In Destiny, players won’t quite be able to hop straight into competitive multiplayer action right away. Instead, developer Bungie has tied PvP to your character’s progression.

Essentially, players will have to unlock PvP, according to Eurogamer. However, once you’ve done so with one character, all characters tied to your account will also have access from that moment on.

Investment lead Tyson Green explains the decision: “We found early on that people here in the studio, when they jumped on the game – these were people who were already really familiar with the game mechanics – they would roll a new character, play through the first mission then go right into PvP, and they would just get really beaten up by the other players because they didn’t have a super ability yet and they’d only got an auto rifle from the first mission.”

“And they said, ‘this is really awful, this is a terrible experience!,’ he added. “And we said, ‘you’re right, we have to make sure that doesn’t really happen.'”

“So when your first character unlocks PvP, you’re a little bit further into the game. You’ve probably done one or two of the campaign missions, probably unlocked a special weapon and your super ability. And then once that’s happened we unlock it for all the characters on your account. Once you know how the game works, if you want to take a Hunter into PvP at level three, yeah, we’re okay with that. You know what the game is at that point, so that’s your decision to make.”

In the end, Bungie simply believes that most players will likely want to earn their Super Ability and their “Golden Gun” before heading off in to competitive matches, which make sense. Do you agree?

You’ll be able to test your skills in Destiny’s online experience in the beta this summer, coming first to PlayStation.