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.