So, day off Monday. Hey, trials until noon! And the flawless folks are gone from the pool, could be fun!
I think the current system is actually worse.
Apparently there are flawless folks that just wait until Monday morning so the competition is thinner. And since it's mostly the flailing folks, one lighthouse resident swings entire matches.
Add to that the terrible matchmaking (I was on a team where our KD was 10, 7, and 5 while the opposing team was .17, .2, .2 - felt terrible for those folks) and I wish to god they would just revamp Competitive Crucible with its own loot so I never have to touch this mode again.
I wasn't getting the pinnacle before, and I'm perfectly happy not doing so again. They want to turn Crucible into a mode where only they benefit, nothing says I have to play it. Burn the damn thing down, IMO.
Edit: Yep. Just played against a top-10% and his fireteam, and I'm sure they had a lovely "chill" game where they didn't have to "try too hard". (For reference, I am currently bottom 38%. And falling.)
Hope they choke on it. Ideally, literally.
If it's any consolation, Destiny Tracker ratings in terms of top % are completely untrustworthy now due to the SBMM. I basically go from top 0.2% or better to top 6% based on class / weapon loadout for example .
Additionally, if it *was* an actual top player, it might be someone exploiting the current SBMM by finding a low skill friend and grouping with them as leader to pulverize low skill lobbies. Bungie knew about this / stated this was an issue, but as always, they can't wait to fix stuff, they had to implement.
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I might just be projecting my bad experiences on to the community, but it feels like the floor has fallen out for PvP. Just nothing but bad experiences every time I tried to play in the last several weeks.
I wasn't getting the pinnacle before, and I'm perfectly happy not doing so again. They want to turn Crucible into a mode where only they benefit, nothing says I have to play it. Burn the damn thing down, IMO.
Edit: Yep. Just played against a top-10% and his fireteam, and I'm sure they had a lovely "chill" game where they didn't have to "try too hard". (For reference, I am currently bottom 38%. And falling.)
Hope they choke on it. Ideally, literally.
If it's any consolation, Destiny Tracker ratings in terms of top % are completely untrustworthy now due to the SBMM. I basically go from top 0.2% or better to top 6% based on class / weapon loadout for example .
Additionally, if it *was* an actual top player, it might be someone exploiting the current SBMM by finding a low skill friend and grouping with them as leader to pulverize low skill lobbies. Bungie knew about this / stated this was an issue, but as always, they can't wait to fix stuff, they had to implement.
Yeah this is actually what it was. A bunch of 1500+ ELO with one 1k ELO, so just y'know, "jerks" I guess.
I swear, I have never seen a PVP community so adamantly opposed to the idea of "a fair match". The sentiment "I spent time to improve myself so now you should match me with easier lobbies as a reward" is ubiquitous.
Yeah this is actually what it was. A bunch of 1500+ ELO with one 1k ELO, so just y'know, "jerks" I guess.
There's a slight chance it was accidental? . I saw a top player show in one of my lobbies, but all his friends were terrible and his 6 stack got rolled hard despite him rocking a 4 KDA.
But yeah, probably not.
Remember, though, ELO doesn't show how good they are as much anymore really. It's just wins / losses. Bungie can place people in a lower tier because they're not as good as some people, but they'll accrue wins / losses separately from that.
I swear, I have never seen a PVP community so adamantly opposed to the idea of "a fair match". The sentiment "I spent time to improve myself so now you should match me with easier lobbies as a reward" is ubiquitous.
Yes, but, it's more about wanting the lobbies to be random. Sometimes you get creamed, sometimes you don't. Hence all the calls for lobby balancing instead of SBMM. People want to see who they're better against and who they're not. Like, for me for example, I didn't mind being on the losing end because I'd gun for the good players on the other side.
This is coming from someone who grew up on Quakeworld, though, so the random was how it worked. This is not to say there are people who don't want to crush newbs, but it's not the only reason that exists.
They have too many playlists. They just need a casual (random, not SBMM), and the SBMM from 2 (3 now?) weeks ago before they changed it to whatever it is now. You're not liking it, but, I'm not either on the higher end. I was fine with it before as games were mostly balanced and my teammates backed me up. Ever since the change, it almost doesn't feel like SBMM and I am seeing more mercies / more people who should *not* be in my lobby.
I might just be projecting my bad experiences on to the community, but it feels like the floor has fallen out for PvP. Just nothing but bad experiences every time I tried to play in the last several weeks.
Yeah, same here. Whatever switch got pulled combined with Gyrfalcon's has made me miserable.
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Oh, no, they had a split before. And all the "good" players went to the CBMM list, and all the people like me didn't, and they cried that all the matches were sweaty, and so the playlists got merged again so they could have their fun like they had "earned".
As for "sometimes you get creamed", I had 4 kills in that match. The top guy on the opposing team had 40. Exactly how much "gunning for" do you think I managed to do, and exactly how much fun do you think I had, and exactly how much impact on the outcome of the game was my presence? "See who you're better against and who your not" only applies when you're playing against people in your own bracket; all my matches are that bad without SBMM. And given that SBMM has been a thing in Bungie games since fuckin' Halo 2, the amount of people insisting "nobody likes it and most games don't use it" is absolutely baffling.
Specifically, since the matchmaking changed, my K/D has gone from .9 average (eh, roughly, a couple better games in there) down to .7 average. 8-10 kills a match down to 2-4. Why the fuck should I keep playing? My loadout doesn't matter, my game sense doesn't matter, my map knowledge doesn't matter, all because someone with 10x-100x the time in wants a "fun time" where they can use whatever weapons.
Edit: In that game? .4. .4 k/d. And that's not even the lowest since the change.
Oh, no, they had a split before. And all the "good" players went to the CBMM list, and all the people like me didn't, and they cried that all the matches were sweaty, and so the playlists got merged again so they could have their fun like they had "earned".
Did they? I don't recall them ever having an SBMM control list and a CBMM control list at the same time. That's what I mean, I don't care about 3s, especially if it's different base rules. I prefer control / sixes.
