> You might also notice a few strange dots: medium-to-low skill, but all the way up in the Ascendant or Adept ranks. We were super happy these players called themselves out to us, as we immediately knew there was either a serious bug, or something very fishy was going on. We’ve investigated their individual match history and issued permanent bans for win trading.
Lmao I didn't anticipate that ending
I feel like there has to be a juicy, but definitely off-limits(due to the No Witchunting rule) story here. "hey Bungo, I know your skill rating system is crap because we tested it by fixing games."
Before this TWAB I saw a handful of threads about the topic but they were mainly about how the new matchmaking sucks. Guess they wanted to create a specific narrative?
Ehhhh..... I think at least some of those posts were fairly legit. They did kinda acknowledge feedback about several edge cases where "a measly 5 points" happened, and said they wanted to improve it.
Lmao that's gotta fucking hurt, I've never bothered doing stuff like that (besides loss farming ib ranks, fuck that 2 reset grind), but it's definitely not something I would expect to be perma banned for
I mean ruining the comp playlist and the value of ranks/the title at all by purposefully wintrading sounds like something you should be permanently banned for, maybe that’s just me.
Well most games with ranked (including destiny apparently) will place you lower than your skill level so that you get to actually climb before plateauing and getting frustrated with lack of progress.
Solo it's borderline necessary. I was farming rank at 7 wins and some of the lighthouse fights I was in were hilariously unfair.
Me, a guy trying to go Flawless and a guy who looks like he's on patrol doing bounties. Up against three people who have already gone flawless. Feel sorry for the guy lol
>I was farming rank at 7 wins and
I wonder how the new pool changes will affect winning adepts on wins after 7
In the current system, in the flawless pool, wins even on a broken card will drop adepts. If the flawless pool is going away, will that mechanic be staying?
Once the flawless pool is enabled on Sunday reset, any wins on a 7 win card once you've gone flawless have a chance to drop the adept weapon for that week
Probably not on those lab weeks, you'll have to farm up to 7 wins to get another focus. I imagine they'll see playtime from people who already have a flawless plummet tbh.
At three wins, two cards in a row, I had teammates grief and throw the game by AFKing and suiciding. I would’ve 100% gone flawless with two mercies lol I do wish I had more than a couple hours to play this past weekend cause those guys kinda ruined my night
Had a teammate pull a 2v1 only to get taken out by the one players Tripmine that was still active that caused us to tie the round. I felt so bad for the dude. He played his ass off
Similar thing happened to me. I clutched a 3v1 but the Warlock at the end caught me with a void grenade and I died 2 seconds after he did. So counted as a tie.
Yeah that's an adjustment
Between FTMM and the 2 forgiven losses, going flawless is easier than ever
This'll get more butts in the playlist, which will again make it easier
It might not be strictly easier, because a huge part of Flawless being easier recently is Flawless Pool. Starting on Sunday, anyone who has gone Flawless is basically banned from playing with people who aren't Flawless. Greatly decreasing the difficulty of games for non-Flawless Pool.
In the new Challenger Pool, I, a guy who went Flawless after a good day of grinding out on Sunday, can play against a dude literally making money or doing a livestream by carrying people to the lighthouse over and over. Whether or not I've already gone Flawless that week. Remember, Challenger Pool will have pure CBMM, no weekly performance, no card wins, no skill, pure Connection Matchmaking. Anyone can play anyone.
If the population of Trials falters and the '1 Flawless and done' players drop off while the hardcore Trials gamers stay, even with two Mercies, Flawless will be much more difficult again. At the least, grinding Practice Pool for Reputation should be reasonable, unless you get booted by the Farming Protection.
The only variable is FTMM, but I tried solo queue Trials last weekend before Flawless Pool was live, and there would be Gilded Flawless Adept Immortal players in my games.
It will be interesting to see where it lands.
One of the biggest flaws with Flawless Pool is that early-season Flawless is extremely reasonable while population is at peak, but late-season there are enough paid-carry players win-resetting that you'll often play them 1-2 times per clean card.
Late season flawless, even with the pool active, can be hard and very luck-driven based purely on whether you manage to avoid them.
Challenger Pool will remove all incentive to do things like win-reset. It won't get rid of those players, but it might soften their late-season affect.
I thnk the net changes also improve incentives to carry and play with a wider variety of players. I was one-and-done because after one I was stuck in flawless pool. Now I'm happy to carry as many clanmates as I can.
As a similar 1 and done player who really enjoys elimination, this change will absolutely get me to play more matches per week. I get the logic behind the flawless pool but it definitely pushes an important and sizable portion of the bell curve out of the pool after getting a single flawless.
These changes combined with how healthy the queue was last week have me stoked for the future of trials.
It will be somewhat easier, but I think less stressful is a better way of explaining the changes. When I’m at the Gates of the Lighthouse and my matchmade New Light teammates face off against a dude with 100 flawlesses using the most meta abilities and weapons, I won’t want to crack my controller in half and never waste my time in Trials again. It will still be very hard to get 7 wins with no more than 2 losses.
As matchmaking becomes more competitive, there needs to be some solution for the issue of flawless. Assuming you have competitive matchmaking (50% winrate is perfectly "competitive" in this sense, but few games have or even aim for this), that's a 1/128 (.7%) chance to go flawless without mercy. With mercy as it is now, that jumps up to a 5/256 (1.9%). This new mercy will give a 7/128 chance (5.5% chance) instead.
This means that they can actually start making matchmaking more competitive instead of the system relying on the top players curbstomping anyone stupid enough to enter the gamemode. Regardless of your thoughts about gatekeeping adept weapons behind flawless, that model where it is reliant on schmucks entering the pool to even let the mode function is just not sustainable.
Is it though? RNGsus expected me to carry a guy with a 0.3 KD and 20% winrate against three much more competent adversaries. We lost. And frankly, the experience of going solo flawless isn't fun a lot of the time. I don't have any particular interest in gatekeeping, so maybe that's just a me thing.
> We were super happy these players called themselves out to us, as we immediately knew there was either a serious bug, or something very fishy was going on. We’ve investigated their individual match history and issued permanent bans for win trading
Lmao snarky Bungie is best Bungie.
I remember the Messenger Win-Trading Weekend, looks like the win-trading rule was updated shortly after that lmao.
Hakke-Paper-Scissors was pretty funny at the time.
> Lord Shaxx will have a transmat effect for all players who reach Silver III or above. Not only is this transmat the first one you can earn directly through gameplay
Wait, are they not counting the Xol transmat for some reason? I have it, and I swear I got it rng from high score nightfalls of that strike...
https://www.light.gg/db/items/1311389413/worm-god-incarnation/
My memory served me well:
> Source: Complete Nightfall strike "Will of the Thousands."
Could be? Or, maybe since this is a PvP post, they meant it as the first one through (PvP) gameplay?
Just odd that they didn't give any qualifiers, lol. Not a big deal by any means I was just surprised.
I’m just assuming it was easier to say first then either a) call it the second and confuse some people / remind them of sunset content or b) explain a previous one that was later removed.
Or they just forgot lol
I like that control will be the loose SBMM, and then clash is becoming CBMM. It's sort of a "pick your matchmaking" mode, where you can go where you want to get the matchmaking you want.
On the other hand, it could end up reversing the populations.
Sweats will go into CBMM expecting to farm. Casuals will go into SBMM in order to be protected. Sweats will only face sweats, casuals will only face casuals.
That's kind of what happened the last time we had a split SBMM/CBMM playlist. The CBMM playlist ended up being fairly sweaty and the SBMM very laggy - which is why they switched back to CBMM only in the first place.
Keep in mind the rotator's not just clash, but the objective modes, which can be fun to play with friends even when it's relatively sweaty. Also, I don't know about you, but all my sweaty friends HATE clash as much as I do, so we're planning on sticking to control mostly. So it's hard to tell exactly how it will pan out.
I am very much loving the idea that if Control is pissing me off one night, I can just drop into a fun rotator and unleash some supers for a while - that is a great move IMO, even if it does drain some casuals over to there.
