Bungie plans fixes for Destiny 2 PvP matchmaking and Trials of Destiny 2 PvP

Bungie will start to improve Destiny twocompany’s player-versus-player experiences later this year, assistant game director Joe Blackburn wrote in a new blog. The team plans to eliminate unpleasant practices like “three peeps” and will balance subclasses, increase security and review the reward structure of the Osiris Challenges.

The first is the removal of three peeps. Three spying is a unique cheese tactic Destiny 2 that uses swords and emotes. When Destiny players pull a sword – even when they don’t have ammo – or use an emote in the game, the game changes to a third-person camera. This is not a problem in most activities, but in competitive multiplayer matches, it allows players to look around the corners. With Destiny being a first-person game, three peeps provide players with a lot of additional information about where their enemies are. Everyone can take three peeps, but this is seen as a cheap or “difficult” tactic in the community – and furthermore, Bungie never intended that tactic to exist.

To solve this problem, Blackburn said, players will no longer be able to draw “third-person weapons” (interesting words, considering that swords are the only third-person weapon at the moment) if they have no ammunition. Bungie will also disable emotes in the competitive playlist and in Osiris Challenges. Players will still be able to use swords in these modes, but only when they have ammo, which is very rare. Blackburn said that this change will take effect for Destiny 2 season 15, which is likely to be released this fall.

Bungie also plans to balance the Stasis and Light subclasses. Since its introduction in Beyond the light, Stasis dominated the Crucible. It is very strong for the taste of Bungie – and the Destiny community – so the studio will control it a little while increasing the power of the underused Arc, Solar and Void subclasses.

Image: Bungie

Blackburn went into detail about the major changes in each Stasis subclass and mentioned that these changes will also target players who are frozen by enemy Stasis powers, making it more likely that they will survive the experience. Blackburn noted that Stasis should still look powerful in PvE after these changes – that’s Bungie’s goal, at least.

Cheating is another big problem in Destiny PvP, and although Blackburn has not announced any anti-cheating software, he has revealed plans to combat the problem. He said Bungie plans to double the size of its security team in the next 12 months, as well as researching players to better understand what is going on in the game. Most notably, the studio started taking legal action against some fraudulent websites and software.

While it is usually not worth speculating on, anti-cheating strategies are something Bungie has reason to talk about rather than provide details. In the past, Bungie’s developers told Polygon that they would not share specific details in an effort to stay one step ahead of the cheaters.

Cheating mainly affects the Trials of Osiris playlist, but that’s not the only problem with the mode. Blackburn ended his PvP segment detailing a series of changes in what he called the “Osiris Test reward structure”.

The first is quite ambiguous: “improving the overall health of the Trials matchmaking pool, encouraging a wider audience to get involved and better defining the separation of skill levels”. This seems to suggest that players can expect matchmaking that looks more like their skill level, rather than the villainous / streamer / cheater roulette that Trials is now.

Blackburn said Bungie also plans to reorganize the rewards, giving players incentives not to reset the Trials of Osiris card if they get lost. Usually, players reboot when they lose, as this means that they can’t go without fail and get the best rewards. And given that the Trials of Osiris matchmaking system tries to match players with a similar number of wins, the first or second game of each card has a massive population, making it more random. Blackburn said that in their ideal world, players should have some reason to keep moving forward after a defeat – which would also prevent them from flooding players with little or no victory.

Interestingly, Blackburn also mentioned the desire to allow solo players to venture into Trials of Osiris. The mode currently requires three players in a preformed Fireteam to participate.

With Trials as they are, it is very difficult for an average or even good Destiny player to get a Flawless ticket every week, even with hours of play. These changes are not very specific, but dealing with matchmaking complaints should help a lot in solving some of the main problems of the mode.

All of these changes to the Crucible should be encouraging for players, as in the past few months we’ve seen many complaints related to PvP. While Bungie has many promises to keep over the next year or so, it certainly shows that players’ concerns are not falling on deaf ears.

In its developer blog post, Bungie also revealed plans to remove its weapon deactivation system and announced a delay for The Queen Witch expansion.