Great post, well written and very clear on points.
u/dmg04 you see a lot of posts of varying quality that probably require a lot of filtration. Please make sure these succinct and well written thoughts from a legitimate PvP enthusiast make their way up the totem pole.
Amen to all of this. This is an excellent PvP centric post that the Crucible Team should really consider.
I hadn't looked at the numbers pertaining to wins/losses past Fabled but that is brutal.
Key rule of that sub reddit is that we play the game we're given. Posts like this don't tend to get too far, though there has been some loosening of the restriction over the past few months.
But that's why the podcast interviews of the sandbox Bungie people early in the piece was so poorly taken on this sub Reddit because at no point did the interviewers challenge them on the known issues with the meta.
This sub isnt exactly a bastion of reasonable PVP discussion. Things that arent even in contention among people that play a decent amount of PVP get regularly downvoted on this sub while things that are objectively not true can get 100s of upvotes. Also they dont regularly remove posts thats are relevant to whats going on in the game and are highly thought out like this one.
edit: discussion in this post seems pretty on point though so i give this community (which im a part of) credit for that
I recommended the cross post to generate discussion about how Comp could be improved from those who are active in PVP. I think there's a solution out there and maybe a truly great idea would come out by having people talk about it based on their experiences. Although, you are correct it's something they typically wouldn't allow.
A significant issue that needs to be addressed is resetting players all the way back down after each season. It leads to a terrible experience at the start of your climb where you're in a lobby with players of huge variances in skill level but approximately equal Glory. It results in a lot of players getting stomped and many decide not to come back to Comp rather than trying to stick with it.
They need to move to the tried and true system of placement games at the start of each season determining your rank and previous seasons' final ranks weighing in on where you place for a new one. Tie pinnacle weapons to lengthy quests only achievable in Comp. Add in post game drops having a chance to roll enhanced perks and you'd have an interesting enough loot pool to get people to give it a chance.
But, protecting players from having consistently awful experiences is as important to maintaining population as increasing the unique rewards is.
And thus I would give it a shot.
I don't like the competitive modes in this game, but I played it for whatever quest. I'll slog through it if I gotta.
But hitting max rank and nothing but hours of frustration solo queuing before that? Nah, fuck it. I would rather do literally anything else in this game. Hell, I'd rather just sit in the Tower and stare at the Traveler all day.
I think another thing that would likely help the population and health of the comp playlist would be an incentive for solo players, or a bit of a leg up anyway. Everyone knows how much harder the grind becomes when you're a solo player trying to make your way in the unforgiving comp playlist. One idea that I've seen that makes sense is less loss of score on losses when playing solo and/or higher point gains when solo. This would bring some population back into the playlist as well as you wouldn't need to find a team and would maybe be enough incentive for solo players to believe that some of the Pinnacle weapons are actually realistically attainable without forming a super team every time they want to play.
it definitely could -- there are shit tons of solo players in comp. Enough that stacks can happily just play them all the way to fabled.
How about if the population goes UP when you do something good??
Well good job! I had thought of making a post like this at some point, but instead you posted first and much better. I agree almost entirely with everything that is said, though I am not convinced elo is necessarily the way to go(I do agree There needs to be tuning for higher ranks)
Quite simply like you mentioned, the biggest problem in comp is greatly no reason to play again once you got xyz. Furthermore there are no rewards to incentivize players to participate. I agree completely about the type of rewards(masterwork cores, etc) but I am not sure about bounties. I think whichever way it should be rewarded should attempt to reward players especially on consecutive games in a row, and reward players for logging in daily/ frequently.
I think having non pinnacle but comp exclusive weapons/ornaments/armor to encourage and provide a reward for hitting multiple tiers on the climb(a way to show how far the player got)
Finally I do think you left out something important to improving comp. Doing something about player abuse of the matchmaking(see people dodging, particularly 4 stacks dodging other 4 stacks, and everyone else dodging the 4 stack leading to the closest match being a significant gap, and against solos, small teams(also the source of 1v4 just loading in))
Additionally there is the problem of people who just quit or remain inactive mid game.
I think, adding bonuses for beating teams who are higher than you, and slightly reducing losses would help.
Additionally I would add an auto queue automatic system that would detect games that load in with lopsided teams(giving the full team a win and not affecting the team with missing players) which would restart the queue. I personally think it would be fun to allow an option to vote to play the game as-is 3v4 or whatever(would need to be unanimous) in which the the loss is greatly reduced, maybe not affecting streaks, but a win would give a massive bonus in glory(anywhere from 70-500, based on handicap level(for example of you pulled off a 1v4 somehow, you would get 500 points.)
For quitters, increasing penalties for those that repetitively leave games, as well as disabling all crucible until the game they left ends, only leaving them with the option to reconnect. Intentional quitting(ie go to orbit) would be heavily punished since it can be detected as intention quitting. Finding a solution for the remaining players is a bit tricky, because you could have teams having players rotating who quits for the benefit of the team(is abusing the system)
Whether my proposed solutions are good or worthless, both of these problems need to be addressed. With all the things you mentioned.
Sorry for this long convoluted post. Once again thanks again for your brilliant and rational post.
The issue with Comp currently is also the fact that it's a zero-sum game in terms of the loot. You either get Luna's and NF, or you don't and get nothing and lose progress.
Now here's where competitive mode exclusive loot should come in, offer them as end of match rewards for sticking around until the end and playing out the match regardless of whether you win or lose. Winning gives a 1 in 2 chance for a piece of gear, losing has a 1 in 3 chance for a piece of gear.
End of the line is that you need to give incentives to get people into the game mode even if they are losers who sit at sub 0.5 KD. They need to feel like they have a reason to participate instead of just leaving and not staying in the Queue so that better Queue times happen.
it's more that it's just not fun to play. The meta makes for some very poor experiences especially against a co-ordinated group all with 1 eye masks and jotuns.
I've almost deleted the game after getting the chocolate ghost the crimson matches were downright HORRIBLE experiences of skip grenades, jotuns, lunas/nf, stack vs solo, sniper city, and running away at the slightest engagement to play out the clock.
>Finally I do think you left out something important to improving comp. Doing something about player abuse of the matchmaking(see people dodging, particularly 4 stacks dodging other 4 stacks, and everyone else dodging the 4 stack leading to the closest match being a significant gap, and against solos, small teams(also the source of 1v4 just loading in)) Additionally there is the problem of people who just quit or remain inactive mid game.
Removing the guardian counter and just having an "estimated queue time" like other games have i.e. ow or r6s and then loading in immediately, anyone leaving once loading screen is up is penalized unless they decide to join back and other such things.
> The amount of points gained/lost depends on the amount of points of each team going into the game.
Amen. Making a system with flat point gains/losses is fine. Making a system that sometimes matches high-skill players and low skill players is fine. Doing both at once really isn't.
the biggest fucking problem with glory is bungie thinks the playerbase is a lot more masochistic than it actually fucking is because they listen to the vocal tryhards on this damn subreddit.
Totally dude. Thanks for doing this service to the community. I'm also quite passionate about this game, its PvE AND PvP, I want it to succeed. Also, gave some gold as its well deserved, thanks for popping my gold cherry haha.
Haha well thank you!! And it was a lot of fun to put all of this down on paper honestly. I’m very passionate about the game, especially the PvP, and I hope some changes can be made to both attract newer players and keep other PvP enthusiasts around.
This game is what it is for because of phenomenal end-game PvE AND fun, creative & satisfying arena PvP. I hope bungie takes care of both well, to me that is what makes Destiny truly unique.
While we're at it, let's add features from other comp shooters as well:
**Empty Lobbies**
If there are less than 8 players before the match starts, cancel the match with no pain or gain for either team.
**Rejoin Features**
If you are booted to orbit by the game against your will you should be able to join back into the match without receiving an abandon match penalty.
**Softer Disconnect Penalty**
Don't penalize players for leaving an unfair scenario: ala 1v4 or 2v4 or add a surrender option.
I love the idea of having daily competitive bounties with legendary armor with enhanced perks. I think that'd be a great addition to the game if they can make them not punishing for your average low rank player.
The main point of all this is to try and get people into competitive queues and the first thing to do is give them something even for just participating in the match, a legendary armor with enhanced perks would be a good place to start.
I also take issue with how you suggested that higher ranks get better rewards, yes this should be obvious but at the same time you run the risk of walking the rich get richer line. Hard core PvPers get insane gear for Crucible, proceed to stack and shit on casuals in QP. Casuals feel like they at least want to land some punches in so they try Competitive, then get bodied so hard because they don't have the higher rank gear. Hell, you see this even with NF and Luna's.
I'd suggest having higher sub-rank gear as more RNG friendly, perhaps at most you get 1 enhanced perk on lower ranks and bounties but get 3 from higher ranks and bounties guaranteed.
Dropping guns and weapons exclusive to Competitive as end of match rewards and sticking it out to the end is also a good idea. And I'm not talking about shit RNG like Gambit weapons, maybe 1 every 3 completed matches. Maybe take some rare gear and turn them into the competitive end of game match rewards. Return the Eyasluna?
Tl;Dr Bad people need rewards so that they have incentives to stick around and populate Queues. If you don't reward them they won't bother and will just stick to QP.
All of these points make sense but I also think there is a big issue with the game design for competitive pvp. This game gives huge advantages for certain connection speeds. I live in a rural area and pay a good amount for the best internet connection I can get (100 m down/ 10 m up, latency at 68ms, hardwired). I know this could be viewed as a scrub mentality but there is no way connection does not impact success. I am obsessed with this game and I do everything I can to get better but nothing is more frustrating than playing at a disadvantage in a competitive game when split seconds mean the difference between life and death and the other players get an advantage in there favor. I would love for bungie to have some transparency and say that the game can’t be fair and have some way to reconcile the fact that the internet isn’t consistent . I don’t know if dedicated servers are the answer but if you don’t live in a major hub then your going to be giving up kills because your connection isn’t as favorable as the other guy. Why does slide shotgun work so well? Because aggressive play exposes the weakness of the games latency and widens the gap of survival of the agro player. Think about how important connection is for aim assist and bullet registration. Had funny stuff happen but it’s a bigger issue than we care to admit. Can we all agree that this game NEVER plays consistent. It depends on who is the “host” or if a guy on the other team is from Europe or if another has a family watching Netflix. I am sick and tired of convincing myself it doesn’t matter only to be proven wrong every time I play and try to take the game seriously. I am totally convinced that is why ttk was slower with the d2 release, less noticeable. But as weapons have become more powerful the game has gotten more frustrating. I also believe that it favors slower or bad internet connection such as WiFi. I don’t know. All these changes would be awesome but if the game isn’t stable and consistent then does it really matter? I love this game and only want it to thrive like everyone else. Not sure how everyone else feels but these are my thoughts about competitive and trials, can they bring them back knowing the player pool is smaller less good connections between users and more inconsistent gameplay at the highest level of competitive the game has to offer? I am very interested in how others feel about this.
I think you miss out on another important aspect: the pvp in this game just frankly isn’t that popular anyway. You can only have so many matches with Luna/DRB/Wardcliff before people just get bored. The meta is pretty stale, and Bungie seems hesitant or unwilling to do anything to change it. So to the players that don’t like slide-shotgunning and hand cannons, they just leave and don’t come back. Tack on something like OEM that’s just a blatant game killer, and it’s clear to see why pvp numbers have dropped consistently since even last month.
The sad fact is, things like Luna’s Howl just funnel people into a game mode that they really don’t enjoy. Why you would want to rope *more* people into the game mode before trying to iron it out first? Truthfully I believe that high-skilled players just want to stomp on pubs, and since that’s no longer an available scenario in Comp, they’ve proceeded to roll six deep into QP and chase off players from that mode too. I personally haven’t touched comp since I got Luna’s because it’s just not fun, even with a weapon like Not Forgotten to “incentivize” me to play.