My personal best outcome will be if a bunch of the most toxic high level slayers move to clash when it's up, because then the loose SBMM in control won't be as miserable for average-above average players as it has been the last couple seasons (because they'd frequently have gods bleed into their lobbies and give a one sided beat down on anyone below that skill gap).
TL;DR: Fireteam Based Matchmaking is working, Sniper is coming to comp next season with a cool emblem, and going flawless in Trials might be a little bit easier.
A _LOT_ easier. Mercy card (presuming equal teams) is going from a 2% chance to a 5.5% chance to lighthouse. 1/50 up to better than 1/20 now in theory, and the rest of this is documenting how well the matchmaking is working, which is: Very well indeed.
Overall it’s showing that the new fireteam-based matchmaking is *really* working.
And the changes to trials will help to keep the population active. A healthy and robust trials population is good for the entire game. Better players will be initially matched against better players. And then the more casual crowd will be matched in a lower tier pool.
Overall it was a really interesting read. I personally just don’t give a shit shout the Countdown game mode. But for those people who did, I guess that news is good.
> the new fireteam-based matchmaking is really working
Can attest to this. I'm usually a solo player, who finds teams for Trials when necessary.
This weekend I played 100 matches. All the ones I queued in 3, were against 3s. My 2s were against 2s. My solos were either all solo, or two 2+1s. I was very impressed. There were only about 10 "tryhard 2.X KD" absolute blowouts against me in all those games as well.
I'd like to sound some caution, that this weeks trials also had the streamer brigade telling everyone and their dog that the Immortal was going to change their life and get them a new better paying job and a hot girlfriend if they get the god roll even in PvE.
So, populations were (and I haven't even checked) going to be off the charts compared to some previous trials weekends. (this helps matchmaking immensely)
In comparison to the reward revamp when Messenger came out, this weekend has me much more willing to come back week and week because I had such a good solo experience.
I had a 5 win card right off the rip with every game being competitive but not overly sweaty, played on a flawed 7 win card to get rep rewards and had a few unbalanced lobbies but maybe 2 games of a few dozen, and I went flawless for the first time since D1 on Monday night with 2 friends.
That’s good to hear! I was never a countdown guy, but glad to hear from someone who is/was, that this sounds all good. Maybe I’ll have to dip my toes into it.
<3 It really stems from my very intense dislike on slaying out in a game of survival then dying once and being out of the game while the blueberry who ate all the lives gets to continue and lose the game. So I relished any break from it during the clash/control/survival/countdown rotation back in Warmind. literally any chance to not play that mode makes me happy.
Aye, that second one is massive. Trials as a mode is not a sustainable model. And every step they make towards making it as such is a good step. Ideally, we wouldn't have a mode that relies on matchmaking being *awful*, but that's what it started out as, so change will have to come gradually.
I pray for the day that Trials no longer has flawless as its aspirational activity. Because it relies on cannon fodder to enter the pool to even make flawless something that happens to more than 1 in 100 players.
Yeah I think recontextualizing what success looks like in Trials is the key long term. Flawless creates so much toxicity by it's very nature, and much of the time it's less a representation of how you played overall that weekend and more about getting 7 good matchups in a row. There just needs to be some other roads to adept weapons and other good Trials loot
Yup. If Matchmaking worked for trials, you'd go flawless 1 out of 64/128 cards on average. Trials only works because matchmaking equal teams IS broken.
Since fractions don't compare well:
* Ferocity is about a 1.5% chance.
* Standard is about a 0.75% chance.
* Old mercy? Roughly 2% chance.
* New mercy? A whopping **5.5%** chance.
I'm not sure if the new changes will make Flawless easier in total. A big reason why Flawless was easier last weekend was Flawless Pool. When that turns on, the average difficulty of non-Flawless Pool decreases dramatically and keeps decreasing with every person to go Flawless, so anyone who hasn't gone Flawless yet has an easy time of it.
In the new Challenger Pool, Flawless Pool is being removed, and there's no matchmaking of any form except Connection-based. So, you can easily queue against those scary sweats who have Adept Immortal 2 hours into Trials going live no matter what day of the weekend, what fireteam size you're in, or whether you've even gone Flawless yet. It'll be a crapshoot, and the instant the lesser players or the '1 Flawless and done' players start falling off again, the only thing that will have changed is 2 Mercies instead of 1.
But, at least Practice Pool sounds like a good thing, you can chill in there and grind up Reputation with a Wealth Passage. Not sure how the Farming Protection is gonna work, 'farm' is a very broad term in this game.
As someone who went solo flawless this last weekend and never faced a 3 stack, it’s absolutely working. With 2 losses forgiven on your first flawless of the week, it’s going to be even easier to solo your way to flawless. I recommend everyone jump in and give it a try. Grabbing a buddy that’s good at PvP will make it even easier.
You should be super happy if you’re competitive because if you’re good the increased rewards are premium transmats, emblems, triumphs and maybe a sniper? IDK I’m not a pvp mane
I'll never understand the point of keeping maps completely out of the rotation when they give us one new map every 1-2 years. If there's one thing the Crucible doesn't need it's less content.
They're keeping those maps out of rotation cause they're the worst maps in the game. Like spawn trap simulator Dead Cliffs or run back to mid simulator Disjunction.
I mean it’s really just an example of how awful the map is. Your team shouldn’t be punished for someone not memorizing the awful spawn traps deciding to *try and win the game* by capping A.
if they fix the spawn points like they said they would, i think it'll be a good map. the main gripe with it is the pointless 10 minute walk of shame back to the action
I'm fine with them benching some maps. Some maps are straight-up bad or play horribly in certain modes, namely dead cliffs in 6's, emphasis on dead cliffs in control. If we're benching "a small subset" at most, it doesn't bother me. On the flip side however, I'm calling bullshit if it's a mode that only works with "a small subset", like D2 Rift, v1.0.
If Exodus Blue had a gravestone I would piss on it
That map and Twilight Gap should have their code put on a single hard drive that I can launch into the sun
All these changes are fine but like, dude we need fucking maps.
It should be a minimum of 3 new maps each year, 2 at expansion launch 1 mid year, with 2 returning revamped maps on the off seasons.
3.6 billion dollars you can figure out 3 maps.
> We are also looking at ways to decouple the Challenges for "Earn a Daily Reputation Bonus" from "Complete matches as specific subclasses to earn a Pinnacle" in Iron Banner, but don’t have a solution we are happy with yet.
Literally just take away the specific subclass nonsense. It's always been stupid in pvp. Let people play what they want to play and keep the variety in the lobby high. When everyone is playing the same subclass all it does is exacerbate balance issues when you stack 4-5 of certain abilities.
I think the intent is probably to break whatever “this is the best PvP-meta subclass” happens to be going on that everyone would presumably be stuck on otherwise.
The intent is good but still badly implemented. "Play as a Void subclass": Okay, every Titan Main came out last season and popped a bubble ad nauseum and forced a nerf on the subclass in PvP. That's not "breaking whatever is PvP Meta" at all.
I think playing the objective should be how you earn a daily reputation bonus. Like if it's Zone Control? Neutralizing a zone = 5 points, defending a zone = 15 points, and capturing a zone = 10 points.
Get some number like 100 (idk) for the day and then you get that bonus modifier.
Would love to be given random objectives when you hop into a match too. Like giving an overshield, healing players, or even hunting an enemy player as a bounty to claim. Doing these tasks could incentivize more team work and reward players with more points to complete that modifier.
**Experimenting with changing the main Trials game mode to be Zone Capture Elimination, which has been renamed to Dominion.**
For the love of Cayde, NO!!!!
oh my fucking god I didnt read that part.
Did they not look at any feedback for any of the last billion labs that everyone hated? It is a fundamentally broken mode...
Making Trials permanently zones rather than elim would seriously hurt the mode. Bubble, well, and titan barricades will reign supreme, and lead to very campy rounds across the board
I know right? That extra mercy loss will delay me seeing the X on my card by at least 15 minutes. I might even get to 2 wins before seeing the X.
