The big news in Destiny this week is the launch of revamped Trials of Osiris, to overwhelmingly positive reaction.  I played a lot of games on Saturday in a variety of situations:  17 games with my main carry team of very good players plus me; about 7 games duo queue , 5 games of solo queuing, and then 16 games with two other regular gamers, one on my level and one a bit higher.  The order might matter here since Bungie has said that matchmaking takes into account your “performance” that week.  Here are my first impressions.

Gameplay changes

Three-peeking via sword hilts or emotes have been disabled in Trials (and Survival) and Trials rounds have been reduced from two minutes to 90 seconds.  These are fantastic changes that vastly improve the experience.  Being three-peeked was very frustrating and I’m happy for it to be gone from the game.

Loot Changes

Tokens are gone, and now just completing matches increases reputation towards rewards and results in trials engrams.  We get enhanced progress the more rounds (not matches) we win, up to a total of 20 rounds won for max progression.  If you are on a flawless card (7 wins no losses) and continue to play, every additional win has a chance to drop another roll of the adept weapon of the week as well as ascendant shards and other materials.  And just playing on a 7 win card has a chance to drop enhanced rewards.

Frankly, I could not be more impressed with this loot system.  Everybody gets something just for playing; playing a lot gets you more, and playing a lot successfully gets you even more.  It will now be trivial for top players to get the exact god rolls they want on adept weapons but I don’t see that as a problem since the adept weapons are not overwhelmingly better than the regular versions that everyone has access to.  And they’re using loot to incentivize high-skill players to stay on seven-win cards to help matchmaking for teams on lower-win cards.

Matchmaking Changes

It is now possible to solo queue and duo queue into Trials.  Weekly ‘performance’ is also now taken into account in matchmaking, though it is not clear how.

The change to the loot structure and promotion of Trials for this week resulted in a huge amount of interest and a lot of people jumping in without fireteams.  That’s fantastic for population and having more players is better for everyone.  That said, my first impression is that the solo queue experience is not good and I expect that I will not be playing solo queue unless the experience is different before you go flawless.  Here’s how it went:

My first 17 games were with an exceptional team and we won all of them.  Our first two games were against other teams of three, and then only two of the rest of the 15 games were against other teams.  And we rolled uncoordinated teams.  Frankly, if all of the games were like this I’m not sure Trials would sustain my interest beyond loot farming.

My games duo queuing with a good but less experienced player were ok, and about what I expected.  Our first five games went 5-4 loss, two stomp losses and two wins.  We then lost a couple more stomps and quit but overall it was ok, at least for the beginning of the card.

I then stayed on that card and solo queued for a while.  It was terrible.  Every match was against a team of three (in contrast to my experience in the morning).  And we got stomped every time.  These were the matches and my performance:

I then played with two regular players from my raid team, one on my level and one a bit more skilled.  We had never played crucible together before,  We fell at the gates of the lighthouse twice but had plenty of success and a lot of fun. It was great, even not making flawless.  Here was my performance.

These 21 matches were back-to-back, so same time of day and same matchmaking pools. 

  • Solo queue stats:  0 wins, 5 losses, 9 kills, 28 deaths, 0.32 k./d.  All against premade teams.
  • Team queue stats:  12 wins, 4 losses, 99 kills, 69 deaths, 1.43 k/d. Mix between premade and matchmade teams.

I didn’t suddenly get miles better, so the difference (aside from randomness) is either the difference between having a team and not or the difference between solo queuing with a flawless that week and team queuing with a team member that doesn’t have a flawless that week.  I’m going to solo queue next Friday to see what the experience is like, but unless it is materially different I don’t see a lot of solo queue Trials in my future unless there are changes.

The best possible change would in my view be a freelance playlist.  Premade teams have such a big advantage that having solo queue players in their own playlist would greatly enhance their experience.  

At a bare minimum something must be done about having the matchmaking indicator show the number of players assigned to a lobby during matchmaking.  As it is, premade teams can force matches with solos or duos by backing out of matchmaking if they see that indicator go from 3/6 to 6/6 all at once.  Everyone knows it’s possible, and so everyone knows that people do it.  And no one likes feeling taken advantage of.  Yes, solos sign up for the possibility of randomly matching teams.  They do not sign up for the possibility of preferentially matching teams where they will have a massive disadvantage.

Conclusion

A problem with PvP changes generally is that even when a change is healthy, usually some players will benefit from it and others will be harmed.  And since the natural human thing to do is oppose things that harm us, most people oppose PvP changes that they think harm them even if it’s overall better for the game or the population as a whole.  What Bungie has managed here is to come up with a package of changes that has benefits for everyone and therefore enjoys broad support, at least initially.  Very well done!