I really enjoyed Destiny when it came out. It was repetitive, a bit shallow and light on content, but damn if it didn’t feel good shooting stuff. Bungie did a great job making the weapons feel weighty and powerful, and it was fun to shoot, reload, and shoot.

I stopped playing because eventually, even the fun of shooting wasn’t enough to get me excited about doing the same thing over and over again. But as they started to fix things in the game with updates and various expansions, I’ve always been itching to fire it up again and check it out. The same is true with the upcoming Rise of Iron expansion.

What stops me (and this may well be a minority opinion), is that there is still no matchmaking service for raids.

Now, I understand that raids are the toughest, end-game content Destiny offers, and whether it’s a FPS or MMO or whatever, PUG raids are always more likely to be rough, messy affairs lacking the coordination and teamwork to progress very far. But it would, at least, allow people like me the option of doing something with the raids, as opposed to the current stats quo: nothing.

My schedule doesn’t really allow for me to hook up with a team and run on any kind of a regular basis. I can’t commit to raid nights on the level that would typically be expected. Knowing that my gaming time fluctuates wildly based on factors like the number of projects I’m working on, family time and my general level of exhaustion, I don’t really want the added stress/guilt of knowing a team is relying on me to log in at X time and play for Y amount of hours.

I’d love to be able log in to Destiny when I find I suddenly have a bit of time, queue up for a raid, and experience some of that content, fully aware that it’s going to be a more varied/rocky experience than if I played with a regular group. I don’t think anyone who joins a pick up group at this point is unaware that it’s a game of russian roulette.

I get that currently Bungie’s vision means raids just aren’t “for” someone in my position. They’re billed as an end-game experience to be tackled only by those able to put forth the time and commitment necessary to learn/defeat them. I guess I don’t quite understand what exactly matchmaking would take away from the premade group experience, to warrant its deliberate exclusion, but whatever. It is as it is.

But compare that to, for instance, Diablo, where I can go back to that game at any point, and if no friends are online I can matchmake at any Torment level I feel I’m geared to attempt, regardless of the time of day.

I don’t feel inclined to purchase any Destiny expansions knowing that, simply by virtue of my schedule at this point in my life, I won’t get to experience the culmination of everything else in the game; and let’s be honest, in a loot-driven title like Destiny, the point of quests and dungeons is typically to get gear to attempt harder content like raids.

If they ever decide to allow matchamaking for raids, I’ll happily leap back into Destiny. Or perhaps we’re on to Destiny 2 by that point. But for now, as enticing as the game continues to look with its cool armor and shooty bits, it’s just not as accomodating as I’d like it to be.