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Destiny 2

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9/19/2021 11:41:09 PM
1

Trials v Competitive, and The Pursuit of "Balance"

The recent changes to matchmaking in Trials are proof that new weapons must be added as competitive (Glory) rewards, and our current sandbox reveals that Luna's Howl and Not Forgotten should never have been touched. I understand there is a crippling fear surrounding Pinnacle PvP weapons after the Three Horsemen: Mountaintop, Revoker, and Recluse. However, that fear from Bungie and the community has led to the worst possible outcome for loot in PvP playlists. Several years worth of painstakingly farmed RNG loot was sunset to essentially kill just those three weapons, and a mere handful of Legendary outliers... Only for new weapons to be (re)issued, despite a gargantuan amount of RNG, with similar and potentially stronger perk combinations. Slideshot Ignition Code may not have micro-missile, but a Velocity MW + any of several Launch perks make it difficult to tell. Luna's/NF were 3-tap 180 Handcannons, but now you don't even have to hit Headshots with Vulpecula + Harmony. Mulligan may not guarantee that a round returns to your Magazine, but I've been allowed to miss FIVE times with Occluded Finality before finally picking off my target on Distant Shore. QuickDraw+Harmony Fractethyst makes peak Felwinter's Lie/Astral Horizon blush. etc. This list will continue to grow, and we simply have to trust that Bungie stops themselves before making another mistake like the aforementioned Three Horsemen. Mind you, this is all before we arrive at Adept Trials loot. Prior to that first weekend of the Trials Revamp, few people even considered attempting a Flawless passage with a Passage of Mercy due to the relative skill-level of Trials regulars (i.e. Sweats) and the prevalence of hackers. Hackers ran so rampant that even the genuine top 0.X% dreaded or regularly avoided the playlist, prompting this revamp in the first place. My argument isn't that 3 stacks should be guaranteed 5 trips to the Lighthouse and dozens of post-Flawless wins by farming solos. You should absolutely have to come correct in order to achieve and sustain Flawless, but I firmly believe that any and *all* RNG loot must be farmable to a significant enough degree to warrant playing a Looter Shooter like Destiny 2. Trials has too much loot that is too potentially powerful for the Playlist to be anything other than the first weekend of the Revamp, with *minor* tweaks to post-Flawless matchmaking. Especially considering how many borderline filler perks exist on every single desirable weapon. RNG loot must be HIGHLY farmable for any sense of "competitive integrity," to remain intact. As it stands now the very best players in Trials could genuinely encounter .1% bad luck to still not see their desired roll after 100s of flawless drops, and a first timer pushed through via SBMM may end up with an objectively better weapon after 1 trip to the lighthouse. That's where dedicated competitive rewards with static, but powerful perk sets serve as a goal for players interested in constantly improving to compete at the top level of Destiny PvP, and that's where I believe there is currently a massive disconnect in Bungie's approach to the new Matchmaking for Trials. Instead of attempting to maintain Trials as a highly exclusive playlist (but also trying to push below average players up with *very* restrictive and deterministic matchmaking), they should reconsider the matchmaking and lean far more towards the Revamp debut, or at the very least implement the new Flawless matchmaking to Passages instead of players. Bungie really likes metrics, but you can't like metrics and expect to cultivate an elite PvP fantasy when you force a 50% W/R on people trying to beat truly hellish RNG. However, that pill is 100x easier to swallow when you know for a fact that every player who manages to climb the mountain is met with the exact same powerful rewards that you'll be met with should you also succeed. In short, Adept Trials weapons should be treated as Pinnacle weapons with powerful static rolls, or (much more preferably) Trials should move closer to the Revamp debut with more minor matchmaking tweaks and Pinnacle weapons should be reintroduced to the Glory playlist. Were they to refocus their Competitive vision in the Competitive playlist, Trials would remain the weird hybrid of accessible and exclusive that it was on the 11th of September, and the sweatiest of the sweatlords would have consistent long-term goals to chase in Glory.

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