Cool. What I was wondering, was how people were saying that it was on Wednesday only, but I did it Thursday night.

Ooooh, haha. Then I have a follow up question. Did you login on Wednesday at all? I was trying to figure out if it unlocked for everyone that all four relics or if you had to at least login.

When you play match made gametypes, does playing with randoms make the experience more enjoyable, or does it just make it possible?

I've often wished Nightfalls had matchmaking, but I'm now starting to think that what I really want is for the Nightfalls to scale so I could more realistically run them solo if none of my friends are around.

I guess in my head, I'm still "playing alone" when I do a match made activity... There are just these other people involved who tend to detract more often than add anything meaningful to the experience. I think, in those cases, I'd rather be really alone and just have the mission or strike scale to suit 1 player rather than 3.

To answer your question, I'd say both, and sometimes one or the other. Depends on the mode.

Higher difficulty PoE is more about just making it possible. I like the arena mode a lot but I approach it more like a marathon, like an arcade game. I'd do it alone if I could, but the way it's built makes it hard to do solo (even though you can technically try).

With Strikes, and Patrols, and what I'd call more story-based, 'adventurous' activities, I actually find random Guardians joining me more immersive and exciting than when I'm doing them solo. I always thought Halo campaigns were the funnest when I was fighting alongside the AI marines in epic battles. Destiny doesn't have that exactly but the random, matchmade Guardians who fill that void are essentially sentient, high-skilled marines in comparison. This means I have a partner to work with as well as a chance to observe their own cool gameplay moments. Sometimes particular challenges or incidents combined with an emote can lead to a funny moment. It's a Noble team that's helpful ALL the time rather than on occasion. :)

Sure, all of this can be taken to a greater impact with a real, personalized team, but, for someone like me, that has its own cost and I'm not always in the mood to combine true socializing and gaming. This isn't a sardonic hatred for humans or something. Even when I'm having a blast with friends or family, it wears me out and once my super meter is depleted, I have to take a break and recharge. Games often fulfill that recharging space. Every day after middle and high school, I'd go home and play a video game for an hour and afterwards, I could be sociable and inviting again because I had that zone-out meditation.

Destiny's matchmaking gives me a happy medium in that respect. In a perfect world I'd love for every activity to have solo, fireteam, and matchmaking avenues, and scale down or up in difficulty accordingly, but the production cost and the constraints of the matchmaking candidate pool limit that, not to mention the difficulty of making that work with a designer's intentions like in a Raid where it is built and optimized for teamwork (and while I don't Raid often, I love that that kind of gameplay exists as an option).

The games you and Cody are describing sound cool, but it wouldn't be something I play anywhere near as often as Destiny.

I'm not totally sure I would play it either, lol. I'm just letting my imagination wander :)

I think it would be a game I'd play when I was younger and when I had friends who could just stop by and play in the ocean of Silent Cartographer for 3 hours. :)

i have this:

You can see my game history, I have two "classified" missions from yesterday, but none on wednesday.

http://destinytracker.com/destiny/games/1/4611686018429571115/2305843009216986310

Yep that's it, now you need to finish The Archive mission on Venus, a Warsat on each location that has them (Earth, Moon, Mars) and dismantle a legendary or exotic heavy weapon. After you do that hover over that item in game and hit the button for repair and then hit A on all the nodes and it'll direct you to the Gunsmith.

You can see my game history, I have two "classified" missions from yesterday, but none on wednesday.

http://destinytracker.com/destiny/games/1/4611686018429571115/2305843009216986310

It came out on Wednesday, but I didn't play it until Thursday. I got the drop, entered the codes, and did the timed mission.

After you did the timed mission did you get a mission item with 5 nodes?

As someone who plays solo 90% of the time, I almost only play matchmade activities and actually wish Bungie added more matchmaking as an option to stuff like Nightfall and higher difficulty PoE - modes I don't play regularly because of the current requirement of socializing. While I've had a blast doing a few Raids with DBO, it's an exception to a medium I usually use as a cool down from extroversion.

I'm just thinking out loud here, so this might be a terrible idea. I guess I'll start with a question:

When you play match made gametypes, does playing with randoms make the experience more enjoyable, or does it just make it possible?

