Trials is flooded with top tier players(streamers, recovs, 24/7 grinders) and it feels like that’s the only player base . If you are 1.3kd or below you have almost 0 chance to go flawless. The casuals jump off the map now they don’t even try no more. Some are incentivized to pay real life money to pay recovs because the playlist is so hard. I think it’s real crazy that I can match a team with players who have been flawless 334 times on game 2. Casuals also have no incentive to play long term past endgame bounties. Tokens are too scarce for them, a lot of them can’t get past game 3 and the rewards at the bottom of the card are too little to warrant going in for a second try. Card based matchmaking is a joke. Pushes casuals out and leaves top tiers to all the loot.
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In order for talent streamers (as opposed to tutorial streamers and personalities/content creators) to wow their audiences they need to excel at an activity that most others can’t. As long as Bungie thinks they are the keys to the kingdom this will continue. The carry and recovery industry makes trials seem more viable than it is. If Bungie dug deep investigatively they would find that most flawless runs are recovs. I knew a guy in D1 that did recovs and he said he was booked solid every weekend. He estimated he did about 25-30 runs for clients a weekend and assumed others did more. The notion of having a high level activity for high level players is cool but it should really be a ranked system like Call of Duty league or something similar. Imagine if MMA worked like trials. I.E. Dustin Poirer vs. the fat bouncer from your local nightclub. The flawless should be earned, but everyone should be able to string two-three wins together now and then.