To explain what I mean by "high-skilled player", I want to begin by establishing my stats since I know someone is going to stat-check me anyways. [url=https://destinytracker.com/destiny-2/profile/psn/4611686018431874053/overview]According to Destiny Tracker[/url], I was Top 500 in the world for Trials, Iron Banner, and Survival for the past three seasons (and once for Gambit, not that anyone cares about it lol). I have an overall 2.33 K/D average and regularly go flawless in Trials. I overwhelmingly play solo except in Trials. I am not trying to humble brag or pat myself on the back; it's just to establish what kind of player I am and who SBMM is going to try to put me against. My experience has been that every single game has been an absolute sweatfest. Every single match, at least one player leaves the match, and sometimes multiple bail out at random points in the game. I've seen many more people intentionally quitting mid-game than I did last season or even season before. In my last Control game, I saw a player on the enemy team leave at the end despite them WINNING the game against us. I see little reason why he would do this despite it being a guaranteed win for him had he stayed for the following 7 points. It was probably to protect his KAD on his emblem since I believe it doesn't count if you quit the match. Again, this is the kind of player and behavior you're going to see regularly in this skill bracket. Almost every single player is using a 100% meta loadout, meta subclass (usually Arc because that's the flavor of this season), and is trying their absolute hardest. I regularly have easier Survival and Trials games even against full, premade fireteams than I have recently experienced in the new Control playlist. Games are bitterly fought and get extremely toxic extremely fast, and with every single game, I've been tbagged and emoted on (usually by some pathetic HC + Shotgun + Stompees Arc Hunter tryhard - you know exactly who I mean). I'm sure if I had my messages as public, I'd have gotten some hate mail, too. No, I'm not complaining about being tbagged or taunted, just pointing it out. I feel like this is just a consequence of regularly playing the tryhards now because that's the kind of behavior common among this skill bracket, from my experience. If I do not try my hardest and pull my weight, my team will not win. Even if I do this, I've lost pretty badly from some stacked teams that I've fought. SBMM is definitely putting me against better players. Still, it's quickly gotten to a degree where every single game is a tryhard-fest, and feels like I'm playing a tournament instead of a Quickplay match trying to complete some bounties or a weekly challenge. And before someone comes in and says "you just want to stomp casuals", no I don't. I just don't want to never be allowed to not try again without being sh*tstomped by the enemy team. I've read complaints about the lag being worse, but that hasn't been my experience so far. I haven't fought any egregiously laggy players and it has seemingly improved slightly from last season, but I honestly wouldn't put too much weight into this as it's only the second week in the season and it could appear better/worse to me later on. I figured I'd add my two cents to this conversation, so feel free to ask me whatever you want if you have any questions.