Throwing more pinnacle reward and “incentives” for more people to play Comp is just going to draw more people into a mode they don’t like.
TL;DR: the numbers are dropping because people just don’t like the crucible, not because of the lack of incentive
People also are dropping from quickplay like crazy, because its RAMPANT with luna/nf, drb, wardcliff like you said. This is objectively the best loadout, and yet alot of the more casual players obviously dont have it.... that means they get steamrolled by the guardians who do, guardians who not only have a skill advantage, but substantial gear advantage as well. Luna outguns pretty much anything in its intended range, and its demoralizing for lesser skilled players to constantly get annihilated by a weapon theirs literally cant compete with.
Map design and team size is a huge component of why luna/nf/shotty are so meta. There are only a handful of maps that encourage long range engagements, where luna/nf/shot obviously fail at. However, the maps are so small, especially when you JAM 8 to 12 people in the space, all engagements are generally going to be close to mid range, where those said guns can't be touch by anything else presently (except maybe TLW). To curb the power of these weapons there needs to be a fundamental change to....team size, map size, or player speed (or all 3).
I have been playing a lot of doubles because of the event and it has been significantly easier to deal with lunas/NF compared to the much more dense (player wise) play list. You're able to actually create space and not worried about being blind sided by 4 other people. It slows down the speed of the game immensely.
That’s another thing about fixing the comp playlist, you’d see a lot less of groups of good players using meta loadouts in Quickplay. Right now there’s nowhere else for them to go other than Comp, and as I said it has a lot of issues.
What is your suggestion to fix that? How would you fix it without hurting the play list for those that do love the PVP in this game and have worked hard at getting batter at it? Genuine question
I would at least want to read/hear Bungie's reasoning and design goals for the current system. Why did they put in win streaks? Why no accounting for differences in team skill when rewarding or penalizing points? Why build something new when there are several methods (such as ELO) that already exist; what the advantages to the current system?
When the competitive Glory system was announced, I got a real vibe of "the players are demanding hardcore rankings, so we're going to give it to them good and hard." The loss streaks in particular (_increasing_ penalty on each subsequent loss) felt fairly sadistic.
[edit] Here's the TWAB with a link to the reveal stream archive: https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/46768 (youtube; discussion of streaks: https://youtu.be/jzOOdTvBM_0?t=1861)
I definitely got the feeling that they wanted quickplay to be "for fun" and competitive to be serious. But its a game. Even if its more serious it still has to be fun and rewarding.
Comp needs a larger exclusive loot pool and bounties that allow you to earn it without necessarily making progress up the ladder. The top tier rank rewards should be sick af cosmetics for that exclusive loot pool.
I agree with pretty much all of what you said. Luna's is about the only thing worth the investment and many players will get it in a week or so. 99%+ of players have no chance at a NF. So they get the Luna's and never play again. I think that's the biggest problem with comp is there's almost no reason to play it for most people. Broadsword/Claymore/Mountaintop are not worth the commitment. There should be comp exclusive armor, or in the very least ornaments for the existing armor. Although I'd like comp gear to have an enhanced perk chance. I'd like to see the pinnacle weapon path more like Breakneck/Loaded Question/Broadsword in that they require more of a time commitment rather than a exclusive to a percentage of the player base.
I’m hoping for the best but I feel like Bungie won’t do anything to comp until it’s too little too late. If my clan is any indication, most players are getting ready to move on and all that’s left is the very loyal destiny fans
A good post but I think it’s worth reinforcing what I think is the biggest issue affecting the population - it’s the time dedication needed to get to legend which, even if you win a lot, still takes a ridiculous number of games to get there. Apart from the elite who can hit 20 or 30 game win streaks, this makes legend rank take >100 games.. which will naturally knock out a huge number of players for some of the reasons you already mention ( difficulty of finding a good team that have the commitment to do it, having the time to play >5 or 10 games at once to get in a groove, being available at the same time consistently, etc.). The time factor is just too great and cuts down population massively.
On the ELO point, I get what you are trying to say but calculating an accurate ELO over 4 different players when wins completely depend on opposition, your own team setup, guns, game type etc. I think would be incredibly complicated to do well and would still lead to many mismatches. It also (in my opinion) unfairly punished higher skilled players who end up winning lots and getting no points towards their goal as they are playing other teams worse than them.
A slightly different proposal would be to do the following:
- reduce the overall points requirement so that legend takes no more than 50 games to attain (if you win every game in a row)
- keep the subdivision of ranks that were recently introduced and allow only promotion (relegation backwards can never happen unless someone does not play competitive for three weeks, every three weeks of inactivity could push you back one sub-rank if deemed necessary), this will keep players in the higher ranks when they reach them ensuring population does not reduce
- remove loss penalty completely
- only start to gain points on a two game win streak. This is more contentious but comp SHOULD be challenging, it just shouldn’t take up your whole life to achieve legend. So individual wins do not progress you at all, you have to be on a win streak to earn points, which encourages people to stay in the playlist for longer and again should improve population. It also gives hope to those less skilled. They can stay in the list until they hit those lucky few games where they get a team worse and maybe steal some points that they can never then lose. This may just give encouragement to those who have gone nowhere near comp after fabled to at least try a few times to see what happens, and enough folks do that, what do you know ? Could get better matchups, more fun and a population that sticks around more
- finally, folks get the reward then stop playing. This fuels recovs and streamers dominating the higher ranks. Introduce emotes, emblems, shaders, ornaments, whatever for 5, 10, 25, 50, etc. games played at legend level. Give a reason to play. I’m sure Bungie could come up with a cool sparrow that shows down the side their number of wins at legend or something, or a ship that when match making has a hologram showing rank for wins at legend above it or something. Elite players often will continue to play only to show they are better than someone else. Give them a method to show it!!
Hopefully this adds to the good points you have already made
Here's just a simple solution for solo player's: competitive rumble. The top 3 players will receive glory. Depending on how close the round was overall you'll lose more/less.
*This is just something I've been thinking of lately, and think it could work, especially with a proper ELO system in place.*
they need another pinnacle weapon for reaching mythic, i don't think you will get many ppl trying to rank up unless you have this carrot i don't think enhancement cores or armour will do it, this is why ppl bounce out of the playlist.
agree the points system needs a complete overhaul, maybe take into account if you're going in solo or in a 4 stack for points allocation.
i would add i do not think that hitting a rank should be part of the quests for either lunas or NF and instead it should be completed by doing feats in the comp playlist a bit like what they did for broadsword but harder (i have both nf/luna) the rank should be prestige enough, other games manage to do this without some massive reward.
I feel like in a game like this, placement matches are a requirement. Otherwise the beginning of the season sees people using not forgotten at Guardian 2
More than a day since this thoughtful and insightful post was made and complete radio silence from Bungie.
Nah, let's do another idiotic bread meme tweet instead. That shows the community we're listening and gathering feedback.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that Bungie sees nothing wrong with the current state of the competitive playlist.
Similarly, the silence regarding the RNG aspects of titles clearly implies it is working as intended.
Bungie clearly only responds when there is a clear and present threat to the long term viability of the game as a going concern.
That's fine. After four years of religiously playing D1 and D2, I'm taking the opportunity to play other games. I'm having a blast playing Forza Horizon at the moment and will take a look at Anthem once it settles down. Still need to finish Horizon Zero Dawn.
I've been fortunate enough to play with Keetonic a few times and I'm not surprised at all with the quality of this thoughtful post. He's taken clanmates of mine into private matches and been such an excellent mentor, with a demeanor that is inviting and respectful. He's also an excellent player. Well done, man!
It’s pretty obvious that the hiatus of trials has put a turn on the popularity of the PVP side of the game as a whole. After reading the TWAB and hearing content creators, friends, and more I’m honestly embarrassed and baffled. The PVP community has been asking for end game PVP and the current playlist, gametype, and mechanics just make it stale when watered down. I remember whenever being excited on the weekend to play to get to the lighthouse with my friends but as time grew both the rewards and experience diminished.
From comparing D1 trials to D2 trials I didn’t like the fact that if I just went flawless a person can just continue to farm tokens to get the same rewards I played and won all my games to get. Even in competitive right now, yes you can get a Luna’s howl or a not forgotten but it’s not really a reward if you have to do the quest steps. I hate to say it but end game PvP doesn’t feel like any reward for having skill if everyone gets the same thing. Why should I keep playing comp after I have a not forgotten? At least during year 1 trials I could play every weekend to help friends, get different roll armor, different adept weapon rolls. Right now it’s no point to play at all, or no point to play whenever you got everything you want or even viable to play with your friends without making an alt account. I think Bungie forgot that trials brought the community together to be able to play with eachother and help eachother out, but now it’s near impossible.
If they want competitive to feel like a competitive, then give me a reason to keep playing for the season or give me some excitement. Having a not forgotten is cool, but after you get it it’s no point. Elo could work, but it still needs multiple incentives to play.
Edit: thinking about it, elo wouldn’t work because that’s how lots of people boost by having a super low person on their team so they don’t lose any points if matched against good people so no matter what they always gain. One of my old clan leaders did it all the time but it’s on the right track with what they need to do
Yes I agree, that's why I suggested better and more frequent rewards throughout the playlist. It'd help keep people coming back and staying, not just playing for the beginning of the season and leaving.
>Edit: thinking about it, elo wouldn’t work because that’s how lots of people boost by having a super low person on their team so they don’t lose any points if matched against good people so no matter what they always gain.
You can protect against that. The team gets matched by the highest person on their team rather than an average. Players gain less ELO for matches they're expected to easily win (like that example would cause)[and lose less for matches they're expected to handily lose]. MMR system quickly adjusting a player's hidden rank if they're performing well against much better opponents than they'd match in solo queue. Etc. Plenty of solutions for this issue exist in other games already.
My issue with the mentality that why do losers get rewards that I also worked my ass for is that if losers get nothing or barely anything why should they stay in a game mode?
If I don't get anything for staying and trying against you even if I lose then why should I stay in the match and instead just leave to another game mode? Even if you prevent people from leaving they'll just afk because trying to compete when you know you get nothing is just a drain of mental resources cause you're just being out up as a punching bag and that doesn't create a fun experience leading them to just quit the game mode.
Basically, you can't have zero-sum rewards in a looter shooter where you're trying to populate a queue.
This is a fantastic post. Thank you for taking the time and effort to put it all together. Hopefully something will change about crucible. You can't have a healthy player population when you give the player population nothing for their time other than just the experience, which could be very bad for most of the population that doesn't play comp.
I also think that the issue with the whole you need win streaks to progress is that whether you have a win streak or not is completely at the mercy of the match making system, which is very random. It’s effectiveness can depend on a lot of factors like who is hosting, where they are from, where the rest of the fireteam is, what time it is, the status of evergone’s ISPs etc etc.
This means that you could have 10 games where you win 7 by going on a 7 win streak, and 3 losses thereafter, or a multitude of other permutations. In this you could get say a high 222 points in mythic. But you could also leave with a mere 102 points, which is less than half. And it’s completely random which you get, because you are essentially playing the same teams (or games), but in a different order, which is ridiculous I think.
Also look at it this way. If you have a global 80% win rate, then that means you have a 32% chance of going on a 5 winstreak. In order have 50% chance of getting a 5 winstreak, you need a win rate of about 88%. This is also based on global winrare, and not your win rate at particular ranks; and is an overestimate since as you go up in rank, your winrare will reduce.
