This week at Bungie, we're talking Crucible.
Welcome to another TWAB, Guardians. Time is flying by, and we're once again on the doorstep of another Destiny 2 Season. We can't believe we're saying this, but we're already over halfway through November, which means we're just a few weeks away from Season of [REDACTED]. This week, we'll be running through a few fun topics with you all.
I'll be honest with you, we're trying to keep this TWAB under six thousand words. (Spoiler alert: we didn't.) It's always fun to have chonky blog articles, but they can be a bit rough to trim on our weekly communications timeline —sometimes there's just a lot of news. If you want to carve out some time to deep dive, this might end up being a 30+ minute read.
Keep in mind we're taking next week off from our TWAB cycle for Thanksgiving here in the states, so after this read, we won't be seeing you again in a TWAB until December 1.
Before we dive into the gaming news, we'd like to give a spotlight to our Trans@Bungie Inclusion Club. This week is Trans Awareness Week, and they have some wonderful words on its importance and how profits from the Bungie Pride Pin will be used to better our communities. You can also find a code for our Be True emblem below, just in case you haven't redeemed it yet.
Trans@Bungie: In a time as tumultuous as the recent years, it is especially important to remember that we stand alongside each other in times of strife. That's why in this TWAB, we'd like to remind everyone about Transgender Awareness Week starting November 13 and ending on November 19 for Transgender Day of Remembrance.
We here at Trans@Bungie and Bungie as a whole support our transgender and gender nonconforming community, and hope that you will join us in celebrating those who have come before, those with us, and those who will come after us. May your lights continue to shine radiant and proud, as all stars are part of the larger sky, and the world would be darker without you.
As the celebration leads into the Transgender Day of Remembrance, we hope you'll join us in memorializing those in our community who we've lost due to transphobic hate or violence. The transgender and gender nonconforming community faces unique difficulties and hardships, so we once again invite all to show support and remembrance by donning our Be True emblem. Unlock it using code ML3-FD4-ND9 on our code redemption site.
As previously announced, all profits from the Bungie Pride Pin in November will benefit the National Center for Transgender Equality, a wonderful source of information and support for both transgender and gender nonconforming community members and allies alike. We also encourage you to see if there are ways to support your local community year-round.
Since Season of the Splicer, we've been finding our new Eliksni friends in some of the most unexpected places. Many corners of our Tower have become safe havens for them, even if they're struggling with vending machines. A space in the Last City was also carved out to serve as a home for them.
However, we've been noticing that the Eliksni Quarter is a bit... cold. While Spider has set up a cozy little shop to house his business dealings, many are still taking up residence in places without walls, shelter, or warmth. Misraaks is calling upon us to aid in improving their living environment.
Starting next Tuesday, the Eliksni Quarter community event is beginning. Here's how you can help:
As the event progresses, we're excited to see things shape up for our Fallen friends. Stay tuned for updates on your progress.
COMMS ARE CLEAR
Just in time for this little event, we also have a quick message from our development team dealing with narrative voiceovers:
Dev Team: Due to some space pirate meddling, the voiceover dialog in Ketchcrash and Expedition may not have accurately reflected a character's progress through the Seasonal story. We made those bugs walk the plank, and now the correct lines will play for anyone who wants to jump back in for the community event or do some last-minute campaign completion before Season 19 drops.
Scallywag Title Requirements Update
Next Tuesday, we'll also have some changes coming to the Season of Plunder title. Specifically, we'll be reducing some requirements to unlock Scallywag. We have some words from the development team to explain the changes:
Dev Team: We've looked at the data and the Season of Plunder Seal and title is harder to acquire than originally intended. To earn the Seal you will still need to complete the vast majority of Plunder content and show mastery over the Seasonal activities, Seals are meant to be an aspirational goal, but our data shows that certain triumphs were over-tuned. We're taking the feedback around Destiny's grind to heart which is why we made the decision to deploy the following changes before the Season concludes:
- 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.
Stay tuned to Bungie Help for further announcements.
While we know you're hungry for Crucible news, we have one final update for you before we get to the goods. Earlier this week, our Security team made some changes to help protect our competitive Crucible experience (and more!). We're keeping the details a bit light for the sake of security, but here's the update in their words:
Security Team: The team is continuing to improve upon detections and mitigations gained with BattlEye. With their help, we have implemented a mitigation against network tools used to gain an unfair advantage in various activities. We will continue to collect data and observe this behavior to strengthen our detections as time goes on. Competition is best when fair. While we are evaluating this data, we will continue to issue bans to those abusing these methods.