As for "sometimes you get creamed", I had 4 kills in that match. The top guy on the opposing team had 40. Exactly how much "gunning for" do you think I managed to do, and exactly how much fun do you think I had, and exactly how much impact on the outcome of the game was my presence? "See who you're better against and who your not" only applies when you're playing against people in your own bracket; all my matches are that bad without SBMM. And given that SBMM has been a thing in Bungie games since fuckin' Halo 2, the amount of people insisting "nobody likes it and most games don't use it" is absolutely baffling.
Yeah, I would gun for the guy with 40 and see how he's killing me / how I get him. But that's just me. That's fun *for me*. I don't expect or want everyone to be like me.
Another thing to remember is KDA is vastly reliant on how good your teammates are. After the initial shock of SBMM and getting savaged by Leavers, I had stabilized and was averaging above a 2 KDA again (I was 2.22 to 2.4 in prior seasons). This was because my teammates weren't trash and, since leaving had died down, I could work.
You went against a 4 stack in that game with good players on the opposing team and potentially no stacks on your side. You're going to get washed. Hell, I've had .5's etc in situations exactly like that. That's less about SBMM and more about Bungie being incompetent when it comes to dealing with stacks in a 6v6 game mode.
This change has made it worse for me, too, because I am more frequently getting lesser skilled teammates which means they're dead / blocking me / not helping, which leaves me against 3 people by myself, which lowers my KDA . The pain is shared. I am definitely not above a 2 since that happened a few weeks ago.
Specifically, since the matchmaking changed, my K/D has gone from .9 average (eh, roughly, a couple better games in there) down to .7 average. 8-10 kills a match down to 2-4. Why the fuck should I keep playing? My loadout doesn't matter, my game sense doesn't matter, my map knowledge doesn't matter, all because someone with 10x-100x the time in wants a "fun time" where they can use whatever weapons.
Edit: In that game? .4. .4 k/d. And that's not even the lowest since the change.
You shouldn't. They fucked it up. I don't know why they changed it (the theory is a drop in player pop leading to longer queue times), but I agree w/you the current way is not the way.
I don't know if they have the player population to support it, though, if that's why they changed it a few weeks back.
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I'm just using that game as an example, 'cause it's the last one I played. I honestly think you just... Can't relate to how shitty it is down here without matchmaking, because you're not this bad. Game a few prior was this, where I don't think I actually saw anyone for the last half of the game, let alone shot at anything. Fuckin' pointless.
Like it's not the stats, right. My stats only exist as an occasional "oh hey, a number went up!". It's "you would have a functionally more engaging experience if I was replaced with a bot".
Edit: I'm not trying to go at you or anything, so apologies if it came out that way. I'm just fairly frustrated that one of the few PVP shooter experiences I actually have enjoyed is being burnt on the altar of letting mouthy little shits pump their stats at my expense.
I mean using that game you just posted as the example, it seems pretty even aside from the guy who ran amok with 26 kills? Nobody else seems like they were too far out of line? How would you have liked matchmaking to fix that, get rid of that one guy? This is a real question, I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm honestly curious what you think matchmaking could have done.
Edit: Like here's the last match I was in and the matchmaking again seems pretty fair, the couple of guys with silver DTR ELOs got dumpstered and that's why one team lost but otherwise it's pretty balanced.
Check out the KDA spreads. That is what I want out of games; everyone kind of around the same ballpark, even if you've still got some negatives. 150-88 is still a hefty beating, but everyone in the game was involved (I mean, badly in my team's case ); you don't have a couple people at like .2, .4, and the winning team still doesn't have outliers like "4, 2, sub-1 the rest."
Like, yeah one outlier at 4.x, but the effect that has is nuts. A 15-7-4 statline (top guy on winning team in my preferred match above) is still "got my ass kicked" but I can tell you it feels materially different from going against a dude who goes 29-9-8. The former is "way better than me, but I can try" and the latter is just not.
Edit: And actually, comparing the statlines yours "looks" kind of the same as my preferred. A spread, not too grossly wide, everyone at a glance looks reasonable to be where they are. People are negative, but not like, spectacularly so, and nobody looks particularly like they were uninvolved in play.
Second edit: And thinking back, I now remember that game; I know why we lost; we were inefficient and fed into capture attempts while they had advantage, and that's not a winning strategy. Like, that feels so much better than an infinite flow of "why'd we lose? Oh, 'cause I suck compared to that guy." I can work with it, you know?
I'm just using that game as an example, 'cause it's the last one I played. I honestly think you just... Can't relate to how shitty it is down here without matchmaking, because you're not this bad. Game a few prior was this, where I don't think I actually saw anyone for the last half of the game, let alone shot at anything. Fuckin' pointless.
Like it's not the stats, right. My stats only exist as an occasional "oh hey, a number went up!". It's "you would have a functionally more engaging experience if I was replaced with a bot".
Edit: I'm not trying to go at you or anything, so apologies if it came out that way. I'm just fairly frustrated that one of the few PVP shooter experiences I actually have enjoyed is being burnt on the altar of letting mouthy little shits pump their stats at my expense.
I know you're not having a go at me, no worries. Likewise, I'm not attacking you. I get it. Believe it or not, I actually came around on and supported SBMM (prior to 2-3 weeks ago, anyways).
I will say the game you're showing as an example shows your team had 5 people for most of it. For Destiny, because of the way PvP works, that has a massive impact on the game. That, plus a killer being on the enemy team, explains a lot. I don't think Peen is too far off, either, that aside from that one killer..it looks pretty balanced.
In fact, I dunno how you do much better than that since I think the main impact were the two leavers. Like, my performance varies WILDLY based on loadouts and subclass now, way more than it used to. SBMM means you have to bring your best shit or your stats have the potential to wildly nosedive.
Are you Medi0prity?
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Yeah, I would gun for the guy with 40 and see how he's killing me / how I get him. But that's just me. That's fun *for me*. I don't expect or want everyone to be like me.
I think an ideal system would be making sure you are matched with people where you can at least understand and work around wins or losses. You don't necessarily have a 50/50 shot of winning or losing, but you can at least understand the process of what is going on. There are certainly teams out there that are so good and so coordinated the average player's experience against them isn't going to be educational, no matter how open to information and analysis that average player is. Getting your ass beat can be a great way to learn, but getting absolutely fucking obliterated is probably going to be too fast / one-sided to glean any useful information from.