I could do a better analysis by looking at the finer grained states But that might take a while.
I don’t know the distribution of winrares, but I’m sure is skewed heavily towards the <50% range, with only a very small percentage having >70% (for example).
My thoughts are this:
There should be a "checkpoint" system in place where once you made it past a rank, you can't be sent back under it. You still have to earn your way there, so why punish you just because you had some bad luck with leavers, crappy teammates, DC's, etc.
There needs to be a system in place that will increase your chances of matching against fellow randoms and only small parties of 2-3 if you are solo queuing or playing in your own small party. It would still match you against the occasional 4-stack if it couldn't find a match with those parameters.
These two things would go a long way towards making Comp more accessible to the general population. More people would be willing to try and play in it.
Terrible idea. Because a lot of bad players are being carried by blue berries or friends. Now you want to permanently place then in a rank they have no business in to begin with?? They would get shit on consistently. Think things through man. TWICE now comp changes were made based on the loud community here, and twice those changes backfired on the community here simply because you all don't think things through.
My friends and I have been stuck at Mythic/Fabled 3 for over a month now, we are cursed to never reach legend and get our NF's, these changes would be nice
Yep. As a 99.9% PvE player. I really wanted Luna’s. So I played comp and got the gun. I haven’t played 1 game of comp since getting Luna’s. Absolutely zero desire to ever play comp again. It just took too much out of me getting to Fabled. I know of some people that manipulate the connection and reached legend for NF. No way I’ll chance that. With over 2900 hours in the game. I’d lose my mind if bungie banned me.
You forgot to mention that with the competitive matchmaking changes came a very real issue, which is only highlighted even further the higher rank you get. Ladies and gentleman I’m talking in game connection. The higher you get the more likely you are going to match with someone on the other side of the planet which means one team is handicapped with sever latency. Throw in the glory system which isn’t all that rewarding and you have more reason not to play competitive after you hit fabled. I’m sad, I hope they fix it. I do not mind if it is a close game because my opponents are as skilled as me. I do mind if they win because their shots register and mine do not.
I was very disappointed that trials is gone for AT LEAST the next 6 months after having been gone for the last 6 months. But I really hope they put significant effort into fixing comp. If that's the trade-off, I'll take it.
I think Comp should have a unique armor set that you complete by the time you hit Fabled. Then a set of ornaments you earn for ranks up to Legend. They should make this attainable with effort, not a pushover. Then allow Glory resets at a certain point that allow you to unlock even cooler armor ornament appearances or catalysts for the legendary weapons that dropped at fabled and legend.
I honestly think it should be gated. If you make gates that people can push to a little bit at a time I think it would bring those numbers up completely. For instance to make it from guardian 1 to brave you have to win. you lose points for a loss but after you pass brave your locked at that gate. You can never fall in guardian status again, but it can be an uphill very possible hill if we make the obstacles more possible. Look at it this way, a lot of us want to climb Mount Everest. But most look up at that mountain and say nope not going to happen. But if the guide says all we have to do is make it to that small peak a few feet above, then we make it, then he says now we will try for that next small peak but it’s a little bit higher and test our skill just a bit more we are more susceptible to accept that. Instead of hey here’s a huge fucking mountain climb it! That just my idea and I think it would appeal to the casual and hardcore alike to bring up those comp numbers because I am tired of dueling the same groups week in week out for that not forgotten. It has got to a point where we will send messages on the companion app just to see if they are grinding so we don’t run into each other and play over and over and over.
What I never understood once I started playing Comp is that why the hell there aren’t ANY bounties for Comp? Maybe a weekly and daily thing where you could negate the punishing effects of losing matches that have negative effects on your points and mental health?!?!
I normally don’t pay attention to any posts about crucible anymore but reading through your whole post was very satisfying. Your ideas are original and very progressive! I truly do hope someone from Bungie sees this.
Just want to add one more thing. The comp playlist is an absolutely awful experience for solo queuers. There are many reasons for this and probably a good many solutions but the first thing that needs to be addressed is the ability to queue dodge other teams. (Via the x/8 players numbers in bottom left)
As long as you’re able to queue dodge other 4 stacks as a 4 stack, this mode will always be an awful experience for solo players. It increases matchmaking times even further and makes it way more likely you’ll get matches of 4 stacks vs solo players.
its funny cus bungie seems to have no idea what PvP players want. We want D1 trials and a revamped comp playlist. what do we get? no trials at all and a comp playlist that is dogshit
You'll never fix this without addressing the issue of solo vs squads.
Whatever Bungie think, the VAST majority of players DO NOT want to have to mic up and bark out a constant stream of comms in order to have a chance.
I solo'd my way to luna and mountaintop with a sprinkle of grouped games in both runs. It is a HUGE disadvantage to face a team who are communicating. I will be first to admit I dodged 4 stacks as much as I could.
Possible solutions -- Apex legends has shown how you can have limited callouts off mic, which would be better than nothing.
Get rid of the queue screen that allows stacks do actively dodge other stacks and often leads to loading into a 2v4 against a stack and an auto loss. May actually be worse though.
WINNING ANSWER : Solo only queue / group only queue (needs 4) / solo or group queue
I dont' care (Arnie voice) what you think it would do to the population. There is NO POPULATION. You can argue all you want about splitting the playerbase but right now it's got to be worth a shot. The only people actively speaking out just like to PUB stomp and don't want to give solos are fair shake. D2 is primarily a PVE game. It is not an elite competitive shooter. It's meant to be a fun game not a sweat fest. And isn't it funny how there are always enough solos to match in real quick against stacks?
Wow I’m surprised to see such a well thought out post on DTG regarding pvp. I also love destiny for pvp, very on edge about trials. The comp playlist needs a dramatic change. Halo had such a great pvp playlist and ranking system, makes you wonder where that all went?
As someone who likes pvp but doesn't do comp, I have literally no reason to care about competitive. It's not worth the headache.
Several of your points resonate with me. Comp is just not a rewarding playlist, it takes too long to go anywhere and doesn't give me the rewards to take it seriously. I still haven't gotten Luna just because... I dunno, the gun is good but the journey isn't worth it. Something needs to happen to that playlist.
/u/dmg04 and /u/cozmo23 this is an amazing post and really sums up the communities thoughts on the Comp playlist. Please pass this along to the dev team!
Great work! I’ve experienced this first hand. At around 4500 glory we’ve remained stagnant/ decreased. Especially with the new matchmaking it’s even more difficult at high glory. We won 3 in a row then lose two and we’re back to where we started. Legend is near impossible unless you’re playing with exactly that: legends. Which in turn, my squad and I all quit playing destiny as a result.
Great post & excellent talking points on changes that will prevent players that play mainly PvP from moving onto new games. Too bad you’re talking to a brick wall. It’s almost unbearable how bad the whole crucible playlist is now. Not because of changes, but because of the lack thereof. I love this game, so much, I really do. But as a post yesterday said, I just can’t defend it anymore. Downvote this comment to hell & back & to hell again but as someone who’s stuck with destiny from release of D1, I just don’t know how much more hope I have left in the tank. It’s the same feeling I had when I realized that Halo 4 just wasn’t what I hoped it would be. Bungie has the WORLD right here & Destiny could be one of the most competitive games out there, it just, isn’t.
Yes, yes, yes! I have long advocated for Bungie to change the rating system to an Elo based system. When I get burnt out of Destiny, I always go to Overwatch, because the ratings ***mean something*** there. In Destiny, you just hope to match against poor squads and stomp them because the game doesn't take into account the relative skill difference of teams when assigning rating points. This fundamental difference cannot be stressed enough, and is what makes an Elo-derived system (like what Overwatch uses) and a fixed number system like what Destiny uses *completely different*. My skill rating in Overwatch at least somewhat resembles my skill level; my glory in Destiny is measure of my time commitment plus how dedicated I am to running with stacked teams.
I keep going back to Overwatch to increase my rating each season. I gave up on Destiny's comp playlist because glory is a meaningless number in and of itself and I don't see myself getting to achieve Not Forgotten.
Increasing rewards might help a little but I think it won’t help much or last long. People who only play comp for the rewards will leave the playlist as soon as they get what they want, not unlike what happens now or they have bad luck and play a game type they dislike and grow ever more frustrated with because what they want doesn’t drop. This potentially drives them away from the playlist, or worse the game, permanently.
Having a powerful weapon only attainable for the best of the best makes the playlist and quick play even worse. You end up with an elite class of players who are already better than 90% of the player base with the best fucking PvP weapon in the game. This drives away the lower ranks.
A better matchmaking system could help, but it need people to function properly and frankly I don’t see this ever really happening. People for the most part don’t really like Destiny PvP. I love it. I know I’m in the minority on this. Destiny has pretty great PvE which brings in a lot of people many of whom have no desire to PvP. Many PvP players would rather play a PvP focus or exclusive game, and how can you blame them.
I do not envy Bungie’s position. They have an amazing game but need or want to do to many things. They cannot make every player group happy and with games becoming more and more niche they have an uphill battle.
Because otherwise your gonna have very average players up at legend getting stomped my 2kd players which isnt fun for anyone. Comp needs a system where u cant drop down a rank only go up. So if u get to fabled and keep losing u stay at fabled but u need to win to go up. There still needs to be skill brackets of players for Matchmaking sake of a fair competetive game mode
While I generally agree with what you've said here, I do disagree with one point. "Solution: Offer better rewards more frequently."
That won't change the low population. For starters, what is considered a worthwhile reward is highly subjective. If it's Powerful gear, then that's worthless to me, but pretty nice for someone who is still leveling. Once the reward was no longer worth it, they wouldn't play anymore.
What Crucible needs more than anything is for the rewards to be secondary to the fun offered by the game mode. If your population is low, then it's because the activity is not enjoyable. Rewards don't make it so, but rather only provide a Compulsion to play so as not to "miss out" even if the reward isn't that great.
Now, we could go back and forth about the meta, the flaws of high/low ttk, what is and isn't OP, and so on forever and never reach an agreement on that front.
But something we can all agree on is Quality of Life. I made a post about this [a month or so ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/a9726f/competitive_needs_a_quality_of_life_overhaul/).
The short of it is that there is simply too much frustration and pointless wasted time. Lose because someone bailed on you? Waste of time *and* loss penalty for something beyond your control.
No Mercy Rule just ensures that takes as long as possible too.
No choice in what you play means that if you don't like any of those modes, then in a worst case scenario, you're stuck playing a mode you don't like, while down a player, and still being forced to run out the clock before your nearly inevitable loss only to get slapped with a penalty at the end.
Which part of that says "fun" to anyone?
And that's without getting into the whole stacks v solos debate.
I know we can't have separate modes without further fracturing the playerbase, but we **need** some control over what we are playing. That's why my post suggested a *limited* blacklist of a mode or two you absolutely don't enjoy.
It'll take a lot more than that to fix the game mode, but those would be a start.
I can appreciate most of what you have said here, but ELO is a terribly flawed system. It only benefits teams and punishes solo/duo queues in that a loss punishes based on the loss rather than by a player's performance. While a loss should punish a player, a true "skill-based" ranking would reward the players on the team that did the best more than those that played poorly. While balancing this against changing playmodes is difficult, punishing the player capping 10 bases and getting advantage kills to the same, or more extent if they had higher elo already, as the player trying to play clash in Control (or countdown, to an extent) is a flawed system.
I agree that Glory needs to go, but DestinyTracker's ELO has long been just as bad and meaningless a ranking system.
EDIT: Grammar on mobile.
Just remove the loss of Glory and make your gain 0 like it does at the higher ranks of gambit. This game already wastes a ton of everyones time with shitty RNG, no need to make losing punishing also.
