Now I currently have a trending rant on the website, but it's rather...angry, and filled with expletives (drinking's bad, m'kay?), so this time I'm gonna cool my salty ass down and try to explain my thoughts the best I can. This is quite long so I get it if it's too long to read. I'm not a fan of SBMM at all. I don't understand why people think SBMM with a P2P networking setup is a good idea. With dedicated servers maybe it'd be okay. The lag in this game was abysmal to begin with back in year one, and it gave people with red bars invincibility and an advantage. Hell, it still does. Now it's even worse because not only do you have to deal with super sweaty and toxic players literally every single game (it seems the higher up in the skill tree you are the more...egotistical people become), you have to deal with the terrible lag, which has somehow gotten even worse. Also, playing against sweaty players every single game is very tiring. It makes me feel like playing the game is a chore. I'd like to try out new builds, I'd like to get a Sum of all Tears using only a Dreg's Promise, I'd like to mess around every once in a while, but I can't because, since I'm technically "sweaty" myself, all I ever run into are good (and laggy) players with the best weapons and gear at their disposal, and it becomes impossible to try new things. I feel like I'm forced to use only a handful of weapons, and that makes things stale for me. I don't think people should be forced into SBMM to begin with. It's bad enough there's a lack of balance in this game. The majority of this community wants SBMM gone. Every game I've heard about that implemented SBMM had a very negative response from their community, including this one. The forums are filled with anti-SBMM rants. Now I get it's benefited some people, but it screws over everyone else in the process. I do understand why they implemented it though. I started at a 0.2 K/D when I first started playing. I was horrible. I had been away for work and training and all this stuff and had no time for myself for a long time, so it was a while before I picked up a controller again. Eventually I brought all of my K/Ds up to 2.0 or higher with hard work and practice, although they've all plummeted as of late because I literally can't kill anyone anymore with this lag, nevermind the lack of balance. But back to the topic... I get it. I've been there before. I know how you less-skilled players feel. I know what it's like to get trashed every game. Hell, the very first game I played was against WTFisPoshy during his blink shotgun days, so you can probably imagine how that went. Where a lot of people begin to hate SBMM is lag and imbalance. I've heard that Destiny runs at an abysmal 10hz, while also using P2P networking. To put it simply, THAT SUCKS. Anybody play Overwatch? Overwatch flourishes while still having SBMM in Casual and Competitive play. It has dedicated servers and runs at 60hz. SBMM makes the already terrible networking of Destiny look even worse, but to rub salt in the wounds, the player lagging is at an advantage, where in Overwatch, if you lag, you'll be punished. Now I have a 75 down 5 up wired connection with very low latency with an almost $200 router that I both bought specifically to help with this game's terrible connection issues, but it seems like it was all waste as of late. This is the only game I have connection problems with too. The problem with SBMM, especially for people like me who are in the higher echelon of players, so to speak, is it's very hard to find someone around our skill level. We're on the higher end of the bell curve. There's already fewer players nowadays. I mean Destiny's player base has shrunk considerably, especially since it's several years old, and many people think it's become stale. Now the matchmaking algorithms have to look for people around our skill level while still (allegedly) taking connections into account. Since there are less high-skilled players it has to look everywhere for good players, not just people from your area. I constantly play people from other countries. I play against at least one red bar probably nine out of ten games, nevermind the ones on my team, and it sucks not being able to kill them. I normally see a red bar on top of either team, and it's frustrating losing to them. I don't mind losing, I don't mind playing competitively, but when I unload an entire HMG mag into someone's face, for example, only to have them walk right up to me and blast my face off with a shotgun, then run away like nothing happened, then I get mad. I can't play with friends anymore because, since they aren't as skilled as I am, they just end up getting demolished by the sweaty players I normally deal with. Destiny is supposed to be a social game, and I can probably say for everyone here that Destiny, and any game for that matter, is much more enjoyable when playing with friends. It's kinda lonely playing by yourself, and no one wants to play with me anymore. I mean having a 2.0ish K/D and then bringing a few friends with 1.0-1.2ish K/Ds into the game is rough when the enemy team has, say, 1.5 K/Ds and up. I will say though I believe the bottom tier of players should be separated from the top tier. I had to restart my characters recently, and when I first went into the Crucible I was destroying everybody. Kinda made me feel bad. That being said I don't think the bottom tier should be hidden from the middle tier, and I don't think the middle tier should be hidden from the top tier. Playing better people helps you get better. You see what kind of weapons and gear and subclasses and tactics they're using, and eventually you begin to implement those styles/items into your way of playing. If they want to keep SBMM I think it needs to be tweaked. I think connection needs to play a much bigger part, because, no matter how skilled you or your opponents are, it doesn't help and isn't fun for anyone when they're too laggy to kill. I could go on and on, but I'm gonna leave the rant part as is. Injury is making it hard to type. Now I had a few ideas to "fix" this problem, but I'll briefly explain my favorite one. Bungie had matchmaking figured out a long time ago with the Halo franchise, specifically with Halo 3 and Halo: Reach. You can see the same thing in Overwatch. You could play in a casual playlist. You know...sit back, relax, snipe some goonies, just have fun with everyone. Then you had a ranked playlist where you could try hard against very skilled players. Their 50 level setup from Halo 3 (I think? Been a long time) was a great idea. You'd end up playing against people around your level, depending on how skilled you were, and you had to learn how to play better to level up. Eventually they added MLG playlists into the mix, which is pretty much just a ranked playlist. Overwatch is similar. That kind of system, where it gives players a choice, where it allows players to try hard one day, and relax the next, is, in my opinion, the best kind of matchmaking setup. I'd really like to know peoples' thoughts and ideas on this. I'd really like to discuss the different playlist idea, because I believe it would be a great thing for Destiny 2.