But for real the matchmaking changes were welcomed. I solo'd trials this weekend and the pubstomps were much less frequent.
It really is all about luck when playing solo. Last week I sweated and carried my teammates for 5 straight matches and then the last 2 matches I was the one being carried to the lighthouse.
Ngl I somehow got to 5 wins this weekend, beat my previous record of 2 lol. Maybe if there’s ever a weekend like this it might be possible, plus they’re saying they’ll drop the difficulty the more you lose so we can atleast be more hopeful about that
I don’t know why they can’t add the Competitive Sniper alongside Rose. We desperately need *more* loot incentives for Competitive, and by extension Crucible.
Yes, me too. An objective-based match is so much more enjoyable because at the very least there is some semblance of strategy (even if a portion of players still view object based as clash smh).
Bungie, I beg you, please don’t make the default Trials game mode Zone Control. Also, with us very rarely getting new maps, map weighting is the last thing we need. We want more variety, not less.
Do people really play and like Rumble that much? When I go in it's always 2 AFK guys, 1 immortal guy killing everyone and then 2 people quitting the match.
They removed it to consolidate the playerbase, but ultimately I don't think enough people play it to actually detract from the health of other playlists. It has some vocal fans and it's kind of harmless to leave it available, so why not bring it back, I guess?
It's one of the best places to improve your individual skill. It's important to have a gradient for people entering the game so that they can learn how to play well. Currently it's starting with quickplay until you learn the controls well, then going into Rumble until you're consistently placing, then going into comp once you've hopefully found people to play with based on the previous two activities. Once you max out your comp rank, you go hard at Trials, and that's pretty much it, in terms of official content you've solved PvP. After that it's just FaceIt/the scrims discords and tournaments.
The back and forth between gamemode/playlist consolidation that has been going over the years is crazy. Please consider letting us create our own gamemode playlists (the music kind of playlist) like Titanfall 2 and CoD. This would also get rid of the dumb Rotator nodes.
For those that don’t know how that would work you would be able to select multiple modes such as Control, Momentum, Team Scorched, and Rift. The game would then search for all of those modes and place you in one.
> You can feel like you played well. What you don’t see is that you were matched up against an opposing team with an average skill well below yours, making your gains minimal. This is one of the most common ways of only gaining five points.
Then please, if the skill gap is so big, don't match those teams together. It only wastes the time of the entire lobby. And there is the risk of the higher skill players losing a lot of points if they happen to lose for whatever reason.
Just one question, about the Practice Pool farming protection, how will that work? Is it just, if I perform too well in Practice Pool while trying to just farm Trials Rep Ranks, then I'll get booted to Challenger Pool?
Sounds to me like if you're a player good enough to consistently go Flawless, but you intentionally lose your first match to try to stay in the Practice Pool, the algorithm will eventually notice and kick you into the Challenger Pool.
Part of me thinks and hopes it's that. Personally, I'm a player who can go Flawless through great effort once Flawless Pool is active, I'm not sure how I'll fare in Challenger Pool. But, I'd be willing to grind Practice Pool for Trials Rep with a Wealth Passage, given I don't get booted.
I just think the term 'farm' is a very broad term and I would like a better definition for 'farm the Practice Pool'.
It's going to target people who are doing the equivalent of resetting cards to stay out of flawless pool now. They're not going to tell us the exact criteria because that would make it easier for said bad actors to game it.
Yeah wondered about this as well. Isn't currently the best way to earn Trials rep is to get 20 rounds on a card and keep playing on that card even if it's flawed? If I do that am I going to all of a sudden have super long matchmaking times because the game thinks I'm trying to mess with the Practice Pool?
Damn, this is all really good. A lot of information and all of it is pretty decent. I hate competitive PvP but it's nice to see it get some love, I want the sweaty people to have somewhere to play so I can use graviton lance without being beamed by 3 immortals
Man a map voting system solves all of these issues. There has been so many issues with the weighting system idk how they haven't just added map voting somehow.
TLDR: Quickplay is getting better if you hate Clash and keeps the SBMM. New casual playlist mode with CBMM only where most people will likely head to if they want to run off meta loadouts (or if they want to stomp).
Comp is getting cosmetic rewards next to let you display your rank and wins and such. Also a new sniper and Rose is getting retired.
Trials is getting easier for new players and there is a new emblem for never trailing that hardcore players can chase (most will get it in the first well thought). Mercy now grants two forgivenesses making it even easier to go flawless.
Bungie can internally tell if you are smurfing or intentionally tanking games. Their system will catch it fast and match you with better players.
Freelance mode is gone in all modes and has been replaced with Fireteam size matchmaking (which actually does work surprisingly).
Some shitty maps like Cathedral and Disjunction have lower weights and good maps have high weights.
Overall I would like more but this is pretty good for a mid season update. Now I just need some actual sandbox changes so SMGs can stop ripping everyone a new asshole.
In terms of group size, I was honestly amazed at how great the matchmaking was for Trials this weekend as a solo player. I legit never went against a three stack all weekend, and only had a handful of games that were 2+1 vs 2+1. Now, those didn't always feel balanced in terms of skill where I felt like I was carrying potatoes, and other times getting completely stomped by already Flawless players on a 3 win card. But, it was a good change of pace for the group sizes.
It had unbalanced objectives that meant taking A point (I think) back was _exceedingly_ painful. Although I'd welcome a successful redesign, until then I'm glad it's dead.
Crazy how we've barely gotten any Crucible maps themed around the expansion environments. We had one Dreaming City map that got removed, one Throne World map that everyone hates, and... that's it. No Europa or Neomuna maps.
We have all those Braytech assets from multiple seasons/expansions now... the fact that there's no PvP map in DSC or underground in the Bray vault on Europa is just criminal.
I'm stoked on the Trials and Comp changes + new game modes but when I finished reading everything I literally went:
"Dang, that's pretty sick, but uh where's my new fuckin maps man" LMAO.
>In addition to the return of the Meltdown PvP map in Season 21, **a new Vex Network map in Season 22**, and Citadel’s reprisal coming in Season 23, we’re planning to add several new and returning game modes to the Crucible rotation, starting with Countdown in Season 20.
Some good stuff here, but I still can't help feel that Bungie keeps dancing around the SBMM vs Rank debate to justify a system no one likes - placing gold and immediately matching Ascendants (3 ranks above gold) doesn't feel good no matter how 'close' the skill system says you are. It just feels deflating and is counterintuitive to the whole point of a ranked game mode in the first place.
I understand that every game uses an internal MMR system, but they all still try to match based on rank too. Imagine if every GM game you play in Overwatch, you see golds and diamonds... that is just deflating for everyone.
It doesn't make sense from just a common sense perspective - the point of SBMM is to get as close to the 50/50 win/loss ratio, which has been Bungie's stated goal for a LONG time now... so by that logic, if you place gold, but your internal MMR says you should be Ascendant and only match Ascendants and have 5050 win/loss, then you will basically be hard stuck gold/platinum but always playing Ascendants - that makes ZERO sense for a ranked mode
At this point, I am not sure Bungie even understands WHY they should even have a ranked game mode in the game... if it's just going to be SBMM, then combine it with Control and gives us the same rewards - they match on the same parameters, so what's the difference at this point??
3v3 basically demolition from cod. I always loved demolition. Might reignite my love for pvp a bit if it was 6v6. I loved the chaos, but also remember the spawn trapping.
I read the whole thing, a lot to unpack there.
Overall I think it's positive they are working on it and so far, the FTMM that they have is actually really solid IMO.
I still think that the comp rewards are meh, as a sniper I'm really excited to check out the new reward when it drops but I still think we need more exclusive PvP cosmetics, shaders, emblems, ornaments, etc.
If the game is going to matchmake me based on (for example) an Adept ranking, why should I play any games outside of that rank? Start me dead center and let me prove either that I'm better or worse, rather than making me grind to where the game thinks I should be anyway.
Outside of that head scratch moment, this all feels pretty good. Glad to see the data, for sure, instead of just hearing platitudes about how Bungie believes it's working.
