Eurogamer talks to Harold Ryan

by Xenos , Shores of Time, Friday, June 21, 2013, 11:28 (3984 days ago)

Good read. Talks a lot about the ideals behind their new matchmaking systems.

Favorite quote:

"We have ideas on how to do that... The most challenging and rewarding thing we could do in a social world for Destiny is to actually have the people you meet be a high probability of being people that you have fun playing and engaging with, and bond with and build relationships with, even if they're anonymous online gaming relationships. For that to be the norm that happens when you play Destiny would be the ideal scenario."

Halo's matchmaking was the envy of its rivals, but Bungie thinks these unseen routines can do much more; indeed, advancing this dark art is a big part of what the studio wants to achieve with Destiny. When I ask Ryan what the studio wants to fix about online gaming, his answer comes instantly: "Matchmaking still is not perfect. I don't know if it will ever get perfect but there's still a lot of room to improve matchmaking in lots of ways, both in terms of how fast do you get in, how good is the quality of experience you get when you get there. And for us the real goal we had for fixing was to come up with a social match, not just a competitive match. That's still a work in progress, and I hope we do really well at it, but we'll see what happens when we get there."