IMO a good SBMM would try to keep that skill range sweet spot in mind, but "good SBMM" isn't a term we should utter in the Destiny thread
I think an ideal system would be making sure you are matched with people where you can at least understand and work around wins or losses. You don't necessarily have a 50/50 shot of winning or losing, but you can at least understand the process of what is going on. There are certainly teams out there that are so good and so coordinated the average player's experience against them isn't going to be educational, no matter how open to information and analysis that average player is. Getting your ass beat can be a great way to learn, but getting absolutely fucking obliterated is probably going to be too fast / one-sided to glean any useful information from.
IMO a good SBMM would try to keep that skill range sweet spot in mind, but "good SBMM" isn't a term we should utter in the Destiny thread
100% agree (but you know that already per Discord convos), but I think it was closer to that ideal a few weeks ago than whatever this is now.
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I'm still mostly dodging the increased skill gap they introduced at the top end. Control matches were getting a bit sweatier on friday night. Ran into a few people running shit like Dead Messenger/SMG. But today has been mostly even matches.
Usually I'm placing near the top these days but there's matches where I'm mid or even near the bottom of the rankings. And I'd say at least half of them are tight affairs, with a few going right down to the wire.
Basically been a great season overall in Control. DestinyTracker even claims I'm top 0.5% now!
I'm just using that game as an example, 'cause it's the last one I played. I honestly think you just... Can't relate to how shitty it is down here without matchmaking, because you're not this bad. Game a few prior was this, where I don't think I actually saw anyone for the last half of the game, let alone shot at anything. Fuckin' pointless.
Like it's not the stats, right. My stats only exist as an occasional "oh hey, a number went up!". It's "you would have a functionally more engaging experience if I was replaced with a bot".
Edit: I'm not trying to go at you or anything, so apologies if it came out that way. I'm just fairly frustrated that one of the few PVP shooter experiences I actually have enjoyed is being burnt on the altar of letting mouthy little shits pump their stats at my expense.
I know you're not having a go at me, no worries. Likewise, I'm not attacking you. I get it. Believe it or not, I actually came around on and supported SBMM (prior to 2-3 weeks ago, anyways).
I will say the game you're showing as an example shows your team had 5 people for most of it. For Destiny, because of the way PvP works, that has a massive impact on the game. That, plus a killer being on the enemy team, explains a lot. I don't think Peen is too far off, either, that aside from that one killer..it looks pretty balanced.
In fact, I dunno how you do much better than that since I think the main impact were the two leavers. Like, my performance varies WILDLY based on loadouts and subclass now, way more than it used to. SBMM means you have to bring your best shit or your stats have the potential to wildly nosedive.
Are you Angry Toastz?
Nope, I'm Guardian<9somethingbunchofnumbers> 'cause they force-changed my name and I haven't fixed it.
I recall the one dude dipping out towards the end when we were already well into "just gettin' farmed", the second I hadn't noticed. Wonder what that's about? Maybe he left and I didn't see it in the message scroll or something.
I'd say "it's not the losing I mind" which would be a lie, because of course I mind losing, but tbh the win where I just didn't see anyone 'cause the other players on my team were good was just as bad. Like how's that fun?
I think an ideal system would be making sure you are matched with people where you can at least understand and work around wins or losses. You don't necessarily have a 50/50 shot of winning or losing, but you can at least understand the process of what is going on. There are certainly teams out there that are so good and so coordinated the average player's experience against them isn't going to be educational, no matter how open to information and analysis that average player is. Getting your ass beat can be a great way to learn, but getting absolutely fucking obliterated is probably going to be too fast / one-sided to glean any useful information from.
IMO a good SBMM would try to keep that skill range sweet spot in mind, but "good SBMM" isn't a term we should utter in the Destiny thread
100% agree (but you know that already per Discord convos), but I think it was closer to that ideal a few weeks ago than whatever this is now.
Speaking of conversations that keep repeating forever, I accidentally wandered on to the old crucible subreddit. Top post (two years old):
I'm still mostly dodging the increased skill gap they introduced at the top end. Control matches were getting a bit sweatier on friday night. Ran into a few people running shit like Dead Messenger/SMG. But today has been mostly even matches.
Usually I'm placing near the top these days but there's matches where I'm mid or even near the bottom of the rankings. And I'd say at least half of them are tight affairs, with a few going right down to the wire.
Basically been a great season overall in Control. DestinyTracker even claims I'm top 0.5% now!
You would think people better than me would get it worse. I find this baffling, unless I'm just somehow so phenomenally bad that I have warped matchmaking around myself recently.
I don't like the post patch Crucible, even though in theory they buffer my favorite gun and pulses. Take me back in time earlier this season please. Less Nightstalkers also if you wouldn't mind.
I know a lot of people hate the current season sandbox. I don't as a filthy console pulse user. But the recent change is noticeably ungood.
I honestly think you just... Can't relate to how shitty it is down here without matchmaking, because you're not this bad.
Oh, I felt that one!
The sad part is that Every. Single. Time. bungie puts SBMM in the game, my personal experiences in PvP improve in every measurable way. And that makes me want to play the entire game more, not just PvP. And then when they remove it, my engagement with the game as a whole reduces. Sure the PvE game is good, but it's really the PvP aspect of Destiny that keeps it "alive" for me.
I'd really like to know what the "average" skill player looks like in this game, because I honestly think that a lot of people make some sweeping assumptions that "I am an average player" ("I" meaning them in this case) when they are actually in the top 10% to 25%. I really suspect that the "average" player in Destiny is pretty awful at the game and really doesn't engage in high-end activities in any meaningful way. And probably plays less than 8 hours a week.
This season has really been a major step backwards for Destiny overall. A seasonal plotline that was not engaging, so lore-hounds aren't happy. A seasonal event that really wasn't fun, so casual shoot-em-up players aren't happy. A holiday event that was definitively worse than it's prior incarnation, so part-time players aren't happy. Matchmaking "issues", so PvP players aren't happy.... I mean, who actually enjoyed playing Destiny for the last 11 weeks? Arc 3.0 was fun when it came out but a meta developed within 2 weeks and then ... nothing. Personally, I was away on holiday for 2-1/2 weeks in the middle of this season (which is only on it's 11th week) and now that I've completed the seasonal challenges and gotten my bright dust I feel literally zero draw to play. I'm not even chasing Pinnacles because I know I'm just going to get the extra 10 skill in the first week of the new season anyway. Normally, at this point in a given season I would be looking at working on Catalysts or cleaning out old exotic quests, or dabbling in raids or something! But this time around, I'm basically taking a break because there's just nothing engaging in the game at this point.