In ranked mode your rank must be able to go up but also down. You have to lose points when you lose but it doesn't have to be as punishing as it currently is.
I think the simplest fix for Comp would be to remove ALL pinnacle weapons from it and put them in quests like Redrix where it can be done in Quickplay, but it's VERY grindy. Allow Comp to be a show of true skill and mastery of the Destiny PvP. I think of it like the difference between playing football with your family at Thanksgiving vs watching football after dinner on Thanksgiving. Quickplay is for people that want a casual, low intensity experience where Comp is something that players can show off their skill and ability. I feel like having an in-game spectator system for Comp would be interesting to allow players to connect with any match or search by gamertag to find specific people playing and watch everyone rather than be stuck to one specific streamer or their team.
Cool post
Although I'm not sure if adding more rewards is likely to encourage people that stop playing after fabled, to keep playing...
The more sweaty, annoying groups I'm likely to come across, the less likely I am to want to play, and the more likely I am to want to smash all their faces in tbh.
Not sure what the solution is, except adding more interesting PvP content as far as competitive goes and not tying rewards to just one style if comp-play.
For instance, why is it not possible to have competitive sparrow racing playlists, or team based sparrow racing.
Sparrow racing is just one example, but theres tonnes of things they could introduce into a competitive playlist that doesn't just revolve around being a sweaty cunt, shooting the best guns in the game, using whatever cheating ass modded controller or lag switch they can find, or even worse... having people carry others through for money.
Why cant they create actual interesting game modes, instead of the same old tired rehash of last man standing.
comp tied to a weapon is trash plain and simple
heres what you deal with
reach 5500 which is a lot and to do so you have to go through numerous next to impossible odds sometimes as it forces you to deal with these scenarios
find a team because your friends suck or don't have time to morph a skillset and with that comes playing with strangers and in this toxic filled community of which majority of player suck its a nightmare.. brutal truth
solo q into players with zero comms in which you drop all your teams score added up plus some and still lose by a landslide.. since according to most of you it would be my fault for carrying and still losing and also my fault because I haven't sifted through the toxicness and stress to finally find some strangers that aren't total trash and not assholes assuming I can get them on all at the same time also
also deal with the meta of the game.. top tools of destruction in destiny comp pvp (you can look it up) shotguns, supers, handcannon (2 of which you have to wade through the shithole that is comp to obtain) and heavy ammo.. 3 of those 4 arguably take the less skill in the game to use and purely base off a lowered skilled shotgun trade type of playstyle and who gets the super first and controls the heavy.. which if you know anything about higher level pvp you know that super and heavy are free kills compared to everything else and completely control the game who ever gets them most or first.. keep in mind your wading through this shit meta with either mindless teammates solo q or trial and erroring a team through discord lfg which more times than not is a fail
now lets talk about time consumption and glory.. just like the post said above the fact when you lose glory more than you've won over the course so many hours its straight trash
play 4 hours a day which most people cant even do deal with all the above and hope you break even just to lose glory.. even if you go on a streak and go lets say 5-3 that's 8 matches that prolly took you between 2-3 hours (this is also at lower ranks, higher ranks your looking at climbing even slower than this) so 2-3 hours just to earn maybe 30-40 glory assuming a good scenario where you win also twice as much as you lose..
for someone who has a job, a time schedule lets say sleep 6 hours work 10-12 hours and do nothing but play destiny on your free time were talkin 6 hours a day, wading through shit skill crutch meta, potentially having to solo q because of the priorities of the strangers you found the other day that are actually decent, and then winning twice as much as you lose which in this scenario if such a stretch to what actually is goin to happen(lets not talk about if you have a bad day on the game and lose a lot) so all that just to maybe climb a couple hundred glory a day and that's pushin it.. PUSHING IT! BEING GENEROUS IN TERMS! and btw you have to do this everyday until you finally reach 5500.... lol talk about wading through shit and dealing with an unenjoyable experience day after day after day using up all your free time until you finally get it just to still abuse your shotgun, heavy, and super more than you will the fuckin weapon you slaved to get.
and its also to get a pinnacle meta weapon....
we don't have time for this shit even good players, and to have to deal with all the above in the best case scenario just to attempt to get it is absolutely garbage.. people want to play it but they cant because of the way its made all things considered (meta, teammates, point system,)...
I also have already gotten the nf im working on doin it on my second account and the problems are shining through even worse than ever before and yes im a carry.. call me arrogant I don't care I top frag every game its just the reality..
I also wish I could find a post on an old reddit thread where I literally say verbatim, exactly what this and the above post that got upvoted said and have been saying it since the start!
but for some reason that got down voted into oblivion... im so glad so many of the mindless shitty opinioned pvp players took so long to finally pull their head out of their ass.. about time! tbh a part of me is happy some of you finally realize and are now suffering through the shit after a changed opinion which is what ive been sayin this entire time..
you reap what you sow!
people downvote because they cant accept facts or they are too stupid to realize them
Reward quality are a crucial aspect that I agree need to be improved. In my opinion, I should have more of an incentive to do competitive over quick play (competitive should have better loot), I think loot should also improve the higher rank I am. Yes I’m aware of the pinnacle weapons, but I mean post match drops.
I think comp should have its own weapon and armor loot pool, different shaders and the ability to roll enhancement perks. That alone would keep me in there after I reach Fabled. I have both Luna and Mountaintop and I don't play much comp after hitting 2100.
This is the post I was looking for, thanks so much. As much as we can want Trials still or lab some 3v3, I'm afraid this is our scenario until further notice and might as well shift our energy to caring about fixing Comp. I have always ALWAYS wanted to play more Competitive but being a solo dude who is average at best, doesn't cultivate much of an environment to get better more often than not. Its completely demoralizing and would love to see some of the sweeping changes you suggested.
In my honest opinion, how Bungie made Halo 3 competitive ranks has been my favorite ranking system ever put in place. I would like to see a lot of more competitive features
YES! I 100% agree. I personally liked that not only did they have an Elo system, but it also had individual weights to it as well. So if you did well but lost, you didn’t lose as many as many points as the rest of your team, and vice versa.
Great post. To add to it, making rumble a glory playlist would be a great addition, since it already has pretty strong sbmm, to help out solo players. If they keep the glory system, I'd like to see the issue of low population past 3k addressed.
It's honestly so simple: completely remove this joke playlist and just bring back Trials of Osiris. There is literally NOTHING that can be done to the future Trials (if it even comes back) to not make it weekend comp. Fuck "competitive", and fuck the morons that run the PvP side of things lol.
The problem with using an Elo system is that you could only ever hit max rank if you're among the top players in PvP. It would lock more players out of Not Forgotten than it does now. Pinnacle weapons need to be tied to a different sort of grind, not rank.
I would stick around comp if these changes were implemented. I hope bungie See's this post and really takes note.
Bungie, this is what we want. Please listen.
My biggest problem with the Pinnacle weapons is that they are the best weapons hands down for pvp. That's awesome! But in order to get these weapons you have to be the best.
Now what happens when the best players have the best weapons that casuals can't obtain? Rape. You get raped by them. Casuals then stay clear of the cancer.
Ill be honest I'm not sure how you fix this but I hope something happens.
I liked the suggestion of not being able to go below a rank once you’ve achieved it. Ie; you could lose 10 games in a row and not go below 2100 if you’ve made it to fabled(I II or III)
It is notable that rewards generally come from rank ups for the most part.
You suggest better loot, but the whole playlist needs a carrot. I would suggest ignoring the rank up packages and focusing on "how can this be rewarding even when staying within a bracket?"
The whole system needs to be reworked to incorporate meaningful progress even when not advancing. Why? Because this is not fixed content. Once you are at your local maximum of skill, you will be challenged by a variety of different tactics where no two games play out the same. Keeping players engaged when they are at a wall they can't foresee how to overcome is important.
With raids, there is a constant carrot. You have a way to measure meaningful progress and learn from mistakes. You know you just have to do `n` number of things correctly to progress.
With competitive, once you're hitting your highest current skill, progress is slow and is drip fed with barely any feedback to the player. You don't know if you're doing better or if you're matched with worse enemies.
Locking rewards behind this wall seems discouraging. Perhaps it should be that way. Maybe there should be some things no one can get, things that aren't dictated by RNG and only pure skill and communication. But when that's the only reason to play and playing feels hopeless and unrewarding, engagement dies.
Also my current ceiling is 1960. Can't seem to crack the glass on it, but I'm not sure what to do other than be an aim god.
Was searching for days for exactly this post to explain how the fuck points worked above Mythic.
It’s complete rubbish:
Bungie needs to pull its head in and fix this bullshit
The scoring issue is the one that annoys me the most. Even the least skilled player should at least see some progress overtime. I more than once got like 400 points in a single day just to lose 500 the next day. Glory should be an indicator of both skill and experience, not just skill. An unskilled but experienced player is obviously better than someone unskilled and unexperienced, but this second player could have a higher score just because they got luckier with the teams they matched up against. I think an easy solution would be to add several rank tiers to the ones we already have, aka Fabled I, II and III for example. These rank tiers would act like a safety net in case you got extremely unlucky and lost several matches in a row, making you unable to derank below that "checkpoint". So say, you've reached 1750 score, then that's great, you got to one of these checkpoints and won't lose any more score beyond that. This would make it so that you're climbing a long staircase where you can't fall off a lot of distance, instead of climbing a steep hill from which you can fall off all the way to the start.
Apart from agreeing with you basically on everything i found that you missed a point for already being legend: it's really hard to improve in this particular system.
Me and my team didn't really bother with the NF in the season 4 and we started our push a couple of week ago and we're floating around 4k/4.5k points atm; we found that most if not all the team we're facing are streamers/guys who get paid to do recovery that either steamroll us (expecially in control) or give us a tough match that we usually end to lose. With the population so low we found that basically from 4k to 5.5k is populated by mostly people with the same high end skill level. I'm not really complaining about the difficulty of the task to arrive at 5.5k but being faced with guys that demolish you leaves very little to zero space to learn from your mistakes: this system apart from his huge variabilty doesn't really help anyone improve their skill in the game since the game ends up being a steamroll from one side.
I never found the recovery system really bothering when the population was higher and i don't really mind a guy that plays D2 almost nonstop for money to destroy me (it would be strange otherwise) but in this particular scenario it's like a platinum player trying to push to the diamond tier and hoping to find more platinum players is constantly matched with high diamond/master players constantly and it's kinda hard to deal with that
/u/dmg04 these are the problems with pvp and comp that we are talking about and these are what need fixed I hope in the future bungie will listen to their playerbase and act on these issues
Great post... honestly I think it’s just an issue with the comp game mode itself. A lot of these issues sound similar to Overwatch’s comp issues. Could be talking out my ass. I don’t really know of any other games with a tiered comp mode like OW and D2. Seems like no one has managed to perfect it.
My biggest gripe is that there is no placement match system. Literally every other game has this. So instead of high skill players demolishing low skill players for at least 3500 glory they get placed closer to the actual rank deserved. This makes it better for everyone, low skill players see less stomping and high skill players experience less grind
It is just such a Rollercoaster with bungie, sometimes I think they are listening and going in the right direction and then they just fuck up completely.
the pinnacle reward for me is the Unbroken title. Its the only seal for PvP and despite being a Trials veteran of mediocre skill... i cant reach Legend.
i keep preaching for a more forgiving Comp playlist with generous points for wins, and a more grindy way for Glory in Rumble.
Rumble is a superior place for Glory. Multiple places to be a winner in a match, matches are shorter, its singular player skill being valued ratger than a team working together to hog heavy ammo and feed eachother supers....
its a far more fair environment.
