This week’s trials map is Wormhaven, and it’s a “Trials Lab” experiment with a control zone that unlocks 30 seconds into each round. In addition, with respect to matchmaking Bungie announced that the flawless matchmaking pool would not be in effect until Sunday’s reset.

The result has been a Friday and Saturday Trials experience that is reminiscent of pre-revamp trials.  Solo queuing is a miserable experience of repeatedly facing three stacks with multiple flawless for the week.  Even playing with regular-player clanmates we struggled to put together wins, though at least the matches were more competitive.  The rewards if you don’t win matches are very meager, so ultimately it feels like a bad experience for poor rewards.  And I am not a loot farmer, anyway. I am primarily motivated by the experience.

I went flawless as usual getting carried on Friday morning, although it was a bit more of a struggle than the last two weeks and we won “only” 18 out of 22 games.  Since then, though, I solo queued 15 games and played 12 with a team of regular players, and won only 6 of those 27 games.  Fully 63% of the Carried games and 60% of the Solo games were what Bungie calls “uncompetitive”.  And about 27% of my solo matches were “blowouts”. (See the September 23 TWAB for what these terms mean).

Simply put, as much as this saddens me, I am not having enough fun to keep playing.  Moreover, I am not sure that I would be having enough fun even at Bungie’s target metrics of under 33% Solo-Fireteam blowouts given that  75% of my Solo matches were against premade fireteams.  One game out of four being a blowout — and even more being a 5-1 or 5-2 loss — does not sound like a good way to spend time, nor would it be rewarding enough given the current loot system.

When trials returns in a couple of weeks I will try to solo queue before I’ve gone flawless and after flawless matchmaking kicks in, unless they’ve changed the system.  If that is a better experience, then maybe I will limit my trials playing in that way going forward.  If not, though, I am going to back to my pre-revamp practice of just playing with a carry team.  And I suspect that many other regular players — particularly solo players — will flee as well.