As always, please leverage our in-game reporting tools, or make a report right here on Bungie.net when encountering other players that you suspect may be cheating.
Today we'll be digging into what the Crucible is for Destiny 2. Philosophies behind things like Quickplay and Ranked will be explained, and we'll be speaking about quite a few general changes we're making as part of our upkeep. Some of these sections will be dense. Others will be a breeze of bulleted lists and patch note previews. If you're not into deep diving, here's a quick bulleted summary for you:
TL;DR
Still here? Sweet. The following changes have been developed by the team dedicated to Destiny 2's ritual modes. What started with our "Trials revamp" many Seasons ago has become a fun development cycle that now spans multiple rituals. We've been focusing on given activities (Gambit, Iron Banner, and now Crucible) during Seasonal development to revisit and reset our goals and address player feedback. For Crucible, there's quite a bit on the table, and it's always a multi-part conversation. In early December, we'll have sandbox and balance information. Today we'll be talking about playlists, modes, and the places you play. Without further ado, let's get to it.
Development Team: As a part of our continuing evolution of Destiny, we like to revisit various aspects of the game to see how well they fit with the rest of the game. To help give some context to changes we are making to the competitive ecosystem, we would like to lay out our thoughts on the overall philosophy, our player experience goals, and how different aspects of the Crucible fit together:
With these definitions in mind, let's get into the thick of it. To help us achieve our goals, we have numerous changes planned for Season 19 and beyond.
We began our journey of Crucible updates with a long look at what the current offerings are in Destiny 2. There are objective modes like Control, elimination-centric modes like Clash, and competitive modes like Survival, Elimination, or Showdown. When going through the experience and looking at back-end data, we felt it would be best to streamline some of these offerings and help focus players on specific playlist offerings while meeting our player experience goals that were listed above.
Starting in Season 19, the Crucible screen will have the following options:
The Crucible screen will also update during limited-time PvP events:
Here's an example image of what the Crucible Director will look like during an Iron Banner week with Rumble as the featured weekly rotator mode:
Let's talk strategy and a bit about player populations.
We have a few analytics we like to look at to determine playlist health; average daily and weekly concurrent players as well as weekly playtime-per-player in the playlists.
| Mode | Average Population | Playtime-per-Player |
| Iron Banner | High | High |
| Control | High | Medium |
| Trials of Osiris | Medium | High |
| Survival | Medium | Medium |
| Mayhem | High | Low |
| Momentum | High | Low |
| Private Match | Medium-Low | Medium |
| Elimination | Medium-Low | Low |
| Scorched | Varies | Low |
| Clash | Varies | Low |
| Rumble | Low | Low |
| Showdown | Low | Low |
Key takeaways:
With the findings above, we've decided to move some modes around. We've heard from players that they generally enjoy Clash and would love to see it more often, so we created the Quickplay playlist to feature both Control and Clash. To help focus player populations and invite more players to engage in the solo Crucible combat of Rumble, we'll be moving this mode to our weekly rotator playlist a few times a Season. Elimination will be unique to Trials of Osiris (or Private Match if players would like to practice), and Showdown has been moved to the Competitive Division playlist to give some variety as players climb the new divisions.
As always, we'll be monitoring the experience, conversation, and data as these refreshed playlists roll out. Nothing's set in stone, and we're excited to see how these evolve over time.
Starting in Season 19, players will have new Triumphs and a new title to chase. When creating this new title, we had many goals centered around ways for players to express their Crucible prowess. Slaying enemies, capturing objectives, and even climbing through some of the divisions of our new Competitive Division, which we speak to in-depth towards the end of our Crucible writeup.
Say hello to Glorious.
When it comes to gilding, we've taken a pass on the requirements for Unbroken to relieve stress. Win streaks and reaching specific Glory thresholds over multiple Seasons are no longer required. We will be challenging you to win a number of matches during a given Season and reach the Adept Division (more on that below) for gilding—but all of this can be accomplished within a single Season. If you see someone with a gilded Glorious, you know they are the best of the best.
Lord Shaxx - Engram Focusing
Starting in Season 19, Lord Shaxx will offer the ability for players to focus Crucible weapons and armor. Crucible will be the fourth of the core rituals (after Trials of Osiris, Gambit, and Iron Banner) to get comprehensive engram focusing options, helping players target specific pieces of gear they've been hunting.