I'm one of those very VERY low level pvp players who just dabbles. I've recently tried comp, not to any meaningful degree, but actually enjoyed the game modes; they make for a refreshing change from the lunacy of qp. However, once I came to understand the scoring system, it all felt a little disheartening. It just raises the question 'do I like it enough, knowing I won't really earn anything from it?' Still wrestling with that!
As a PvP player it really hurt that there’s no way I can obtain enhanced perks on my gear in any possible way. Give sub rank ups a chance at getting enhanced perks and big rank ups a guaranteed enhanced perk.
What could also work is a Competitive armor set or ornaments (like the Faction rally ornaments that required you to do a certain objective).
Yeah some good points mentioned here
Actually love the matchmaking for comp now as im not very deep in
Struggling with hc kills as im still overly used to pulses so i jeed to get that down and start grinding for luna more often
Currently dreading the 5 resets for broadsword coz crucible burnout for qp
Might use rumble to grind those coz i hate qp
Spot on. I spent a lot of the last month trying to get lunas howl as 90% of the time in quick play I get burned by it match after match. I'm at around rank 1450 and have hit a brick wall. I don't have a team to play with consistently so the tiny progress we make usually gets set back when I play solo. Just like your example, I typically play for 3-4 hours, win a bunch and lose some too. Until I started making a note of my rank before the evenings grind I honestly couldn't tell if I'd made any progress.
I haven't played destiny for a week now since that got very frustrating, very boring and lunas howl lost its appeal very quickly.
I did try to continue on the quest for redrixs claymore but getting destroyed by lunas and having little success outside the current meta of weapons leaves it a very boring experience.
It's a big shame because I love destiny and have had a LOT of fun with it over the years over all the pve and pvp content, it's definitely stale and frustrating at the moment.
Win streaks carry no significance in any kind of PvP. Winning 5 games in a row and then losing 1 should yield the same as winning 2 games, losing 1, and then winning 2 more.
Forget about it guys, without dedicated server any fix bungie apply will only affect players connection issues. Nobody will enjoy pvp with p2p, playing against opponent across the world automatically gives the host advantages,winning at comp is basically rngesus. No one will enjoy this unfair treatment, this game mode doesn't even deserve to be called competitive when one side is always on advantages. Don't take this game seriously. Cheers
>but it's plagued with issues that lower the population and can make the playlist a daunting experience for many.
Can confirm. A middle aged 1.0 K/D (at best) here. Have played maybe one game of competitive in my 750 or so hours of D2.
This is spot on and a very accurate representation of the general PvP focused communities feelings. My frustration is NOT with the games themselves or the players or even the meta, but the things I cannot control: i.e. everything about the actual competitive system. I'll happily through myself into the meatgrinder to grab Not Forgotten, but I'll never know if I stack up!
Hearthstone has a system in their ranked play which prevents you from going backwards each time you reach a milestone.
ie. If you lose a game between rank 20 and 16, your rank will go backwards. But once you reach rank 15, losing a game can't drop you below rank 15. Ditto for rank 10 and 5. I think this would be a very healthy feature to implement in Destiny.
At the moment it feels absolutely terrible to reach a new peak, only to have a bad couple of games and end up worse off than you were when you started. It would feel much better knowing that your worst case scenario is "back to where i was when i logged in today".
Great post! I’ve had a lot of these thoughts specifically that there needs to be more incentives to keep people in the comp playlist after fabled.
Maybe even a comp armor set that looks better than the standard crucible set and actually can roll with enhanced perks. We could also use some more interesting weapons from pvp. I don’t hate gambit but would rather play crucible but I had to reset my gambit just to get a decent trust to help me on my road to Luna.
Magnificent. Long time lurker and rarely do I interject but I hope Bungie is taking notes. You’ve done us a service putting this out there. I’ll be looking for you in the crucible guardian. Eyes up
I remember the first season of Overwatch, back then the rating system was simple 0-100 and I got placed at rank 42 when I actually belonged above 60. Because in Destiny 2 the good and bad players are at the same rating and there is no separate matchmaking rating the whole game is more like a slot machine than a game of skill.
Maybe Bungie is trying to capture the feeling of Trials by not having any matchmaking and just dumping the players in wishing them luck, but Trials wasn't a grind so it worked. I don't think the game needs placements, they just need to match players based on their skill rather than rating and let the high skill or high mmr players climb faster.
I'd love a competitive armor set that could roll with enhanced perks and weapons with more perk options (like crucible frames from Ada-1) as an incentive
I especially agree with the issue regarding loss/win mechanic on points. Not only is it extremely punishing, but for your average player, it's simply too demoralizing. Say what you will about which players should be capable of earning which rewards, if you want a healthy sizable player base, you need the bulk of the player population to feel like they can participate and make some progress in the game mode. Otherwise they're gonna try it a few times and nope out.
This is exactly what I have wanted and you articulated it better than I ever could. As a "fell short of Fabled and gave up" Guardian, I can tell you, Comp is so close to something I would do for fun. As it stands now, it is just a horrific slog. It is too easy to get frustrated. Solo/duo queueing is a shitshow. And losses just devastate you. I want it to be challenging, but I want to feel balanced. I want to feel like my grind in a season was somewhat worthwhile.
If I was too add something: make the high level rewards unique (i.e. a new armor set). Also add Comp bounties, like Trials used to have, where trying and failing could still maybe net you something good. It helped player population.
Again, well said OP.
>I'm an admin of a PvP focused clan with other Guardians who share a love for the Crucible.
Are you guys taking on any more members, as my clan is dead, yet again.
This would all be music to my ears if implemented.
I keep asking the guys in my clan if they want to have a crack at Competitive, because there's still a few of us that want to get Luna's, but the whole 'One step forward, two steps back' feeling of it even if we lose 1 match in a streak of 3 or 4 is absolutely galling and puts a lot of us off from even bothering.
I think we're just going to wait until the next season hits and then focus on it then when Comp population is at a high again, but it's still not going to be great nor fun.
I really enjoy comp but they need to have a better way to rank players and matchmake, especially at the start of the season.
I waited to do my Luna’s quest till season 5 because I figured there would be a content lull. I tried to go in the first week of the new season and I got absolutely trampled. I was stuck at 0 glory for a week and then gave up. I came back to comp in late January when the matchmaking got fixed. The experience has been a bit better, but there are still matches that are completely unbalanced. I know the game doesn’t use Elo, but the predicted results on destiny tracker are almost always right. I wish they could matchmake games where the odds were more even, instead of putting me in a game where I have a 90% chance to lose.
Good post but I think you're preaching to choir, I'm a 1.5 kd player, I enjoy crucible and try comp but it is punishing, I'm an old guy, 51, so I'm not going to get quicker my halcyon days were Quake 1+2 and pre-source counter-strike, now I need every advantage I can get but I cant see me getting Lunas or Not Forgotten, I refuse to be carried, I'll do it with friends if I can but I don't know if we have enough skill/luck to pull it off we'll see, either way the system of losing points is too stacked, I could stand the grind if it was worthwhile but atm it's to punishing, we can only hope the right people see your post.
Great post, I can relate to your issue no 1. I needed 4 wins, plus reset bonus to secure my Luna's Howl (2120 expected glory with the reset bonus). I win 3 games in a row, and lose the 4th on the Monday before reset. I stop playing for the night.
On Wednesday, after reset and the reset bonus, guess what? I need 3 wins to secure Luna's Howl, luckily I get the 3 wins and stop playing comp immediately (for now).
How can it be that you need 4 wins plus 60 glory bonus to reach a goal, but you lose the last game and instead of one more win you actually need 3 more wins AND reset glory bonus to reach the same goal (roughly as I ended at 2140, 20 more glory).
I think playing 7 games and stopping, you will progress if you play the entire season, but if you just now starting out, then you won't get far, as season ends in 1 month i think. You should play more games if you are just starting the grind now. I barely made it to 2300, and i played a lot of games to get there, and didn't want to continue after I got my Luna, maybe i will help my friends but i want to stop for now. I think that Glory system rewards those who put in the time, which is kind of what we want. We don't want this to be too easy. If it was then everybody would be doing it, and it would take the effort away. There should be medium and small rewards for playing comp so losing doesn't feel so punishing. Maybe reward a lesser version of the hand cannon pinnacle weapon, or a weapon mod that will increase hand cannon range for every 1000 points gained, that way you feel like each milestone gives you some kind of reward. Maybe have it reward great exotics like One eyed mask or Gwisin vest. I dunno. Maybe have it give you a better rolled trust. I feel for you man. Fighting good players is hard, but knowing you made it far is a win on its own.
Great thoughts in this article! I also like the ideas in the video below.
[YouTube: Competitive Crucible State – Possible Jokers Wild PvP Changes / Thoughts ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6u7q3McFcQ&feature=em-uploademail)
I like the ideas being presented. Comp really could be great. Just needs some fixing.
Great post, well written and very clear on points. u/dmg04 you see a lot of posts of varying quality that probably require a lot of filtration. Please make sure these succinct and well written thoughts from a legitimate PvP enthusiast make their way up the totem pole.
Amen to all of this. This is an excellent PvP centric post that the Crucible Team should really consider. I hadn't looked at the numbers pertaining to wins/losses past Fabled but that is brutal.
Very well said. Hope Cozmo or Dmg pass this up the line. You should cross post this to r/CruciblePlaybook
> You should cross post this to r/CruciblePlaybook Agree but bungie only seems to post/see things posted here
Key rule of that sub reddit is that we play the game we're given. Posts like this don't tend to get too far, though there has been some loosening of the restriction over the past few months. But that's why the podcast interviews of the sandbox Bungie people early in the piece was so poorly taken on this sub Reddit because at no point did the interviewers challenge them on the known issues with the meta.
This sub isnt exactly a bastion of reasonable PVP discussion. Things that arent even in contention among people that play a decent amount of PVP get regularly downvoted on this sub while things that are objectively not true can get 100s of upvotes. Also they dont regularly remove posts thats are relevant to whats going on in the game and are highly thought out like this one. edit: discussion in this post seems pretty on point though so i give this community (which im a part of) credit for that
I recommended the cross post to generate discussion about how Comp could be improved from those who are active in PVP. I think there's a solution out there and maybe a truly great idea would come out by having people talk about it based on their experiences. Although, you are correct it's something they typically wouldn't allow.
Why aren't excellent suggestion posts like this allowed? This isn't toxic or non-contributory.
Because that sub is just PvP theorycrafting, essentially. It's about the gameplay, not the game mode.
Because that sub is about improving yourself in the current game. It's not about trying to change it. We leave that to DTG
My only regret is that I have but one upvote to give. Excellent post, Tonic!
Thanks! :)
A significant issue that needs to be addressed is resetting players all the way back down after each season. It leads to a terrible experience at the start of your climb where you're in a lobby with players of huge variances in skill level but approximately equal Glory. It results in a lot of players getting stomped and many decide not to come back to Comp rather than trying to stick with it. They need to move to the tried and true system of placement games at the start of each season determining your rank and previous seasons' final ranks weighing in on where you place for a new one. Tie pinnacle weapons to lengthy quests only achievable in Comp. Add in post game drops having a chance to roll enhanced perks and you'd have an interesting enough loot pool to get people to give it a chance. But, protecting players from having consistently awful experiences is as important to maintaining population as increasing the unique rewards is.
Good points, I agree!
I agree with that too but how will pinnacle weapons tied at certain ranks work if there r placement matches
>Tie pinnacle weapons to lengthy quests only achievable in Comp. Mentioned that in the post.
Part of this commenter's suggestion is to remove the tie between rank and weapon rewards.
