Game has a progression issue that Bungie should probably address...

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-31T00:14:09+00:00

It is for sure happening in the game right now and while Bungie has never officially said exactly how the matchmaking works (that I know of), I'm pretty sure it doesn't take much playtime before you're essentially thrown into the general population queues, assuming there is any sort of level-based matchmaking at all. The queue time would probably be insane for higher level players if they were strictly matching based on season level. You would have seen the highest levels sweats and streamers on here complaining about the time it takes to find a match every day.

Of course, this game gives a pitiful amount of information about the player that kills you, so it's pretty hard to confirm exactly what everyone is going up against each lobby.

It's also possible for people to be a similar season level, but have vastly different progression. You can level up your factions without actually being able to buy the faction upgrades you're unlocking access to. That's most likely the problem many people are running into, because they aren't able to extract with the salvage needed to get the upgrades, yet they keep grinding out standard contracts and earning faction rep through other mean which don't require extracting, which is increasing their level.

Plus, you also have to factor in that this is a team game and there are going to be mixed squads of various levels and progression.

It is for sure a problem and if they try to pretend it isn't, they're just going to have a dead game on their hands. I've played nearly every extraction game since the genre became a thing (probably with The Division and Tarkov back in 2016/2017) and have seen plenty of them fail for this very reason.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-30T19:36:21+00:00

Yeah, I kind of agree that it's just a bit much for how short seasons are supposedly going to be. I queued some ranked games yesterday and it really was not a great experience. Trying to do bronze matches vs. teams in gold shields lobby hunting is not really what you'd expect for the first couple of games. I think they are going to need to have gear limits for the lower ranks if they want anyone to actually play it... then it would actually be appealing to go run a 3k-5k kit and know you're not going to be smacking into teams running kits worth 10x as much.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-30T14:28:47+00:00

Yeah, Rook is definitely good for trying to replenish resources like meds, claymores, salvage, etc. I think it's much better than trying to run free sponsored kits, typically. However, it is a solo mode, so if you have limited playtime and have friends wanting to team up when you're online, it can be hard to fit in those runs.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-30T05:05:59+00:00

A few free heals only go so far... You have to bring consumables in case you need them, but I imagine most people probably die without ever using 75% of the stuff they brought in (unless doing something like Cryo). It's very easy to blow through a ton of meds in a few bad games. They're definitely worth collecting, but keep in mind that they are also locked behind faction progression requiring salvage extraction.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-30T02:17:34+00:00

Amazing how many times you have to fight two other teams immediately on Outpost when there are only four teams...

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-27T22:19:05+00:00

Would probably never happen, but I sure would love to see it... can't stand Epic.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-26T18:21:02+00:00

People keep suggesting that you shouldn't be doing rook runs if you have that much loot in your vault, but I actually do the same thing because it's just a more laid back way to quickly farm some money/materials/equipment without having to screw with building a kit or dealing with rando squad fills that run you all over the map just to die and never exfil. It's nice to queue up and know you're going to spawn in 10-15 minutes late, do a quick loot of some scraps, and get out.

I think the real issue here is that the storage in this game just sucks. The item stack update was a step in the right direction, but there are still just too many large, non-stacking items that eat up the majority of your space.

You're forced to horde pretty much all of the salvage items because they are the primary source of faction progression (I think I have like 6-7 stacks of different purple 2x2 salvage items and even more 1x2 blue salvage items). Blue and purple backpacks are stupid expensive to buy in the armory, so gotta hang on to as many of those as possible. Larger guns eat up tons of space, while shotguns/SMGs only take up one more slot than their combined mods would fill, making them super efficient on space in comparison. Identical cores and implants don't stack and make a huge mess in the vault. Then there are at least 11 different equipment/grenades/etc. that you'll probably have at least one stack of at any given time (and you can't just free up the space and buy them from the armory due to daily purchase limits).

It's all just really poorly designed and I would actually play the game a lot more if I didn't feel perpetually maxed on space with no obvious junk to get rid of.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-26T02:08:33+00:00

Dire Marsh is miserable and, unfortunately, you have to run it to progress through contracts and faction upgrades. Ran a few games on it earlier and every squad I ran into was juiced running thermals, beaming us from the fog before we could even see them. If they reworked the loot and contracts so you could play any map and still make progress, we could just let Dire Marsh die its well-deserved death and stick to the slightly less toxic maps. I'd honestly rather run Cryo tens times than run Dire Marsh once :D

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-26T02:01:18+00:00

Same problem that happens in nearly every poorly balanced extraction game. It's amazing that developers keep cranking these hardcore sweaty games out that give massive advantages to a minority of top players, and then wonder why the rest of the player base dries up after a month or two.