Actually the TWAB where they went into the matchmaking changes says "most" people have a k/d around .9. People saying they're "not very good" at a 1.5-2 are... So far off.
The sad part is that Every. Single. Time. bungie puts SBMM in the game, my personal experiences in PvP improve in every measurable way. And that makes me want to play the entire game more, not just PvP. And then when they remove it, my engagement with the game as a whole reduces. Sure the PvE game is good, but it's really the PvP aspect of Destiny that keeps it "alive" for me.
Destiny 2really needs some kind of SBMM, because the skill difference between top players and "kind of bad mediocre" players is so significant they aren't really even playing the same game. But doing SBMM wrong is worse than not doing it at all, and right now we've got bad SBMM. As the PvP population declines the "S" in "SBMM" is going to turn into more of a "?BMM" and you're just going to have awful matches like the old system except everyone has significantly worse connection quality.
I know plenty of people who really enjoyed the SBMM changes made early in the season. I'm glad they got some fun out of it, but TBH almost all of them have stopped playing by now (which is fine), so there's some question as to how much damage Bungie should do for the benefit of people who are going to play two dozen matches in the first month of a season and then never come back. Most of the "play PvP all season long" players seem to be either quitting or complaining enough that they ought to.
All that said, it is a bit hard to evaluate SBMM right now because everything else in PvP is a dumpster fire too. If SBMM was turned off tomorrow it would still be a pretty unpleasant experience IMO.
Actually the TWAB where they went into the matchmaking changes says "most" people have a k/d around .9. People saying they're "not very good" at a 1.5-2 are... So far off.
It had lots of numbers. I like numbers.
Make sure to pay attention to whether they are talking k/d or k/da. The game, and many websites, show k/da (which is a perfectly useful number), kills + assists / deaths.
k/d is solely kills vs. deaths, no points for assists. Having a k/d of 2.0 or higher makes you pretty goddamn terrifying, a k/da of 2.0 is still very good but much closer to the central skill band.
IIRC the k/da average is somewhere around 1.25-1.5.
No, they mean k/d. It's because without SBMM people like me are used for stat farming. It's why they instituted a leaver penalty, because the high-skill players were continually quitting out of matches they "didn't like" (for whatever reason, couldn't imagine) after the skill element got turned on.
It's also why they just changed k/d stats to record before the end of a match; people were leaving until they got the matchup they wanted or when they started losing/dying. (And it was "predominantly" (saith Bungie) the "high skill" players, even. )
Edit: I feel like I should clarify--I know they're not right. They're full of shit/completely deluded about both what "average" is and their own skill levels. So a fair matchup happens, and suddenly their numbers drop, which is clearly due to lag and improper networking and obviously this is completely unplayable. Complete opposite reaction from people who have their stats drop and go "shit, now I actually have competition".
Just another data point that the higher skill players really don't want to have even matches, they want an easy "casual" game of kicking puppies and shooting fish in barrels.
PvP was the best for the one season where SBMM was on for everything other than competitive. (For me!) I have to believe that it was changed because Bungie looked at metrics (that we don't have access to) and decided it was moving the game in a direction they didn't want, or was impacting Eververse, or something. I refuse to believe that they changed it simply because streamers and "content creators" yelled loudly.
For what it's worth, destinytracker shows my K/D in Control at 0.79 (1.11 K/D+A wheee) which is in the "bottom 6%" - there's not a lot of daylight between 0.9 K/D and 0.79 K/D and based on how bell curves work... well, something isn't adding up here. (Crucible emblem shows 0.8 right now.)
Eh. Actual good players like playing actual games, not bot matches. The exceedingly noisy segment of people that think they're good 'cause they have high number 'cause they farmed up bad players, it's those fuckers that's the problem. The ones who think their reward for "improvement" should be getting matchups where they don't have to try to win.
I don't have a problem with people who are good at this game. I just don't wanna be in their lobbies, 'cause I don't have fun.
Edit: Ha, aha, it's like people who are good at poker, vs people who will tell you they're good at poker. That jackknob who shows up to your Friday evening card game with mirror shades and earbuds in, and acts like he's at the WSOP at all times. It's not that he's bad at the game, he's just not as good as he thinks he is or acts.
Just another data point that the higher skill players really don't want to have even matches, they want an easy "casual" game of kicking puppies and shooting fish in barrels.
PvP was the best for the one season where SBMM was on for everything other than competitive. (For me!) I have to believe that it was changed because Bungie looked at metrics (that we don't have access to) and decided it was moving the game in a direction they didn't want, or was impacting Eververse, or something. I refuse to believe that they changed it simply because streamers and "content creators" yelled loudly.
For what it's worth, destinytracker shows my K/D in Control at 0.79 (1.11 K/D+A wheee) which is in the "bottom 6%" - there's not a lot of daylight between 0.9 K/D and 0.79 K/D and based on how bell curves work... well, something isn't adding up here. (Crucible emblem shows 0.8 right now.)
You're looking at your ELO. That's what the bottom 6% is referring to. ELO is heavily based on how much you played and also only looking at your win / loss record, not your KD or KDA.
You've only played 37 control matches all season, that's why your ELO is so low.
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Also... When I was finishing up Ticuu's in Control, I got into a duel with one dude, about 10 feet apart, me in my rift, him in his... Not, just sprayin' me with an AR. So I managed to hit 2x precision on him with Ticuu's. Please note the most complex thing I did was "strafe", okay.
We may not be good at this shit, but there are definitely, definitely people less good than we are. (Yes I know they're probably 5. Let me have this one...)
Edit: Also, the other day I learned that there's an entire class that can aim and/or fire a gun while in the air while not instantly dropping like a stone, and I'm a little (not actually) upset about this. I had no idea Hunters could jump while doing things like drawing a bow, and this seems most unfair. I never played a hunter, had no idea.
