Stop Getting Matchmaking Wrong: Why Destiny, Call Of Duty, Battlefield Must Learn To Play Fair

Forbes: "I had what’s turned out to be a pretty dumb idea last weekend. I decided it might be fun to trade the eternal grinding of my high-level Destiny Warlock for starting back at the beginning with a new Titan character. Especially as I fancied some of that ‘bubble shield’ action I’ve found so maddening during my Crucible games as a Warlock.

As soon as my new Titan could enter the Crucible I dived straight in, eager to keep levelling up in the part of Destiny that for me has provided the most consistent enjoyment. And then I died. Over and over and over again. With barely a kill or two (usually at the end of a rocket launcher) of my own to break the fatal monotony.

While I’ll happily admit I’m not a particularly brilliant Destiny player, I usually hold my own. So a lack of skills couldn’t totally be to blame for my complete and continual annihilation. Luckily there was an all-too-apparent other explanation for my endless failure: my pathetically low rank versus the other players I kept being thrown up against.

[Gaming247allday]

Halo 2 perfected matchmaking, which is why i will be so happy this November 11th!

[DarthZoolu]

that's funny because I LvLd a titan all the way from 1 to 20 in 2 days in the crucible and I beasted extra hard every match. look at my status online to prove it. This guy Just sucks.

[DarthZoolu]

DarthZoolu is my gamertag I absolutely did lvl up a titan from 4 to 20 in todays in the crucible. I use the Preacher MK20 and a low lvl auto rifle, I didn't even have a heavy weapon. I always went positive won most My matches and came in top 3 most of the time. If you have skill you will do just fine in the crucible. Check my stats. The author has bad stats on all his characters so what is he even talking about? This guy is reaching heavy.

[Ace Killa 08]

@Darth Zoolu? how does this tie in with halo perfecting matchmaking?

[DarthZoolu]

It goes to say multiple games have it just right. What does your comment have to do with halo matchmaking?

[Syleros]

I guess this guy missed the text on the crucible matches saying "level advantages disabled"

derp

[Maxor]

This is why matchmaking sucks. Give me dedicated servers.

[brads4]

? Dedicated servers have nothing to do with matchmaking.

[Ace Killa 08]

SMDH.... he was serious

[Peekayboo]

Welcome to gear based games, clearly you're new here and if you don't want to put in the same amount of time as everyone else I suggest playing pay to win games where nothing is fair

[joab777]

Yeah, maybe they could attempt to matchmake a little better, but it doesn't take too long to level to 20, and then to 24, or to max 1 subclass.

At that point, it's fair game. So yeah, if u start at level 1, u may have some issues. Grab some higher level friends to play w u or use ur teammates to ur advantage.

I'm sure they don't pit u against high level characters on purpose, but in order to find the quickest match. Maybe like other games, they offer a filter to wait for better matchmaking...but u may wait a bit.

[Ravenor]

Pretty sure level advantages disappear in all but one of the Destiny hoppers. So other than the advanced features of legendary and exotic guns, there is no difference between your stuff and their stuff.

So no, this is totally on the author and not Destiny. I'd also like to point out in CoD and Battlefields defense, most people playing those games have played multiple iterations of these titles and they are generally one of the few games they play (GENERALLY). It goes without saying that you're going to run into people who know how to play these games, and they might have the maps, weapons, perks, killstreaks down to a science.

In other news, matchmaking is always going to prioritize proximity and connection quality in peer to peer situations. Quite simply the developers of these games generally care more about you being matched into games where you're not laggy over what your Truskill rank is or whatever MS calls it.

[GameSpawn]

Yeap. Except during the Iron Banner when all the governors are pulled off. During normal Crucible matches there are no level advantages - all weapons are scaled to do the same amount of damage and all armor is scaled to take the same amount of damage. Like you said, all that makes a difference is the additional perks that weapons and armor come along with such as faster reload speeds, better stability, faster ability recharge times, and additional effects on weapons such as the poison effect on the Thorn hand cannon.

Now the screen capture NEVER could have happened for a Raid or Strike as you are locked out of Raids and Strikes at level 2. In my experience with Strikes the matchmaking has been relatively decent (I've never be matched with others more than a few levels above or below me (which at level 18+ becomes a non-issue; 16 and up you should be able to survive all the normal Strikes at their base levels).

[meller]

In strikes the matchmaking goes by level. In crucible by grimoire score, so experienced players don't get matched up with the newbies when they hop on their secondary character. So in a way it is pretty fair.

[GameSpawn]

Yeah, I've played enough Crucible to see what each game type was like. Personally, I stink in the Crucible. I concentrate on the PvE portion of the game. I essentially do all the PvE bounties that are available each day, usually 2-3 public events, and a strike or two. I've still held off on doing the Vault of Glass until I have a fairly decent set of weapons and armor (I'm 27 on my Primary now so I'm probably good on armor).

Grimoire score actually works against me (and experienced Crucible players I get teamed with). I've actually gone out of my way to get all the ghosts (sans the two glitched ones) and I have killed so many of each enemy type that I have earned the maximum Grimoire score for each one of them (I'm only behind on enemies you don't see very often such as Ogres). I'm somewhere north of 1800 grimoire.

I try to hold my own in team matches, but I end up apologizing to my fireteam because again I really do suck in Crucible. I just haven't gotten used to the flow of it and the layout of the maps. I had the same problem in Halo 1 & 2 until I got used to the map layout and weapon/ammo spawn points (mastering the Sniper rifle in Halo 2 also helped along with the ability to stick someone with a grenade from the opposite side of the map).

[Agent_hitman]

Yeah I agree with this article. It is very unfair if you join match making and get teamed with bunch of amateurs without any notice. That sad truth is it will lead you to defeat.

Just like in MOBA games, there's no Room to find any servers to join and there's no choice but to click that 'find a match' and just wait.

[Strange]

The author is complaining that his LV2 character that doesn't even have double jump, super, and melee (the only unlocked thing at LV2 is the first grenade) is being unfairly matched against LV20+ characters that take around 10 hours of PVE to create.

Seriously.

[Ace Killa 08]

But think about it for a while, and maybe destiny is a bad example to use, waiting 10 hours before playing multiplayer is kinda dumb. Especially after giving you access to it a few missions into the game.

WoW would pair you with in your level range (1-10) (11-20) and so forth. Destiny can do something like this for at least pre lvl 20 and I assumed they did. Not until after the beta where the lvl cap was unlocked I realized it wasn't.

[Syleros]

level advantages are disabled in cruicible, everyone just has to stop being bad.