As Alexander Payne once said, "You just never know when you're living in a golden age." I know now that if Destiny ever had a golden age, it is long gone, but can it ever come back? It depends on if we speak up. The implementation of Skill-Based Matchmaking has destroyed this game. Match times take twice as long as before, and the matches that we do get thrown into are either in progress or are complete sweat fests. It doesn't help that our once-favorite Exotic guns now feel like severely mediocre pea shooters that are mere shells of their former selves. Still, for the purposes of this post, I would like to focus on SBMM. A little about myself. Last summer, I pulled consistent 2.5 to 3 k/ds and found that I was at the top of the scoreboard almost every match. On an average game, I would pull about a 2 to a 2.3 k/d. On an above-average game, I would pull as high as a 5 k/d. Now, I am lucky to even go neutral, and that's putting it lightly. My overall kill/death ratio is somewhere around 2.1 (give or take). The k/ds of the players who I am matched against are 1.5, 2, and 3, whereas the k/ds of the players on my team are .9 to 1.2 (at the highest). Can someone please explain to me how this is fair? Way back, the k/ds of my opponents and teammates alike typically ranged from .8 to 1.3, but as of June 2016 they are more than double these values. Some of you will argue that I was never good at the game to begin with if I cannot compete against players who share my skill set. You may be right, but why should that matter? At the end of the day, Destiny is supposed to be a casual shooter, and as such I should not be forced to play my heart out every single match against players who are just as good if not better than me. Another argument some of you will make is that the only way to truly improve at a game is to play against difficult opponents. What backwards logic. How am I supposed to improve as a player when the anger and frustration brought upon by difficult opponents negatively affect my performance in game? The truth is that you can only improve against weak opponents, not strong ones. It is the same principle in MMOs: you start off fighting lower tier enemies until you are strong enough to fight the higher tier ones. In Destiny's multiplayer, if you possess an overall 1.5 k/d or higher, there is simply NO room for improvement because you are only as strong as Bungie thinks you should be. Essentially, the only way up is down. "But Marc, SBMM finally gives below-average players the chance to compete. You shouldn't be allowed to pull 2 and 3 k/ds every match--that's just unfair to everyone else!" While that may be true for below-average players (the minority), you are literally alienating the rest of everyone else by forcing them to regress to the mean and re-normalize their k/ds against their will. If Bungie is so avid about keeping SBMM in the game despite 90% of the player base blatantly objecting to it on the forums and otherwise, then they need to RESTRICT it to SPECIFIC playlists (i.e.: Iron Banner and Trials of Osiris) that are skill-based by nature. We, the Destiny community, should be given the option to play hyper-competitive matches at our leisure, not all the time. In addition, the only surefire way to resolve the connectivity crisis that is plaguing matchmaking right now is to 100% prioritize the best possible connections over skill. Doing so will make Destiny fun again, but most importantly, doing so will MAKE DESTINY GREAT AGAIN! TL;DR -- Skill-Based Matchmaking has destroyed this game because it favors the minority of players yet excludes the majority, forcing them into ultra-competitive matches without taking into consideration casual play styles and optimum connections. In that regard, Bungie needs to either abolish or restrict SBMM to playlists such as Iron Banner and Trials so that the Crucible can be the light-hearted experience that it once was. EDIT 6/29: So many "you shouldn't be pulling 2 and 3 k/ds every match because that's unfair for us casual players!!" comments. I guess I should have known what to expect. Clearly some of you have short attention spans and did not actually read my post. By catering to the noobs, you alienate the people who actually perform consistently well. Why should players whose k/ds exceed 1.5 need to suffer at the expense of everyone else? That is an emulation of socialism, and it hasn't worked in a single country. One other thing I would like to clear up is that I don't want Bungie to get rid of SBMM across the board so that I can pub stomp everyone again. I want them to RESTRICT SBMM to specific playlists so that the Crucible is not ultra-competitive everywhere we go. Lastly, even if I did go back to getting 25, 30, or 40 kills a match, I'd probably lose anyway. Any time I did exceptionally well in Year 1 was most likely when the rest of my team did exceptionally poor. It's just the way the universe works.