Note: Shaxx is using a new engram system that lets us use the engram stored directly on the vendor for focusing, rather than needing to pull it into your engram inventory. Making this change is more convenient for you and lets us more easily shift the main cost burden from "lots of Legendary Shards and Glimmer" to "multiple engrams." While the current costs are similar to Gambit's, expect a larger focusing rebalancing pass (read "lower Glimmer and Legendary Shard costs") with Lightfall, as well as all of the ritual vendors converted over into this new system. A wallet item showing you all of the various engram counts will be available in Season 20.
Additionally, we'll be looking at ways for players to earn older Crucible armor sets through focusing in Season 20, when Lightfall releases. We've previously announced legacy focusing for Trials, Nightfall, and Iron Banner—and this applies to armor sets as well. If you've been asking for the return of the Exile armor set or eyeballing some older Iron Banner pieces, we're looking forward to having those available once more. Stay tuned for more details.
Back in Season of the Haunted, Saladin re-established the Iron Banner as the twice-a-season PvP celebration for everyone. Guardians from all around wear their flaming Iron Banner armor and compete for the love of competition. Since then, we have brought Rift into Destiny 2 and introduced our first new mode since Team Scorched—Iron Banner: Eruption! We want to continue this tradition of introducing unique spins on existing modes. For Season 19, let us introduce you to Iron Banner: Fortress.
In Iron Banner: Fortress, the core gameplay is capturing and holding zones. If that sounds like Zone Control to you, you'd be right! The real fun begins when Caiatl gets involved, but we'll leave some of this for you to experience first-hand when Iron Banner: Fortress launches on January 3, 2023. Let's just say, a few of you may be dying to cap a hill.
Iron Banner Rewards
In Season 19, players can expect to earn a few returning Iron Banner weapons not seen since the earlier days of Destiny 2. If Auto Rifles or Slug Shotguns are your thing, Saladin has something special for you. Updated with random rolls, fresh perks from the last few Seasons, and the Iron Banner Origin Trait, we're looking forward to seeing what rolls you chase.
That's not all. It's been about a year since our last Iron Banner armor refresh. We've seen some wonderful themes throughout the years. Inspirations drawn from ages past, focused on the looks of a true warrior. This year, we'll be returning to some fan favorite sets, coming from an era of a Taken King...
We're expecting these to be a fun complement to many sets in the game and looking forward to your fashion statements coming out of Iron Banner next Season.
Fireteam-Based Matchmaking
Starting in the first week of Season 19, we will be testing a new Quickplay matchmaking parameter that should excite many of you: Fireteam-Based Matchmaking (FBMM). At a high concept, FBMM means that your fireteam's makeup should match your opponents. If you join a matchmaking queue as a full team of six, you should generally match against another full fireteam. Depending on how long you wait in matchmaking, it might start a match against fireteam of five plus a solo. If you wait longer, you might start against a fireteam of four plus a duo (or two solos). If you are a smaller fireteam, you might match with a larger fireteam against two fireteams of similar sizes, or against all smaller fireteams. As with all of our other matchmaking parameters (as explained in the Season 18 TWAB), FBMM can be as loose or strict as we want. For Quickplay we will be fairly generous, allowing slightly mismatched fireteams if Skill is similar and connections are fast.
Once we have ample time to test these matchmaking settings, we're planning to roll them out to more playlists: Iron Banner, Trials of Osiris, and more. As next Season starts just before a holiday period, we'll be taking a bit of time to make sure things are solid. Expect more news and updates in January.
Improving Connection at the High End
Over the last Season, we've been monitoring and adjusting loose SBMM settings that were applied to Quickplay. While we're seeing better matches for many players, we're also seeing issues with player connections when getting into higher Skill bands. To address this, we are planning to roll out a second new matchmaking feature (yes, our programmers and tech designers have been busy) called Dynamic Skill Ranges. At a high level, this feature increases the Skill window our system looks for when matchmaking if you are in a low population Skill bracket or during a particularly low population time (e.g., 2:30 AM Pacific, when many are sleeping or just waking up). The intention here is to increase the window enough to give those playing at low population times additional good connections to choose from, without harming the Skill balance significantly. This is the next step in our evolution of loose SBMM that we introduced in Season 18.
Due to timing (holidays!), we hope to roll out Dynamic Skill Ranges sometime in January, but we expect it to significantly increase connection qualities in matches for the high-Skill players in Control. We don't want to set a firm date just yet (our plans will change as we tune FBMM), but we will have more information as we get closer to pushing this live.
