[u]Part Two[/u] Then there's matchmaking. With the return of 6v6 came a bug that disabled skill in matchmaking. While everyone was originally praising 6’s as the return of the Crucible fun factor, once the news got out on sbmm, players seized the opportunity to demonize it more and beg for it to be left out in Forsaken. Bungie acquiesced. I really thought the Y2 sandbox was incredible at launch, but I don't think we ever really got to experience it properly because of the decision to leave skill out of QP. That one call cut the legs out from under so much of what should have been great in Y2, but instead created a farming ground for the top level players and a stomp or get stomped Crucible that wasn't fun or accessible for solo, average skill or new players. It was just game after game of 1 or 2 players going off while everyone else struggled to go positive (even on the winning teams). Players were told if they didn't like getting stomped, to just quit and re-queue… then quitting and being dropped into games in-progress became a huge issue again. Comp and ranked play never really panned out. Pinnacle weapons were a success, but once acquired, players abandoned Comp to go farm QuickPlay, and suddenly QP became the preferred mode for the high skilled instead of a feeder into the PvP “endgame” of Comp. Then there was balancing and the return of the nerfs. Weapons and supers once more started to get cut down and PvE once more became affected by PvP, but how can you assess or begin to know how to balance the sandbox when your primary Crucible playlist doesn't factor skill? How do you establish a baseline for what is weapon/ability/super performance vs what is just extreme skill discrepancies of combatants? How counterable is Luna's when it's used by a player of similar skill vs a player or team of players 500-1000 Elo above us or anyone on our team? One positive in year 2 is that Iron Banner did include the best skill matchmaking the franchise has ever seen, but even IB games are undone by rules and scoring, as well as the decision to make power matter which to a degree negates the positive gains from skill factoring. So here we are with a PvP population struggling to maintain 300k across all platforms, national media and high profile streamers suggesting Destiny could drop PvP and Bungie having to confirm that no, they're not getting rid of it. I don't know where Bungie are going to take it from here. I know that it really needs to be rebuild the foundation because this square peg/round hole doesn't work. I see a couple directions that I would love to see the game evolve. One I've written extensively in the past on is moving away from the current format for the base Crucible and expanding on private matches by adding optional matchmaking and allowing players to host or join lobbies. IB and Trials type content could still exist as PvP endgame with current matchmaking formats. The other option I wouldn't mind seeing is just the simplification of the Crucible and a focus on what worked and made it fun to begin with. Return to a regular (skill based) Crucible with set choices of Clash, Control, Rumble and one rotating weekly playlist. Drop Comp and 4v4 completely and return a 3 player Trials type ranked PvP endgame for the hard core players to go along with IB as the PvP endgame for everyone else. I think this is the easiest solution they could implement at this juncture and I think getting back to the roots of what made us love the Crucible to begin with would be a good thing. Just my thoughts on things. Don't know where it will end up, but I firmly believe that a fun and accessible Crucible is integral to the success of this franchise as it heads into its future.

To me, you missed the #1 issue with Crucible, it's peer to peer networking. 1) A peer to peer connections is likely to fail because most peoples internet can not handle the upload rates. ISPS have asymmetric internet with upload being far slower than download rates. With 6V6, you have to upload to 11 people your information and download from 11 people so 22 connections + whatever Bungie tally server requires. With Dedicated servers, you only send and receive to and form one source, greatly reducing the amount of data you send, receive and process. 2) Peer to Peer shares your IP address with everyone in the match. That means that anyone (including griefing teammates) can launch an IP Exploit (like DOS etc.) and cripple your ability to play the game, or even knock you out of the game. With dedicated servers, no one knows your IP Address therefore this issue goes completely away and it reduces the number of people needed at Bungie for Ban Hammer investigations. 3) Peer to Peer is at the mercy of who gets connected to your game and when. With falling populations, Bungie has no choice but to match you with anyone in the world and regardless of their connection Quality. So then we get these bullet sponge moments where 3 clips of ammo to the back of the head doesn't register and they spin around and one shot you. Dedicated Servers will reduce the impact of this. These 3 things largely mitigate any argument for Skill in the game and make balancing anything in Crucible nearly impossible. Until Bungie grows up and has Regional Dedicated Host Servers they are just spinning their wheels in the sand with any tuning of Crucible.

Upvote for starting an important conversation that needs to be had. IMO there is just never going to be enough people playing to institute SBMM as long as we are split across three different platforms. We need millions playing in order for it to work right. Otherwise its just constant catch up mechanics. I also disagree with 4v4 needing to be deleted because its better to not have so much weight put on our shoulders with respect to individual skill. 3v3 contributes to too much toxicity and elitism. Imagine how much rage would ensue if comp was 3v3. 3v3 is fine for trials but it would still leave too many people out of the mix. The answer is to make PvP more accessible to solo players. They did it with Halo and they can do it with Destiny if they code it right. It was a good move to double the amount of points earned in comp for instance. More people are able to reach the middle ranks and earn the Fabled pinnacle weapons which in turn makes the rank you reach actually mean something, instead of having a giant pool of people stuck at the bottom and a small class of elites at the top with almost no one in the middle. Going forward they need to make it so that you don't necessarily need a clan or your raid team to go into PvP in order to succeed. All the talk about making how much you play and what you decide to do more meanignful needs to also be transferred to PvP. It should mean something if the highest you can get to is 4000. If you play people that are at 3000 you should feel that you earned your rank. The way it is now its mostly about luck or the fact that you played on a stacked team. The focus on stacked teams is the real problem. Its not a matter of SBMM or CBMM, there's much more going on in the background with respect to the way this game works than just connection or skill factoring. Teams will always have an advantage because of communication but the fact that the game doesn't really try to match solos of considerable skill against those teams is a mistake. Bungie has done a good job with PvP in D2 but that good job has been spread out over time and blended with bad decisions, many of which were probably made to try to give players with lower skill a chance (Telesto in season 4, Spectral Blades, etc.). If they could just take all of the best and apply it to one point in time this game would be one of the most skillful PvP expeiriences to date.