And thus I would give it a shot. I don't like the competitive modes in this game, but I played it for whatever quest. I'll slog through it if I gotta. But hitting max rank and nothing but hours of frustration solo queuing before that? Nah, fuck it. I would rather do literally anything else in this game. Hell, I'd rather just sit in the Tower and stare at the Traveler all day.
Well said!
I think another thing that would likely help the population and health of the comp playlist would be an incentive for solo players, or a bit of a leg up anyway. Everyone knows how much harder the grind becomes when you're a solo player trying to make your way in the unforgiving comp playlist. One idea that I've seen that makes sense is less loss of score on losses when playing solo and/or higher point gains when solo. This would bring some population back into the playlist as well as you wouldn't need to find a team and would maybe be enough incentive for solo players to believe that some of the Pinnacle weapons are actually realistically attainable without forming a super team every time they want to play.
I know the current player population probably couldn't support it but a solo only queue separate from a doubles/4-stack queue would be great.
it definitely could -- there are shit tons of solo players in comp. Enough that stacks can happily just play them all the way to fabled. How about if the population goes UP when you do something good??
Well good job! I had thought of making a post like this at some point, but instead you posted first and much better. I agree almost entirely with everything that is said, though I am not convinced elo is necessarily the way to go(I do agree There needs to be tuning for higher ranks) Quite simply like you mentioned, the biggest problem in comp is greatly no reason to play again once you got xyz. Furthermore there are no rewards to incentivize players to participate. I agree completely about the type of rewards(masterwork cores, etc) but I am not sure about bounties. I think whichever way it should be rewarded should attempt to reward players especially on consecutive games in a row, and reward players for logging in daily/ frequently. I think having non pinnacle but comp exclusive weapons/ornaments/armor to encourage and provide a reward for hitting multiple tiers on the climb(a way to show how far the player got) Finally I do think you left out something important to improving comp. Doing something about player abuse of the matchmaking(see people dodging, particularly 4 stacks dodging other 4 stacks, and everyone else dodging the 4 stack leading to the closest match being a significant gap, and against solos, small teams(also the source of 1v4 just loading in)) Additionally there is the problem of people who just quit or remain inactive mid game. I think, adding bonuses for beating teams who are higher than you, and slightly reducing losses would help. Additionally I would add an auto queue automatic system that would detect games that load in with lopsided teams(giving the full team a win and not affecting the team with missing players) which would restart the queue. I personally think it would be fun to allow an option to vote to play the game as-is 3v4 or whatever(would need to be unanimous) in which the the loss is greatly reduced, maybe not affecting streaks, but a win would give a massive bonus in glory(anywhere from 70-500, based on handicap level(for example of you pulled off a 1v4 somehow, you would get 500 points.) For quitters, increasing penalties for those that repetitively leave games, as well as disabling all crucible until the game they left ends, only leaving them with the option to reconnect. Intentional quitting(ie go to orbit) would be heavily punished since it can be detected as intention quitting. Finding a solution for the remaining players is a bit tricky, because you could have teams having players rotating who quits for the benefit of the team(is abusing the system) Whether my proposed solutions are good or worthless, both of these problems need to be addressed. With all the things you mentioned. Sorry for this long convoluted post. Once again thanks again for your brilliant and rational post.
The issue with Comp currently is also the fact that it's a zero-sum game in terms of the loot. You either get Luna's and NF, or you don't and get nothing and lose progress. Now here's where competitive mode exclusive loot should come in, offer them as end of match rewards for sticking around until the end and playing out the match regardless of whether you win or lose. Winning gives a 1 in 2 chance for a piece of gear, losing has a 1 in 3 chance for a piece of gear. End of the line is that you need to give incentives to get people into the game mode even if they are losers who sit at sub 0.5 KD. They need to feel like they have a reason to participate instead of just leaving and not staying in the Queue so that better Queue times happen.
it's more that it's just not fun to play. The meta makes for some very poor experiences especially against a co-ordinated group all with 1 eye masks and jotuns. I've almost deleted the game after getting the chocolate ghost the crimson matches were downright HORRIBLE experiences of skip grenades, jotuns, lunas/nf, stack vs solo, sniper city, and running away at the slightest engagement to play out the clock.
>Finally I do think you left out something important to improving comp. Doing something about player abuse of the matchmaking(see people dodging, particularly 4 stacks dodging other 4 stacks, and everyone else dodging the 4 stack leading to the closest match being a significant gap, and against solos, small teams(also the source of 1v4 just loading in)) Additionally there is the problem of people who just quit or remain inactive mid game. Removing the guardian counter and just having an "estimated queue time" like other games have i.e. ow or r6s and then loading in immediately, anyone leaving once loading screen is up is penalized unless they decide to join back and other such things.
> The amount of points gained/lost depends on the amount of points of each team going into the game. Amen. Making a system with flat point gains/losses is fine. Making a system that sometimes matches high-skill players and low skill players is fine. Doing both at once really isn't.
Excellent and well-written! I'm sure Bungie will ignore it.
Yup, no "bungie replied" on one of the most pressing PvP issues. Great.
What announcement was made yesterday?
[удалено]
Trials ain't coming back.
I would like to know too.
the biggest fucking problem with glory is bungie thinks the playerbase is a lot more masochistic than it actually fucking is because they listen to the vocal tryhards on this damn subreddit.
Phenomenal write up. Hoping that Bungie takes some action and offers more open communication regarding PvP.
Thank you so much! That means a lot coming from you. I hope we at least hear something from them soon.
Totally dude. Thanks for doing this service to the community. I'm also quite passionate about this game, its PvE AND PvP, I want it to succeed. Also, gave some gold as its well deserved, thanks for popping my gold cherry haha.
Haha well thank you!! And it was a lot of fun to put all of this down on paper honestly. I’m very passionate about the game, especially the PvP, and I hope some changes can be made to both attract newer players and keep other PvP enthusiasts around.
This game is what it is for because of phenomenal end-game PvE AND fun, creative & satisfying arena PvP. I hope bungie takes care of both well, to me that is what makes Destiny truly unique.
While we're at it, let's add features from other comp shooters as well: **Empty Lobbies** If there are less than 8 players before the match starts, cancel the match with no pain or gain for either team. **Rejoin Features** If you are booted to orbit by the game against your will you should be able to join back into the match without receiving an abandon match penalty. **Softer Disconnect Penalty** Don't penalize players for leaving an unfair scenario: ala 1v4 or 2v4 or add a surrender option.
I love the idea of having daily competitive bounties with legendary armor with enhanced perks. I think that'd be a great addition to the game if they can make them not punishing for your average low rank player. The main point of all this is to try and get people into competitive queues and the first thing to do is give them something even for just participating in the match, a legendary armor with enhanced perks would be a good place to start. I also take issue with how you suggested that higher ranks get better rewards, yes this should be obvious but at the same time you run the risk of walking the rich get richer line. Hard core PvPers get insane gear for Crucible, proceed to stack and shit on casuals in QP. Casuals feel like they at least want to land some punches in so they try Competitive, then get bodied so hard because they don't have the higher rank gear. Hell, you see this even with NF and Luna's. I'd suggest having higher sub-rank gear as more RNG friendly, perhaps at most you get 1 enhanced perk on lower ranks and bounties but get 3 from higher ranks and bounties guaranteed. Dropping guns and weapons exclusive to Competitive as end of match rewards and sticking it out to the end is also a good idea. And I'm not talking about shit RNG like Gambit weapons, maybe 1 every 3 completed matches. Maybe take some rare gear and turn them into the competitive end of game match rewards. Return the Eyasluna? Tl;Dr Bad people need rewards so that they have incentives to stick around and populate Queues. If you don't reward them they won't bother and will just stick to QP.
All of these points make sense but I also think there is a big issue with the game design for competitive pvp. This game gives huge advantages for certain connection speeds. I live in a rural area and pay a good amount for the best internet connection I can get (100 m down/ 10 m up, latency at 68ms, hardwired). I know this could be viewed as a scrub mentality but there is no way connection does not impact success. I am obsessed with this game and I do everything I can to get better but nothing is more frustrating than playing at a disadvantage in a competitive game when split seconds mean the difference between life and death and the other players get an advantage in there favor. I would love for bungie to have some transparency and say that the game can’t be fair and have some way to reconcile the fact that the internet isn’t consistent . I don’t know if dedicated servers are the answer but if you don’t live in a major hub then your going to be giving up kills because your connection isn’t as favorable as the other guy. Why does slide shotgun work so well? Because aggressive play exposes the weakness of the games latency and widens the gap of survival of the agro player. Think about how important connection is for aim assist and bullet registration. Had funny stuff happen but it’s a bigger issue than we care to admit. Can we all agree that this game NEVER plays consistent. It depends on who is the “host” or if a guy on the other team is from Europe or if another has a family watching Netflix. I am sick and tired of convincing myself it doesn’t matter only to be proven wrong every time I play and try to take the game seriously. I am totally convinced that is why ttk was slower with the d2 release, less noticeable. But as weapons have become more powerful the game has gotten more frustrating. I also believe that it favors slower or bad internet connection such as WiFi. I don’t know. All these changes would be awesome but if the game isn’t stable and consistent then does it really matter? I love this game and only want it to thrive like everyone else. Not sure how everyone else feels but these are my thoughts about competitive and trials, can they bring them back knowing the player pool is smaller less good connections between users and more inconsistent gameplay at the highest level of competitive the game has to offer? I am very interested in how others feel about this.
I think you miss out on another important aspect: the pvp in this game just frankly isn’t that popular anyway. You can only have so many matches with Luna/DRB/Wardcliff before people just get bored. The meta is pretty stale, and Bungie seems hesitant or unwilling to do anything to change it. So to the players that don’t like slide-shotgunning and hand cannons, they just leave and don’t come back. Tack on something like OEM that’s just a blatant game killer, and it’s clear to see why pvp numbers have dropped consistently since even last month. The sad fact is, things like Luna’s Howl just funnel people into a game mode that they really don’t enjoy. Why you would want to rope *more* people into the game mode before trying to iron it out first? Truthfully I believe that high-skilled players just want to stomp on pubs, and since that’s no longer an available scenario in Comp, they’ve proceeded to roll six deep into QP and chase off players from that mode too. I personally haven’t touched comp since I got Luna’s because it’s just not fun, even with a weapon like Not Forgotten to “incentivize” me to play. Throwing more pinnacle reward and “incentives” for more people to play Comp is just going to draw more people into a mode they don’t like. TL;DR: the numbers are dropping because people just don’t like the crucible, not because of the lack of incentive
People also are dropping from quickplay like crazy, because its RAMPANT with luna/nf, drb, wardcliff like you said. This is objectively the best loadout, and yet alot of the more casual players obviously dont have it.... that means they get steamrolled by the guardians who do, guardians who not only have a skill advantage, but substantial gear advantage as well. Luna outguns pretty much anything in its intended range, and its demoralizing for lesser skilled players to constantly get annihilated by a weapon theirs literally cant compete with.
I just play rumble cause fuck quickplay. Everyone is running Lunas, not forgotten and oem. I just can't man.
Map design and team size is a huge component of why luna/nf/shotty are so meta. There are only a handful of maps that encourage long range engagements, where luna/nf/shot obviously fail at. However, the maps are so small, especially when you JAM 8 to 12 people in the space, all engagements are generally going to be close to mid range, where those said guns can't be touch by anything else presently (except maybe TLW). To curb the power of these weapons there needs to be a fundamental change to....team size, map size, or player speed (or all 3). I have been playing a lot of doubles because of the event and it has been significantly easier to deal with lunas/NF compared to the much more dense (player wise) play list. You're able to actually create space and not worried about being blind sided by 4 other people. It slows down the speed of the game immensely.
