Bungie recently confirmed that unlike strikes of the Crucible there shall be no matchmaking in Raids. Raids are Destiny's endgame content, and are extremely difficult, six-player, missions that may take hours to complete. Bungie defended this decision saying they want raids to be a difficult but fun, sociable experience and wants to get player together So what do you think of this? Should Destiny have matchmaking for Raids or not ? My thoughts : I am finding it really difficult to put my thoughts into words and explain them so here is a post on Bungie.net I saw that sums up what I was going to post and improves it.
This is a Wow player posting about why matchmaking is bad for raids The complaint back then was that more time was spent looking for a raid group than actual raiding. To be fair, a part of that was because the raid group was up to 40 players in the beginning, now it's 25. After a few years, Blizzard eventually introduced LFG (which, like I said, is just like MatchMaking). The initial result was what we expected, faster setup times pre-raid... but that had an undesirable effect that a big portion of the community did not anticipate. You see, raids used to be a HUGE deal. They took hours and hours to setup, and even longer to progress. It was a grueling trial of not only skill, but leadership. You could have the talent and gear necessary in your group to complete the raid, but without some level headed leaders directing the group you would be destined to fail. Finishing that hours/days/weeks long raid? That was the ultimate feeling. Finally, after all that time spent forming a group, training a group, making all those friends and enemies after nights of failure... you down that last boss. Nothing beats that feeling in gaming, nothing. Now? The raids feel watered down. You log on, click that "find a group" button. Wait 10 minutes. Teleport to the raid, no words are spoken, just throwing 25 random players at a raid that most of the group has done 100 times already. No friends, no enemies. Just a sea of nameless, empty players grinding away at this now trivial Raid. Failure no longer means waiting a day to regroup because half the team had to go to sleep. Failure now means waiting another 10 minutes for another tank to queue up for the raid. What used to feel massive and utterly rewarding has now become a chore. A chore that you must perform over and over again until you can find no enjoyment short of getting that occasional gear upgrade. Blizzard addressed this by lowering the difficulty of "LFG" raids, and made "Normal" and "Heroic" modes that you HAD to group up for. But still, the damage has been done. You never enter a raid with your friends anymore. LFG has become mandatory to gear properly for the "Normal" and "Heroic" modes, but by then you've done these fights dozens of times. There's no thrill of exploring, no thrill of learning the fights and the map. Just a different type of grind that has already lost its appeal days/weeks before you even needed to find a real group to do it with. Look, I know I said was going to try to remain unbiased, but the truth is MatchMaking ruins raiding. Raiding SHOULD NOT be something you do easily. Raiding is a test of your skill against PvE as much as it is a test of your communication skills. But when you allow for a "fast track" method to access the raids, you turn it into a chore that you simply throw yourself at until you arbitrarily find a group that has the DPS/HP numbers on their side.
Back to Caboose....
So overall I am on Bungies side on this one I want to raids to be a difficult and challenging experiences that stay that, that take so long to even begin but when you are finished you are given tons of rewards, and you don't get that kind of stuff in games anymore.