This week at Bungie, we're talking crucible.
Eliksni Quarter Event
- Starts next Tuesday
- Donate Captain's Coins to help improve the Quarters
- Can be found in destination chests, Lost Sectors, public events, ketchcrash, and expedition
- Also can be found in raids, Dares, and playlist activities
- Earn personal rewards like an emblem, upgrade materials, and a new ghost shell
- Community contributions will lead to "thank you gifts", including seasonal deepsight weapons
- Event is 2 weeks long
Seasonal Story
- Ketchcrash and Expedition dialogue now matches story progression
- Scallywag Title changes made
- Now 10 ruffians instead of 50
- 14 vendor upgrades instead of 23
- First Mates only need to be summon once
- Seal requirement dropped from 9 triumphs to 8
Security Update
- More mitigations added to BattlEye to prevent network manipulation tools
The Future of Crucible
Goals
- Quickplay, rotators, and labs should be fair and fun
- Iron banner is for everyone
- Trials matches you up against worthy opponents to test your skill
- Ranked Play is high stakes with fair matches that help you improve
- Private matches are for you to have fun with friends
Playlist Updates
- Quickplay will now include Clash and Control
- Quickplay retains loose SBMM
- Weekly rotator is purely connection based
- Rotation includes Momentum Control, Mayhem, Team Scorched, Rift, and Rumble
- Competitive/Freelance 3v3 is now a playlist that rotates between Survival, Rift, and Showdown
- Comp will use a tighter SBMM
- Crucible Labs S19 will feature 3v3 Rift on asymmetrical maps
- Labs includes 25% rep bonus and uses connection based
- Private Matches not changing
- Trials will replace Crucible Labs when active
- Trials uses ticket based match making and the Flawless Pool
- Iron Banner replaces the Quickplay node
- Iron Banner moving to loose SBMM
Playlist Health
- Bungie uses average population and playtime per player to determine state of Crucible modes
- Iron Banner, Control, and Trials of Osiris dominate in the current sandbox
- Survival population is ok, but has strong playtime per player
- Momentum and Mayhem significantly outclass Clash and Scorched
- Private Matches outclass both Elimination and Rumble (which both are low)
- This all lead to the shifts above
Rewards
- Created a Crucible seal
- Updated guilding requirements for Unbroken to be easier to achieve in a single season
- Lord Shaxx is getting engram focusing
- Works pretty similar to other vendors
- You no longer need to claim crucible engrams into your inventory in order to focus them (they stay with Shaxx)
- New S19+ crucible weapons are drop only, focusing is for older crucible weapons
- Kill tracker ghost shell will no longer appear on Shaxx if you own it already
- Costs for focusing are same as Drifter, but Bungie plans to drop glimmer and shard requirements in Lightfall for all vendor focusing
- With legacy focusing in Lightfall, Bungie plans to add ways to get old crucible armor sets
Iron Banner: Fortress
- New game mode for S19
- Launches Jan 3rd and Caiatl is somehow involved
- Similar to zone control, but Bungie is teasing
- Iron Banner Taking King armor being brought into D2
- Old Iron Banner auto and slug from early D2 getting reworked and brought forward for this event
Matchmacking Techniques
- Bungie adding Fireteam based matchmaking to Quickplay in order to improve team balancing
- Dynamic Skill match making being added around January to help improve queue times for those at the high and low end of skill pools
- Suspensions eased up in Quickplay, and they now show the player the length of suspension
Trials
- New Machine Gun and 140 hand cannon being added in S19
- Looking into adding Fireteam matchmaking in future to eliminate need for freelance
- Working on Trials lab mode for S20 that will experiment with a new system that removes the flawless pool
Lightfall: Crucible Maps
- Will be getting 2 reprised D2 maps, and 1 new map
Competitive Division
Goals
- Balanced and competitive matches for everyone
- PvP Divisions being added as a ranking system
- Have places that are competitive and ones that are more chill
What is it?
- S19 replaces Glory playlist with a laddered 3v3 Ranked playlist
- Divisions are copper, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, adept, and ascendant
- At start of season, you play 7 games to earn your initial rank
- First season, the highest you can start at is Gold 3
- Division rating based on match outcome, how your skill ranks in the division, individual performance, and individual performance compared to others in the match
- Each match gains or looses rating
- In order to jump divisions, or prevent falling out of you, you must win 2 out 3 games in a promotional series
- At Gold or higher, you will lose rating weekly if you do not play enough matches
- Divisions will include an intro quest
- No unique grindable rewards to your division beyond showing off the rating, i.e. no Pinnacle weapons
- Divisions do give you a reputation multiplier for all Crucible playlists, going from 1x to 1.5x
- That multiplier stacks with double rep weeks
- MIDA Multi-Tool catalyst is now a rare drop on any win in the Crucible
Participation rewards
- There are rewards for hopping into the playlist
- The first is the handcannon, Rose
- Now has random drops and an updated perk pool
- Hybrid Frame: shoots like a 140RPM, but allows movement speed rewarded from old 150RPMs
- Perks will benefit 3v3 play
- Intro quest gives you your first drop
- The Comp playlist has a weekly challenge that helps you earn another drop each week
Future Rewards
- Cosmetic rewards will be added post Lightfall
- Expect details to change