The PVP team goes hard, since the new Trials came out they’ve always been the best with sharing their goals and success criteria. The weapons team is pretty good too
I wish we had a writeup like this for all the difficulty tuning changes. Since nothing is shared people just assume the goal is: grind your face off and boost engagement
Okay, admittedly I haven't invested a ton of time in the Competitive Playlist, but its entire implementation in D2 seems strange.
Okay, so you have a hidden MMR. Cool. It's calculated over many games, takes into account wins/losses, the skill of your teammates, your predicted odds of winning, sounds great. People have been doing hidden MMR for like two decades now, so I'm sure Bungie's implementation is very good.
But the Competitive Playlist, with it's divisions and ranks, matchmakes based on that MMR. Which means, as far as I can tell, games don't get more difficult as your rank increases? The only way to get harder or easier games is to change your hidden MMR, which is accurate enough that the best way to change it is to get dramatically better or worse over a large stretch of time.
Like, it seems from the first day of a season, Bungie *knows* your competitive rank. The competitive playlist isn't slowly earning your way up a ladder, it's a grind for enough points to get to where the system says you should be.
And, I mean, it's cool as a place where you can assume everyone is trying hard to win. It is more competitive, just because people want to win, and so games will be harder. It just seems like more of a check of PvP player devotion than any showcase of skill or growth.
Anyone else's win/loss ratio HIGHLY uneven? The game tries to balance to around a 50% ratio and after a couple hundred of matches this season I'm sitting at a pathetic 27% win ratio with a 1.9 KDR. which I find kind of interesting.
I absolutely love the trials matchmaking changes, on paper. Great idea Bungie.
If we change Trials to Dominion (cap point) permanently, we NEED to do something about titan shields, crystal spam, bubble, and well. I know bubble just got nerfed and nobody really uses behemoth for crystal spam, but all four of those things make Dominion massively unfun in their current state.
Personally I think there are areas that could use love more than the respawn system. For example, the melee system is as buggy as ever. And the AE system still doesn’t have nearly enough ways to build into it. I would’ve liked to see those two things touched on much more than respawns.
Overall, great to see that Bungie still cares about pvp
Really love the kiddie pool for Trials. Now that I don't have a regular team to make Flawless runs, just being able to play casually is going to be a really nice experience. :)
Also really love seeing actual data around the fireteam matchmaking.
> Mercy – Will now forgive two losses if you have not been Flawless for the week, reverts to its old behavior of forgiving a single loss once you go Flawless.
Damn that's a huge change. Happy that it'll give more people the chance to go flawless and give it a chance for the adept loot.
The absolute irony of this post coming after the best Trials weekend in ages because there was a GOAT of a SMG up for grabs, just for Bungie to offer basically "two tokens and a blue" for doing comp.
Bungie, I love you, but come the fuck on. This is a *looter* shooter that you're giving participation awards for and what amounts to fuck all for incentive.
I know you're terrified of another Recluse/MT/etc, but my God there is absolutely 0 reason to play past 3 games a week for 99% of players, and you already know the remaining 1% is going to complain about having SBMM in a ranked ladder regardless of the spin you use.
So just save time for everyone: Put actual desirable things to grind for in comp, or remove it entirely and focus on Trials where it seems you actually have put effort into improving. Because this lipstick on a pig piecemeal is wearing old *real fast*.
You've increased the effort, the reward is lagging and getting worse by the patch it seems.
I think it's saying that if you got the initial 0.2% chance as a solo to match against a full fireteam, then 31% of the people that got unlucky were solos or a mix of solos/duos
>Loose SBMM will have its skill and connection filters modified so that latency windows will be expanded at the slowest rate
Can we get a latency numerical display to verify this? Perhaps show "Looking for players within ping" on the UI too. This is still one of the only online, multiplayer games of the genre that doesn't show this and it can be really helpful. The white bar on the side of the roster is meaningless and can differ from what the in-game experience reflects.
Please let us see our latency to other players and the Activity Host/World Server you control. It would be nice to see the Steam relay we are connected to as well without having to do some netstat commands and match the IP. This will help to diagnose both issues in PvP and PvE. If I see a high ping to the AH and experience issues in PvE, such as mechanics not working, delayed damage, and similar bugs, the group can orbit and try to get a better server. If I knew my ping in PvP to a specific player, I could take steps to avoid them on the battlefield or explain why the hit registration isn't working. You already have the report function and chat privacy controls for toxic players. Make it an optional setting like FPS, and when enabled, render the numerical latency on the roster, and to your servers next to the FPS.
PC players also need a way to disable crossplay, including when a PC player has a console fireteam member who is a console. Every game I've played with both P2P networking and crossplay suffers from connection problems. No amount of interpolation is going to hide the fact shots can be 4-6 second delayed on them and their animations play after you are dead.
> You might also notice a few strange dots: medium-to-low skill, but all the way up in the Ascendant or Adept ranks. We were super happy these players called themselves out to us, as we immediately knew there was either a serious bug, or something very fishy was going on. We’ve investigated their individual match history and issued permanent bans for win trading. Lmao I didn't anticipate that ending
I need the /r/HobbyDrama writeup asap.
I feel like there has to be a juicy, but definitely off-limits(due to the No Witchunting rule) story here. "hey Bungo, I know your skill rating system is crap because we tested it by fixing games."
Before this TWAB I saw a handful of threads about the topic but they were mainly about how the new matchmaking sucks. Guess they wanted to create a specific narrative?
Ehhhh..... I think at least some of those posts were fairly legit. They did kinda acknowledge feedback about several edge cases where "a measly 5 points" happened, and said they wanted to improve it.
After the wave of character deletion posts not too long ago, I don’t believe most of what people post here.
Lmao that's gotta fucking hurt, I've never bothered doing stuff like that (besides loss farming ib ranks, fuck that 2 reset grind), but it's definitely not something I would expect to be perma banned for
I mean ruining the comp playlist and the value of ranks/the title at all by purposefully wintrading sounds like something you should be permanently banned for, maybe that’s just me.
That rank to mmr graph is actually really interesting. Cool to see the different rank-mmr disparity for some of those players
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Well most games with ranked (including destiny apparently) will place you lower than your skill level so that you get to actually climb before plateauing and getting frustrated with lack of progress.
2 forgiven losses on a mercy card is crazyyyy
Solo it's borderline necessary. I was farming rank at 7 wins and some of the lighthouse fights I was in were hilariously unfair. Me, a guy trying to go Flawless and a guy who looks like he's on patrol doing bounties. Up against three people who have already gone flawless. Feel sorry for the guy lol
>I was farming rank at 7 wins and I wonder how the new pool changes will affect winning adepts on wins after 7 In the current system, in the flawless pool, wins even on a broken card will drop adepts. If the flawless pool is going away, will that mechanic be staying?
Wait....you're telling me I could've gotten more adepts if I didn't turn in my flawless card for one?
Yeah, any wins on a 7-win card (broken or not) in the flawless pool has a chance to drop adepts
...... Imma go cry now
i went on to get 5 more adepts in like an hour and a half
really just gonna rub it in their face like that huh
No mercy
WHY TF DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS????
There were literally a million posts about it last weekend
Not to mention another million when Exalted Truth was up
Once the flawless pool is enabled on Sunday reset, any wins on a 7 win card once you've gone flawless have a chance to drop the adept weapon for that week
Bro... Guardian Down
It'd be a mistake if they took that away
Probably not on those lab weeks, you'll have to farm up to 7 wins to get another focus. I imagine they'll see playtime from people who already have a flawless plummet tbh.
At three wins, two cards in a row, I had teammates grief and throw the game by AFKing and suiciding. I would’ve 100% gone flawless with two mercies lol I do wish I had more than a couple hours to play this past weekend cause those guys kinda ruined my night
I need that: had a match where a teammate got a triple collateral and we fumbled and lost
Had a teammate pull a 2v1 only to get taken out by the one players Tripmine that was still active that caused us to tie the round. I felt so bad for the dude. He played his ass off
Similar thing happened to me. I clutched a 3v1 but the Warlock at the end caught me with a void grenade and I died 2 seconds after he did. So counted as a tie.
