While Destiny 2 players have already seen massive changes in Trials of Osiris starting with this season, it seems Bungie isn’t stopping there. The studio announced that for this week, the Trials of Osiris will be replaced with Trials Labs: Capture Zone! This is the first Trials Labs spun by the developer, and this won’t be the last. Bungie has mentioned that they are collecting data and feedback, and players can expect more experimentation to take place as the season goes on.
Destiny 2 Trials Labs: Capture Zone Explanation:
- 30 seconds after the round starts, a capture zone is enabled. Players can capture this zone to win the round – or just eliminate the other team like normal.
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- The capture zone has a waypoint from round start, including a countdown timer, so everyone will know exactly when and where it will be.
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- The capture zone starts in the middle of the map in the first round and changes location each round.
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- The team who just lost gets the advantaged spawn location.
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Players can also expect double Trials rank points for every match as well for this weekend.
While that’s happening this week, Bungie has also given an explanation to some of the changes they’ve made. It’s a rather long read, but well worth it if you’re curious where the developers are coming from.
We tried something new for Trials this past weekend, something that has been requested in feedback since Trials launched back in Destiny 1. We tested out separating off flawless players (and their fireteams) from players who hadn’t yet gone flawless that week. Before we discuss what to expect this week (and in the future) we’d like to talk about the goals we have for matchmaking in Trials of Osiris and look at some key data points for the first two weeks.
- It allowed players a low barrier of entry and expectation to try the mode out.
- And more importantly, it increased the population enough that fireteams of mid-skilled players landed more wins than if they only matched against other mid-skilled or high-skilled teams.
Regarding blwlouts and solo play, Bungie has a lot to say:
KEEP SOLO PLAYERS PLAYING
- Week 1
- Solo Wins: 23% of games
- Blowouts (5-0 Losses): 38% of games
- Week 2
- Solo Wins: 36% of games
- Blowouts (5-0 Losses): 29% of games
KEEP GAME QUALITY HIGH (MAKE SURE MORE MATCHES FEEL COMPETITIVE, ESPECIALLY AT SEVEN WINS.)
OTHER THINGS THAT WORKED
- We had just over 700k players this weekend – only 50k fewer players than Week 1. This is higher than expected, given a normal drop-off after launch combined with Distant Shore being a less popular map. Plus, we had 253k players go flawless!
- Games were 10% longer, mostly due to more competitive games.
THINGS THAT DIDN’T WORK
- We saw 34% less matches played overall, and the number of matches post-flawless dropped by 45%.
- We had reports of significant numbers of players resetting 5-0 or 6-0 cards, but we saw around 16k total cards that were reset while flawless but under seven wins. Given the vast number of games and cards played (2.7m cards started this week), this isn’t a lot, but it is something we are watching, as it is unhealthy for the mode if it becomes more common.
- Normally, we see nearly 50% of the players who go flawless doing so with someone else who is already flawless. Last week, it was 56%! This can either be a traditional “carry” or just playing with friends. That number dropped to 16% this week, which is unacceptably low for ‘friendgame’ content.
- We are waiting until the Sunday morning reset(10:00 AM PT) to enable the flawless pool. This serves as a middle ground between Week 1 and Week 2, and as the semi-permanent placement for enabling the flawless pool. As always, we will be looking at both analytics and feedback – so keep telling us what is working and what isn’t!
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- We are working on some deeper matchmaking solutions which we hope lets us remove the flawless pool. Look out for more info in mid/late October.
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- We are turning off matchmaking help until you have played at least two matches during the weekend.
- Players will no longer get Special ammo replenished when being revived.
- Adding “Hold” functionality to purchase gear from Saint-14 to prevent accidental purchases.
- Weapons received from the Reputation Rank Reward track on Saint-14 will now have their Masterwork Slots active. Previous weapons obtained won’t receive a Masterwork Slot.
- Unfortunately, while we previously announced that we would be removing the matchmaking counter for this week, this change wasn’t quite able to make the 3.3.0.3 patch.
- We expect to take another swing at matchmaking to keep some of the solo/lower skill protections from Week 2 without strongly negatively affecting flawless players.
- We are looking at adjustments to rewards for round and match wins on seven-win cards.
- Other than that, updates and Trials TWAB reports will be less common as we get Trials into a more stable state.
Speaking of Trials, we’ll be posting the weekly map rotation and rank rewards later today, so make sure to check back on our Destiny game hub.
Source: Bungie
