“Skill based matchmaking is still a thing?” is what you’re probably asking when it comes to Bungie’s Destiny but yes. After a successful Iron Banner, connections and matches in the Crucible have seemingly dropped back down in quality.
Much of this is blamed on skill based matchmaking – which Bungie has been trying to tweak for months now – but on asking senior designer Derek Carroll how one is supposed to relax and play Crucible under these settings, he replied, “Try Strikes?”
Carroll further stated that, “MM may not be perfect, but ‘games are too competitive’ is not one of the issues.”
The comments drew outrage mostly because other designers at Bungie have said the Crucible isn’t meant to be taken too seriously. Regardless, Carroll clarified his tweets on Reddit.
I was simply replying to the ‘how can I relax and play Crucible’ question, which my answer is ‘relaxation isn’t one of the primary goals of the Crucible.’ Perhaps I was being too snarky, but hey, we all have our days. Destiny MM doesn’t ‘favor’ skill over connection. In a nutshell, we attempt to find the best connections within a skill range, and if we can’t find a good match, we expand the skill range and try again. If it’s taking you minutes to find a match, it’s not because we’re waiting to find you the perfect skill match, it’s because we’re having trouble finding you a good connection. We give up on skill almost immediately, because it’s less important than having low latency.
“We aren’t skill-obsessed, but I do believe that the best matches are where both teams are evenly matched, and have low-latency connections. Are you with me on that, at least? No one is saying Destiny‘s MM is perfect, but I’d love to be able to improve it (with your help!) instead of just hearing that ‘SBMM is the devil!'”
What are thoughts on Carroll’s stance? Let us know in the comments.