You hit a real nail on the head when it comes to progression. There is no progression for PvP players. It's basically getting mud stomped by entitled sweats until you figure out something that works and it's very disheartening and morale shattering to go 1 and 15 in a mercy rule control game. PvP is not beginner friendly and worse, the PvP community believes heavily in this hazing process where you spend months getting tortured for their amusement in order to get "gud". You're gonna get a lot of salt from people but everything you said matches with what new players in my clan tell me. PvP sucks until you've got like 500 hours into PvE and then you can finally hang around in a match long enough to get familiar with the map and stuff. It's so screwed up and twisted, tbh.

The TLDR of my post? [i][b]You're absolutely right and for the right reasons. [/b] [/i] Which is why Trials self-destructs whenever it is introduced to the game, and why Bungie basically is at the point where they have to BRIBE us with tons of loot to play PVP. (I played IB for the first time in about a year, and that event is EMBARASSINGLY generous wtih loot compared to the rest of the game. [i]Seriously, Bungie[/i].....?) The problem is a simple one. You have two IRRECONCIABLE views on what constitutes "fun" that are warring with one another over control of the PVP side of the game. You've given voice to---and a good description of---those who see fun in actual competition. IOW, getting to play against people of similar skill level....but for higher stakes as one climbs the latter of skill. In this setting, playing people of higher skill is NOT a "punishment"....its the REWARD for "getting good". (As you said, you don't turn pros loose on kindergarteners...and then call that "competitive") The OTHER faction is what I just call "pub stomp culture". Which we have Call of Duty and early Halo to thank for that. A generation ago, internet infrastructure was so poor, and connection speeds so slow, that CBMM was a necessary evil to get these games to work properly. So feeding weaker players to stronger players was an unavoidable evil...and since there were few options....people tolerated it. But the result is that you now have a generation of shooter gamers who define "fun" not in terms of getting to play against people of their own skill level for bragging rights. But instead in terms of their ability to DOMINATE weaker players. In short, they like to "win"...but they don't like to compete...and they feel that the game owes them success regardless of what effort level they feel like putting out on a given day. (In sports terms that attitude is called "Throwing your hat on the field (baseball) or "Mailing it in (golf)." These players expect success whenever they show up, but only want to put out effort and compete (sweat) on THEIR terms and when THEY feel like it. d Many here actually view having to play people of their own skill level to be a "punishment".....while they hypocritically call for CBMM....and consign the vast majority of players to WORSE conditions than the ones they deem "unfair" and "unreasonable" for themselves. Unfortunately, I don't think you can resolve this conflict within one game, in the current climate. The Devs just need to decided WHICH faction they wish to cater to....and have the stones to tell the other to either suck-it-up and deal with it....or go play a different game. As you noted, the RPG gamer who makes up the backbone of the Destiny PVE player base simply isn't going to tolerate this predatory, "get good" environment where they get served up for the enjoyment of stronger players, with no regard and NO RESPECT for the experience they are having playing the game. They won't tolerate it....and they dont' have to. There are more enjoyable parts of this game.....and a CRAP TON of more enjoyable games out there (Outriders....) So ever since Bungie has gone to CBMM, this game has struggled to get PVP engagement. This is an IRON Banner week...and traditionally that meant that players who were typically PVE players would flood the Crucible in search of themed loot and to "catch up" progression-wise if you were a solo player. But the IB experience now is so MISERABLE with the combination of CBMM and the "lock out" mechanic, that probably 60-70 percent of matches are mercied. Many before you even play long enough to get your super for the first time. Result? IB participation is WAY down. It an effective loot pinata, but its an absolute shit-show of a pvp game mode. An absolute **garbage** experience for anyone looking to enjoy competitive play....and I'm not some kid who uses that term lightly. Yesterday, ALL of Crucible only got about 585 K players. That is about what Crucible used to AVERAGE everyday before Bungie forced CBMM on all of 6v6....and its FAR below the peaks of 800K that IB would usually drive Crucible engagement up to. So why is Bungie doing it? IMO, [i]Google Stadia[/i]. The Stadia players base (7.6K) is simply too small to support any kind of SBMM (2.6K in PvP)....and Bungie is unwilling to anger Google by calling attention to the low player numbers on what is considered one of that platforms flagship games.....and is unwilling to handle that platform differently. So the entire franchise gets stuck with CBMM to meet the needs of a single, badly underperforming platform.