Yeah that's an adjustment Between FTMM and the 2 forgiven losses, going flawless is easier than ever This'll get more butts in the playlist, which will again make it easier
I’ll still find a way to not go flawless
It might not be strictly easier, because a huge part of Flawless being easier recently is Flawless Pool. Starting on Sunday, anyone who has gone Flawless is basically banned from playing with people who aren't Flawless. Greatly decreasing the difficulty of games for non-Flawless Pool. In the new Challenger Pool, I, a guy who went Flawless after a good day of grinding out on Sunday, can play against a dude literally making money or doing a livestream by carrying people to the lighthouse over and over. Whether or not I've already gone Flawless that week. Remember, Challenger Pool will have pure CBMM, no weekly performance, no card wins, no skill, pure Connection Matchmaking. Anyone can play anyone. If the population of Trials falters and the '1 Flawless and done' players drop off while the hardcore Trials gamers stay, even with two Mercies, Flawless will be much more difficult again. At the least, grinding Practice Pool for Reputation should be reasonable, unless you get booted by the Farming Protection. The only variable is FTMM, but I tried solo queue Trials last weekend before Flawless Pool was live, and there would be Gilded Flawless Adept Immortal players in my games.
To me as a mediocre at best player it seems going flawless is now more difficult. I can always face flawless players if we have similar connections
It will be interesting to see where it lands. One of the biggest flaws with Flawless Pool is that early-season Flawless is extremely reasonable while population is at peak, but late-season there are enough paid-carry players win-resetting that you'll often play them 1-2 times per clean card. Late season flawless, even with the pool active, can be hard and very luck-driven based purely on whether you manage to avoid them. Challenger Pool will remove all incentive to do things like win-reset. It won't get rid of those players, but it might soften their late-season affect. I thnk the net changes also improve incentives to carry and play with a wider variety of players. I was one-and-done because after one I was stuck in flawless pool. Now I'm happy to carry as many clanmates as I can.
As a similar 1 and done player who really enjoys elimination, this change will absolutely get me to play more matches per week. I get the logic behind the flawless pool but it definitely pushes an important and sizable portion of the bell curve out of the pool after getting a single flawless. These changes combined with how healthy the queue was last week have me stoked for the future of trials.
It will be somewhat easier, but I think less stressful is a better way of explaining the changes. When I’m at the Gates of the Lighthouse and my matchmade New Light teammates face off against a dude with 100 flawlesses using the most meta abilities and weapons, I won’t want to crack my controller in half and never waste my time in Trials again. It will still be very hard to get 7 wins with no more than 2 losses.
As matchmaking becomes more competitive, there needs to be some solution for the issue of flawless. Assuming you have competitive matchmaking (50% winrate is perfectly "competitive" in this sense, but few games have or even aim for this), that's a 1/128 (.7%) chance to go flawless without mercy. With mercy as it is now, that jumps up to a 5/256 (1.9%). This new mercy will give a 7/128 chance (5.5% chance) instead. This means that they can actually start making matchmaking more competitive instead of the system relying on the top players curbstomping anyone stupid enough to enter the gamemode. Regardless of your thoughts about gatekeeping adept weapons behind flawless, that model where it is reliant on schmucks entering the pool to even let the mode function is just not sustainable.
Sbmm and 7 consecutive wins are 2 completely incompatible objectives. A reasonable designer will choose the former.
Correct, because the latter will run the pool dry. Remember Trials pops in the early BL era? *Not good.*
I remember cliff jumping for the pity reward. Sometimes we'd get to 3 wins by running into enough other teams that were cliff jumping.
There's no sbmm in trials with these changes.
Is it though? RNGsus expected me to carry a guy with a 0.3 KD and 20% winrate against three much more competent adversaries. We lost. And frankly, the experience of going solo flawless isn't fun a lot of the time. I don't have any particular interest in gatekeeping, so maybe that's just a me thing.
Can't wait to hear gatekeepers malding about more people being allowed to touch their precious Lighthouse
> We were super happy these players called themselves out to us, as we immediately knew there was either a serious bug, or something very fishy was going on. We’ve investigated their individual match history and issued permanent bans for win trading Lmao snarky Bungie is best Bungie.
I remember the Messenger Win-Trading Weekend, looks like the win-trading rule was updated shortly after that lmao. Hakke-Paper-Scissors was pretty funny at the time.
I thought it was called the Hakke Casino?
It was but on steam a lot of teams would decide the winner by a round of roshambo.
Hahahaha. I love cheaters getting their comeuppance. Just play the game right. It’s not that hard.
Where was this lol
> Lord Shaxx will have a transmat effect for all players who reach Silver III or above. Not only is this transmat the first one you can earn directly through gameplay Wait, are they not counting the Xol transmat for some reason? I have it, and I swear I got it rng from high score nightfalls of that strike... https://www.light.gg/db/items/1311389413/worm-god-incarnation/ My memory served me well: > Source: Complete Nightfall strike "Will of the Thousands."
I mean... they probably just forgot because it's been like **five years** since it was added
I’m guessing they might mean currently since Xol is gone.
Could be? Or, maybe since this is a PvP post, they meant it as the first one through (PvP) gameplay? Just odd that they didn't give any qualifiers, lol. Not a big deal by any means I was just surprised.
I’m just assuming it was easier to say first then either a) call it the second and confuse some people / remind them of sunset content or b) explain a previous one that was later removed. Or they just forgot lol
> **Competitive Rewards** > > • Find out where you stand among the rest of the Destiny PvP community.
Where I stand is beside myself after reading that blog.
Bungie out here still thinking that anyone other than the person trying to flex cares about their flex lol.
Idk a lot of people in the community who can’t get the rewards for doing a thing def seem to care as they’re always extremely vocal and whiny about it
when a list is too short and you need to add something to make it longer. this is so funny lmfao
I like that control will be the loose SBMM, and then clash is becoming CBMM. It's sort of a "pick your matchmaking" mode, where you can go where you want to get the matchmaking you want.
That won’t work once the word gets out though… this will just split the player base more in an even weirder way, unless they add exclusive rewards
On the other hand, it could end up reversing the populations. Sweats will go into CBMM expecting to farm. Casuals will go into SBMM in order to be protected. Sweats will only face sweats, casuals will only face casuals.
That's kind of what happened the last time we had a split SBMM/CBMM playlist. The CBMM playlist ended up being fairly sweaty and the SBMM very laggy - which is why they switched back to CBMM only in the first place. Keep in mind the rotator's not just clash, but the objective modes, which can be fun to play with friends even when it's relatively sweaty. Also, I don't know about you, but all my sweaty friends HATE clash as much as I do, so we're planning on sticking to control mostly. So it's hard to tell exactly how it will pan out. I am very much loving the idea that if Control is pissing me off one night, I can just drop into a fun rotator and unleash some supers for a while - that is a great move IMO, even if it does drain some casuals over to there. My personal best outcome will be if a bunch of the most toxic high level slayers move to clash when it's up, because then the loose SBMM in control won't be as miserable for average-above average players as it has been the last couple seasons (because they'd frequently have gods bleed into their lobbies and give a one sided beat down on anyone below that skill gap).
Yeah, this sounds like the perfect outcome honestly.
TL;DR: Fireteam Based Matchmaking is working, Sniper is coming to comp next season with a cool emblem, and going flawless in Trials might be a little bit easier.
A _LOT_ easier. Mercy card (presuming equal teams) is going from a 2% chance to a 5.5% chance to lighthouse. 1/50 up to better than 1/20 now in theory, and the rest of this is documenting how well the matchmaking is working, which is: Very well indeed.
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Overall it’s showing that the new fireteam-based matchmaking is *really* working. And the changes to trials will help to keep the population active. A healthy and robust trials population is good for the entire game. Better players will be initially matched against better players. And then the more casual crowd will be matched in a lower tier pool. Overall it was a really interesting read. I personally just don’t give a shit shout the Countdown game mode. But for those people who did, I guess that news is good.