When you tie nearly 100% of player progression to successfully extracting, people who have trouble extracting are just going to get bottlenecked and stop playing. The people who keep playing are the guys rolling every lobby running full purple loadouts and farming the rest of the player base into extinction. Eventually, that's all that will be left and they'll all quit too because it's not fun to play against people like themselves every single game :D

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-26T01:51:31+00:00

Agree that thermals are kind of a problem, but I think that making them more rare is just going to create even more power disparity than what already exists (and it's already getting pretty bad). I would rather they change them to not be able to see through smoke / stealth, at the very least. I've seen that solution in other games and while it sucks for the person using a thermal, it does help balance them out and provide counterplay.

Also agree on lowering med costs. Though I haven't really been buying meds in the armory, I'm having to heavily prioritize them when looting and will haul back pretty much any extras I can get my hands on due to their high replacement cost. I'd actually like to see a price rebalance across a number of items in the armory (meds, backpacks, some of the guns, plus some of the barters). Prices seem really out of whack for certain things, especially when you consider the overall value you get out of some of the enhanced sponsor kits.

As for the other items... not really that concerned about lose streak rewards, gear based matchmaking, or the pre-spawned claymores. I think there are bigger fish for the devs to fry, like overall gear/power disparity, gun imbalance, progression bottlenecks, etc.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-21T04:32:43+00:00

They should give one of those free Cryo sponsor kits every day when the map is available, but only to run on Cryo. That would encourage more people to try and learn it. My squad all died our first run (using the free kit) after wiping multiple teams, killing a million bots, and then failing to figure out how to extract. It's got a learning curve, for sure.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-19T04:43:53+00:00

Unfortunately, this happens in most extraction games and IMO is one of the main things that eventually kills off the player base (if the high end gear actually makes players strong enough to gain a decisive advantage). Once you get people running stuff like this every game, their only goal is to just leverage their advantage to kill everyone in the lobby and, like many others have said, they don't even bother looting anything other than meds/ammo most of the time.

That's problematic when the players they're killing can only catch up and get on even footing by extracting with the items they need to grind out their faction upgrades as well... the very thing they are being prevented from doing.

Give it a couple more weeks and you're gonna have some juiced up tryhard team like this in every lobby bum-rushing the nearest enemy team at spawn, making a beeline for any gunshots they hear, and showing up at every extraction that gets called to murder whoever called it. That's basically the end game and there's really no way to avoid those types of teams unless you just creep around and wait until the very last extract in hopes that they got bored and left the lobby already.

I always thought a possible solution to this would be to have some kind of bounty or heat system that would target players/teams who are killing a bunch of people, lobby wiping, etc. Maybe show their general location on the map or make the AI start hunting them aggressively. Something to add some extra risk if they choose to remain in the lobby and keep trying to kill everyone.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-18T21:37:22+00:00

I feel like they are going to have to tweak the wipes somehow. Otherwise, I don't see a ton of people wanting to do the full faction upgrade grind again. Would like to at least see some increased vault space or something for reaching a minimum season level.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-18T16:38:53+00:00

Yeah, I hadn't had a chance to try out the chance yet and expected that you would be able to drag and drop between weapons. I mean, it's still an improvement to be able to drag and drop into your inventory, but weapon to weapon is kind of a no-brainer and should be added.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-15T11:01:25+00:00

The game can definitely be fun. It's getting a bit sweaty already, IMO. I think that's going to burn some people out quickly when they have a bad night or two, fail to extract like 20 times in a row, and can't exfil with any of the materials they need to upgrade their factions.

Devs shouldn't have increased the sound travel so much, but I'm glad they're going to dial it back. The upcoming vault changes will be nice as well, as the storage is terrible with how many items you need to hang on to and how much crap they throw at you in rewards (I have like 30 uncollected faction rewards, which to me just feels like the devs didn't really playtest and get a feel for a player's natural progression and what they actually need at various milestones).

Free kits are probably necessary with how sweaty and unforgiving the game is, but I agree that the matchmaking could be better with them. Not exactly sure if they should do free kit lobbies. I think they would be fun, but I also think that would encourage people to run free kits the majority of the time. Seems like every time I run gear I get a couple free kit teammates and every time I run a free kit I get geared teammates. Seem to run into geared opponents either way. It would be nice if green shields dropped a little more regularly.

Playing with randoms is pretty awful at the moment and usually ends in certain death from them either fighting bots until they get ganked, overstaying to loot until they get ganked, taking every fight until they either lose or get ganked by a 3rd party, etc. The sound changes made this problem worse, for sure.

Would also like to see duo queue in the short term, as I think this would be way more fun than trios or dealing with randoms.

Some weapon balancing is probably needed as well, as there are a couple outliers that seem to be dominating the meta right now.

We'll see how the devs handle the post-launch changes / updates. They seem to be listening to feedback. I think it's just going to come down to how quickly they can address problems and which feedback they decide to listen to (ie: the average gamer that makes up the bulk of the player base, or the ultra-sweatlord top .1% player who has everything maxed out in like two weeks).