I've often wished Nightfalls had matchmaking, but I'm now starting to think that what I really want is for the Nightfalls to scale so I could more realistically run them solo if none of my friends are around.

I guess in my head, I'm still "playing alone" when I do a match made activity... There are just these other people involved who tend to detract more often than add anything meaningful to the experience. I think, in those cases, I'd rather be really alone and just have the mission or strike scale to suit 1 player rather than 3.

The games you and Cody are describing sound cool, but it wouldn't be something I play anywhere near as often as Destiny.

I'm not totally sure I would play it either, lol. I'm just letting my imagination wander :)

matchmaking makes the game inviting for many people to play in a way that games without matchmaking aren't.

Totally agreed. I also liked your point that Patrol and Tower are two really interesting matchmaking scenarios.

I've said similar things before, but I think running into randoms on patrol is so cool. I'm not even sure why. In some ways it's mundane but it has some transformative power: Yeah, I'm here trying to get my 30 headshots or whatever, so is this guy/girl, and we came together to defend the warsat.

What I'm saying is this: People on this fan-forum are the 1%; they are people who want to go out of their way to arrange things so they can be the best and do the best things.

Other people don't want that. Matchmaking is for the 99%.

The way I see it, this game handles both groups pretty well.

Very well said. As I said in my post, matchmaking makes the game inviting for many people to play in a way that games without matchmaking aren't. I guess what I'm daydreaming about is "is there a better way to group people together than the typically hoppers?". I like to think about this stuff because I think Destiny is just on the edge of breaking some really interesting ground in that regard.

Very, very few people do as much gun-changing in PvP as you do.

Totally agree. I wasn't trying to imply anything different. I'm just saying that for me, and the few who play closer to the way I do, earning currencies quickly has practical benefits.

On the other side of the coin, there are some overwhelming facts that support the inclusion of matchmaking. Not everyone has a friends list full of people playing the same game all the time. Many people have inconsistent or unpredictable schedules that make it difficult to set up events with friends in advance. And for many, many people, they just don't want to spend the time thinking about this stuff in advance. They want to sit down and play whenever they feel like it and jump in to whatever activity they want. If matchmaking was removed from Destiny, the truth is that most people wouldn't play it. Just look at the PSN trophy data; as of today, only 23% of Destiny players have completed a raid. By omitting matchmaking from any specific activity, you chop off 3/4 of your player base.

This could all be mitigated by designing Destiny with no RNG loot, so that things do not have to be replayed over and over. If you only ever have to do one raid to get what you want, it makes organizing one easier.

I'm going to disagree with you pretty solidly, here. If the game had no loot at all, it would be EVEN HARDER to get random, non-matchmade groups together to do the activities.

I like turning on Destiny whenever it strikes me, loading up an activity, and just playing. Often I specifically don't want to join a group and chat or even plan to join a group, because to me that is social and potentially stressful and I'm playing a game to hibernate and relax. Sometimes I just want to drink and shoot the virtual things. I don't like to schedule game stuff way in advance because I prioritize IRL activities over game activities and I want to meet my friends whenever they want without leaving you virtual people in the lurch.

I was overjoyed when Heroic strikes went to matchmaking, because it meant I could easily do Heroic strikes every week without having to solo the mission, schedule something on FTB, or relying on people from LFG tools. But when the feature hit, I remember reading a LOT of complaints on here. I had maybe 2 bad experiences with randoms during Heroic strikes out of dozens of runs.

I haven't done the new raid because.. A variety of reasons; I was out of town when it launched and then I got injured pretty badly when I got back in town. I couldn't talk for a few days. I could barely stay conscious for a week and a half.

What I'm saying is this: People on this fan-forum are the 1%; they are people who want to go out of their way to arrange things so they can be the best and do the best things.

Other people don't want that. Matchmaking is for the 99%.

The way I see it, this game handles both groups pretty well.

And regardless of whether they get there on Week 2 (for you super-competitive people) or Week 30 (folks like Levi, maybe), once they get there, they've got their guns, and they can compete at whatever level they were going to compete at.

Very, very few people do as much gun-changing in PvP as you do.

STOP READING MY BRAIN! ... My primary weapon in Crucible is a blue handcannon from the launch game. :p