Just another data point that the higher skill players really don't want to have even matches, they want an easy "casual" game of kicking puppies and shooting fish in barrels.
PvP was the best for the one season where SBMM was on for everything other than competitive. (For me!) I have to believe that it was changed because Bungie looked at metrics (that we don't have access to) and decided it was moving the game in a direction they didn't want, or was impacting Eververse, or something. I refuse to believe that they changed it simply because streamers and "content creators" yelled loudly.
For what it's worth, destinytracker shows my K/D in Control at 0.79 (1.11 K/D+A wheee) which is in the "bottom 6%" - there's not a lot of daylight between 0.9 K/D and 0.79 K/D and based on how bell curves work... well, something isn't adding up here. (Crucible emblem shows 0.8 right now.)
You're looking at your ELO. That's what the bottom 6% is referring to. ELO is heavily based on how much you played and also only looking at your win / loss record, not your KD or KDA.
You've only played 37 control matches all season, that's why your ELO is so low.
I was speaking generally when talking about higher skill players. I know there is a significant portion of the high-skill playerbase that hates the current situation just as much as the people on my end of the skill spectrum. I'd say that most of the people in this forum are in that group. I didn't mean to call out anyone here and I'm sorry about implying any of you guys are bad people. I know that's not true!!
I have no illusions about my skill level. Even if I could play Destiny like it was my job, my ELO won't move all that much. If you look at my "all time" Iron Banner stats, there's 505 games tracked and my win/loss ratio is still sitting at 47.1% with a K/D of 0.48! I'm clearly "not good" at this game and that's fine! What is not fine - and I think we all agree on this - is that putting players like me, and players like you, in the same lobby is going to be very much a not-fun time for both of us.
To the point @dporowski is making, I run into people with less skill than me all the time. Here's two screen grabs from earlier this month:
Just as backstory - those are from different days. When teams got mixed up in subsequent games, I stayed near the top of the leaderboard(s). Worth noting this was during the "small window" SBMM experiment and I had fun even when I was losing games.
I was speaking generally when talking about higher skill players. I know there is a significant portion of the high-skill playerbase that hates the current situation just as much as the people on my end of the skill spectrum. I'd say that most of the people in this forum are in that group. I didn't mean to call out anyone here and I'm sorry about implying any of you guys are bad people. I know that's not true!!
For what it's worth, destinytracker shows my K/D in Control at 0.79 (1.11 K/D+A wheee) which is in the "bottom 6%" - there's not a lot of daylight between 0.9 K/D and 0.79 K/D and based on how bell curves work... well, something isn't adding up here. (Crucible emblem shows 0.8 right now.)
You seemed to be linking your K/D and KDA to the bottom 6% when they're very much unrelated. Just wanted to reassure you that that's not what the 6% is referring to.
XBL: Bizazedo
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
I think an ideal system would be making sure you are matched with people where you can at least understand and work around wins or losses. You don't necessarily have a 50/50 shot of winning or losing, but you can at least understand the process of what is going on. There are certainly teams out there that are so good and so coordinated the average player's experience against them isn't going to be educational, no matter how open to information and analysis that average player is. Getting your ass beat can be a great way to learn, but getting absolutely fucking obliterated is probably going to be too fast / one-sided to glean any useful information from.
IMO a good SBMM would try to keep that skill range sweet spot in mind, but "good SBMM" isn't a term we should utter in the Destiny thread
100% agree (but you know that already per Discord convos), but I think it was closer to that ideal a few weeks ago than whatever this is now.
Speaking of conversations that keep repeating forever, I accidentally wandered on to the old crucible subreddit. Top post (two years old):
I've been replaying the available campaigns on my Titan to level up a forged item.
Witch Queen is still fantastic. Savathun's VA does an amazing job, the missions are good, just quality all around.
Season of the Haunted, however, is terrible. I get that they were trying to copy the dumb being chased games (my son plays them constantly) but the idea some Cabal Legionaire is literally undefeatable by a Guardian who has killed gods is just dumb.
Could this space rhino have taken out Oryx, apparently?
It's a prime example of wanting to ape a mechanic outweighing narrative, story, and context.
I've been replaying the available campaigns on my Titan to level up a forged item.
Witch Queen is still fantastic. Savathun's VA does an amazing job, the missions are good, just quality all around.
Season of the Haunted, however, is terrible. I get that they were trying to copy the dumb being chased games (my son plays them constantly) but the idea some Cabal Legionaire is literally undefeatable by a Guardian who has killed gods is just dumb.
Could this space rhino have taken out Oryx, apparently?
It's a prime example of wanting to ape a mechanic outweighing narrative, story, and context.
It's not really any different than any other enemies we've had with unbreakable shields or invincibility that we needed to solve some mechanic for imo
Thinking about it, I’m not against the *idea* of Ketchcrash… I think I would have liked it better if it was *more* about the first segment and ship to ship combat instead of “and now we all jump over and do a mini dungeon thing.”
Like, start out the same, but when it comes time to board only half of the six go over to cause trouble on the enemy ship, while the rest defend and keep the cannons rolling. Throw in a series of random events to spice things up while we hammer the enemy ship. Near the end the enemy captain is forced out and leads a last ditch raid on our ship to try to stop us, we take them out and steal the map that’s on them.
EDIT: Splitting up the guardians a bit would maybe help something annoying about the activity, where there might be long stretches of time where you might not get anything to do due to how compact things are and AOE abilities just clearing decks.
PMAvers on
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
I've been replaying the available campaigns on my Titan to level up a forged item.
Witch Queen is still fantastic. Savathun's VA does an amazing job, the missions are good, just quality all around.
Season of the Haunted, however, is terrible. I get that they were trying to copy the dumb being chased games (my son plays them constantly) but the idea some Cabal Legionaire is literally undefeatable by a Guardian who has killed gods is just dumb.
Could this space rhino have taken out Oryx, apparently?
It's a prime example of wanting to ape a mechanic outweighing narrative, story, and context.
It's not really any different than any other enemies we've had with unbreakable shields or invincibility that we needed to solve some mechanic for imo
I think it is also important to remember how the Guardians are crazy god killing assholes. They basically save scum reality in order to find that one in a million chance that will totally overcome that obstacle.
