I am aware of the large handful of third party websites people can use to try and hook up with other Destiny players for in-game activities. I have no doubt they are an effective method of circumventing the game’s lack of tools for raidmatching in-game.

My primary point, however, is in a game like Destiny that is designed to be played online and to be played with other people, I see no insurmountable excuse not to provide players with the tools necessary to meet up with other players without having to operate a second-screen experience.

I’ve had discussions with a number of still-Destiny-players over the last day, and all of the reasons they’ve offered for not making raidmatching an option in-game (AFKers, undergeared/underperforming members, negative attitudes) have all been addressed to some degree by other online games that use player-matching tools. And none of those reasons are necessarily nullified by forming a team from random people on a message board.

Even if Destiny’s matchmaking for raids stopped short of actually forming groups for you, and just created an in-game version of what is found on external websites (the ability to flag yourself as LFG for certain content, and directly invite flagged people from a pool of interested players, for instance), the ability to form raid groups would only increase in efficiency and use. If a hundred people play Destiny, then only a percentage of them (let’s say 50%) are aware of/interested in using third-party solutions. And then, that percentage is diluted even further across the half-dozen or so third-party solutions available.

Ultimately, however, at the end of the day this is strictly my opinion on the matter. Yes, if I really desperately wanted to play Destiny, the effort required to work around the lack of in-game tools is minimal. But Destiny does not exist in a vacuum, and there are dozens of great games I’m itching to play at any given time, not only as a hobbyist but also as a necessity for my job. Volume of titles combined with fewer windows of time at this point in my life means some titles get sidelined. And the reason for such can be something as simple as missing or frustrating mechanics.