Assembling mm teams with the goal of giving all players a 50% win rate, is a fine goal in a general playlist of mixed skill players, but in a ranked playlist it is foundationally contrary to the concept of rank. These should be the goals of a ranked matchmaking system 1. Rank should be a shorthand way to express skill on a fixed scale. 2. Correct rank should be assigned as quickly as it can be determined. 3. By playing with players of similar skill, players can improve, by learning how other players beat them, and observing which strategies are effective. If the goal is for rank to be an expression of skill, it should not require a long arduous grind to achieve, it should be very fluid, if youre having a great day you should climb fast, likewise if you are having a bad day you should fall fast. Problem A top 1% player doesnt engage with comp at the beginning of a season, they come into their placement matches and demolish all of their opponents, in every placement match. They are placed at a capped rank below adept. The system from then on matches them with the goal of achieving a 50% win ratio. To accomplish this, the system has to give them what it knows to be lower skilled teammates in a similar rank range. Because most players of top 1% skill have already grinded out of gold and plat lobbies, this player gets bottom tier teammates and top tier opponents which results in a 50% win ratio, which traps this player in a lower rank. This isnt fun for the skilled player who gets matched with people who trickle into 1v3's all game and go vastly negative, and it isnt fun for opposing teams who have a player on the other team they always lose to. This happens because teams are made with the goal of 50% win ratio. Not with the goal of expressing skill as soon as it can be determined and adjusting frequently. The purpose of a 50% win ratio is to waste player time. Solution Start placement matches with the highest ranked opponents, and only progress to lower ranks during placements when they fail to perform. Do not put an artificial cap on max rank after placement matches. Do not attempt to achieve 50% win ratios via matchmaking in a ranked playlist. Instead try to match players of similar rank, and adjust rank quickly so that players are facing their peers most of the time. Rant I am sick to death of being a mid tier player, and despite the years of fps's and hundreds of hours in this game and specifically comp, I am truly mid, but I am sick to death of being the best person on my team. I never quit a game in comp bc I want to climb to the higher ranks, I care about my rank, it is a long term pursuit for me to improve. And yet I get on my team all the time, people who quit early, even when we are winning the first few engagements, people who do nothing but run at the enemies, trickling in to 1v3 deaths again and again, a behavior that I never do, and that should be punished by the ranking system very quickly so they are ranked below people who have the wherewithal to move with their team. I also play against people who are in the top 0.01% on trials.report, why are they in gold? I shouldnt see a player like that until I am in the ascendant ranks. I certainly shouldnt see them over and over again. Because the goal of this system is to waste player time to increase engagement, they make the user experience bad to obfuscate this. They do not show the system evaluation of each teams skill level, they do not show the current rank of players in the postgame stats screen, they do not show the +- to rank given to players in the post game stat screen. And the reason for all these is very obvious, if they did, someone would crunch the numbers in the api and the community would be up at arms complaining with aggregate data rather than first hand accounts, that players are deliberately not ranked by skill, but rather subjected to a frustrating matchmaker picks winners system. Think of this in terms of sports. Should the 94 bulls have a 50% win ratio? Should Micheal Jordan not get to play with his team mates and instead get some high school player on his team when he plays the wizards? No of course not, Jordan should win every time he is the best player on the best team. For all its flaws, if you go to Halo Infinite, so many of these problems are solved, if you go back as far as halo 2, you can see these problems solved by bungie. Halo infinite, shows the rank of every player, it shows the relative ranks of both teams, and you can see very clearly the raltionship between player skill, player rank, and what it is like to play that player in game. If Im geting wrecked and then I see that the player that I just couldnt beat is onyx (the top rank) I immediately think ok I get it I have to improve. And what you never see in halo ranked, despite it having a much lower player population than destiny, is a game where an onyx player is in a silver lobby, they place them in onyx, because the goal is to rank people correctly, not trap them in a frustrating grind. They also end games when someone quits in the first minute of a match, which saves you the frustration of being unable to quit bc its a higher rank penalty, and escalates your timeout penalty, so youre forced to suffer a lopsided defeat for 5-10 minutes. There is no reason for this. There is no player benefit to these design decisions. This is artifical inflation of engagement numbers, by making people angry, and it leads to all sorts of bad player behavior. This is not a solvable problem, this is a solved problem 20 years ago. The fact that I have to wait through 3 seconds of crucible rep, 3 seconds of gunsmith rep, 3 seconds of a glimmer popup, none of which I care at all about, before I can see the +- to my rank is egregiously poor design. The fact that I cant see team skill cratings, or the rank of anyone in the match in the post game is offensive. The fact that top tier players are trapped in lower ranks subverts the entire purpose of having a rank. If my rank is not an expression of my skill relative to the entire playerbase, if spending the effort to improve, acquire and use a meta loadout, play smart, results in me being punished with team mates palced on my team purposfully to make me lose, then what is the point? The long term result is what you see, people dont like comp, they dont feel that ranks are accurate, they dont feel that teams are made in a way that fosters competition and player development, they are universally at all skill levels, frustrated to the point that they avoid the playlist or leave the game. Not even bungie is served by this. It is an abject failure. And as someone with thousands of hours, and hundreds of dollars, in this game, who loves it and wants to put in the time and the effort to grow and improve, it is just deeply disappointing, frustrating, demoralizing, and frankly insulting that you are not listening. You are not making it better, you are not even trying to serve the community, you continue prioritizing short term metrics over long term health, you are not listening, and every time you say you are, it is so obviously a lie.