I don't believed the Tweet. It was either a lie, or the person tweeting simply didn't get the correct info himself (TLDR at the end). There are numerous people who are excellent Crucible players and who found enough proof that the matchmaking itself changed. They have gaming routers (most notably the Netduma and his biggest competitor) which can show you to where you get connected geographically. What those guys constated, was a clear geographical shift in terms of the player base. If you once mainly fought people in close proximity, you will now battle Japanese players, as a French guy. This wouldn't be that remarkably, if the shift wouldn't get accompanied with much more competitive matches. It's one thing if the player base is too small for strict regional matchmaking, it's something completely different however, if the global matchmaking let's you battle opponents with a similar skill. Mostly because the lag gets unbearable at that point. This got further tested later on, by players making new PSN/XBL accounts. Those guys would have a level 5 guardian, and get 40 kills a game. Until a certain threshold of stat collection is overcome, this would continue. But then suddenly after the 10th-15th game, the matchmaking got faaaar stricter and said guardians with new accounts started to face much better opponents. Much better as in, similar to their true skill level. There was also no turning back. After the threshold was overcome, said players wouldn't face "noobs" anymore. (TLDR) If it would be the Sparrow league, it shouldn't matter if you have a new or old account. You would always get matchmade with good opponents, as the player base seems to be concentrated somewhere else and the Tweet clearly says that whatever we experience in terms of matchmaking, SRL is to blame for. So why does this change when you have a new account? Obviously because skill gets factored in far more heavily than before. Now let's just pretend it's only SLR: Then the game mode has to disappear forever. If SRL/SLR makes it as such, that the rest of the Crucible is unplayable, then the mode has no raison d'être. This is a shooter, not a 5€ PSN sci fi racing game with 2 tracks.