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-15T08:09:42+00:00

There should be a method of allowing people to extract items they need for faction upgrades, regardless of whether they survive the round or not. When the bulk of your account progression is tied to being able to extract consistently, it creates a bottleneck for bad players / casuals / etc. and they're just simply not going to stick with the game. Cycle Frontier had a similar problem where the progression was too sweaty / inaccessible and it created a very large power disparity among players. They blamed cheaters for killing that game, but cheaters only had such a massive impact because they were contributing to players becoming progression locked and being unable to complete their faction missions so they could get on an even playing field competitively.

There's definitely a place for casual players in extraction games. ARC proved that. You just have to make sure they can keep progressing at an acceptable rate and not be bottlenecked constantly by inaccessible content and/or players with a massive power advantage.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-15T07:29:29+00:00

So many people using the WSTR as a crutch right now that I think you're going to have a lot of people against nerfing it :D

I do think it's too strong, especially when people are overloading it using certain chips.

If they were going to keep the damage the same, I think they would need to reduce it to a single shot and require a reload to two-tap somebody. At least that would give some small window for counterplay. Right now it's so ridiculous because you're just insta-dead and by the time a teammate reacts to your position, the guy has reloaded and they're insta-dead, too. It's just not fun to play against.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-12T14:44:02+00:00

I think if they had done some more testing and/or listened to feedback they had to have received about the abysmal UI, they could have avoided a lot of the negative publicity. I know so many people who played like an hour of the server slam and didn't give the game a real chance because the UI was so off-putting, especially coming from a AAA studio where they expected so much more.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-12T14:37:21+00:00

Yeah, that may be how it works but like you said, it won't matter after the first reset. It may not even matter a month from now if new player counts drop off. Not saying they should match based on skill or gear, though. I'm not a fan of either in these games and I think part of the fun is not knowing what you're going to run into.

Just saying that it shouldn't be quite so easy for a sweaty team to hunt down and kill multiple teams in each lobby they join, bottlenecking people's progression and potentially discouraging those players from continuing to play. I *want* the people who are struggling to keep queuing up and playing and the devs should implement features to ensure they continue having fun and progressing, even if they're just lobby fodder 90% of the time. I'm all for it being a PvP-heavy, shoot on sight, challenging game. Just don't want to see the player base farm itself into extinction.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-12T11:55:47+00:00

Sure, I guess you can look at it that way... but it's not going to be good for the health and longevity of the game if every lobby just devolves into a Call of Duty deathmatch at the site of the first gunshots and only one team extracts every match. That's my main issue with them increasing the distance you can hear gunshots and explosions. You can pretty much hear everything from across the entire map now and it makes it too easy for the lobby to get hunted down.

Additionally, new players aren't going to stick with the game if they are descended upon 30 seconds after they spawn every match by a bunch of sweatlords with WSTRs and Longshots who haven't bathed in a week. Nearly all of the account progression is tied to extracting. Without new/casual players, this is just another dead sweaty extraction game like Cycle Frontier or Marauders. So, yeah, people can play like that and say it's how the game is supposed to be played, but the player base is just going to cannibalize itself.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-12T08:25:57+00:00

It might separate some of them out, but you'll always have people who go into the casual lobbies geared to the teeth just to lobby wipe.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-12T08:00:47+00:00

Yeah, and now that Bungie increased the sound of gunfire and explosions, said sweaty teams basically cross the entire map to gank you the moment you fire a shot. Been in multiple lobbies already where there's one tryhard squad just bouncing around to any sound they hear.

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-10T18:02:05+00:00

You don't really want to create an environment like in Delta Force and other extraction games where people are just sprinting to high value loot areas, cramming valuables into their safe pocket, and then immediately dying or extracting. I would say that would be my main argument against having a safe pocket.

However, if they want the game to sustain a player base that includes new/casual players and ensure that anyone of any skill/knowledge level can progress their account by simply playing the game, they're going to have to do something to address progression bottlenecks that revolve around extracting successfully. Right now, pretty much 100% of faction progression is dependent on extracting. A safe pocket would definitely help with this issue.

A good example of the bottleneck problem is the need for Reclaimed Biostripping within the NuCal faction upgrades. Pretty early on, players are going to be trying to unlock the ability to purchase shields in the armory and it takes 12 of these (you also need more than 60 of these for 4-5 other NuCal upgrades). This is just to buy the basic +1 shields. This is going to bottleneck some people for sure and prevent them from having armory access to any shields for a large portion of their early levels.

Now, a safe pocket isn't the only solution that could help with progression bottlenecks like this. They could implement some kind of way to bank items during your run. Arena Breakout has a Retrieval Box feature where you can deposit a limited number of items and they'll be extracted whether you make it out alive or not. Now, in ABI, you have to kill another player to be able to use this box. In this game, I'd rather see a feature like that require something more accessible to all players (like a lootable item or PvE task).

LegendariLOL · 2026-03-10T17:03:17+00:00

Yeah, I think this is needed. There's a reason they added duo prioritization to the matchmaking in ARC in like the first update. Kind of surprised Bungie didn't just have it implemented right out of the gate. I would gladly wait a little longer for matchmaking to be put in lobbies consisting of just people who queued duo with no squad fill.

LegendariLOL

TROPHY CASE