Bungie is no stranger to matchmaking, as its signature Halo series practically runs on matchmaking, but their decision to leave this option out of their latest release, Destinty, left many loyal Bungie fans annoyed and disappointed. At the time, Bungie writer Luke Smith said that he could “understand everyone’s frustration about the decision,” but went on to say that he was willing to take the risk to forgo the option to allow matchmaking.
Destiny‘s current six-person raid, The Vault of Glass, can currently be completed with friends - rather than using a matchmaking system or an MMO-style system of forming a group to take on multi-person challenges. This has left a lot of Destiny players a bit dissatisfied, as The Vault of Glass requires a level of coordination and timing that can be difficult in a hectic, minute-by-minute world that most of us live in, so managing to schedule a time when you and your buddies can carry out the mission can be seomthing of a bother. Sure, we meet people during our online playthrough that we enjoy and chat with, but we may not necessarily ever send them a friend request. That’s the primary reason for guild systems, really; we can join up with hundreds of people without having to flood our friend lists. Perhaps Bungie wanted to steer clear of the WoW stigma, and tried to avoid having 60+ players milling around the beginning of a zone, calling across chat channels for others to join in.
Community Chief David “Deej” Dague said in the latest Bungie Weekly Update, “You don’t need to sell us too hard on the value of Matchmaking at Bungie. It’s something we helped to pioneer. Yet, we understand its limitations. In the recipe of a Bungie game, Matchmaking has always contributed the ingredient of a team built to play one match of competitive multiplayer. As you’ve probably witnessed in recent weeks (or years), many of those fresh allies have failed to go the distance together.”
Well, sure. Not every raid is going to be successful. You may not have the right combination of character classes, or someone’s internet connection goes haywire, or another person just up and quits just to be nasty and leave the rest of their team in the lurch. But those things can happen with a friend-formed group, too. Those nasty power outages or calls to the dinner table don’t discriminate between local friend play or a random match.
Dague went on to say that, “The Raid was designed for solid teams of killers who have made a commitment to solve a dense and explosive riddle. Most of the raiding parties who have emerged victorious from the Vault of Glass have sworn that one weak link would have doomed their chain. There have been other stories, of course. We’ve heard tell of Guardians who met each other just outside the door that leads into that vault. Strange tales have reached our ears - tales of total strangers who have banded together to see the Raid all the way through to a triumphant finale.”
So, in essence, Dague is balancing on the fence, arguing at the same time both for and against the idea of matchmaking. We understand where Bungie was coming from, at the same time wanting to provide a fresh, new gaming experience and distance itself from Halo, but also wanting to leapfrog off Halo‘s amazing success, but it just doesn’t add up. Friend groups can fail a raid just as easily as a random conglomeration of characters. What Bungie doesn’t seem to realize is that random conglomeration does have a common goal: they all want to complete the The Vault of Glass. Everybody wants to win. It’s possible, too, that through the random match-made gameplay that a group of people could form an alliance and continue to experience Destiny together, pulling more of the people they meet into the effort of running The Vault.
It almost feels like Bungie isn’t giving their players enough credit. We’re not all soulless grinding machines, matchmaking, running, and quitting without having any kind of interaction with our group counterparts. Does it happen? Sure. But we’d like to bet that it happens a lot less than Bungie seems to think it does.
Dague has given Destiny players an inkling of change, though. “The best I can do to answer your question is to let you know that you’ve been heard… Keep sounding off about it, and maybe someday some matchmade Fireteam mates will hear you, too.” He also went on to say that private matches might be on the horizon, allowing players to pit their skills against one another.
“I totally get it,” Dague said. “I want that too.”
Destiny has been doing well at retail, but it’s proven something of a divisive title. Kyle reviewed it for us, and he decided that, basically, it made him just want to play Halo. He scored it 6/10, though it’s safe to say that many players think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. You can read Kyle’s review here.
Are you relieved that Bungie is considering making raids a little bit more manageable? Or perhaps you couldn’t care less and want more details about future single-player content. Either way, let us know in the comments and if you want to keep up to date on future Destiny info, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or subscribe to our RSS feed.
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