Play solo until your skill improves. Stop moaning about a feature that should be in all games. Too many pussies on this forum just wanna play against noobs all day to shit on them. I like the idea of sbmm and want to go up against opponents of similar skill level.

No. SBMM must stay. It's completely unreasonable to have a game where people who like each other team up and enter games, then just play against other people and the team with the best players wins. We can't have that, we need to separate good players from the bad. Ignore their connections, nerf their weapons and randomly disconnect them from games. That's a much better experience for everyone I'm sure you all agree.

Matching people from Europe and brazil is the best experience ever....NOT remove sbmm.

I have literally never seen anyone support SBMM. If anyone who doesn't get paid to is literally not playing this game ever.

OK, so your friends are proping you into their lobbies. I know it, I do it to my friends. They don't play nearly as well in my lobbies and sometimes it's disheartening for them. But you know what? When they go back to their lobbies, they start crushing it. Like hard. They all know that it's harder to play with me because they will get harder opponents...but they recognize their skill increasing as an offset of that increased difficulty. I never had SBMM to protect me when I learned to pvp in year 1. In fact, I finished all of the exotic questlines that had me go through crucible (including Thorn) and it was very difficult. Thorn alone was a two day (10 hour+ each day) grind to finish, but I did it. I used to be a 0.6 k/d player back then. From December to July of year 1 that was what I could muster. But the lobbies had a good mix of players. It had players that I could beat, and players that absolutely trounced me. That's where the appeal of crucible grew for me. I'd spend time fighting these tougher opponents match after match as they constantly domed me, cross mapped me with TLW or straight up shotgun rushed me. I watched how they played. They didn't break up lobbies back then. I'd stick with those opponents too, and stay in those lobbies as long as they did. I didn't care about my stats (I still don't, but I recognize they dictate the experience I have), and chasing them down became my goal. Win or lose, I got something, and thralling into them didn't feel as punishing because I learned from my engagements, and by the time TTK launched, I had gone flawless in ToO (Twice total), and brought that abysmal KD from 0.6 (and about 8 months of holding onto that number) up to a 1.3. Then in year 2 something changed. SBMM started into effect. It was subtle in September, noticble in November, and almost unplayable in December. My KD didn't change, if anything it slightly improved, as did my win-rate...but the game itself became significantly different for me. Not only was the gunplay changed, and I had to re-learn it...but the lag itself started to get so severe I had no idea if I was improving. I couldn't tell if my losses in my encounters were because of my own faults, odd weapon balancing, SBMM itself, or just the lag itself. Even if I found an opponent I wanted to learn from it didn't matter. It only took one bad game for the lobbies to break up. SBMM and its implications took away the challenge for me. That lack of consistency in gameplay made it impossible to tell what I was doing wrong or where I was improving. It also closed to doors to finding reliable opponents to emulate...because things were mostly relative in my lobbies. My average win percentage went up, as did my KD...did that mean I was having a better time? Hell no. People that argue that skilled players ''just want to stomp the lesser skilled players and not have a ''sweaty'' pvp experience in the crucible'' have it wrong. We just want to be able to play the game and experience the skill is it comes without lag. I'd argue that people who argue FOR SBMM want the same thing. They don't want to be challenged and pushed outside of their comfort zone because they're ignorant to the benefits of going up against harder opponents, or because they hypocritically don't want to go against ''sweaty'' opponents themselves. You want SBMM? That's fine IF the game had dedicated servers. It doesn't, so the game should never compromise playability just to isolate those easily intimidated and unwilling to invest time and effort into beating 1 or 2 difficult players that would be bound to show up in their lobbies.

I know what you mean. I am max light on all characters, but my best gaming friends are a bit lower than me. I can't really go into a match with them because if I lead, I am bringing them to a realm of torture. If they lead, I bring torture to other, low light level players.

This has been rolling around my mind for a while and I've debated on when I should post or not but now seems like a good or time as ever. I love SSBM. You read correctly. I LOVE IT. Why? I've never met so many friends in such a short amount of time. Almost ever match I get in is someone I recognize and I play with at least weekly. Those games have been the most fun I've had since year one. We play our sweatiest and learn each other's playstyles. We hold small tournaments atleast every month and I always have someone to run threes with whenever I log on. The thing is I would've never met any of these people without SSBM. As for lag I rarely experience such a intense session of latency. Only in a blue moon do I see a red bar warrior running through walls on Rusted Lands. Even if I do I usually just treat them like a regular player and shoot them like a regular player and they go down in a delayed spin. I thank Bungie for matching me up with these great people. And I hope it stays for the next expansions/games. Cheers.

This is a really bad time for bad/so-so players like you and me to be playing PvP. The reasons for that is due to Bungies' matchmaking changes in the recent months because of a decreasing player base. They've increased the skill gap (K/D range) of the players we're going up against. Solo players like me aren't being matched with only solo players anymore, we're now matchmade with fireteams. I haven't played much PvP the past 2 weeks because I've grown tired and frustrated with it. I'm back to my year 1 raging and cursing.