Destiny 2 Big Changes are Coming to Crucible and More

Bungie has now released a new Destiny 2 TWAB and this time it will be focused more on the Crucible and the future.

First off, Bungie is now celebrating Trans Awareness Week and to celebrate with the community, they have released a code that would reward players with a free Be True emblem. Use code ML3-FD4-ND9 on the code redemption site to claim this.

Next is improving the Eliksni Quarter which will start next Tuesday. There will be a community event that start and here is how players could help out:

• All Guardians will be asked to collect treasure in the form of Captain’s Coins from around the system to donate towards the Eliksni Quarter, helping Spider with improvements and upkeep while Misraaks and Eido devote their time to researching the Relics of Nezarec. 
  • Captain’s Coins can be found in Destination chests, Lost Sectors, public events, and of course, Season of Plunder Ketchcrash and Expedition activities. 
  • You can also find Captain’s Coins in the King’s Fall raid, Dares of Eternity, strikes, Crucible, and Gambit. 
• Each Guardian will have their own personal donations reward track with an emblem, upgrade materials, and a new swashbuckling Ghost Shell.
• The community as a whole will pool their treasure together to help Misraaks and Spider improve the Eliksni Quarter, receiving global community earned rewards and special Eliksni ‘thank you’ gifts along the way.
  • Guardians may even find a Deepsight weapon or two to help with completing their crafting collection. 
• The community event only lasts for two weeks, so tell your friends, assemble a fireteam, and track down that treasure! 

Narrative voiceovers in Ketchcrash and Expedition have been getting some issues lately, but a fix has been done.

There will be some changes coming to the Season of Plunder title with reductions to some requirements to unlock Scallywag.

• Drop Ruffian completion value to 10 (down from 50).
  • While we introduced a fix to prevent Ruffians from despawning in Expeditions, players can still progress through objectives a bit too fast for these Champions to spawn. 
  • As such, we’re reducing the requirement to help players meet the requirements a bit faster. 
• Drop Vendor upgrades required (14 down from 23).
  • This would be the equivalent of completing the first 7 weeks of Seasonal Challenges that award Repute, the upgrade currency.
• Change promote and summon First Mates to doing it 1 time each.
  • We realize that this step didn’t have a deep enough tutorial for some players to fully grasp, and requires a lengthy grind to unlock all three First Mates. 
• Change the Seal requirement to complete 8 out of 9 Triumphs.
  • This should allow some flexibility for players as they progress through Triumphs and Seasonal Challenges to unlock the Seasonal title. 

The Security team has now made some changes as well. They have implemented mitigation against network tools used to gain an unfair advantage in various activities.

Now for the Crucible changes, here is the summary:

• We define our goals for the Crucible ecosystem. 
• We’re updating our Crucible playlist structure to streamline our Crucible offerings and help focus our Crucible population. 
  • Collapsing Control and Clash into a single Quickplay playlist. 
  • Bringing some of our lesser-played game modes into weekly rotators. 
• We’re introducing a new Crucible Seal and bringing engram focusing to Lord Shaxx to give players more ways to engage with Crucible rewards.
  • In Lightfall, we’ll be expanding engram focusing to include older weapons and armor sets across Crucible, Iron Banner, Trials, and more. 
• In Season 19, Iron Banner gets a new mode and a legacy armor set that veteran Guardians should recognize. 
• We’re updating our matchmaking techniques between Skill, connection, and team sizes to provide better experiences in the Crucible. 
  • This starts with Quickplay and will roll out to more playlists over time. 
  • We’re also tuning quitter suspension parameters for Quickplay. 
• We’re testing new matchmaking techniques in Trials to hopefully provide better experience to solo and duo fireteams without the need for Freelance.
  • This will also help us in reassessing the Flawless pool for Season 20 and beyond.
• We’re bringing more maps to the Crucible over the next year.
  • Two maps are returning from the earlier years of Destiny 2, and a brand-new map is being added during the year of Lightfall. 
• We’re introducing Competitive Division to act as our “ranked” Crucible space for players seeking to test their Skill.

Player Experience Goals

• Casual Crucible – Quickplay, Rotators, Labs 
  • Find a fair game, make friends, and stay as long as you’re having fun. 
  • Real life comparison: “Pickup games at the gym.” 
• Iron Banner 
  • Week-long celebration of PvP in Destiny that draws in everyone. 
  • Real life comparison: “Exhibition play/at a block party.” 
• Trials of Osiris 
  • Prove your skill and build against worthy rivals. 
  • Real life comparison: “High stakes pro-am tournaments.” 
• Ranked Play 
  • Fair matches. Measure yourself. Growth you can see and feel. Stakes are always high. 
  • Real life comparison: “Local recreational leagues.” 
• Private Match 
  • Make the game you want, play with your friends, and stay as long as you’re having fun. 
  • Real life comparison: “Game night with friends.” 

