The MMO shooter Destiny does not have matchmaking for the raids, but prefers that the community does it. In any case, they trust the fans to fill in the numerous information and feature gaps and thus bind them more strongly to the game.
In an interview with vg247, Destiny’s community manager DeeJ explains how matchmaking works. The “auto-matchmaking” works for the “simple group tasks” in Destiny, but it is not possible to find players for the more difficult tasks in the game via an algorithm. Those who want to defeat Atheon or Crota cannot rely on an anonymous and automated mechanism.
A catastrophic mistake for some critics of the game. How could such a fundamental feature be overlooked? Even before the release, websites emerged that aimed to fix this negligence by Bungie: with self-made raid finders, for example. But Bungie now says: That was intentional. This is exactly how we envisioned it.
With matchmaking, Bungie has now given in somewhat. For a long time, matchmaking for heroic strikes was not possible. However, this has now been allowed. At the moment, it is only deactivated for the Nightfall, the weekly Dawn Strike, and the raids.
Instead, players find each other through LFG tools on external sites or via Facebook groups. They come together through forums. And Bungie is absolutely satisfied and in agreement with this, as it is said. Yes, moreover: They have explicitly encouraged this. And those who are waiting for matchmaking for Nightfall or the raids can probably wait for a long time.
“When like-minded players come together and work on something together, it is so much better than if we wrote an algorithm that works for everyone,” DeeJ said in the interview. “When small clusters of players come together, it is, in our experience, much better than a system that applies to everyone.”
Leaving gaps for others to fill
My MMO thinks: The experience of recent months seems to confirm Bungie’s position here. At least for players who are willing to overcome their reluctance and seek out others. Because while in “auto-matchmaking” it increasingly happens that individual players go afk and let themselves be carried by the rest of the group, it is different when players connect through Facebook groups or forums. Here everyone is accountable by their own name.
This is also an experience from other MMORPGs. While “auto-matchmaking” makes it significantly easier to find other players, the appreciation for those players diminishes drastically: The “you only see each other once” concept of anonymous matchmaking is not exactly one of the highlights of modern MMORPGs.
It is indeed an interesting idea to leave gaps and voids that are filled by the community. Even early on, there were websites that provided event timers, or YouTubers who explained specific game mechanics or discussed weapons, as the shooter was very stingy with information.
Perhaps that is why the game has so many large YouTube channels, because there is this demand for information and the thrill arises to engage with Destiny outside of the game, deciphering its secrets. In a game that spoon-feeds everything, that would surely not be the case.
The still popular World of Warcraft has also spawned professional sites that thrive on telling players what Blizzard keeps from them: from complicated damage calculations to professional data mining.
The success seems to justify Bungie’s approach: Destiny certainly has one of the most active, creative, and useful communities ever.
Evil tongues even claim that Destiny has also exploited these gaps in storytelling to keep the story as flat as possible, so players can keep rushing through the missions …
We have already addressed the topic of group searching in Destiny using external tools and websites.
