🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ You are not going be playing against ”high tier players” every game, and chances are they will be on your team if you match one.

I don't know what to tell you. Fiber is good for the last mile, but after that you're at the mercy of your ISP. I remember the days when regional (peer ring) and international traffic used to be prioritized differently, and priced separately. Perhaps your ISP is not prioritizing low-latency traffic outside of its own network, or the local peer ring? Distance is, of course, a factor, perhaps I'm luckier since I'm at a sort of a crossroads and I'm 50ms away from EU, UK, Russia and the Middle East. If you're in, say, Dallas, then you'll get sub-50ms ping to DC, LA, Miami and even Toronto, but you're screwed if you try to go anywhere outside the US or CA. You [i]could[/i] invest in dedicated bandwidth and priority low-latency traffic, but unless you do this for a living or need it for legitimate business reasons (like Telepresence) it's simply not worth the ridiculous premium. As for me, I used to barely touch PvP before the introduction of SBMM, but since then I've actually enjoyed it quite a lot, with the exception of Trials of course. I grinded out all of the pinnacles except NF, and enjoyed learning to snipe for Revoker, or land HC shots for Luna's (I was mainly using dad pulses before,) and even love scouts for Randy's, though I never got into the Erentil, Mindbenders, DRB, LoW and similar metas. Just not my thing. I do like running HC/Sniper these days, though I may switch to auto + shotty if I face a particularly sweaty team running the current meta. I've goofed around with builds like bow + Erianas/Duke with Lucky Pants, Bombardier's, Gemini, Ahamkara's, Ophidia, Kherpi's, etc. and used to have fun. Now, it seems everyone is mapping at 40m with autos or aping with Fellwinter's, and not much room for fun is left. The point is, there's a certain level of challenge beyond which no learning is possible, and no fun either. Games and learning share a very strong connection, but both require proper stimuli. When the outlook is too grim, there is no incentive left. That's why you don't study calculus in third grade, and that's why all professional sports have tiered leagues. I know D2 is not an e-sports title, but as long as there are performance-based rewards, it's a competitive activity nonetheless, and fair competition rules should apply. For the record, I am not convinced SBMM in the form that Bungie had it implemented is the right solution, either. We don't have enough details to know what, exactly, was wrong but if the top tier was having problems matchmaking, then the brackets were definitely not percentile-based but rather skill-based, meaning the top 1% were definitely screwed. Perhaps a working compromise would be to have the brackets be percentile based, say quintiles (top 20%, upper-average 20%, average 20%, lower-average 20%, and bottom 20%.) This will make sure that player pools are evenly distributed, while keeping skill brackets somewhat fair. It would still be skewed at the top end, but I'd wager that's where people would be least likely to complain about losing to better players. At the bottom end the skill gap would also be large, but much easier to overcome as the learning curve is not so steep initially. Whatever the outcome, it's clear that neither CBMM nor SBMM are without issues, and a compromise is needed.

You got your way, bungie basically decided to exclude a certain level of player from pvp, other than comp which has always been toned down trials anyway, and wtf would a crap player enjoy that. It's time people realised that Bungie really did just make pvp elitist. And that is not a good thing long term

This ^^

Sure buddy, constantly playing in lobbies that connect players from two or three continents under SBMM has to do my with my internet, obviously not a matchmaking problem. I guess i just have to wait until something better than this fibre line is invented so i can ugrade to that...

[quote]What can I say, get a better Internet connection? I live in the EU and I have no issues playing with anyone except some folks in the rural US. EU, UK, Middle East, Russia, Central Asia, Far East... No issues. Maybe Aus or NZ would be tough but we are rarely online together. Heck, a few nights ago I was playing with a Texan, a Brummie and a Pakistani (among others,) no lag whatsoever.[/quote] Way to contradict yourself, saying to me in one post you have no issues at all, and claiming to have constant lag now.... 🤦‍♂️

Exactly

Wrong. He is slightly below 1. Well over 50 percent of all players have a kd below 1.