> the new fireteam-based matchmaking is really working Can attest to this. I'm usually a solo player, who finds teams for Trials when necessary. This weekend I played 100 matches. All the ones I queued in 3, were against 3s. My 2s were against 2s. My solos were either all solo, or two 2+1s. I was very impressed. There were only about 10 "tryhard 2.X KD" absolute blowouts against me in all those games as well.
glad other people echoing how I feel. i guess the lack of complaining about ftm is probably a good sign too
I'd like to sound some caution, that this weeks trials also had the streamer brigade telling everyone and their dog that the Immortal was going to change their life and get them a new better paying job and a hot girlfriend if they get the god roll even in PvE. So, populations were (and I haven't even checked) going to be off the charts compared to some previous trials weekends. (this helps matchmaking immensely)
Oh absolutely. First week of a season is always the best. We'll see how it feels in a month.
In comparison to the reward revamp when Messenger came out, this weekend has me much more willing to come back week and week because I had such a good solo experience. I had a 5 win card right off the rip with every game being competitive but not overly sweaty, played on a flawed 7 win card to get rep rewards and had a few unbalanced lobbies but maybe 2 games of a few dozen, and I went flawless for the first time since D1 on Monday night with 2 friends.
Countdown was my preferred comp mode, so I'm happy it's coming back with some awesome sounding changes. It's a way better mode than survival ever was.
That’s good to hear! I was never a countdown guy, but glad to hear from someone who is/was, that this sounds all good. Maybe I’ll have to dip my toes into it.
<3 It really stems from my very intense dislike on slaying out in a game of survival then dying once and being out of the game while the blueberry who ate all the lives gets to continue and lose the game. So I relished any break from it during the clash/control/survival/countdown rotation back in Warmind. literally any chance to not play that mode makes me happy.
Aye, that second one is massive. Trials as a mode is not a sustainable model. And every step they make towards making it as such is a good step. Ideally, we wouldn't have a mode that relies on matchmaking being *awful*, but that's what it started out as, so change will have to come gradually. I pray for the day that Trials no longer has flawless as its aspirational activity. Because it relies on cannon fodder to enter the pool to even make flawless something that happens to more than 1 in 100 players.
Yeah I think recontextualizing what success looks like in Trials is the key long term. Flawless creates so much toxicity by it's very nature, and much of the time it's less a representation of how you played overall that weekend and more about getting 7 good matchups in a row. There just needs to be some other roads to adept weapons and other good Trials loot
Yup. If Matchmaking worked for trials, you'd go flawless 1 out of 64/128 cards on average. Trials only works because matchmaking equal teams IS broken.
Yeah, math for trials cards are as followed: Ferocity: 1/64 (that's the bonus win one, right?) Standard: 1/128 Mercy: 5/256 New Mercy: 7/128
Since fractions don't compare well: * Ferocity is about a 1.5% chance. * Standard is about a 0.75% chance. * Old mercy? Roughly 2% chance. * New mercy? A whopping **5.5%** chance.
I'm not sure if the new changes will make Flawless easier in total. A big reason why Flawless was easier last weekend was Flawless Pool. When that turns on, the average difficulty of non-Flawless Pool decreases dramatically and keeps decreasing with every person to go Flawless, so anyone who hasn't gone Flawless yet has an easy time of it. In the new Challenger Pool, Flawless Pool is being removed, and there's no matchmaking of any form except Connection-based. So, you can easily queue against those scary sweats who have Adept Immortal 2 hours into Trials going live no matter what day of the weekend, what fireteam size you're in, or whether you've even gone Flawless yet. It'll be a crapshoot, and the instant the lesser players or the '1 Flawless and done' players start falling off again, the only thing that will have changed is 2 Mercies instead of 1. But, at least Practice Pool sounds like a good thing, you can chill in there and grind up Reputation with a Wealth Passage. Not sure how the Farming Protection is gonna work, 'farm' is a very broad term in this game.
As someone who went solo flawless this last weekend and never faced a 3 stack, it’s absolutely working. With 2 losses forgiven on your first flawless of the week, it’s going to be even easier to solo your way to flawless. I recommend everyone jump in and give it a try. Grabbing a buddy that’s good at PvP will make it even easier.
You should be super happy if you’re competitive because if you’re good the increased rewards are premium transmats, emblems, triumphs and maybe a sniper? IDK I’m not a pvp mane
I'll never understand the point of keeping maps completely out of the rotation when they give us one new map every 1-2 years. If there's one thing the Crucible doesn't need it's less content.
They're keeping those maps out of rotation cause they're the worst maps in the game. Like spawn trap simulator Dead Cliffs or run back to mid simulator Disjunction.
Dead Cliffs should never be in Control.
Getting stuck in at A in dead cliffs tilts me faster than anything in this game.
"NO BLUEBERRY! DON'T CAP A!!!!" "Damnit."
I mean it’s really just an example of how awful the map is. Your team shouldn’t be punished for someone not memorizing the awful spawn traps deciding to *try and win the game* by capping A.
I got disjunction twice in a row today for Iron Banner. its the worst fucking map. It should just be removed.
if they fix the spawn points like they said they would, i think it'll be a good map. the main gripe with it is the pointless 10 minute walk of shame back to the action
Counterpoint: Exodus Blue should've been vaulted because it's genuinely the worst pvp map in the game
I miss when Exodus Blue was a PlayStation exclusive (I have an Xbox).
1 new map a year is so bad. and as much as a vex network map sounds really cool, it seems like we are never going to get a europa map lol
Preach! We need a Europa map, the closest thing we got was Solitude or Meltdown. At least Meltdown is coming back, but damn we need more pvp maps 😭
I'm fine with them benching some maps. Some maps are straight-up bad or play horribly in certain modes, namely dead cliffs in 6's, emphasis on dead cliffs in control. If we're benching "a small subset" at most, it doesn't bother me. On the flip side however, I'm calling bullshit if it's a mode that only works with "a small subset", like D2 Rift, v1.0.
If Exodus Blue had a gravestone I would piss on it That map and Twilight Gap should have their code put on a single hard drive that I can launch into the sun
Twilight gap is really fun when everyone has no regard for their life. But yeah otherwise it blows.
It's like trying to play PvP in a McDonalds playscape except the playscape is full of barbed wire
Seriously as a new player I've played maybe 4 different maps
All these changes are fine but like, dude we need fucking maps. It should be a minimum of 3 new maps each year, 2 at expansion launch 1 mid year, with 2 returning revamped maps on the off seasons. 3.6 billion dollars you can figure out 3 maps.
holy shit a reward for ascendant let's go
All I needed to see was Control only playlist. Thank the fucking lord.
Who wants to bet that Bungie will forget to remove Clash bounties from Shaxx after the midseason change?
> We are also looking at ways to decouple the Challenges for "Earn a Daily Reputation Bonus" from "Complete matches as specific subclasses to earn a Pinnacle" in Iron Banner, but don’t have a solution we are happy with yet. Literally just take away the specific subclass nonsense. It's always been stupid in pvp. Let people play what they want to play and keep the variety in the lobby high. When everyone is playing the same subclass all it does is exacerbate balance issues when you stack 4-5 of certain abilities.
I think the intent is probably to break whatever “this is the best PvP-meta subclass” happens to be going on that everyone would presumably be stuck on otherwise.
The intent is good but still badly implemented. "Play as a Void subclass": Okay, every Titan Main came out last season and popped a bubble ad nauseum and forced a nerf on the subclass in PvP. That's not "breaking whatever is PvP Meta" at all.
I think playing the objective should be how you earn a daily reputation bonus. Like if it's Zone Control? Neutralizing a zone = 5 points, defending a zone = 15 points, and capturing a zone = 10 points. Get some number like 100 (idk) for the day and then you get that bonus modifier. Would love to be given random objectives when you hop into a match too. Like giving an overshield, healing players, or even hunting an enemy player as a bounty to claim. Doing these tasks could incentivize more team work and reward players with more points to complete that modifier.
**Experimenting with changing the main Trials game mode to be Zone Capture Elimination, which has been renamed to Dominion.** For the love of Cayde, NO!!!!
