Bungie provided extensive details today about the much-anticipated updates coming to the Destiny 2 Crucible experience.
Next season, launching on Dec. 6, players can expect to find a completely reworked list of playlists being offered, including a new competitive experience and the merger of lesser-played modes into the weekly rotator.
The new competitive playlist will no doubt be the main draw of the Crucible updates since the Glory: Survival node that Destiny 2 currently offers has not received any updates—or cosmetics to chase beyond a title—for many years. This new playlist, called the Competitive Division, now features three game modes in the pool: Survival, Showdown, and Rift. As community manager Dmg04 describes it, the idea behind this is that “these modes showcase a variety of playstyles designed to show how good you really are.”
Better showcasing player talent is a core goal of the reworked playlist. It now features seven divisions in a proper ladder-based system instead of Glory. It introduces a new, tight skill-based matchmaking setting to Destiny 2 alongside it, instead of the unique “skill/persistance” model that it previously had. Players who regularly engage with the playlist will be able to grind out the new “Glorious” seal, as well as get bonus reputation across all Crucible experiences.
A weekly challenge in the Competitive Division playlist will also award players with rolls of an old Legendary handcannon, being reprised exclusively as a reward for the node in season 19: Rose. This new version of Rose will be able to get random perks, each chosen from a list of popular consistency perks in three-vs-three PvP. It will also be able to randomly roll grips, in place of having an Origin Trait.
On the casual end, there is just as much to discuss. The six-vs-six experience has been effectively dominated by Control as the primary playlist over the years, and Bungie aims to fix that with the introduction of a proper Quickplay playlist. Quickplay will feature both Control and Clash as its available modes, with Clash being made a permanent addition thanks to its popularity as a weekly LTM.
This Quickplay playlist is the core Crucible offering for casual players in season 19, but the node will be replaced by Iron Banner in the weeks that Lord Saladin brings the event to Destiny 2. Quickplay and Iron Banner will both make use of a loose skill-based matchmaking setting that was introduced and tweaked this season, although Dmg04 added that further assessment of SBMM would happen in the future.
Foundational changes to the most popular offerings aren’t the only updates coming, with Bungie also taking the opportunity to free the Crucible directory of playlists that weren’t seeing a lot of engagement from players across the board. Elimination will now be unique to Trials of Osiris and Rumble is getting merged into the weekly rotator node. Both playlists suffered from low engagement and Bungie hopes that by trimming them down to just be limited-time features, more players will choose to dive in and experience them.
What it leaves is a Crucible directory that is much less bloated than before with often vacant nodes. Crucible Labs continues to exist as an experimental spot for the developer to try new experiences, but similarly to Quickplay and Iron Banner, it will be replaced by Trials of Osiris whenever the competitive PvP mode is live.
These are all drastic changes to the way that Destiny 2’s Crucible currently operates, and Dmg04 was quick to emphasize that the updated experiences would be free to evolve as time went on. “As always, we’ll be monitoring the experience, conversation, and data as these refreshed playlists roll out,” he said. “Nothing’s set in stone, and we’re excited to see how these evolve over time.”
All of these playlist updates will go live with season 19 of Destiny 2, launching on Dec. 6.
