Thoughts on Trials? (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Saturday, September 16, 2017, 12:54 (2422 days ago) @ squidnh3

I'm not very fond of the crucible in general, but I was a HUGE fan of Trials of Osiris in D1. It's obviously very early still, but my first impression of Trials in D2 was not good at all. For me, it has lost just about everything that made Trials so much fun for me in D1. I don't think 4v4 works for the mode very well, nor does the gametype. The pre-match intro was cool the first time I watched it, but by the 2nd game I was already wishing I could skip it.

I was a huge fan of D1 Crucible and Trials, and I have occasionally mentioned I haven't been very happy with the direction Bungie has been going with PvP.

My first impressions were not good at first, but after playing for a little longer (and having some more success), I'm a little happier. A couple of thoughts:

You have to consciously not do things that were successful in Destiny 1. D1 was often very rewarding to highly aggressive attacking moves, but D2 is not. It's much better to let the other team be the aggressor, and give some ground and then encircle (sort of a rope-a-dope). This means that...

I think this is a big part of what is rubbing me the wrong way. Not just that it is different... but that it is different in a way that changes the flow of the game for the worse IMO. A lot of it comes down to 4v4 in place of 3v3. In D1 Trials, there was a great balance to the risk/reward strategic decisions that came into play. Staying with your teammates provided a certain strength in numbers, but left you equally open to flanking maneuvers. Splitting up from your team was risky, but had the potential to pay off in a big way. And the small team sizes limited the potential risk. If I went off solo, I might run into 1 opponent, or maybe 2, or worse case scenario all 3. 1v1 I can usually handle. I can even engage 2 enemies by myself and keep them busy long enough for my teammates to flank them. If I run into all 3 by myself, then I'm often screwed but not always, and the chances of that are low.

But with a 4v4 gametype, the benefits of staying all together start to outweigh the benefits of splitting up. A group of 4 will usually vaporize a lone player before they have time to escape, and 4v2 doesn't usually go much better. Even if I split from my team and successfully get into a good flanking position, the best I can usually hope for is to get 1 kill before the other 3 opponents spot me out of position and waste me (I've had better results than that once or twice, but only because the enemy team totally dropped the ball).

So what 4v4 tends to turn into is a series of long-range standoffs until somebody scores a kill, and then it becomes a route as the team with superior numbers overpowers the shorthanded team. Obviously there are exceptions to that, but more often than not, that is how 4v4 seems to play out in Destiny 2 in my experience. And I just find that stale and predictable.