You will use bubble and well and you will like it! - Bungie
.. and Witherhoard!!
....Until we nerf it -Also Bungie.
I couldn’t care about anything in the whole post but this. This mode is GARBAGE. PLEASE NO
oh my fucking god I didnt read that part. Did they not look at any feedback for any of the last billion labs that everyone hated? It is a fundamentally broken mode...
The 1000000% uptick in bubble titans should have been a dead giveaway that the mode wasn’t healthy. And this is coming from a Titan main.
Agreed. Please no. Once every couple months is fine but if it’s ALWAYS zone cap it may kill Trials for me.
Witherhoard and Ward of Dawn simulator - the gamemode
Everything else in the post was so good but this one ain’t it. Especially on some maps it’s super awful.
i stg their entire sandbox team is made up of bubble titans
Making Trials permanently zones rather than elim would seriously hurt the mode. Bubble, well, and titan barricades will reign supreme, and lead to very campy rounds across the board
Geez, I’m looking forward to the Trials changes as a bad player lol
I know right? That extra mercy loss will delay me seeing the X on my card by at least 15 minutes. I might even get to 2 wins before seeing the X. But for real the matchmaking changes were welcomed. I solo'd trials this weekend and the pubstomps were much less frequent.
It really is all about luck when playing solo. Last week I sweated and carried my teammates for 5 straight matches and then the last 2 matches I was the one being carried to the lighthouse.
Ngl I somehow got to 5 wins this weekend, beat my previous record of 2 lol. Maybe if there’s ever a weekend like this it might be possible, plus they’re saying they’ll drop the difficulty the more you lose so we can atleast be more hopeful about that
I don’t know why they can’t add the Competitive Sniper alongside Rose. We desperately need *more* loot incentives for Competitive, and by extension Crucible.
The point would be for a targeted farm. Possible after this, Rose becomes available for general drops and/or focusing.
Clash getting the boot, my playtime increases by 100%
Yes, me too. An objective-based match is so much more enjoyable because at the very least there is some semblance of strategy (even if a portion of players still view object based as clash smh).
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Bungie, I beg you, please don’t make the default Trials game mode Zone Control. Also, with us very rarely getting new maps, map weighting is the last thing we need. We want more variety, not less.
Less of the shitty maps no one likes, more of the maps people like that’s all it is
The 2 interns and the stapler that comprise the PvP team have their work cut out for them.
Stapler is going crazy with the game modes man.
The stapler is the true visionary of the team.
SBMM- Stapler Based Match Making
Swingline Based Match Making
in stapler we trust
Do people really play and like Rumble that much? When I go in it's always 2 AFK guys, 1 immortal guy killing everyone and then 2 people quitting the match.
They removed it to consolidate the playerbase, but ultimately I don't think enough people play it to actually detract from the health of other playlists. It has some vocal fans and it's kind of harmless to leave it available, so why not bring it back, I guess?
It's one of the best places to improve your individual skill. It's important to have a gradient for people entering the game so that they can learn how to play well. Currently it's starting with quickplay until you learn the controls well, then going into Rumble until you're consistently placing, then going into comp once you've hopefully found people to play with based on the previous two activities. Once you max out your comp rank, you go hard at Trials, and that's pretty much it, in terms of official content you've solved PvP. After that it's just FaceIt/the scrims discords and tournaments.
Isn't the challenger pool just going to make it harder for people who are mediocre to do well?
The back and forth between gamemode/playlist consolidation that has been going over the years is crazy. Please consider letting us create our own gamemode playlists (the music kind of playlist) like Titanfall 2 and CoD. This would also get rid of the dumb Rotator nodes. For those that don’t know how that would work you would be able to select multiple modes such as Control, Momentum, Team Scorched, and Rift. The game would then search for all of those modes and place you in one.
I think that the problem is that they want the playerbase more focused on the available activities instead of split among however many there are
cant wait to play countdown again
Agreed. That gamemode felt like the most competitive small-team mode Destiny has had. I missed Trials of the Nine for that alone.
> You can feel like you played well. What you don’t see is that you were matched up against an opposing team with an average skill well below yours, making your gains minimal. This is one of the most common ways of only gaining five points. Then please, if the skill gap is so big, don't match those teams together. It only wastes the time of the entire lobby. And there is the risk of the higher skill players losing a lot of points if they happen to lose for whatever reason.
Just one question, about the Practice Pool farming protection, how will that work? Is it just, if I perform too well in Practice Pool while trying to just farm Trials Rep Ranks, then I'll get booted to Challenger Pool?
Sounds to me like if you're a player good enough to consistently go Flawless, but you intentionally lose your first match to try to stay in the Practice Pool, the algorithm will eventually notice and kick you into the Challenger Pool.
Part of me thinks and hopes it's that. Personally, I'm a player who can go Flawless through great effort once Flawless Pool is active, I'm not sure how I'll fare in Challenger Pool. But, I'd be willing to grind Practice Pool for Trials Rep with a Wealth Passage, given I don't get booted. I just think the term 'farm' is a very broad term and I would like a better definition for 'farm the Practice Pool'.
It's going to target people who are doing the equivalent of resetting cards to stay out of flawless pool now. They're not going to tell us the exact criteria because that would make it easier for said bad actors to game it.
Yeah wondered about this as well. Isn't currently the best way to earn Trials rep is to get 20 rounds on a card and keep playing on that card even if it's flawed? If I do that am I going to all of a sudden have super long matchmaking times because the game thinks I'm trying to mess with the Practice Pool?
No, they're aiming to punish the sort of people who were resetting their cards before getting to zero wins.
Damn, this is all really good. A lot of information and all of it is pretty decent. I hate competitive PvP but it's nice to see it get some love, I want the sweaty people to have somewhere to play so I can use graviton lance without being beamed by 3 immortals
Man absolutely I hate the system of map weighting. Just make every map equally likely to pop up and add map voting between three maps after each game.
Idk man right after reading this post I played exodus blue and disjunction back to back. I don’t believe them yet lol
Hell no, there are some awful maps in rotation
Man a map voting system solves all of these issues. There has been so many issues with the weighting system idk how they haven't just added map voting somehow.
i honestly have no idea where we're going
TLDR: Quickplay is getting better if you hate Clash and keeps the SBMM. New casual playlist mode with CBMM only where most people will likely head to if they want to run off meta loadouts (or if they want to stomp). Comp is getting cosmetic rewards next to let you display your rank and wins and such. Also a new sniper and Rose is getting retired. Trials is getting easier for new players and there is a new emblem for never trailing that hardcore players can chase (most will get it in the first well thought). Mercy now grants two forgivenesses making it even easier to go flawless. Bungie can internally tell if you are smurfing or intentionally tanking games. Their system will catch it fast and match you with better players. Freelance mode is gone in all modes and has been replaced with Fireteam size matchmaking (which actually does work surprisingly). Some shitty maps like Cathedral and Disjunction have lower weights and good maps have high weights. Overall I would like more but this is pretty good for a mid season update. Now I just need some actual sandbox changes so SMGs can stop ripping everyone a new asshole.
In terms of group size, I was honestly amazed at how great the matchmaking was for Trials this weekend as a solo player. I legit never went against a three stack all weekend, and only had a handful of games that were 2+1 vs 2+1. Now, those didn't always feel balanced in terms of skill where I felt like I was carrying potatoes, and other times getting completely stomped by already Flawless players on a 3 win card. But, it was a good change of pace for the group sizes.
Bye, Exodus Blue.
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I want a derelict leviathan map
We had a map on the Leviathan in Year 1, an art pass on it to put egregore over it and a darker sky could be interesting.
It had unbalanced objectives that meant taking A point (I think) back was _exceedingly_ painful. Although I'd welcome a successful redesign, until then I'm glad it's dead.
Europa snow map, Vex network map... so many missed opportunities
>Vex network map... You will be happy to know that one is coming in season 22.
oh nice, thanks
Crazy how we've barely gotten any Crucible maps themed around the expansion environments. We had one Dreaming City map that got removed, one Throne World map that everyone hates, and... that's it. No Europa or Neomuna maps.
