The Destiny experience as it is today would be hardly recognizable to someone that only played the game at launch. While it's still the same core experience, Bungie has endlessly updated the game based on feedback from fans, tweaking things here and there, and adding often requested features to try to make Destiny the best it can be.

Unfortunately, while Bungie does a pretty good job at listening to their fans for the most part, there is one issue that they seemingly refuse to budge on, and that is matchmaking. At first, fans demanded that matchmaking be added to Destiny's raids, as they are almost impossible to complete solo (with some exceptions), and quite frankly, some people simply do not want to take the extra effort to have to seek out others to play with personally.

Months after the introduction of raids in Destiny, and there is still no matchmaking. Fans cooled on this particular issue, but now Bungie has drawn their ire yet again, this time regarding a new gameplay mode added in the House of Wolves expansion. The new mode in question is the horde mode-like Prison of Elders, a co-op PvE experience that, much like the raids, suffers from a severe matchmaking deficiency.

While the level 28 version of Prison of Elders has matchmaking, the higher level versions of the mode do not. This hasn't sat well with fans of the game, and they've openly criticized the Prison of Elders for its lack of matchmaking. After staying silent on the subject for a couple of weeks, Bungie community manager Deej has finally issued a statement in regards to fan demand for Prison of Elders matchmaking. Apparently, Bungie has added Prison of Elders matchmaking to their "wish list" thread, wherein they post potential features and updates that they may or may not add to the game down the road.

In a post to the community, Deej said, "You have my personal assurances that the design teams know you want it. They’ve seen the conversation." He went on to clarify that Bungie hoped the lack of matchmaking in modes such as the Prison of Elders would encourage players to seek out personal relationships with others, and take matchmaking "into their own hands."

Whether or not matchmaking will actually be added to Prison of Elders eventually is anyone's guess, but it'd be wise not to hopes up too high. After all, raid matchmaking was even discussed at one point, but nothing ever came of it.

Bungie has been fairly stubborn about adding matchmaking to both the raids and Prison of Elders, and while their reasoning makes sense in some regards, matchmaking would still be a nice option to have. While playing with random people is obviously not the ideal experience, it's better than nothing, as a large portion of Destiny players are stuck playing alone, meaning that they can't truly enjoy some of the game's higher level content.

In any case, Bungie has shown that they are absolutely dedicated to Destiny and improving the experience in other areas (such as making Treasure Keys drop more often), so there's always at least a little hope that they'll eventually give in and add matchmaking to Prison of Elders.

Destiny is currently available on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Source: Forbes