Destiny 2’s first season three iteration of its PvP-centric Iron Banner event is currently live, allowing players to partake in good old fashioned 6v6 competitive matches while also earning some unique rewards in the process. However, if you’re a solo player who has been routinely getting matched up with (or against) premade fireteams during your Iron Banner escapades, it turns out you’re far from alone.
Ever since the inaugural season three Iron Banner event began earlier this week, solo players have reported a drastic spike in the number of cases where they’re placed in a match full of premade fireteams (it’s often easy to tell when a team has a premade fireteam on it since they’re all in the same clan and thus sport the same clan tag next to their profile name). Naturally a premade fireteam is able to coordinate its efforts far better than a team made up of randomly matched solo players, leading to many lopsided matches (and mounting frustrations) that solo players are forced to endure.
Fortunately, Bungie has acknowledged the issue and even admitted that it’s being caused by a problem on its end. According to Destiny 2’s Crucible lead Derek Carroll, solo Iron Banner players are currently not receiving the benefits of the fireteam matchmaking update that Bungie implemented last month:
https://twitter.com/_mantis_/status/999768953961381888
The fireteam matchmaking update was supposed to make it so that premade fireteams have a higher chance of being matched against each other in Crucible matches (thus giving solo players a higher chance to be matched with each other as well). However, Carroll’s Twitter update confirms that, currently, the update isn’t applying to Iron Banner, hence the many cases of lopsided matches. The good news is that, according to Carroll’s tweet, Bungie plans to implement a fix before this week’s Iron Banner is over, so all solo players need to do at this point is be a little patient.
Meanwhile, skewed matchmaking isn’t the only problem Destiny 2’s playerbase has with this week’s Iron Banner, as a pricey new emote is dredging up old concerns about Bungie’s Eververse-fueled greed.