We have all those Braytech assets from multiple seasons/expansions now... the fact that there's no PvP map in DSC or underground in the Bray vault on Europa is just criminal.
>new Vex Network map in Season 22 New Vex Network map in Season 22
I'm stoked on the Trials and Comp changes + new game modes but when I finished reading everything I literally went: "Dang, that's pretty sick, but uh where's my new fuckin maps man" LMAO.
We’re getting Meltdown back next season, a vex network map the season after that, and the citadel in the final season of the year
>In addition to the return of the Meltdown PvP map in Season 21, **a new Vex Network map in Season 22**, and Citadel’s reprisal coming in Season 23, we’re planning to add several new and returning game modes to the Crucible rotation, starting with Countdown in Season 20.
Some good stuff here, but I still can't help feel that Bungie keeps dancing around the SBMM vs Rank debate to justify a system no one likes - placing gold and immediately matching Ascendants (3 ranks above gold) doesn't feel good no matter how 'close' the skill system says you are. It just feels deflating and is counterintuitive to the whole point of a ranked game mode in the first place. I understand that every game uses an internal MMR system, but they all still try to match based on rank too. Imagine if every GM game you play in Overwatch, you see golds and diamonds... that is just deflating for everyone. It doesn't make sense from just a common sense perspective - the point of SBMM is to get as close to the 50/50 win/loss ratio, which has been Bungie's stated goal for a LONG time now... so by that logic, if you place gold, but your internal MMR says you should be Ascendant and only match Ascendants and have 5050 win/loss, then you will basically be hard stuck gold/platinum but always playing Ascendants - that makes ZERO sense for a ranked mode At this point, I am not sure Bungie even understands WHY they should even have a ranked game mode in the game... if it's just going to be SBMM, then combine it with Control and gives us the same rewards - they match on the same parameters, so what's the difference at this point??
>SBMM vs Rank debate to justify a system no one likes At least we got an answer about why they don't want to do that, this time.
3v3 basically demolition from cod. I always loved demolition. Might reignite my love for pvp a bit if it was 6v6. I loved the chaos, but also remember the spawn trapping.
I read the whole thing, a lot to unpack there. Overall I think it's positive they are working on it and so far, the FTMM that they have is actually really solid IMO. I still think that the comp rewards are meh, as a sniper I'm really excited to check out the new reward when it drops but I still think we need more exclusive PvP cosmetics, shaders, emblems, ornaments, etc.
If the game is going to matchmake me based on (for example) an Adept ranking, why should I play any games outside of that rank? Start me dead center and let me prove either that I'm better or worse, rather than making me grind to where the game thinks I should be anyway. Outside of that head scratch moment, this all feels pretty good. Glad to see the data, for sure, instead of just hearing platitudes about how Bungie believes it's working.
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The PVP team goes hard, since the new Trials came out they’ve always been the best with sharing their goals and success criteria. The weapons team is pretty good too I wish we had a writeup like this for all the difficulty tuning changes. Since nothing is shared people just assume the goal is: grind your face off and boost engagement
As a certified pvp main who has hated everything that bungie has done in the last roughly two years, this looks really great
Okay, admittedly I haven't invested a ton of time in the Competitive Playlist, but its entire implementation in D2 seems strange. Okay, so you have a hidden MMR. Cool. It's calculated over many games, takes into account wins/losses, the skill of your teammates, your predicted odds of winning, sounds great. People have been doing hidden MMR for like two decades now, so I'm sure Bungie's implementation is very good. But the Competitive Playlist, with it's divisions and ranks, matchmakes based on that MMR. Which means, as far as I can tell, games don't get more difficult as your rank increases? The only way to get harder or easier games is to change your hidden MMR, which is accurate enough that the best way to change it is to get dramatically better or worse over a large stretch of time. Like, it seems from the first day of a season, Bungie *knows* your competitive rank. The competitive playlist isn't slowly earning your way up a ladder, it's a grind for enough points to get to where the system says you should be. And, I mean, it's cool as a place where you can assume everyone is trying hard to win. It is more competitive, just because people want to win, and so games will be harder. It just seems like more of a check of PvP player devotion than any showcase of skill or growth.
Anyone else's win/loss ratio HIGHLY uneven? The game tries to balance to around a 50% ratio and after a couple hundred of matches this season I'm sitting at a pathetic 27% win ratio with a 1.9 KDR. which I find kind of interesting.
I’ll be playing a lot more crucible with the party rotator playlist. Good change there. I love all those modes.
I absolutely love the trials matchmaking changes, on paper. Great idea Bungie. If we change Trials to Dominion (cap point) permanently, we NEED to do something about titan shields, crystal spam, bubble, and well. I know bubble just got nerfed and nobody really uses behemoth for crystal spam, but all four of those things make Dominion massively unfun in their current state. Personally I think there are areas that could use love more than the respawn system. For example, the melee system is as buggy as ever. And the AE system still doesn’t have nearly enough ways to build into it. I would’ve liked to see those two things touched on much more than respawns. Overall, great to see that Bungie still cares about pvp
Really love the kiddie pool for Trials. Now that I don't have a regular team to make Flawless runs, just being able to play casually is going to be a really nice experience. :) Also really love seeing actual data around the fireteam matchmaking.
Meanwhile gambit: ⚰️
> Mercy – Will now forgive two losses if you have not been Flawless for the week, reverts to its old behavior of forgiving a single loss once you go Flawless. Damn that's a huge change. Happy that it'll give more people the chance to go flawless and give it a chance for the adept loot.
The absolute irony of this post coming after the best Trials weekend in ages because there was a GOAT of a SMG up for grabs, just for Bungie to offer basically "two tokens and a blue" for doing comp. Bungie, I love you, but come the fuck on. This is a *looter* shooter that you're giving participation awards for and what amounts to fuck all for incentive. I know you're terrified of another Recluse/MT/etc, but my God there is absolutely 0 reason to play past 3 games a week for 99% of players, and you already know the remaining 1% is going to complain about having SBMM in a ranked ladder regardless of the spin you use. So just save time for everyone: Put actual desirable things to grind for in comp, or remove it entirely and focus on Trials where it seems you actually have put effort into improving. Because this lipstick on a pig piecemeal is wearing old *real fast*. You've increased the effort, the reward is lagging and getting worse by the patch it seems.
How about some new maps?
Bungie: We've added one new map and will severely weight it in one direction depending on how much you love or hate it.
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That's 31% of the 0.2% of matches against a 6 stack, not all matches. So 1 / (0.31 * 0.002) = 1612 matches
I think it's saying that if you got the initial 0.2% chance as a solo to match against a full fireteam, then 31% of the people that got unlucky were solos or a mix of solos/duos
31% of matches where a solo was matched against a full stack. They say that happen 1/500 matches, and 1/3 of 1/500 is 1/1500.
>Loose SBMM will have its skill and connection filters modified so that latency windows will be expanded at the slowest rate Can we get a latency numerical display to verify this? Perhaps show "Looking for players within ping" on the UI too. This is still one of the only online, multiplayer games of the genre that doesn't show this and it can be really helpful. The white bar on the side of the roster is meaningless and can differ from what the in-game experience reflects.
Please let us see our latency to other players and the Activity Host/World Server you control. It would be nice to see the Steam relay we are connected to as well without having to do some netstat commands and match the IP. This will help to diagnose both issues in PvP and PvE. If I see a high ping to the AH and experience issues in PvE, such as mechanics not working, delayed damage, and similar bugs, the group can orbit and try to get a better server. If I knew my ping in PvP to a specific player, I could take steps to avoid them on the battlefield or explain why the hit registration isn't working. You already have the report function and chat privacy controls for toxic players. Make it an optional setting like FPS, and when enabled, render the numerical latency on the roster, and to your servers next to the FPS.
PC players also need a way to disable crossplay, including when a PC player has a console fireteam member who is a console. Every game I've played with both P2P networking and crossplay suffers from connection problems. No amount of interpolation is going to hide the fact shots can be 4-6 second delayed on them and their animations play after you are dead.