Which is exactly what we did to that stupid Cabal nightmare stalker jerk.
As for mimicking various genres I'm for it though it needs to be way more like Haunted than Plunder. Haunted was all about trauma and recovery. For that genre it was a little shallow but we're still talking videogame storytelling and the MMO version of that. On that curve I thought it did well and earns some big points for fleshing out some characters who desperately needed it, like Zavala, using the conventions of that genre.
Plunder is about us being repeatedly attacked unprovoked so we can be justified just rolf-stomping these assholes who had no realistic chance of defeating us. It isn't about us embracing pirating it is about the kids shows version of that. Like trying to make The Shield but telling it like it's Paw Patrol. Just total flavor miss.
Though I do find the world reacting to our God-Killing shenanigan's in the way Plunder does (by ignoring it) way more annoying than us occasionally not immediately being able to steam roll something.
After unlocking Symmetry, Witherhoard, Ticuu's, and Lorentz, I swear I don't want to go near a playlist. (Still got 150 left on Eriana's.)
Least I finally got a crafted BxR from all the Dares I've just been doing...
Edit: BTW, if you build this thing with a chambered compensator + ricochet rounds, then slap a stock mod on, it's... Almost a laser. Slightly less stable than with steady rounds, but I like the range increase so far. And yes, Demo + Incandescent is indeed that nice.
Posts
I think the current system is actually worse.
Apparently there are flawless folks that just wait until Monday morning so the competition is thinner. And since it's mostly the flailing folks, one lighthouse resident swings entire matches.
Add to that the terrible matchmaking (I was on a team where our KD was 10, 7, and 5 while the opposing team was .17, .2, .2 - felt terrible for those folks) and I wish to god they would just revamp Competitive Crucible with its own loot so I never have to touch this mode again.
If it's any consolation, Destiny Tracker ratings in terms of top % are completely untrustworthy now due to the SBMM. I basically go from top 0.2% or better to top 6% based on class / weapon loadout for example
Additionally, if it *was* an actual top player, it might be someone exploiting the current SBMM by finding a low skill friend and grouping with them as leader to pulverize low skill lobbies. Bungie knew about this / stated this was an issue, but as always, they can't wait to fix stuff, they had to implement.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Yeah this is actually what it was. A bunch of 1500+ ELO with one 1k ELO, so just y'know, "jerks" I guess.
I swear, I have never seen a PVP community so adamantly opposed to the idea of "a fair match". The sentiment "I spent time to improve myself so now you should match me with easier lobbies as a reward" is ubiquitous.
But yeah, probably not.
Remember, though, ELO doesn't show how good they are as much anymore really. It's just wins / losses. Bungie can place people in a lower tier because they're not as good as some people, but they'll accrue wins / losses separately from that.
Yes, but, it's more about wanting the lobbies to be random. Sometimes you get creamed, sometimes you don't. Hence all the calls for lobby balancing instead of SBMM. People want to see who they're better against and who they're not. Like, for me for example, I didn't mind being on the losing end because I'd gun for the good players on the other side.
This is coming from someone who grew up on Quakeworld, though, so the random was how it worked. This is not to say there are people who don't want to crush newbs, but it's not the only reason that exists.
They have too many playlists. They just need a casual (random, not SBMM), and the SBMM from 2 (3 now?) weeks ago before they changed it to whatever it is now. You're not liking it, but, I'm not either on the higher end. I was fine with it before as games were mostly balanced and my teammates backed me up. Ever since the change, it almost doesn't feel like SBMM and I am seeing more mercies / more people who should *not* be in my lobby.
Yeah, same here. Whatever switch got pulled combined with Gyrfalcon's has made me miserable.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
As for "sometimes you get creamed", I had 4 kills in that match. The top guy on the opposing team had 40. Exactly how much "gunning for" do you think I managed to do, and exactly how much fun do you think I had, and exactly how much impact on the outcome of the game was my presence? "See who you're better against and who your not" only applies when you're playing against people in your own bracket; all my matches are that bad without SBMM. And given that SBMM has been a thing in Bungie games since fuckin' Halo 2, the amount of people insisting "nobody likes it and most games don't use it" is absolutely baffling.
Specifically, since the matchmaking changed, my K/D has gone from .9 average (eh, roughly, a couple better games in there) down to .7 average. 8-10 kills a match down to 2-4. Why the fuck should I keep playing? My loadout doesn't matter, my game sense doesn't matter, my map knowledge doesn't matter, all because someone with 10x-100x the time in wants a "fun time" where they can use whatever weapons.
Edit: In that game? .4. .4 k/d. And that's not even the lowest since the change.
Another thing to remember is KDA is vastly reliant on how good your teammates are. After the initial shock of SBMM and getting savaged by Leavers, I had stabilized and was averaging above a 2 KDA again (I was 2.22 to 2.4 in prior seasons). This was because my teammates weren't trash and, since leaving had died down, I could work.
You went against a 4 stack in that game with good players on the opposing team and potentially no stacks on your side. You're going to get washed. Hell, I've had .5's etc in situations exactly like that. That's less about SBMM and more about Bungie being incompetent when it comes to dealing with stacks in a 6v6 game mode.
This change has made it worse for me, too, because I am more frequently getting lesser skilled teammates which means they're dead / blocking me / not helping, which leaves me against 3 people by myself, which lowers my KDA
You shouldn't. They fucked it up. I don't know why they changed it (the theory is a drop in player pop leading to longer queue times), but I agree w/you the current way is not the way.
I don't know if they have the player population to support it, though, if that's why they changed it a few weeks back.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Like it's not the stats, right. My stats only exist as an occasional "oh hey, a number went up!". It's "you would have a functionally more engaging experience if I was replaced with a bot".
Edit: I'm not trying to go at you or anything, so apologies if it came out that way. I'm just fairly frustrated that one of the few PVP shooter experiences I actually have enjoyed is being burnt on the altar of letting mouthy little shits pump their stats at my expense.
Edit: Like here's the last match I was in and the matchmaking again seems pretty fair, the couple of guys with silver DTR ELOs got dumpstered and that's why one team lost but otherwise it's pretty balanced.