Quitter Suspensions
During Season 18's rollout of SBMM, we applied a competitive quitter penalty to the Quickplay playlist to help ensure that all Skill brackets were getting fair and complete matches. Though it was done as an emergency measure, we eventually made it so that Quickplay had its own quitter-tracking system and didn't share the one we used with Competitive and Trials. For Season 19, we've made the following changes:
As always, we enjoy being transparent about our matchmaking changes. Expect notifications from our awesome Support and Community teams on various social channels when and if we make updates to matchmaking for any node!
While Season 19 has much of its focus on general Crucible playlists, matchmaking, and the introduction of Competitive Division, we do have some upkeep planned for Trials of Osiris. For starters, we're following tradition with two new weapon rewards for players to hunt for. Whether you are hungry for a base model or the fabled Adept variant, we have a new Machine Gun and 140 Hand Cannon up for grabs.
(This is where I'd show you an example image of the Saint-14 Vendor screen, but we don't want to spoil any gear icon watermarks for the new season just yet.)
Additionally, we're looking to add FBMM into Trials of Osiris in the future. By introducing these matchmaking changes to the playlist, we're looking to provide a larger sense of "fairness" for smaller fireteams and eliminate the need for a Freelance node. Solos can match solos or fill in for teams of duos. Fireteams of three will match fireteams of three.
While we won't have changes to the Flawless pool for Season 19, we are working on a new paradigm that removes the Flawless pool but still provides protection for players working on Trials reputation rewards. Expect more information later in Season 19, as our goal is to have a Trials Labs during Season 20.
This past year, we saw the return of two Destiny 2 maps (Eternity, Vostok), one map from Destiny 1 (Cathedral of Dusk), and a brand-new map set on Savathûn's Throne World (Disjunction). Much of our focus for this year of map content was to give players some larger spaces—lanes for sniping, and a bit of range for Pulse Rifles, Scouts, and other ranged options.
For the coming year, we are going to be bringing back two more maps from earlier in Destiny 2, and we've just started production on a brand-new map which we expect to be released in the year of Lightfall.
If you have some experience creating gameplay spaces and would like to join us in creating Destiny content, be sure to check out our Careers page. Specifically, keep an eye out for "World Art" listings in the future!
After the changes to Trials of Osiris, Gambit, and Iron Banner the last few Seasons, we knew we had to look at our ranked play experience next. While the Glory playlist had been home to our core 3v3 Skill-based offering for years, it had fallen behind in the rewards department since we sunset the pinnacle weapons and their quests in Beyond Light. Additionally, it was built onto a hybrid Skill/persistence model to enable more players to get to the top ranks than you would normally expect on a bell curve. We knew we had to revisit the reward structure as well as fit the ranking system to more closely reflect player Skill. We also wanted to create something that would be familiar to players of other competitive games in multiple genres while adding our own flair.
Goals for Competitive Division
What is Competitive Division?
In Season 19, we are removing Glory and adding a 3v3 Ranked playlist, Competitive Division, which is a true ladder-based system.
Our goal is to provide players with ladders to climb and divisions to achieve, giving a more accurate representation of Skill than our current Glory system. Players who surpass Gold and begin to chip away at Platinum, Adept, and Ascendant will represent some of the best Crucible players that our community has to offer. Let's talk a bit about how you climb the ladder. This is a higher-level explanation of how things work. We'll be releasing a Help article closer to launch to go a bit further in-depth.
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:
As you continue to compete in the Competitive Division, your Division Rating is adjusted based on four major factors:
As you earn and lose Division Rating:
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.
Also, we will have a small intro quest that will demonstrate the Competitive Division system and unlock a reward listed later in this TWAB. This quest must be completed once for each account and will be available from Shaxx once you unlock Crucible as a New Light, or immediately for veteran players.
Competitive Division Rewards
Since Competitive division is aimed at drawing a close link between Skill and division, we don't see division as something to really grind for rewards. We don't want someone to feel pressure to play tons of games looking for a drop, all while your Division Rating drops and you ruin your division standing. Instead, we want the primary motivator to be your actual division. We aren't going to be adding any unique grindable rewards outside of those you can get anywhere in Crucible, and really focus our rewards on weekly participation and achieving higher divisions.
Secondly, we are going to be very careful about giving out high-performance rewards for achieving higher divisions. Since these divisions are tightly tied to Skill, some divisions will be completely unattainable to some players, no matter how much they try/play. Having some of the old pinnacle weapons tied to higher Glory had some unfortunate effects on players and led us to eventually add numerous persistence features to the ranking system. To avoid that, we are going to initially keep rewards for achieving a higher division limited to efficiency rewards:
Every Thorn Has a Rose
For our weekly participation rewards mentioned above, we are bringing an old favorite back. That's right, Rose is back for Competitive Division! Rose was originally a Legendary Hand Cannon earned during the Lumina Exotic quest. It has a long history in Destiny, in which it was corrupted then redeemed. It now returns with random rolls and an updated perk pool!
