Bungie has more changes on the way for the Destiny Crucible

Sure, you’re probably not playing Destiny right now, but someone else certainly is. While the current solar system of activities feels a bit barren and lifeless, the Crucible is still one of the finest arenas around within which to test your skills and guns. There’s already been some big changes this year, with match-making switching back over to quality over skill, but Bungie isn’t finished yet.

In the newly rebranded “This Week at Bungie” blog post, the studio dished out news on two new Crucible playlists that are on the way: Freelance 6v6 and Freelance 3v3.  As you’d imagine, these are playlists for the solo guardians, so you won’t find yourself dropping into a Mrs map where your team of gangly and uncoordinated Tower dwellers have to face off against a team which regularly visits Mercury after a weekend in the Trials of Osiris.

These playlists will supposedly offer a “much more diverse experience,” and feature multiple modes on all of their maps. The 6v6 mode includes Clash, Control, and Rift, while 3v3 has Salvage, Skirmish, and Elimination. Other tweaks include 3v3 modes starting all guardians out without any special ammo once a round begins. Which means that the likelihood of walking into a shotgun blast at the start of a match decreases dramatically.

“The PvP team wanted to increase the use of primary weapons, especially at match-start,” senior designer Derek Carroll explained.

Sniper rifles and shotguns, in particular, inspire great happiness or sadness depending on which end of the weapon you find yourself. We wanted to somewhat delay that gratification (and sadification).

Rumble and 6v6 will remain unaffected in Destiny, as Carrol explained that “the larger gametypes are generally less sensitive to initial conditions, which gives us more freedom to have special weapons going from the beginning.”

Smaller gametypes like Skirmish are a bit more hardcore, with more weight applied to each player in the match, so we felt we could try pushing Primary weapons for those initial engagements. Conversely, Control is the friendliest place to enter the Crucible, so we wanted to make sure that we don’t present new players with a fundamentally different game than what they’re used to.

Other tweaks include improved latency across all playlists and the introduction of the Damage Referee. According to Networking engineer Paul Lewellen, this is a codename “for upcoming changes to the way Destiny handles things that can go wrong when you’re playing games online. Our goal is to give you a better experience in the Crucible when there are Internet problems outside of your control.”

That February update will hit on the ninth at 10AM PST, and includes the upcoming tango de la muerte event of Crimson Days. The tweaks sound small, but they’re pretty significant for anyone who sunk quite a few hours into the Crucible. Now to see if Xur has anything worth purchasing for the multiplayer, later today.

Last Updated: February 5, 2016