I don’t like to rant, and there’s enough negativity on the internet. I’ll try and keep this positive. So here we are, a year into development, and still Destiny lacks the most basic of integrated, social functions as found in online games. Cruising an app or the forums is in no way preferable to making postings and forming groups in game—assuming said tools existed for Destiny, yet they do not. What’s astonishing is that group play is more and more encouraged with new content, however, Bungie declines to provide the means, the tools for such activities. I’m talking about optional matchmaking for each and every activity in the game. I’m talking about a functional social panel where people uninterested in matchmade groups can put together postings and strike teams of their own. A year in, and these basic quality of life features—again present in nearly every massively multiplayer game under the sun—are nonexistent. But Raids can only be done in preformed teams! Great, no one (well, not me, at least) wants to take away that option from you. Anyway, the fact that TTK raid was downed in a day, and often by groups pooled together out of random PSN and Live invites from the forums, is telling about the perceived difficulty of the content. It took about a month before anyone completed the highest tier content in FFXIV: Heavensward. It was a process of slow and steady grinding and bashing one’s head against dps-checks and failure after failure. If a raid can be completed by a going-in-blind team in 3-4 hours, the content isn’t nearly as hard as people decry. Furthermore, the lifestyle that Bungie is advocating for its player base is simply not grounded in reality. I admire the strike team that got the world first on the raid. However, Bungie’s expectations and accolades as posted on Bungie.net that that team’s hardcore gaming lifestyle is in any way behavior to which most normal gamers can adhere is mind-boggling obtuse regarding who, actually, buys their game (read “normal gamers” as: 9-5 ladies and gents—I’m not calling anyone a loser for being a serious hobbyist). Have I raided yet in Destiny? No. A.) I just started the game fresh, after bailing a few days after launch. I have played every piece of content that is available to me via the game itself: PVP, heroic strikes, the works. B.)[b] I should have the basic tools for social functions built into the game that I am playing. [/b]C.) For what it’s worth, I’m a raid-leader, guild member and min-max player in whatever game I choose to play—Destiny notwithstanding. (Heck, I’m light level 276 after only 2 weeks and I didn't use my instant level 25 boost—saving that for my warlock.) Warframe, WoW, DCUO, FFXIV, Tera, Planetside and too many other games to mention have functional social tools and options for grouping and forming leagues/ clans/ whatever. Forever why should I have to use external 3rd party sites to perform basic acts of grouping and communication? Why the unnecessary micromanagement of PSN/ Live friends lists? Why has Bungie deferred the players—and the responsibility—to external sources? It’s a mess, and if even the most devout fan of the game steps back for a moment and examines what’s on the market, it’s unprecedentedly bad by comparison. Don’t take my word for it, here’s what the professional reviews had to say: [i]As most players agree the six player co-op is the best thing in the game but with just one new, hard to access, raid The Taken King does nothing to expand it. Especially as there’s still no matchmaking for anything other than the three-player strike[/i]—Metro [i]Where World of Warcraft has spent the best part of a decade iterating and improving MMO mechanics, Destiny seemed intent on reinventing them from scratch. The game launched with almost no matchmaking functionality for any serious play, requiring players to put themselves into teams of three to six friends manually. Bungie insisted on treating co-operative and competitive play the same for balancing purposes, ensuring that weapons were frequently bizarrely overpowered or completely useless. Earning high-level loot, explicitly required to participate in the game’s high-point, the Vault of Glass raid, was an exercise in frustration and destructive psychological loops to the extent that players chose to stand outside a cave shooting low-level enemies for hours on end to earn rewards, rather than play the game “as intended”. Those are problems World of Warcraft experienced at launch, too – over a decade ago[/i]—The Guardian. [i]The Taken King's best content is often the stuff that highlights one of the game's worst remaining flaws: For an online game, it can be really hard to find people to play with. The Taken King's three best repeatable sources for loot — the weekly Nightfall, the new raid and the Court of Oryx — don't feature matchmaking at all, requiring you to use third-party websites to fill a fireteam if you don't have any friends online. What's more frustrating is that The Taken King's new hyper-challenging public events, which are intended to bring strangers in the same area together, have actually formed altogether new social disconnects[/i].—Polygon I could go on, really, almost any review—good or bad—that you can peruse off Metacritic acknowledges the hobbled social functions of the game. I would like to be a dedicated hardcore fan and member of this community, however, it seems to be Bungie themselves who are denying myself and countless others the opportunity to enjoy their game simply by not building comprehensive social tools into what is, supposedly, a social game. Bungie’s cutting off their nose to spite their face and the critics—for all their paid and feigned praise at times—almost universally agree. [b]Dear Bungie, please, please, please, fix matchmaking and the social infrastructure of this game[/b]. All the best to you guardians and hardworking programmers behind the scenes. I hope that Destiny has a bright future ahead of it, though Bungie has to want that too.