Future Rewards Updates
And with that, we come to the end of our Crucible update preview. We have a little bit of something for everyone, and maybe even a lot of something for everyone. No doubt there are some thoughts and feelings being shared among your Discord servers and texts to friends already, but we'll be watching the conversation as all of these changes roll out.
What do you mean it's halfway through November?
Known Issues List | Help Forums | Bungie Help Twitter
PREVIOUS SEASON PASS AND VENDOR REWARDS
As we approach the end of Season of Plunder, players should ensure that they have collected any earned but unclaimed rewards from their Previous Season Pass page for Season of the Haunted, as well as any unclaimed vendor rewards.
Previous Season Pass rewards can only be claimed up to one Season after a Season concludes. Once we transition into Season of [REDACTED] on December 6, 2022, the Previous Season Pass page will be updated for Season of Plunder rewards.
SAVE YOUR STADIA CHARACTERS
Destiny 2 players whose main characters are from Stadia should set up Cross Save with another platform so they do not lose access to their characters after the shutdown on January 18, 2023. Additionally, after January 18, players with Google Stadia as their primary account should not deactivate Cross Save for any reason. Doing so will result in players completely losing access to their characters.
For more information, please see our Save Your Stadia Characters article.
Stadia players who encounter issues accessing their characters once they set up Cross Save should see our Stadia Cross Save Troubleshooting Guide.
KNOWN ISSUES
While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help forum:
- Players can sometimes die when transporting to the Nightmare realm in the Duality Dungeon.
For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.
Bruno: We are all scared of Telesto, OK? You think fixing it was easy or fun? No, not at all, not in a thousand years... But let's focus on the good stuff today. It's been fixed, and it won't be trouble ever again. Right? Right?
Movie of the Week: Shoes? For Telesto?
Dread it, run from it, Telesto arrives all the same... | #Destiny2 pic.twitter.com/rB8Xzej59N
— AK 影 (@Ansonikage) November 9, 2022
Ivan: While you might have more questions than answers after watching this video, the animation level is just insane. The creator says this video took eight years to produce. Well, it was totally worth the wait!
So, the final question is: Have you danced for Destiny today?
Movie of the Week: Dance of Destiny
Hippy: I'm a simple Hippy. I see cat, I love cat. So, why don't we go ahead and witness this purrfect piece of art that is living its best villainous life with a splash of kitty cuteness? (Eh, Ehh?)
Art of the Week: Witness Purrfection
My Kitness#Destiny2Art #Destiny2 pic.twitter.com/b8r6JrZMua
— Taemiru (@TessKatu) November 6, 2022
Sam: Warlock fashion, and the robe more specifically, is something that I actively believe could transfer really well into our IRL fashion game here on Earth, and I am still slightly baffled we haven't made at least the robes a more common day-to-day look yet... Anyhoo, look at this Warlock drawn in white charcoal. Wouldn't this be a super rad OOTD (outfit of the day)—helmet horn and all—to wear on your next trip to the grocery store? I think so. 😊
Art of the Week: Warlock in White
A traditional white charcoal piece I did involving the Splicer season of Destiny 2! My favourite season out of them so far, was a delight to get to make this!#Destiny2 #Destiny2Art #AOTW @A_dmg04 @Cozmo23 @DirtyEffinHippy @D2ArtEvents pic.twitter.com/vfFaw4KvQE
— Spooky Cartoon TV (Commissions Open) (@Circuitreats) November 10, 2022
Hippy: OK, OK, one more. Just because we couldn't resist just one final nod to our mighty overlord. Just one. OK, bye!
Bonus Art of the Week: "I am in control" - Telesto
"I AM IN CONTROL" - Telesto @Bungie @DestinyTheGame @DirtyEffinHippy @A_dmg04 @Cozmo23 @TheSamBartley @KobOneArt @rDESTNYCREATION
— MrTragicX (@MrTragicX) November 10, 2022
#AOTW #TelestoOverlord #Destiny2Art #Destiny2 pic.twitter.com/BJw0PqeaCO
Was trying to keep this under six thousand, but in the current draft I'm looking at, we've smashed through that initial cap. Keeping this outro short and sweet. Apologies for the brevity.
No TWAB next week. We're out on holiday. Planning to have a blog article from the Bungie Foundation, so keep an eye out. We'll be back with another TWAB on December 1. See you next time.
Cheers,
dmg04
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