This has been covered in recent TWABs, but I thought it would be worth mentioning here now that we've had some time to see how the new competitive playlists and ranking system are playing out.

If you've always wanted Luna's Howl, Recluse, Mountaintop, Revoker, and the new Randy's Throwing Knife, but never thought you'd be able to pull of the competitive playlist rank requirements, then you just might want to jump back in and give it a try this season.

The TL;DR is this: Ranking up in comp (now called "Survival") is far easier than ever before, with a few small caveats.

I've been working towards reaching Legend over the past 10 days or so (Legend rank being 5500 points). I got as high as 5000 a few days ago, before tumbling back down to 3800. But that's a post for another day. The only reason I bring up my progress is that the highest I've ever reached in previous seasons was ~2600. So the fact that I hit 5000 within a week or so should give you an indication of how drastic the changes are this season.

So what's changed?

In a nutshell, there are 2 major factors that are making it far easier to rank up:

1) The "Freelance" playlist

2) Reworked point-gain calculations

Comp is now divided into 2 "survival" playlists. One of them is straightforward. It's a 3v3 game mode, and you can go in by yourself, as a duo, or a full fireteam of 3. Just like previous seasons, if you do go into this playlist yourself, you can expect to get matched up with randoms and then pitted against full fireteams on a regular basis, which is a tough disadvantage to overcome.

However, the 2nd competitive playlist is called "Survival: Freelance". It's the exact same 3v3 game mode, but it will only let you join if you're a solo player. So you'll never get matched with or against players who are in a party together. In theory, this makes the playlist a bit less brutal for solo players (although I have a lot to say about how its working out in practice, but I'll cover that in another thread later). What it has certainly done is made the standard "Survival" playlist even tougher, because it no longer has any solo players in it. So you're probably only going to find 3-stacks in that playlist. All that said, the fact that the Freelance playlist gives solo players a place to play without worrying about getting matched up against 3-stacks is a big stress relief, and a very welcome addition.

The even bigger point is the way the rank calculations have changed.

When I first jumped into the Survival Freelance playlist, I got off to a brutal start. I lost my first 8 games in a row. "But wait, I thought you said its easier to rank up this season!" Don't worry, I'm getting there. Despite the fact that Matchmaking seemed to be doing everything it could to prevent me from ever winning a match, when I eventually did, I gained somewhere close to 600 points. Then I lost another 3 or 4 games (which in previous seasons would have wrecked my score), but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was only losing a very small amount of points per loss. Then another win, and BAM another ~500 point increase.

I don't know how the ranking system is working exactly, but there does appear to be some connection to a hidden Trueskill rating, or something along those lines. Bungie said that they want players to land at their appropriate ranks more quickly than previous seasons. Whatever they're doing behind the scenes, the experience I've had is that I've never ranked up so quickly, despite the fact that I'm actually losing more matches than I've ever lost in comp before.

I reached 2100 points (Fabled rank) after about 15 games, and only 4 or 5 of those were wins. So while my game-to-game experience was one of the most punishing runs I've had in Destiny PvP, my rank results painted a very different picture. Now that I'm up in the Mythic 2 & 3 levels, things have normalized to more predictable gains and losses.

I've got a lot to say about the way the Freelance Playlist handles matchmaking, which I'll go into in-depth at some point (here's a preview: it's utter shit), but I wanted to stress this in case anyone tries a couple games of Freelance and gets discouraged: stick with it. If my experience is any indication, you might be able to hit Fabled way faster than you'd ever expect, even with a losing record.

Is anyone else playing much comp? How's it going?

I was thinking about trying to out together a team to go into Survival with. Maybe Freelance is the way to go, and we can form a team to hit Elimination instead.

I played Freelance the second or third night Shadowkeep was out. I played five games and won three of them I think. It was a really fun five games, only one was a complete blowout. One was an amazing comeback.

I’m eager to dive in some more, but the raid and leveling kept me away so far.

I don't know how the ranking system is working exactly, but there does appear to be some connection to a hidden Trueskill rating, or something along those lines.

This is exactly what is happening. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they are using some form of the Arena system from Reach, and individual performance is actually one of the factors.

My experience in the Freelance playlist has been mediocre. It seems like the players in it are very lone-wolf types (makes sense) and I find myself abandoned constantly with my flank wide open, or players not pushing in obvious push scenarios. I switched back to normal Survival, and find getting matched with 2s to work better (very, very small sample size).

I played three games tonight. Did well in all of them, won all three of them. The first was a complete blowout, the other two were really tense and pretty close.

I've still played less than ten games total, but my limited experience has been really great so far. I could have lost any of the games I've played, and I genuinely don't think I would have minded much because it wouldn't have felt like absolute horsehit dying to the same Striker Titan three times in row or being steamrolled by a four stack running Not Forgottens and Mountaintops.

I played three games tonight. Did well in all of them, won all three of them. The first was a complete blowout, the other two were really tense and pretty close.

I've still played less than ten games total, but my limited experience has been really great so far. I could have lost any of the games I've played, and I genuinely don't think I would have minded much because it wouldn't have felt like absolute horsehit dying to the same Striker Titan three times in row or being steamrolled by a four stack running Not Forgottens and Mountaintops.

I’ve definitely found that the recent changes to in-super damage resistance are a shift for the better. Supers are still dangerous, but I feel like I now have a fighting chance against them. I’ve managed to shut down quite a few super attacks in the past couple of weeks with my Fusion rifle or shotgun. Sometimes I don’t pull it off, sometimes I get the kill and die in the process, either way it rarely feels hopeless the way it used to.