Season 19 Playlist Updates

Starting in Season 19, the Crucible screen will have these options:

• Quickplay 6v6 
  • This is now a playlist with both Clash and Control. 
  • Uses loose skill-based matchmaking (SBMM), which we have tuned during Season 18. 
• Weekly Rotator 6v6/FFA 
  • Rotates weekly between Momentum Control, Mayhem, Team Scorched, Rift, and Rumble. 
  • Use purely connection-based matchmaking (CBMM). 
• Competitive Division / Freelance 3v3 
  • This is now a playlist, randomly picking Survival, Rift, and Showdown. 
  • These modes showcase a variety of playstyles designed to show how good you really are. 
  • Uses a new SBMM setting built using concepts we developed for loose SBMM tuning, but tightened to match you more closely against opponents of your Skill. 
• Crucible Labs 
  • During Season 19, Labs is showcasing 3v3 Rift with asymmetric maps. 
  • Labs has a stacking +25% reputation booster! 
  • Crucible Labs uses CBMM. 
• Private Match
  • This will continue to act as your place to train up in a given mode, play against your friends, host small tournaments, or mess with activity settings to make silly modes! 

The Crucible screen will also update during limited-time PvP events: 

• Trials of Osiris 3v3 
  • When Trials is active, it replaces Crucible Labs. 
  • Trials uses ticket-based matchmaking (TBMM) and the Flawless pool—though we have some news on that below too! 
• Iron Banner / Freelance 6v6 
  • When Iron Banner is active, it replaces the Quickplay node. 
  • Iron Banner is going to be moving to loose SBMM during Season 19. 

Crucible Rewards

In Season 19, there will be new Triumphs and a new title called Glorious.

Win streaks and reaching specific Glory thresholds over multiple Seasons will not be required anymore. Win a number of matches during a given Season and reach the Adept Division for gilding, which can all be completed within a single Season.

Lord Shaxx Engram Focusing

In Season 19, Lord Shaxx can now offer the ability for players to focus Crucible weapons and armor. Crucible will be the fourth of the core rituals to get comprehensive engram focusing options.

• Crucible Engrams 
  • Crucible Engrams will be a virtual currency and live exclusively on the Rank progress bar on Lord Shaxx. 
  • Crucible Engrams may be opened individually by players directly on Shaxx. 
• Crucible Gear Focusing  
  • You can focus the Crucible Engram directly into either Crucible armor or Crucible weapons. 
    • Crucible gear focusing cost for Season 19: 
      • 1 Crucible Engram 
      • 10,000 Glimmer 
      • 50 Legendary Shards  
    • Crucible Engrams DO NOT need to be “claimed” in order to be spent on focusing (see note below).
    • Individual pieces of gear must have been acquired at least once prior to being available for focusing. 
    • Crucible armor available for focusing in Season 19: 
      • Clutch Extol Set 
    • Crucible weapons available for focusing in Season 19: 
      • Stars in Shadow 
      • The Keening 
      • Frozen Orbit 
      • Survivor’s Epitaph 
      • Sorrow’s Verse 
      • Crisis Inverted 
      • Riptide 
      • Out of Bounds 
  • Brand new Crucible weapons are only available as drops during their introductory Season, and are then available for focusing the following Season.  
• Other Shaxx Changes
  • The Kill-Tracker Ghost Shell will no longer appear at Lord Shaxx if it has already been acquired. It may be reacquired from Collections. 

Shaxx is using a new engram system that will let players use the engram stored directly on the vendor for focusing rather than needing to pull it into the engram inventory. This will make it convenient for players.

Introducing Iron Banner Fortress

Season 19 will introduce the Iron Banner Fortress. Its core gameplay is capturing and holding zones, which is similar to Zone Control. This will launch on January 3, 2023.

Iron Banner Rewards

Earn returning Iron Banner weapons that were seen in the earlier days of Destiny 2. There will be a retun of some fan favorite sets like from the Taken King era.

New Matchmaking Techniques

Fireteam-Based Matchmaking

In the first week of Season 19, Bungie will be testing a new Quickplay matchmaking parameter, the Fireteam-Based Matchmaking. FBMM means that your fireteam’s makeup will match with the opponents. If they join a matchmaking queue as a full team of six, they will generally match against another full fireteam.

There are plans to roll them out on more playlists if Bungie has more time to test the matchmaking settings. It could come to Iron Banner, Trials of Osiris, and more.

Improving Connection at the High End

Issues with player connections when getting into higher skill bands have been discovered and to address this, Bungie is planning to roll out a second new matchmaking feature called Dynamic Skill Ranges. It increases the Skill window its system looks for when matchmaking.

Quitter Suspensions

Season 19 will introduce the following changes:

• Lowered the amount of suspension time handed out for serial quitting in the Quickplay playlist. 
• Added the amount of time remaining to all suspension messages and made the messages trigger when clicking on the node. If you want to know how much time you have left before you can play again, the information is now available. 
• As we continue to roll out both of the new matchmaking techniques (FBMM and Dynamic Skill Ranges) which address many of the player feedback surrounding SBMM in Quickplay, we will be re-evaluating the need for a quitter penalty in Quickplay at all. 