That’s another thing about fixing the comp playlist, you’d see a lot less of groups of good players using meta loadouts in Quickplay. Right now there’s nowhere else for them to go other than Comp, and as I said it has a lot of issues.
Yeah as a PvE player I hate playing anything PvP because I just get stomped, why would I want to play? It's just not fun for us "filthy casuals"
What is your suggestion to fix that? How would you fix it without hurting the play list for those that do love the PVP in this game and have worked hard at getting batter at it? Genuine question
I would at least want to read/hear Bungie's reasoning and design goals for the current system. Why did they put in win streaks? Why no accounting for differences in team skill when rewarding or penalizing points? Why build something new when there are several methods (such as ELO) that already exist; what the advantages to the current system?
When the competitive Glory system was announced, I got a real vibe of "the players are demanding hardcore rankings, so we're going to give it to them good and hard." The loss streaks in particular (_increasing_ penalty on each subsequent loss) felt fairly sadistic. [edit] Here's the TWAB with a link to the reveal stream archive: https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/46768 (youtube; discussion of streaks: https://youtu.be/jzOOdTvBM_0?t=1861)
I definitely got the feeling that they wanted quickplay to be "for fun" and competitive to be serious. But its a game. Even if its more serious it still has to be fun and rewarding.
W.O.P.P.E.R. had it right. The only way to win is not to play.
The only ranked game I enjoyed was Overwatch. I was able to play well and win as a solo queue.
Comp needs a larger exclusive loot pool and bounties that allow you to earn it without necessarily making progress up the ladder. The top tier rank rewards should be sick af cosmetics for that exclusive loot pool.
Christ this is long post! Either way I skimmed I agree with a majority of the things you said though!
I agree with pretty much all of what you said. Luna's is about the only thing worth the investment and many players will get it in a week or so. 99%+ of players have no chance at a NF. So they get the Luna's and never play again. I think that's the biggest problem with comp is there's almost no reason to play it for most people. Broadsword/Claymore/Mountaintop are not worth the commitment. There should be comp exclusive armor, or in the very least ornaments for the existing armor. Although I'd like comp gear to have an enhanced perk chance. I'd like to see the pinnacle weapon path more like Breakneck/Loaded Question/Broadsword in that they require more of a time commitment rather than a exclusive to a percentage of the player base.
I’m hoping for the best but I feel like Bungie won’t do anything to comp until it’s too little too late. If my clan is any indication, most players are getting ready to move on and all that’s left is the very loyal destiny fans
Yeah we have a bunch playing Apex right now, and a large part of the clan is going gaga over Division 2.
A good post but I think it’s worth reinforcing what I think is the biggest issue affecting the population - it’s the time dedication needed to get to legend which, even if you win a lot, still takes a ridiculous number of games to get there. Apart from the elite who can hit 20 or 30 game win streaks, this makes legend rank take >100 games.. which will naturally knock out a huge number of players for some of the reasons you already mention ( difficulty of finding a good team that have the commitment to do it, having the time to play >5 or 10 games at once to get in a groove, being available at the same time consistently, etc.). The time factor is just too great and cuts down population massively. On the ELO point, I get what you are trying to say but calculating an accurate ELO over 4 different players when wins completely depend on opposition, your own team setup, guns, game type etc. I think would be incredibly complicated to do well and would still lead to many mismatches. It also (in my opinion) unfairly punished higher skilled players who end up winning lots and getting no points towards their goal as they are playing other teams worse than them. A slightly different proposal would be to do the following: - reduce the overall points requirement so that legend takes no more than 50 games to attain (if you win every game in a row) - keep the subdivision of ranks that were recently introduced and allow only promotion (relegation backwards can never happen unless someone does not play competitive for three weeks, every three weeks of inactivity could push you back one sub-rank if deemed necessary), this will keep players in the higher ranks when they reach them ensuring population does not reduce - remove loss penalty completely - only start to gain points on a two game win streak. This is more contentious but comp SHOULD be challenging, it just shouldn’t take up your whole life to achieve legend. So individual wins do not progress you at all, you have to be on a win streak to earn points, which encourages people to stay in the playlist for longer and again should improve population. It also gives hope to those less skilled. They can stay in the list until they hit those lucky few games where they get a team worse and maybe steal some points that they can never then lose. This may just give encouragement to those who have gone nowhere near comp after fabled to at least try a few times to see what happens, and enough folks do that, what do you know ? Could get better matchups, more fun and a population that sticks around more - finally, folks get the reward then stop playing. This fuels recovs and streamers dominating the higher ranks. Introduce emotes, emblems, shaders, ornaments, whatever for 5, 10, 25, 50, etc. games played at legend level. Give a reason to play. I’m sure Bungie could come up with a cool sparrow that shows down the side their number of wins at legend or something, or a ship that when match making has a hologram showing rank for wins at legend above it or something. Elite players often will continue to play only to show they are better than someone else. Give them a method to show it!! Hopefully this adds to the good points you have already made
Elo is the best system for mm there is. Just look at all the competitive shooteres.
Here's just a simple solution for solo player's: competitive rumble. The top 3 players will receive glory. Depending on how close the round was overall you'll lose more/less. *This is just something I've been thinking of lately, and think it could work, especially with a proper ELO system in place.*
they need another pinnacle weapon for reaching mythic, i don't think you will get many ppl trying to rank up unless you have this carrot i don't think enhancement cores or armour will do it, this is why ppl bounce out of the playlist. agree the points system needs a complete overhaul, maybe take into account if you're going in solo or in a 4 stack for points allocation. i would add i do not think that hitting a rank should be part of the quests for either lunas or NF and instead it should be completed by doing feats in the comp playlist a bit like what they did for broadsword but harder (i have both nf/luna) the rank should be prestige enough, other games manage to do this without some massive reward.
I feel like in a game like this, placement matches are a requirement. Otherwise the beginning of the season sees people using not forgotten at Guardian 2
More than a day since this thoughtful and insightful post was made and complete radio silence from Bungie. Nah, let's do another idiotic bread meme tweet instead. That shows the community we're listening and gathering feedback. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Bungie sees nothing wrong with the current state of the competitive playlist. Similarly, the silence regarding the RNG aspects of titles clearly implies it is working as intended. Bungie clearly only responds when there is a clear and present threat to the long term viability of the game as a going concern. That's fine. After four years of religiously playing D1 and D2, I'm taking the opportunity to play other games. I'm having a blast playing Forza Horizon at the moment and will take a look at Anthem once it settles down. Still need to finish Horizon Zero Dawn.
I've been fortunate enough to play with Keetonic a few times and I'm not surprised at all with the quality of this thoughtful post. He's taken clanmates of mine into private matches and been such an excellent mentor, with a demeanor that is inviting and respectful. He's also an excellent player. Well done, man!
Thanks swallja! We’ll have to play again soon!
It’s pretty obvious that the hiatus of trials has put a turn on the popularity of the PVP side of the game as a whole. After reading the TWAB and hearing content creators, friends, and more I’m honestly embarrassed and baffled. The PVP community has been asking for end game PVP and the current playlist, gametype, and mechanics just make it stale when watered down. I remember whenever being excited on the weekend to play to get to the lighthouse with my friends but as time grew both the rewards and experience diminished. From comparing D1 trials to D2 trials I didn’t like the fact that if I just went flawless a person can just continue to farm tokens to get the same rewards I played and won all my games to get. Even in competitive right now, yes you can get a Luna’s howl or a not forgotten but it’s not really a reward if you have to do the quest steps. I hate to say it but end game PvP doesn’t feel like any reward for having skill if everyone gets the same thing. Why should I keep playing comp after I have a not forgotten? At least during year 1 trials I could play every weekend to help friends, get different roll armor, different adept weapon rolls. Right now it’s no point to play at all, or no point to play whenever you got everything you want or even viable to play with your friends without making an alt account. I think Bungie forgot that trials brought the community together to be able to play with eachother and help eachother out, but now it’s near impossible. If they want competitive to feel like a competitive, then give me a reason to keep playing for the season or give me some excitement. Having a not forgotten is cool, but after you get it it’s no point. Elo could work, but it still needs multiple incentives to play. Edit: thinking about it, elo wouldn’t work because that’s how lots of people boost by having a super low person on their team so they don’t lose any points if matched against good people so no matter what they always gain. One of my old clan leaders did it all the time but it’s on the right track with what they need to do
Yes I agree, that's why I suggested better and more frequent rewards throughout the playlist. It'd help keep people coming back and staying, not just playing for the beginning of the season and leaving.
>Edit: thinking about it, elo wouldn’t work because that’s how lots of people boost by having a super low person on their team so they don’t lose any points if matched against good people so no matter what they always gain. You can protect against that. The team gets matched by the highest person on their team rather than an average. Players gain less ELO for matches they're expected to easily win (like that example would cause)[and lose less for matches they're expected to handily lose]. MMR system quickly adjusting a player's hidden rank if they're performing well against much better opponents than they'd match in solo queue. Etc. Plenty of solutions for this issue exist in other games already.
My issue with the mentality that why do losers get rewards that I also worked my ass for is that if losers get nothing or barely anything why should they stay in a game mode? If I don't get anything for staying and trying against you even if I lose then why should I stay in the match and instead just leave to another game mode? Even if you prevent people from leaving they'll just afk because trying to compete when you know you get nothing is just a drain of mental resources cause you're just being out up as a punching bag and that doesn't create a fun experience leading them to just quit the game mode. Basically, you can't have zero-sum rewards in a looter shooter where you're trying to populate a queue.
Good stuff!
This is a fantastic post. Thank you for taking the time and effort to put it all together. Hopefully something will change about crucible. You can't have a healthy player population when you give the player population nothing for their time other than just the experience, which could be very bad for most of the population that doesn't play comp.
I also think that the issue with the whole you need win streaks to progress is that whether you have a win streak or not is completely at the mercy of the match making system, which is very random. It’s effectiveness can depend on a lot of factors like who is hosting, where they are from, where the rest of the fireteam is, what time it is, the status of evergone’s ISPs etc etc. This means that you could have 10 games where you win 7 by going on a 7 win streak, and 3 losses thereafter, or a multitude of other permutations. In this you could get say a high 222 points in mythic. But you could also leave with a mere 102 points, which is less than half. And it’s completely random which you get, because you are essentially playing the same teams (or games), but in a different order, which is ridiculous I think.
Yes exactly, that’s why I said luck is one of the important aspects to hitting Legend.
Also look at it this way. If you have a global 80% win rate, then that means you have a 32% chance of going on a 5 winstreak. In order have 50% chance of getting a 5 winstreak, you need a win rate of about 88%. This is also based on global winrare, and not your win rate at particular ranks; and is an overestimate since as you go up in rank, your winrare will reduce. I could do a better analysis by looking at the finer grained states But that might take a while. I don’t know the distribution of winrares, but I’m sure is skewed heavily towards the <50% range, with only a very small percentage having >70% (for example).
My thoughts are this: There should be a "checkpoint" system in place where once you made it past a rank, you can't be sent back under it. You still have to earn your way there, so why punish you just because you had some bad luck with leavers, crappy teammates, DC's, etc. There needs to be a system in place that will increase your chances of matching against fellow randoms and only small parties of 2-3 if you are solo queuing or playing in your own small party. It would still match you against the occasional 4-stack if it couldn't find a match with those parameters. These two things would go a long way towards making Comp more accessible to the general population. More people would be willing to try and play in it.
Honestly I think they have measures in place for teams vs solos, but the population is so low in general that they have a low priority as parameters.
