Disclaimer: I don't have the kind of data that Bungie would have on this so I have to work with basic stats and probability as well as personal experience. Please bump to keep the thread alive. Even if Bungie doesn't respond with any kind of "got it, moving to the wishlist" I would love to see the numbers for lighthouse attainment percentages from year one to year two. TL;DR: Bungie's change to matchmaking in year two to favor scorecard ranking has had a crippling effect on this gametype by widening the skill gap to such an extreme level that many now have to beg for carries when they really didn't need to in year one. I understand Bungie's reasoning. This is a competitive mode. It makes sense to challenge players with matches of similar skill and similar passage wins. But changing matchmaking from year one has created more problems than its solved: 1: [b]Scorecard Based Matchmaking Increases the Skill Gap Far Beyond What is Necessary[/b] In year one, matches were pure connection based (or at least it tried it's hardest). Having pure connection with no skill based matchmaking involved means that you were likely to face players of all skill levels and it was close to random who you would fight. Sometimes you would face people with .5 k/ds and sometimes you would fight gods who wipe the floor with you. This gives players the best shot of reaching the lighthouse. Because as long as you were dead average or slightly higher there was a >/=50% chance you would be of a higher skill than your opponents since they are effectively randomly selected. Go to year two and things change. I [i]believe[/i] that they removed SBMM from trials and focused more heavily on scorecard based matchmaking. Scorecard based matchmaking inherently makes it nightmarish to get to the lighthouse. Instead of connection based matchmaking which effectively randomizes the players you face scorecard based means that you face players who have the same number of wins that you do. This is why the games are reletively the same until about seven wins in and suddenly it's a Sweat Fountain of Pain. The increased skill gap comes into play because for the god mode crucible elite this effectively didn't do much (neither does it for the extremely low end players who never had a chance anyways) but for the average, slightly above, and slightly below average players this is the difference between taking a couple passages to go flawless and [i]never going flawless without getting carried[/i] which leads me to: 2 [b]The Widened Skill Gap has Dramatically Increased the Amount of Actual Pay to Win in Destiny[/b] I would say for every scumbag selling flawless runs there's about 5+ good Samaritan high skilled players willing to help. But the fact that this exists and has only increased because of Bungie's decisions is sickening and it needs to be stopped. It's simple supply and demand. There is now a heightened demand for flawless runs because of the widened skill gap in trials matchmaking. So if you're a high skill player who does trials runs in their sleep this is now the prime time to make money. On the tame end you have Twitch raffles. You see these everywhere: every two bit streamer hyping their stream "Just follow my channel and watch the stream and you'll be entered into a raffle for a carry." Not that terrible. I've done this because there's no other option but I still lost at win 8 so go figure. Then there's the bigger, more popular twitch steamers who also do raffles but for subscribers who pay money or at least heavily weighted toward players who pay money. More scummy because you now have to actually pay money instead of whatever the guy makes in ad revenue. Do not do this. Do not buy into this system there are plenty of decent players willing to help you out. I believe this should be able to be reported and the banhammer should be dusted off as a warning. Then there's literally pay to win trials sites where I think the rate is like $60+ (Edit: just checked, their going rate is [b]$86 -blam!-ing dollars[/b])to get a flawless trials run. And I'm sure they won't just take your money and run. Positive. Seriously don't do this. You have to be insane to actually do that. Ban these people. Ban their consoles. Ban their IPs. I'm serious. If even half of you who got up in arms about sterling treasure being pay to win got up in arms about paid trials carries (which is objectively pay to win) it would end abruptly. The best thing that Bungie can do is start banning those who offer paid trials carries but more importantly cut the demand down by reversing their decision on scorecard based matchmaking.