See, i get where people like you are coming from but your last idea sums it up. You are a pve player. Why should a pvp matchmaking system be catered to people who generally aren't that interested in pvp and just get their bounties done at the very most before dipping out of pvp. I've legit never, not once, seen an actual pvp player ask for SBMM. SBMM in a game like this, a game that isn't balanced in the slightest, is the worst idea i've ever heard of. SBMM in this game made the experience for players like me who actually play pvp to enjoy pvp the worst experience ever. I am not saying i play pvp to slay noobs and need CBMM for that. No, CBMM is needed because the overall player pop in YOUR own general area for pvp is not high enough to guarantee a fun experience. With SBMM, my queue times for QUICKPLAY at the BEGINNING of seasons were at 5-15 minutes because the game failed to provide enough players of my own skill level. On top of that once i finally found games, there were laggy asian players in my lobby all over the place. In addition, literally everyone was playing meta and only that, sweating their asses off like its a championship THE WHOLE TIME in the most casual game to ever exist. Variety is key, SBMM provided stale sweatlord lobbies 100 % of the time. Its not fun for the actual pvp players. CBMM is needed for the actual pvp players to enjoy their game mode. So please stop trying so hard to make your 10 minutes of pvp you play every 3 weeks enjoyable while ruining our hours of pvp per day. I am not asking to make GM Nightfalls easier for my own enjoyment either. I don't play em. Crazy concept, i know.

Personally I think its not CBMM that’s the problem, but the fact that it’s matching bottom people into the same matches as top players They should make sure the bottom players never see the top players, but still keep CBMM in

Stasis has turned Crucible into an obnoxious & silly comedy act worth avoiding. Unfortunately.

Dwindling player base is the root of all problems. Or if not the root, it's preventing otherwise reasonable solutions. That's partly why Bungie is trying to lure new players into the Crucible. The other part is that it's ideally the lowest maintenance part of the game, and that's how Bungie wants Destiny to run -- on autopilot. I've played this game on and off for over five years by now -- and I've never played a single match of Trials. I just have no interest in it...

I agree. Improving your skills at a game is like trying to learn how to swim. A teacher throwing you in at the deep end isn't going to make you improve because you'll just drown straight away. Skill is gradually built up. You start at the shallow end and work your way up after you are confident that you can cope in that area. The Crucible throws this out of the window and decides to put sweats against noobs for them to get easy kills.

It wasn’t ‘hardcore players’ complaining about the SBMM, it was almost everyone, some of whom now complain that it’s gone. Trials is a different story entirely. Getting 3-5 wins can be reasonably achieved by most with some practice, but flawless is pretty much a wash unless your team is totally stacked and abusing as much cheese as possible.

youre 100% right but this has been said many times before and will be shouted down by many in the forums who dont want to 'sweat' all the time. There obviously needs to be a tier system for at least some of the playlists in pvp. i dont know why they dont do it, its not exactly difficult.

[quote]EDIT: I've been informed that that's not the only reason, connection was also an issue etc[/quote] You were lied to. Connections always suck because Destiny has no dedicated servers. Lagswitchers and DOSers are everywhere. They were mad that they couldn't stomp to "chill out" so they cried about it until they got their way.

With SBMM the "tryhards" had to sweat, now the majority of PvP dudes has to do so. Idk when I could have fun in QP, people running 120s and FW, but yeah they dont want to farm bad players to get better stats. If you are against SBMM, you dont want competition thats easy.