While Bungie is still hard at work on one of the biggest patches for Destiny yet, they are slowly revealing the component parts of the upcoming update. We know the patch will fix the heavy ammo bug that has been plaguing high level players since launch, and it will also add a reputation panel to the menu, but the hope was that there is still more in the pipeline.

As turns out, our suspicions were correct: Destiny’s first major patch of 2015 will be a doozy, packing in more fixes than the average update. And today, Bungie Community Manager DeeJ revealed one of the bigger changes that’s included with the update – one that’s been very high on Destiny players' wish lists.

Starting after update 1.1.1, Weekly Heroic Strikes will become a mandatory matchmaking activity. That means no matter if the player is in a fireteam of two or flying solo, they will be matched up with additional players. A full fireteam of three, however, will start up the Weekly Heroic Strike as if nothing has changed.

Strike and raid matchmaking have been high on Destiny player’s wish list when it comes to new features, and although it’s not a perfect solution the mandatory matchmaking for the Weekly Heroic is a good start. But don’t expect matchmaking to creep into the Nightfall Strike or raids, though, as Bungie still believes those are experiences that require solid communication and are best tackled with a group of friends.

No Raid Matchmaking for Destiny 1

Bungie does say that they are looking into ways to meet the needs of players who don’t have regular Destiny cohorts, but those features will likely be included in a future release. The Weekly Heroic Strike matchmaking was a fairly basic introduction, but you can’t simply match up 6 random players for a raid and expect them to succeed.

"We think good Raid sessions rely on groups of communicative players who are invested in each other, but we know that it’s challenging for many players to find groups for Raids and Nightfall today. We are thinking hard about how we can help make that an easier experience in future releases."

For that matter, the Weekly Heroic Strike matchmaking could become a crap shoot, depending on who players are matched up with. Many actually preferred soloing the strike because the enemy balancing made the foes weaker, and those players didn’t need to worry about a teammate making any mistakes. Now that players can’t opt out of the matchmaking, we wouldn’t be surprised to see some players – especially those with an overabundance of Strange Coins – take to a site like Destiny LFG to find a group of three, rather than roll the dice.

Additional Gameplay Fixes

So while it may have seemed like the forthcoming update was going to be fairly small in terms of its fixes, that is apparently not the case. These big changes – like matchmaking and weapon balancing – are certainly the headline items, but there’s apparently more in the pipeline. According to Bungie, some of the smaller changes in the patch will improve strike variety in playlists, Iron Banner rewards, and the developer will ensure Xur brings an exotic engram every week. Sounds like Destiny players have a lot to look forward to this month.

Do you think matchmaking for Weekly Heroic Strikes is a good idea? What do you think of the known changes included with patch 1.1.1?

Source: Bungie