Bungie finally removes Skill-Based Matchamking from Destiny 2 Crucible playlists

Skill-based matchmaking has always been a controversial topic for many competitive shooters with streamers like Ninja, Dr. Disrespect, and Nadeshot all repeatedly calling out in anger whenever a developer adds it into a game.

Skill-based matchmaking has the gaming community almost split down the middle with high skill players advocating against the system as it forces them into intense, ‘sweaty’ games while those players on the lower end of the bell curve enjoy the system as it means they can play the game without getting repeatedly stomped by pro players.

Skill-based matchmaking has been present within Destiny for some time now as Bungie seems to be hellbent on slipping it into the matchmaking algorithm without letting the community know.

It has happened numerous times over the course of the Destiny franchise where Bungie will sneak skill-based matchmaking into the game and after a short while players soon notice the average match has become much more difficult.

A large portion of the community then raises their pitchforks in complaint for Bungie to respond with an “Our bad, we’ll tone the skill matching down.” and then slowly restore it to its original settings a few months later.

Per the recent ‘This Week at Bungie’ blog post it seems that Bungie has finally decided to listen to player feedback and has removed skill-based matchmaking from most of the casual Crucible playlists.

“By the time that this TWAB is published, a few changes to Crucible matchmaking will be live. Matchmaking based on player skill has been removed from all playlists except Elimination, Survival, and Survival: Freelance. Trials of Osiris will continue to be matched based on the number of wins on your Passage.” Bungie community manager Chris ‘Cozmo’ Shannon said.

This means that a player will be able to jump into a casual Control match and be matchmade with players of random skill levels from nearby locations resulting in a smooth, lag-free gameplay experience. No more will lagging opponents from half the world away ruin the match.

This also means that sometimes players will be matched up against players way beyond their skill level, both over and under, which can result in unpredictable games, but as they say variety is the spice of life.

The reason for this change came down to a couple of reasons according to Cozmo:

“We are doing this to:

• Respond to community feedback.
• Shorten queue times for players.
• Improve connection quality of matches.
• Provide more places where the outcome of the match isn’t as important as enjoying the experience.
• Play into the strengths of Crucible being a bombastic, frenetic action game.”

The middle points here are the main takeaways from this change. Players will now simply be able to find low ping games at a much faster rate.

A large portion of the community quickly rushed to Twitter to voice their excitement at this new change. Popular Destiny streamer and Youtube ‘Mtashed’ could hardly hold back his enthusiasm with him tweeting “OMFG SBMM OUT OF THE CRUCIBLE I REPEAT SBMM IS GONE WTF”.

Another PvP focused Destiny streamer ‘Gigz’ had a similar reaction to Mtashed: “BUNGIE JUST REMOVED SBMM FROM ALL PLAYLISTS EXCEPT SURVIVAL AND ELIMANTION (sic) OH MY GOD”

Skill-based matchmaking still remains a controversial topic however as many replies to the above tweets did not match the level of eagerness that these two streamers were showing.

It seems Bungie will need to strike a fine balance between matching players of reasonably close skill levels with good connection games in order to appeal to all players. Jury is still out on whether this is even possible though.