Personally, I'm in agreement that Matchmaking would likely be a horrible experience for those that use it. I know it is on their "We've heard you list", but it might be time for them to run an experiment to test it out. They (and I) might even be surprised at the outcome.
If nothing else, they can have a given week, though a month would probably be better, where they allow matchmaking (with an option in the menus similar to the fireteam chat options). Have it set to "On" by default, but allow users to turn it off. [b](Having it 100% optional is EXTREMELY important - if people want to solo something or just have a few friends with them, they need to be able to do it.) [/b]The back-end for matchmaking seems to already be there, though they'd probably need to make it so that the PVE content is level restricted to the level of the content or above instead of 3 levels of difference.
At the beginning of that week (or however long it lasts), there could be a banner similar to what we get for Iron Banner indicating that it is a limited time event and noting that it is limited simply because it is an experiment to see how effective it actually is.
Let it run and see how people feel about it. I personally think that, for matchmaking to be successful, you'd need a lot more options, but given that matchmaking is such a hot button topic, this would be a way for the player base and Bungie to actually determine how it would play out in reality instead of in the realm of hypotheticals (both on the part of those who think that matchmaking is good and those that feel it would be bad).
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They really should have a public test realm