Check out the KDA spreads. That is what I want out of games; everyone kind of around the same ballpark, even if you've still got some negatives. 150-88 is still a hefty beating, but everyone in the game was involved (I mean, badly in my team's case
Like, yeah one outlier at 4.x, but the effect that has is nuts. A 15-7-4 statline (top guy on winning team in my preferred match above) is still "got my ass kicked" but I can tell you it feels materially different from going against a dude who goes 29-9-8. The former is "way better than me, but I can try" and the latter is just not.
Edit: And actually, comparing the statlines yours "looks" kind of the same as my preferred. A spread, not too grossly wide, everyone at a glance looks reasonable to be where they are. People are negative, but not like, spectacularly so, and nobody looks particularly like they were uninvolved in play.
Second edit: And thinking back, I now remember that game; I know why we lost; we were inefficient and fed into capture attempts while they had advantage, and that's not a winning strategy. Like, that feels so much better than an infinite flow of "why'd we lose? Oh, 'cause I suck compared to that guy." I can work with it, you know?
I know you're not having a go at me, no worries. Likewise, I'm not attacking you. I get it. Believe it or not, I actually came around on and supported SBMM (prior to 2-3 weeks ago, anyways).
I will say the game you're showing as an example shows your team had 5 people for most of it. For Destiny, because of the way PvP works, that has a massive impact on the game. That, plus a killer being on the enemy team, explains a lot. I don't think Peen is too far off, either, that aside from that one killer..it looks pretty balanced.
In fact, I dunno how you do much better than that since I think the main impact were the two leavers. Like, my performance varies WILDLY based on loadouts and subclass now, way more than it used to. SBMM means you have to bring your best shit or your stats have the potential to wildly nosedive.
Are you Medi0prity?
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
I think an ideal system would be making sure you are matched with people where you can at least understand and work around wins or losses. You don't necessarily have a 50/50 shot of winning or losing, but you can at least understand the process of what is going on. There are certainly teams out there that are so good and so coordinated the average player's experience against them isn't going to be educational, no matter how open to information and analysis that average player is. Getting your ass beat can be a great way to learn, but getting absolutely fucking obliterated is probably going to be too fast / one-sided to glean any useful information from.
IMO a good SBMM would try to keep that skill range sweet spot in mind, but "good SBMM" isn't a term we should utter in the Destiny thread
100% agree (but you know that already per Discord convos), but I think it was closer to that ideal a few weeks ago than whatever this is now.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
Usually I'm placing near the top these days but there's matches where I'm mid or even near the bottom of the rankings. And I'd say at least half of them are tight affairs, with a few going right down to the wire.
Basically been a great season overall in Control. DestinyTracker even claims I'm top 0.5% now!
Nope, I'm Guardian<9somethingbunchofnumbers> 'cause they force-changed my name and I haven't fixed it.
I recall the one dude dipping out towards the end when we were already well into "just gettin' farmed", the second I hadn't noticed. Wonder what that's about? Maybe he left and I didn't see it in the message scroll or something.
I'd say "it's not the losing I mind" which would be a lie, because of course I mind losing, but tbh the win where I just didn't see anyone 'cause the other players on my team were good was just as bad. Like how's that fun?
Speaking of conversations that keep repeating forever, I accidentally wandered on to the old crucible subreddit. Top post (two years old):
Time is a flat circle, etc.
You would think people better than me would get it worse. I find this baffling, unless I'm just somehow so phenomenally bad that I have warped matchmaking around myself recently.
I know a lot of people hate the current season sandbox. I don't as a filthy console pulse user. But the recent change is noticeably ungood.
The sad part is that Every. Single. Time. bungie puts SBMM in the game, my personal experiences in PvP improve in every measurable way. And that makes me want to play the entire game more, not just PvP. And then when they remove it, my engagement with the game as a whole reduces. Sure the PvE game is good, but it's really the PvP aspect of Destiny that keeps it "alive" for me.
I'd really like to know what the "average" skill player looks like in this game, because I honestly think that a lot of people make some sweeping assumptions that "I am an average player" ("I" meaning them in this case) when they are actually in the top 10% to 25%. I really suspect that the "average" player in Destiny is pretty awful at the game and really doesn't engage in high-end activities in any meaningful way. And probably plays less than 8 hours a week.
This season has really been a major step backwards for Destiny overall. A seasonal plotline that was not engaging, so lore-hounds aren't happy. A seasonal event that really wasn't fun, so casual shoot-em-up players aren't happy. A holiday event that was definitively worse than it's prior incarnation, so part-time players aren't happy. Matchmaking "issues", so PvP players aren't happy.... I mean, who actually enjoyed playing Destiny for the last 11 weeks? Arc 3.0 was fun when it came out but a meta developed within 2 weeks and then ... nothing. Personally, I was away on holiday for 2-1/2 weeks in the middle of this season (which is only on it's 11th week) and now that I've completed the seasonal challenges and gotten my bright dust I feel literally zero draw to play. I'm not even chasing Pinnacles because I know I'm just going to get the extra 10 skill in the first week of the new season anyway. Normally, at this point in a given season I would be looking at working on Catalysts or cleaning out old exotic quests, or dabbling in raids or something! But this time around, I'm basically taking a break because there's just nothing engaging in the game at this point.
It had lots of numbers. I like numbers.
Destiny 2really needs some kind of SBMM, because the skill difference between top players and "kind of bad mediocre" players is so significant they aren't really even playing the same game. But doing SBMM wrong is worse than not doing it at all, and right now we've got bad SBMM. As the PvP population declines the "S" in "SBMM" is going to turn into more of a "?BMM" and you're just going to have awful matches like the old system except everyone has significantly worse connection quality.
I know plenty of people who really enjoyed the SBMM changes made early in the season. I'm glad they got some fun out of it, but TBH almost all of them have stopped playing by now (which is fine), so there's some question as to how much damage Bungie should do for the benefit of people who are going to play two dozen matches in the first month of a season and then never come back. Most of the "play PvP all season long" players seem to be either quitting or complaining enough that they ought to.
All that said, it is a bit hard to evaluate SBMM right now because everything else in PvP is a dumpster fire too. If SBMM was turned off tomorrow it would still be a pretty unpleasant experience IMO.