Trials of Osiris

Season 19 will introduce two new weapon rewards for players to hunt form, which are the Machine Gun and 140 Hand Cannon. FBMM isalso being planned to be added as well.

Competitive Division

Goals for Competitive Division 

• All players can find a variety of balanced matches and feel competitive. 
• A player’s PvP division is a core part of their Guardian identity. 
• Maintain places in the ecosystem to not engage in ranked play but still have decently balanced matches, or to not engage in Skill-based matching at all. 

Season 19 will remove Glory and add a 3v3 Ranked playlist, Competitive Division.

• There are seven Divisions, each with three subdivisions. 
  • Copper 
  • Bronze 
  • Silver 
  • Gold 
  • Platinum 
  • Adept 
  • Ascendant

At the start of the Season, you will begin a “placement series” during which you will not gain any Division Rating for the first seven games. After the seventh game, you complete the placement series and are placed into a division based on Skill: 

• For the first Season, the highest you can be placed is Gold III. In future Seasons, you will be placed closer to your previous Competitive Division. 

As you continue to compete in the Competitive Division, your Division Rating is adjusted based on four major factors: 

• Match outcome: Whether you win or lose. 
• Division inflation/deflation: How far above or below your division is compared to your Skill. 
• Match performance: How well you performed on a match-to-match basis. 
• Player-to-lobby Skill delta: How your Skill compares to everyone else in the match. 

As you earn and lose Division Rating: 

• If you gain enough Rating to move up between subdivisions (ex., from Gold II to Gold I), you automatically enter the next subdivision. Same goes for moving down subdivisions. 
• If you gain enough Rating to move up a division (ex., from Gold I to Platinum III), you enter a promotion series, where you must win two out of three games to be promoted to the next division. 
• Similarly, if you lose enough Rating to move down a division (ex., from Gold III to Silver 1), you enter a relegation series, where you must win two out of three games to remain in your current division. 

Upon reaching Gold or higher, your Division Rating is subject to decay on a weekly basis; i.e., you will lose Division Rating if you haven’t played enough matches recently. 

Competitive Division Rewards

There will be no addition of any unique grindable rewards outside of those that can be acquired anywhere in Crucible.

Rewards for achieving a higher division limited to efficiency rewards will be kept initially.

• Your current division gives you a multiplier on all Crucible ranks (reputation) earned in Destiny, letting you earn more Crucible engrams, resets, and extra perks on weapons much faster. 
  • Copper and Bronze – 1.0x 
  • Silver – 1.1x 
  • Gold – 1.2x 
  • Platinum – 1.3x 
  • Adept – 1.4x 
  • Ascendant – 1.5x 
• So, even if you aren’t great at PvP, jumping into Competitive Division and earning/keeping your rank up will help you earn Crucible rewards 10-20% faster than now. 
  • This bonus stacks multiplicatively with both the scheduled Bonus Ranks weeks and the “hidden” bonus in Crucible Labs. 
  • As a note, we are reducing bonus week Crucible rank multipliers from 2.0 to 1.5 in Season 19.  
    • Our goal in the above changes is to reduce the need to wait for Bonus Ranks weeks to get the most out of your Crucible playtime. 
    • With the added bonuses provided by divisions, 95% of players will be earning more reputation over the course of the Season than what’s currently available. 
    • We’ll be keeping a close eye on this change to ensure there isn’t any major negative impact on the rewards that players are earning. 
• We have also moved unique Glory playlist rewards:
  • MIDA Multi-Tool catalyst is now a rare drop on any win in the Crucible. 
• One of the best rewards you can get from Competitive division is right in the name.
  • Your Competitive Division, which you have earned throughout the Season, lets you know where you actually sit in the hierarchy of players better than KDA, win percentage, or a third-party Elo ranking ever could. 

Every Thorn Has a Rose

Rose is coming back for Competitive Division. It is originally a Legendary Hand Cannon that was earned during the Lumina Exotic quest. It returns with random rolls and an updated perk pool.

• Hybrid: Fires like a 140 RPM Hand Cannon, but allows you to move like a 150 RPM, and has stats that blend the two. 
• Its perk list is built from popular consistency perks designed to highlight 3v3 play. 
• Random rolled grips instead of an Origin Trait. 
• How do you earn it though? 
  • When you complete your Competitive Division intro quest (once per character), you get a drop with the perk selection Rose originally had. 
  • After the intro quest, you have a character-based weekly Competitive Division challenge to earn another roll. 
  • That’s it! Play Competitive Division, earn one roll a week per character! 

Future Rewards Updates 

• We aren’t done here. In the Seasons post-Lightfall, we are expecting to get further cosmetic rewards for Competitive Division. 
• We are still working out the details of what (you can earn), when (you can start earning them), and how (you earn them). Expect more discussion after Lightfall launches! 

Destiny 2 is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.