---Part One--- Lol, it's been awhile. I have to say, that's quite a plate you set before me. I was actually in bed on my phone calling it a night, but you've made me go back to my computer for this one :) Let's see if I can get you to see my perspective. [quote]Matchmaking serves no one save for elitist Malcontents, the ones who may have missed their moment of allotted time and have become desperate. Would others benefit? Of that I've no doubt. But the scales are weighted heavily in favor of the Guardian Malcontents; the Trolls who bully for attention, the Players who are self-serving that may choose to abandon others once satisfied. It is unfortunate, but unfortunately true nonetheless.[/quote] Matchmaking is actually the lifeblood of online gaming. Xbox made Microsoft a name as a console manufacturer, but matchmaking made them the kings of the last console generation. To say the mm serves only elitist malcontents makes no sense. Matchmaking allows anyone to participate in content regardless of race, religion, social status, skill level, etc. Would there be bullies, malcontents and trolls? Of course. There are on LFG sites and there are in any number of normal crucible matches. It's a part of gaming, but they are by no means a majority and to allow a small percentage of trouble makers to dictate how everyone accesses the game is not right. In 2005 Perfect Dark had hosted lobbies. If you hosted, you picked game type, game size (up to 50 players if I remember correctly), number of spaces open for random people to join, weapon layouts, etc. If you weren't hosting, you could browse lobbies and see what people were playing and if there were open spaces to join. Once a lobby was formed, you played until the host quit or you left. What this led to is the same people playing game after game together and it was the single most social experience I've even seen online. Everyone ended up talking eventually and 99.9% of the people playing were cool as hell. Gears of War came out and it was the same thing and again, playing together in lobbies, people would open up after a game or two and it was extremely social. Halo 3 changed things. Halo 3 allowed team killing and it also just matched everyone as we do now where it was all random, but easier and quicker to leave and requeue after a match than try to party up with people. It also allowed cross team chat before and after matches and it quickly became a cesspool of 10 year olds screaming obscenities and racial slurs before and after matches. I played a few other games after Halo 3 (Fallout and a few others), but could not get back into any more Halo games. So I ended up switching to pc and playing WoW for 7 years. Know what permeates through every activity in WoW and works amazingly? Matchmaking. I was in guilds pre-mm raids where there was tremendous in-fighting over who got to raid and who got left out each week. Countless guilds died agonizing deaths over jealousies and popularity contests. When they introduced LFR, everyone said the same thing you and others say now. It could never work. It would be all trolls and quitters. No one would talk. I ran hundreds of LFRs and I had one fail group ever. Sometimes we'd all get in someone's vent and other times people would type out who would do what. In some cases, you know what to do just by what group you were put in. The thing is, when content requires communication, people will maybe not always talk, but they'll listen. I hear the argument that LFRs were dumbed down. I've played regular raids, heroic raids, LFR raids, 10 man raids, 25 man raids. All of them are infinitely more involved than anything in Destiny. The difference was, in non-LFR raids when someone quit or was kicked for being bad, sometimes you didn't find a replacement or had to send someone to trade chat to try to recruit a random. There was no guarantee that you finished the boss let alone the raid though. In LFR if someone quit or was kicked, the group just re-entered the queue and usually within 3-5 minutes the group was back at it. Occasionally it would be a bitch to find a tank, but the groups never just fell apart and had to quit. Pre-LFR is was really frustrating to try to play endgame content in WoW because your best odds were to join a guild, but that didn't guarantee you'd be chosen to raid. So if you weren't in one or chosen, you'd have to post in trade chat looking for a group and hope to find one and then hope they let you roll loot. I was in a guild during WoTLK where those of us not chosen to be in the guild raid team formed a second team. We ended up beating the first 3 wings of the raid before the main raid team so they started raiding our members. It was -blam!-ed up and tore the guild apart. Once LFR was implemented there was no bullshit, no "you don't get to run this week", no "you can't roll on that dps piece because the off tank wants it for their dps spec" LFR was bullshit free. You go fly around questing or doing dailies and when the queue pops, you hit enter and go raid EVERY WEEK. Matchmaking made endgame not only accessible to everyone, it made it as or more social and fun because there wasn't the political bullshit involved. And also, it made it where pretty much everyone knew how to do all the raids and even when people didn't there were plenty to guide the groups through the mechanics. So I disagree that matchmaking cannot work because the best gaming experiences I've had the last 10 years have all involved random matchmaking. [quote]Lately these forums seem to have become a haven for prejudice and bigotry[/quote] Yes there is that element on any forum and any community, but it is by no means the majority on here either. It's always a very vocal minority. I spent most of the day today on and off the forums and 99.9% of the exchanges were highly positive. The problem is that one person talking shit can ruin your day sometimes. But that doesn't make the forums a bad place or speak to the overall quality of the community. Generally I've found there are 2 types of people. Those who want to post about Destiny and those that want to talk shit about people who they don't agree with. The overwhelming majority want to talk about the game. [quote]Bungie, the Developers of Destiny, do not hold exclusive autonomy in their Game's development. Activision, the Publishers of Destiny, fund or otherwise pay the internal development team (Bungie) to work on their licensed Intellectual Property (Destiny). As such, Activision is an "external developer" and actively monitors, critiques, and likely even assists in ongoing development. Some of the most controversial decisions Destiny suffers from may have been enforced by Activision or at the very least encouraged (I.e., the growing price of DLC). Furthermore, Destiny as an existing Intellectual Property still maintains support for Last Generation consoles (Xbox 360 and Playstation 3). This is likely a mandate from Activision, which while profitable, severely stunts Destiny's in-game content growth.[/quote] I posted this yesterday in a thread regarding Activision and their roll in endgame grouping: [quote]Honestly I think the biggest issue with endgame matchmaking is the contract with Activision and the Teen rating. Halo had a VERY bad reputation for multiplayer. I think Activision, Bungie or both were scared shitless Destiny would end up the same. Hence a game that released with virtually no ways to interact socially in a shared online world. Basically it's letting a very small % of gamers (raging, racist, foul mouthed trolls) to dictate how everyone are able to play. But it's far easier to just exclude everyone than to try to build tools to remove those players. As far as the forums and the people who are radically against optional mm or gear accession, in general they tend to be the same 10% that everyone is so afraid we'll run into in OMM in the first place.[/quote] There is no doubt that Bungie are beholden to Activision on way more fronts than they should be. Bungie should have held all the cards when shopping publishers and yet somehow gave the farm to Activision when it should have been Activision giving the farm to publish Destiny.