Make sure to pay attention to whether they are talking k/d or k/da. The game, and many websites, show k/da (which is a perfectly useful number), kills + assists / deaths.
k/d is solely kills vs. deaths, no points for assists. Having a k/d of 2.0 or higher makes you pretty goddamn terrifying, a k/da of 2.0 is still very good but much closer to the central skill band.
IIRC the k/da average is somewhere around 1.25-1.5.
It's also why they just changed k/d stats to record before the end of a match; people were leaving until they got the matchup they wanted or when they started losing/dying. (And it was "predominantly" (saith Bungie) the "high skill" players, even.
Edit: I feel like I should clarify--I know they're not right. They're full of shit/completely deluded about both what "average" is and their own skill levels. So a fair matchup happens, and suddenly their numbers drop, which is clearly due to lag and improper networking and obviously this is completely unplayable. Complete opposite reaction from people who have their stats drop and go "shit, now I actually have competition".
PvP was the best for the one season where SBMM was on for everything other than competitive. (For me!) I have to believe that it was changed because Bungie looked at metrics (that we don't have access to) and decided it was moving the game in a direction they didn't want, or was impacting Eververse, or something. I refuse to believe that they changed it simply because streamers and "content creators" yelled loudly.
For what it's worth, destinytracker shows my K/D in Control at 0.79 (1.11 K/D+A wheee) which is in the "bottom 6%" - there's not a lot of daylight between 0.9 K/D and 0.79 K/D and based on how bell curves work... well, something isn't adding up here. (Crucible emblem shows 0.8 right now.)
I don't have a problem with people who are good at this game. I just don't wanna be in their lobbies, 'cause I don't have fun.
Edit: Ha, aha, it's like people who are good at poker, vs people who will tell you they're good at poker. That jackknob who shows up to your Friday evening card game with mirror shades and earbuds in, and acts like he's at the WSOP at all times. It's not that he's bad at the game, he's just not as good as he thinks he is or acts.
You're looking at your ELO. That's what the bottom 6% is referring to. ELO is heavily based on how much you played and also only looking at your win / loss record, not your KD or KDA.
You've only played 37 control matches all season, that's why your ELO is so low.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
We may not be good at this shit, but there are definitely, definitely people less good than we are. (Yes I know they're probably 5. Let me have this one...)
Edit: Also, the other day I learned that there's an entire class that can aim and/or fire a gun while in the air while not instantly dropping like a stone, and I'm a little (not actually) upset about this. I had no idea Hunters could jump while doing things like drawing a bow, and this seems most unfair. I never played a hunter, had no idea.
I have no illusions about my skill level. Even if I could play Destiny like it was my job, my ELO won't move all that much. If you look at my "all time" Iron Banner stats, there's 505 games tracked and my win/loss ratio is still sitting at 47.1% with a K/D of 0.48! I'm clearly "not good" at this game and that's fine! What is not fine - and I think we all agree on this - is that putting players like me, and players like you, in the same lobby is going to be very much a not-fun time for both of us.
To the point @dporowski is making, I run into people with less skill than me all the time. Here's two screen grabs from earlier this month:
ETA - today's PA comic seems applicable
I was more pointing out this - You seemed to be linking your K/D and KDA to the bottom 6% when they're very much unrelated. Just wanted to reassure you that that's not what the 6% is referring to.
PSN: Bizazedo
CFN: Bizazedo (I don't think I suck, add me).
A circle you say? Not a cube? https://web.archive.org/web/20160112000701/http://www.timecube.com/
Destiny Profile : http://www.bungie.net/en/Profile/254/7028016
This is somewhat sad, somewhat funny. You hunt for and finally buy an expensive Ps5... and then don't take the free upgrade for your game to actually be the good version.
Witch Queen is still fantastic. Savathun's VA does an amazing job, the missions are good, just quality all around.
Season of the Haunted, however, is terrible. I get that they were trying to copy the dumb being chased games (my son plays them constantly) but the idea some Cabal Legionaire is literally undefeatable by a Guardian who has killed gods is just dumb.
Could this space rhino have taken out Oryx, apparently?
It's a prime example of wanting to ape a mechanic outweighing narrative, story, and context.
It's not really any different than any other enemies we've had with unbreakable shields or invincibility that we needed to solve some mechanic for imo
Like, start out the same, but when it comes time to board only half of the six go over to cause trouble on the enemy ship, while the rest defend and keep the cannons rolling. Throw in a series of random events to spice things up while we hammer the enemy ship. Near the end the enemy captain is forced out and leads a last ditch raid on our ship to try to stop us, we take them out and steal the map that’s on them.
EDIT: Splitting up the guardians a bit would maybe help something annoying about the activity, where there might be long stretches of time where you might not get anything to do due to how compact things are and AOE abilities just clearing decks.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
I think it is also important to remember how the Guardians are crazy god killing assholes. They basically save scum reality in order to find that one in a million chance that will totally overcome that obstacle.
Which is exactly what we did to that stupid Cabal nightmare stalker jerk.
As for mimicking various genres I'm for it though it needs to be way more like Haunted than Plunder. Haunted was all about trauma and recovery. For that genre it was a little shallow but we're still talking videogame storytelling and the MMO version of that. On that curve I thought it did well and earns some big points for fleshing out some characters who desperately needed it, like Zavala, using the conventions of that genre.
Plunder is about us being repeatedly attacked unprovoked so we can be justified just rolf-stomping these assholes who had no realistic chance of defeating us. It isn't about us embracing pirating it is about the kids shows version of that. Like trying to make The Shield but telling it like it's Paw Patrol. Just total flavor miss.
Though I do find the world reacting to our God-Killing shenanigan's in the way Plunder does (by ignoring it) way more annoying than us occasionally not immediately being able to steam roll something.
Least I finally got a crafted BxR from all the Dares I've just been doing...
Edit: BTW, if you build this thing with a chambered compensator + ricochet rounds, then slap a stock mod on, it's... Almost a laser. Slightly less stable than with steady rounds, but I like the range increase so far. And yes, Demo + Incandescent is indeed that nice.
No really, it's broken and you have to fix it now.
The gun sparks and shoots wrong until you hold reload, where you smack it and it starts working again.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)