'Destiny 2': Skill-Based Matchmaking Returns In Season 18

Skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) will be making a comeback later this August after Bungie confirmed its intent to rebalance “Destiny 2’s” Crucible lobbies to be less frustrating and one-sided for less-skilled players.

A toned-down version of the old SBMM system will be reimplemented in Season 18, as per Bungie’s latest TWAB. There will be some important differences in the new matchmaking system compared to the company’s last attempt to balance multiplayer PvP lobbies in hopes of not breaking the game for most players.

The move is geared toward making matches feel more competitive for all players without making the high-level play feel too stressful. The change will also keep matchmaking speed and connection quality in mind.

In the future, players can expect to be matched against others who are near their skill level as dictated by tangible stats like kills, deaths, and objective captures and some other categories that are harder to gauge, such as reaction times, agility, playstyle and player knowledge.

Bungie said these systems are currently being used for matchmaking in Survival and Elimination games, and they will use them to create a slightly less competitive system for Control matches in future seasons.

According to the developers, they want to keep the win rates in Control between 40-60%. As it stands now, over half of all Control matches have extreme skill disparity between players, which leads to more mercy games and much less fun for everyone involved.

Moving forward, the game will begin to match players against those with similar skills. If it fails to do so, it will widen the allowable skill disparity gradually until all 12 player slots are filled.

The team will be monitoring and tweaking this “Loose SBMM” system as Season 18 progresses. In the future, they will be implementing a form of fire-team-based matchmaking that will reduce the number of games where a full-stack of Guardians are pitted against a team of six solo players.

This team-based system aims to replicate the benefits of the Freelance playlist seen in Trials of Osiris and Iron Banner without splitting the PvP population in half.

More information about the new systems is expected by the second half of August and beyond.