Up to this point, Destiny 2’s aspirational PvP mode has not fulfilled its promises to players in being the premiere place to show off skill and power in the game.
The game mode has been overrun by cheaters and a matchmaking system that lacks any skill-based matchmaking. On top of that, it has usually encouraged the players performing at the top of the game’s skill levels to reset their wins and losses and start over when they experience one or two losses. This means that as the average player tries to ascend to the Lighthouse, many find themselves pitted against top tier players in the early few games of their Trials passages.
Because of this, Bungie has done two things to mitigate these problems. First, Bungie has implemented BattlEye anti-cheat, a service that has already proved itself to be capable of rooting out cheaters and banning them from the game. Hand in hand with this change is the decision from Bungie to bar players that do not have the current yearly expansion from playing Trials of Osiris each weekend. These changes are part of the team at Bungie’s move toward making the game more secure and cracking down on players who win trade and use account recovery services.
Second, the Trials experience has been completely revamped this season before it launches on September 10 at 12 p.m. Central Time. The changes to the game mode are aimed at addressing the problems with having people constantly resetting their progress and rewarding players for simply playing the mode at all. Flawless cards still allow players to earn Adept loot, and are the only way to do so in the Trials game mode, but overall these changes make the mode much more forgiving.
With all that being said, let’s dig into the changes implemented in Trials of Osiris this season.
Access Changes
- Reduced the requirements for the Trials Access quest to use lifetime Valor ranks and kills.
- This should open Trials to more long-term Crucible dabblers.
- Trials now allows queuing and matchmaking without a full fireteam.
- We want to allow more players to try the mode out and start earning rewards, even if they don’t have a fireteam.
- You can enter the playlist solo or with a friend, and matchmaking will fill the rest of your fireteam for you
- Freelance Trials (No pre-made fireteams, solos only) will also be available via Labs. More on that below.
- Going Flawless on your own will be hard-to-impossible, but we are sure someone will do it thanks to the other players they match up with!
- Trials of Osiris now requires the annual expansion to play.
- In our efforts to strengthen security around the Trials experience, we’re removing opportunity for players to create numerous free accounts to circumvent cheat detection, bans, and restrictions. (More on Security below)
- This is Beyond Light for Season 15, and will change to The Witch Queen once it launches.
Activity Ruleset Changes
- Round time is reduced to 90s (from 120s).
- Stalling to wait for ability energy is not fun for either the winning or losing team.
- This will not eliminate stalling but will lessen the amount of stalling that can take place.
- We will talk about other plans to help this further down in the article.
- Emotes stay in first-person camera, and Swords can’t be equipped unless you have ammo. (This change is in Elimination and Survival also).
- If you run out of Sword ammo while using it, you will be force-swapped to a different weapon.
- This removes the ability for players to secretly peek around corners without putting themselves in danger.
- Special and Heavy ammo no longer carries over between rounds.
- Having the winning team keep all collected ammo, but the losing team getting set back to default creates too big of a snowballing advantage.
Rewards and Reputation
- Saint-14 is getting new Trials ranks, reputation, and a rewards track.
- Trials tokens have been retired.
- Reputation is gained at match complete, based on the number of rounds won on your Ticket.
- Tickets track up to 20 round wins now.
- Emphasizing winning individual rounds for the core rewards gives every player more achievable goals at all skill levels.
- Since you don’t have to win full matches to get rewards, you always have a reason to keep trying even if you are behind.
- Ranking up gives you a Trials engram (more on that in a bit).
- Powerful Trials engrams show up every three rank ups before your first reset of the Season
- Just like the other ritual reputations, there are other rewards to earn every three ranks – and Trials ranks has one of the unique Trials weapons at Rank 10 and Rank 16 for each of the first three resets of Season 15.
Passages
- Passages no longer track losses – a Passage is either Flawless or not.
- This allows you to keep playing and earning match and round wins for rewards.
- Players may continue to reset their passages after a loss, but are no longer forced to after three losses total.
- Passages track up to 20 rounds won.
- Passages have been re-ordered (Mercy is not super useful unless you are trying to go Flawless) and have all had their prices significantly reduced.
- Passages are now account-wide.
- You can play and earn rewards on any of your characters on the same Passage.
Each week, there are two pinnacle challenges for Trials:
- Win seven matches total on a given weekend.
- Win 50 rounds.
Bonus progress based on the number of wins on your card.
- 3/5/7 win challenges have been removed.
- Once you max out the reputation, you can reset and claim an Ascendant Shard or Exotic engram.
- Like the other ritual reputations, Trials ranks and rewards reset each Season.
- Additionally, we’d like to keep players going deeper into their cards, rather than resetting each time they lose a match.
- Match wins on a seven-win card have a chance to drop extra Trials engrams, Masterworking materials, and high-stat Trials armor.
- The Lighthouse experience isn’t changing.
- A unique pinnacle Adept weapon each week the first time you visit on your account.
- All of the mods and cosmetics are available in the chest to reward return visits.
The Trials Engram
- Trials engrams now decrypt to a random selection from current armor and non-Adept weapons.
- You do not need to unlock a piece of armor or weapon before it shows up in the engram.
- You can Focus your engrams at Saint-14 to decrypt specific items that you have already received.
- If you have gone Flawless that week, you CAN Focus additional drops of the weekly Adept weapon.
- Expect it to be a bit… expensive.
Here is where the changes made to Trials get a little controversial in high skill level communities. The new matchmaking system will match players together with the same amount of wins on their card and similar Trials game performance on any given week. If this matchmaking takes long, the similarity check will widen until it finds enough opponents for the match to start.
That is everything you need to know going into Trials tomorrow regarding the changes made this season, so you should be prepared to hop in tomorrow and start slaying out.
Stay tuned to Gaming Trend for all your gaming news needs.
Noah Anzaldua is a game journalist, Twitch streamer, and a passionate fan of Apex Legends and Destiny 2. Writing and streaming are his passions, and he is carving a career path out for himself. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama where he is majored in News Media, History, and Political Science.
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