The much anticipated Crucible blog that Bungie teased was coming for Destiny 2 finally dropped today, outlining their current successes with PvP and their plans for the future of the mode. A major part of those plans include Trials of Osiris, which got an unexpectedly sizeable spotlight alongside the wider conversation on the casual and competitive playlists.
In the blog, Bungie confirmed that a Trials Lab will be coming later during season 20 that experiments with a brand new matchmaking system for the mode. The developer wants to get rid of the Flawless pool system that it currently has, introducing “Challenger” and “Practice” pools instead with the goal of encouraging new players to engage with Trials of Osiris and make the penalties on going Flawless less harsh to the above average ones.
Tweaks to Trials of Osiris had already began when Lightfall launched last month, with Bungie implementing fireteam-based matchmaking to it in order to encourage a more diverse set of players and fireteam sizes to play the mode every weekend.
“This gives us many of the same benefits as having a separate Freelance playlist available, without the downsides of directly splitting the population and making it difficult for duos to find quality matches,” the team explained in the Crucible blog, but expressed that they will continue to monitor the impact of this new system before concluding on how successful it has been.
The removal of the Flawless and non-Flawless pools is the next step toward their ultimate goals with the Trials of Osiris matchmaking environment, and Bungie outlined their key goals with the changes for the future of Trials:
- Allow players to play with friends without worrying about whether they have gone Flawless.
- Remove the motivation to reset cards in order to farm or carry.
- Better protect players who are struggling to find success in the playlist.
When the Flawless pool is removed, it will be replaced by two “soft” pools—Challenger and Practice. Unlike the strict matchmaking paradigm Trials currently has, soft pools will allow for some amount of blending between them if absolutely necessary to find a good match, drastically cutting down on queue times during lower population hours.
The Challenger pool will be the new pool that the majority of Trials players will find themselves in. Players who engage with Trials “on a week-to-week basis and who want to go Flawless” will play within this matchmaking pool, and operates upon a system more akin to the original one in the original Destiny. Games won’t get harder as the Passage progresses or after you’ve gone Flawless, instead having a fairly consistent competitive experience throughout.
This pool matches solely based on connection, according to Bungie, no longer accounting for wins on your Passage or your hidden skill rating. Players who are currently in posession of a Passage with zero losses on it—even if that Passage has been reset—will be automatically placed into the Challenger pool. If you have losses on your Passage but a fireteam member who is still Flawless, you will also be put into Challenger.
By comparison, the Practice pool will be a matchmaking experience dedicated to nurturing players who are new to Trials of Osiris or less experienced in PvP. It will be “a place for them to dip their toes into Trials, without being thrown straight into the deep end” in Bungie’s words, and that means it utilizes more aggressive matchmaking algorithms to maintain that more relaxed environment.
The Practice pool will match based on both connection and your current weekly performance, and you will only be placed into this matchmaking pool if you have a Flawed Passage or you’re on your first game of the weekend. This accounts for everyone in your fireteam in the same way the requirements for the Challenger pool do, so your party will need to be similarly on Flawed Passages or a first game to be put into the Practice pool.
Unlike the Challenger pool, the Practice pool will also have a few key protections. Stomp protection will artificially reduce your current weekly performance rating if you’re repeatedly struggling for round and match wins, giving you some easier matches until you recover. Likewise, farming protection will lock you and your fireteam out of the Practice pool for the remainder of the weekend if the game detects that you are attempting to farm the easier matches rather than face your equals in the Challenger pool.
The intent with this update is to first trial it in a Labs variant coming later this season, with it then getting pushed to live full-time in season 21. Bungie also teased that a “more in-depth discussion” on Trials of Osiris is coming later on, which will touch on additional changes that will be implemented into the gamemode for next season. This includes updates to the current Trials Passages, a rework to the Flawless title and making Zone Capture Elimination—which is being renamed to Dominion—into the main gamemode.
