Man, I've been gone for a while, I forgot about the christmas influx of new players. Crucible was...less than competitive. I don't imagine the noobs were very happy getting melted by a bunch of guns they'd never heard of, either. More importantly, the teams were badly imbalanced; I feel like I was on a team of 30's, against a team of teens. Couldn't they use grimoire score to help match players with other players who have played the game? I feel dirty after that.

*Just a quick edit, that last statement should have read "players who have played the game an equal amount?" Don't think I expressed that clearly. I think throwing new players in the chum doesn't really promote a healthy PvP community either; it may deter some players by giving them a potentially inaccurate idea of the skill curve.

Bungie haven't talked about the logic the matchmaking system uses in any great detail, but we know it uses 'skill' as a primary criteria, and unless you're playing IB the levels don't matter much.

Not being 20 means no exotic weapons, no exotic armor, and probably not a full skill tree. Additionally, lower grimoire is probably indicative of map familiarity. If you have someone with 2300 grimoire at level 5, it's probably his 3rd character and he knows what's up. If you have someone at 200 grimoire at level 5, it's his first probably. Is it really fair?

There just has to be a better way; if not grimoire, then something else. Even if it's just adding up the sum of the two team's grimoire, or even level, so it isn't one 29 and five 11's against one 5 and five 31's. There were some moments where players just blithely walked past me, like new born lambs traipsing through the Tyrannosaur paddock.

I agree with your goal, but because I hunted down hidden ghosts and grinded public events is no reason to match me "higher".

I agree with your goal, but because I hunted down hidden ghosts and grinded public events is no reason to match me "higher".

It's certainly not ideal, but I don't really go out of my way to do any of the grimoire (like ghost hunting), and just playing the game has brought mine above 2k. The fact that there are websites which track k/d, win percentage, and more advanced combat rating would suggest bungie probably has a way to metrically monitor this. Why they don't implement something more along those lines is beyond me; currently, I don't really understand what the metric is, or how skill is measured (that combat rating system is mostly about not disconnecting when you're losing, right?).

The fact that there are websites which track k/d, win percentage, and more advanced combat rating would suggest bungie probably has a way to metrically monitor this. Why they don't implement something more along those lines is beyond me;

When discussing match making, people tend to forget two other criteria:
1. The ping or connection stability between players
2. The wait time

The pool of possible players effects this greatly. It seems more likely that you got the best match possible given the available players at that moment, and that Bungie's algorithm decided you wouldn't want to wait 30 minutes for a couple more high level players with good ping to load up the Crucible.

While I do get thrown so incredible unbalanced games at times, it's amazing how often any game can find 12 players that when divided out actually makes for a close game.

While I do get thrown so incredible unbalanced games at times, it's amazing how often any game can find 12 players that when divided out actually makes for a close game.

Yeah, as is often the case, I'm hoping this just came down to small sample size.