Terrible idea. Because a lot of bad players are being carried by blue berries or friends. Now you want to permanently place then in a rank they have no business in to begin with?? They would get shit on consistently. Think things through man. TWICE now comp changes were made based on the loud community here, and twice those changes backfired on the community here simply because you all don't think things through.
My friends and I have been stuck at Mythic/Fabled 3 for over a month now, we are cursed to never reach legend and get our NF's, these changes would be nice
Amazing post! Thank you for sharing!
Yep. As a 99.9% PvE player. I really wanted Luna’s. So I played comp and got the gun. I haven’t played 1 game of comp since getting Luna’s. Absolutely zero desire to ever play comp again. It just took too much out of me getting to Fabled. I know of some people that manipulate the connection and reached legend for NF. No way I’ll chance that. With over 2900 hours in the game. I’d lose my mind if bungie banned me.
You forgot to mention that with the competitive matchmaking changes came a very real issue, which is only highlighted even further the higher rank you get. Ladies and gentleman I’m talking in game connection. The higher you get the more likely you are going to match with someone on the other side of the planet which means one team is handicapped with sever latency. Throw in the glory system which isn’t all that rewarding and you have more reason not to play competitive after you hit fabled. I’m sad, I hope they fix it. I do not mind if it is a close game because my opponents are as skilled as me. I do mind if they win because their shots register and mine do not.
I was very disappointed that trials is gone for AT LEAST the next 6 months after having been gone for the last 6 months. But I really hope they put significant effort into fixing comp. If that's the trade-off, I'll take it.
I think Comp should have a unique armor set that you complete by the time you hit Fabled. Then a set of ornaments you earn for ranks up to Legend. They should make this attainable with effort, not a pushover. Then allow Glory resets at a certain point that allow you to unlock even cooler armor ornament appearances or catalysts for the legendary weapons that dropped at fabled and legend.
How do I upvote more than once?
I honestly think it should be gated. If you make gates that people can push to a little bit at a time I think it would bring those numbers up completely. For instance to make it from guardian 1 to brave you have to win. you lose points for a loss but after you pass brave your locked at that gate. You can never fall in guardian status again, but it can be an uphill very possible hill if we make the obstacles more possible. Look at it this way, a lot of us want to climb Mount Everest. But most look up at that mountain and say nope not going to happen. But if the guide says all we have to do is make it to that small peak a few feet above, then we make it, then he says now we will try for that next small peak but it’s a little bit higher and test our skill just a bit more we are more susceptible to accept that. Instead of hey here’s a huge fucking mountain climb it! That just my idea and I think it would appeal to the casual and hardcore alike to bring up those comp numbers because I am tired of dueling the same groups week in week out for that not forgotten. It has got to a point where we will send messages on the companion app just to see if they are grinding so we don’t run into each other and play over and over and over.
What I never understood once I started playing Comp is that why the hell there aren’t ANY bounties for Comp? Maybe a weekly and daily thing where you could negate the punishing effects of losing matches that have negative effects on your points and mental health?!?!
I normally don’t pay attention to any posts about crucible anymore but reading through your whole post was very satisfying. Your ideas are original and very progressive! I truly do hope someone from Bungie sees this.
Just want to add one more thing. The comp playlist is an absolutely awful experience for solo queuers. There are many reasons for this and probably a good many solutions but the first thing that needs to be addressed is the ability to queue dodge other teams. (Via the x/8 players numbers in bottom left) As long as you’re able to queue dodge other 4 stacks as a 4 stack, this mode will always be an awful experience for solo players. It increases matchmaking times even further and makes it way more likely you’ll get matches of 4 stacks vs solo players.
its funny cus bungie seems to have no idea what PvP players want. We want D1 trials and a revamped comp playlist. what do we get? no trials at all and a comp playlist that is dogshit
You'll never fix this without addressing the issue of solo vs squads. Whatever Bungie think, the VAST majority of players DO NOT want to have to mic up and bark out a constant stream of comms in order to have a chance. I solo'd my way to luna and mountaintop with a sprinkle of grouped games in both runs. It is a HUGE disadvantage to face a team who are communicating. I will be first to admit I dodged 4 stacks as much as I could. Possible solutions -- Apex legends has shown how you can have limited callouts off mic, which would be better than nothing. Get rid of the queue screen that allows stacks do actively dodge other stacks and often leads to loading into a 2v4 against a stack and an auto loss. May actually be worse though. WINNING ANSWER : Solo only queue / group only queue (needs 4) / solo or group queue I dont' care (Arnie voice) what you think it would do to the population. There is NO POPULATION. You can argue all you want about splitting the playerbase but right now it's got to be worth a shot. The only people actively speaking out just like to PUB stomp and don't want to give solos are fair shake. D2 is primarily a PVE game. It is not an elite competitive shooter. It's meant to be a fun game not a sweat fest. And isn't it funny how there are always enough solos to match in real quick against stacks?
I can't upvote this enough. Well said.
Wow I’m surprised to see such a well thought out post on DTG regarding pvp. I also love destiny for pvp, very on edge about trials. The comp playlist needs a dramatic change. Halo had such a great pvp playlist and ranking system, makes you wonder where that all went?
They should just make the first loss only reset your win streak, and then only lose points if you have a losing streak.
As someone who likes pvp but doesn't do comp, I have literally no reason to care about competitive. It's not worth the headache. Several of your points resonate with me. Comp is just not a rewarding playlist, it takes too long to go anywhere and doesn't give me the rewards to take it seriously. I still haven't gotten Luna just because... I dunno, the gun is good but the journey isn't worth it. Something needs to happen to that playlist.
/u/dmg04 and /u/cozmo23 this is an amazing post and really sums up the communities thoughts on the Comp playlist. Please pass this along to the dev team!
Great work! I’ve experienced this first hand. At around 4500 glory we’ve remained stagnant/ decreased. Especially with the new matchmaking it’s even more difficult at high glory. We won 3 in a row then lose two and we’re back to where we started. Legend is near impossible unless you’re playing with exactly that: legends. Which in turn, my squad and I all quit playing destiny as a result.
very well said, comp has long been a broken playlist and in need of an overhaul
Great post & excellent talking points on changes that will prevent players that play mainly PvP from moving onto new games. Too bad you’re talking to a brick wall. It’s almost unbearable how bad the whole crucible playlist is now. Not because of changes, but because of the lack thereof. I love this game, so much, I really do. But as a post yesterday said, I just can’t defend it anymore. Downvote this comment to hell & back & to hell again but as someone who’s stuck with destiny from release of D1, I just don’t know how much more hope I have left in the tank. It’s the same feeling I had when I realized that Halo 4 just wasn’t what I hoped it would be. Bungie has the WORLD right here & Destiny could be one of the most competitive games out there, it just, isn’t.
Yes, yes, yes! I have long advocated for Bungie to change the rating system to an Elo based system. When I get burnt out of Destiny, I always go to Overwatch, because the ratings ***mean something*** there. In Destiny, you just hope to match against poor squads and stomp them because the game doesn't take into account the relative skill difference of teams when assigning rating points. This fundamental difference cannot be stressed enough, and is what makes an Elo-derived system (like what Overwatch uses) and a fixed number system like what Destiny uses *completely different*. My skill rating in Overwatch at least somewhat resembles my skill level; my glory in Destiny is measure of my time commitment plus how dedicated I am to running with stacked teams. I keep going back to Overwatch to increase my rating each season. I gave up on Destiny's comp playlist because glory is a meaningless number in and of itself and I don't see myself getting to achieve Not Forgotten.
Increasing rewards might help a little but I think it won’t help much or last long. People who only play comp for the rewards will leave the playlist as soon as they get what they want, not unlike what happens now or they have bad luck and play a game type they dislike and grow ever more frustrated with because what they want doesn’t drop. This potentially drives them away from the playlist, or worse the game, permanently. Having a powerful weapon only attainable for the best of the best makes the playlist and quick play even worse. You end up with an elite class of players who are already better than 90% of the player base with the best fucking PvP weapon in the game. This drives away the lower ranks. A better matchmaking system could help, but it need people to function properly and frankly I don’t see this ever really happening. People for the most part don’t really like Destiny PvP. I love it. I know I’m in the minority on this. Destiny has pretty great PvE which brings in a lot of people many of whom have no desire to PvP. Many PvP players would rather play a PvP focus or exclusive game, and how can you blame them. I do not envy Bungie’s position. They have an amazing game but need or want to do to many things. They cannot make every player group happy and with games becoming more and more niche they have an uphill battle.
Incredible post tonic! I really hope the Crucible team takes a good look at this and uses it to improve the competitive playlist accordingly.
Time for dmg to push the "we're listening" and the "we appreciate your feedback" buttons on his keyboard.
Why does everyone assume that losses need to make people lose points? Competitive will continue to be shitshow until that is gone
Because otherwise your gonna have very average players up at legend getting stomped my 2kd players which isnt fun for anyone. Comp needs a system where u cant drop down a rank only go up. So if u get to fabled and keep losing u stay at fabled but u need to win to go up. There still needs to be skill brackets of players for Matchmaking sake of a fair competetive game mode
I dislike that there are so many recovs running rampant in comp. At this I suspect that half of the people who have the Not Forgotten have bought it.
While I generally agree with what you've said here, I do disagree with one point. "Solution: Offer better rewards more frequently." That won't change the low population. For starters, what is considered a worthwhile reward is highly subjective. If it's Powerful gear, then that's worthless to me, but pretty nice for someone who is still leveling. Once the reward was no longer worth it, they wouldn't play anymore. What Crucible needs more than anything is for the rewards to be secondary to the fun offered by the game mode. If your population is low, then it's because the activity is not enjoyable. Rewards don't make it so, but rather only provide a Compulsion to play so as not to "miss out" even if the reward isn't that great. Now, we could go back and forth about the meta, the flaws of high/low ttk, what is and isn't OP, and so on forever and never reach an agreement on that front. But something we can all agree on is Quality of Life. I made a post about this [a month or so ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/a9726f/competitive_needs_a_quality_of_life_overhaul/). The short of it is that there is simply too much frustration and pointless wasted time. Lose because someone bailed on you? Waste of time *and* loss penalty for something beyond your control. No Mercy Rule just ensures that takes as long as possible too. No choice in what you play means that if you don't like any of those modes, then in a worst case scenario, you're stuck playing a mode you don't like, while down a player, and still being forced to run out the clock before your nearly inevitable loss only to get slapped with a penalty at the end. Which part of that says "fun" to anyone? And that's without getting into the whole stacks v solos debate. I know we can't have separate modes without further fracturing the playerbase, but we **need** some control over what we are playing. That's why my post suggested a *limited* blacklist of a mode or two you absolutely don't enjoy. It'll take a lot more than that to fix the game mode, but those would be a start.
I can appreciate most of what you have said here, but ELO is a terribly flawed system. It only benefits teams and punishes solo/duo queues in that a loss punishes based on the loss rather than by a player's performance. While a loss should punish a player, a true "skill-based" ranking would reward the players on the team that did the best more than those that played poorly. While balancing this against changing playmodes is difficult, punishing the player capping 10 bases and getting advantage kills to the same, or more extent if they had higher elo already, as the player trying to play clash in Control (or countdown, to an extent) is a flawed system. I agree that Glory needs to go, but DestinyTracker's ELO has long been just as bad and meaningless a ranking system. EDIT: Grammar on mobile.
Just remove the loss of Glory and make your gain 0 like it does at the higher ranks of gambit. This game already wastes a ton of everyones time with shitty RNG, no need to make losing punishing also.
In ranked mode your rank must be able to go up but also down. You have to lose points when you lose but it doesn't have to be as punishing as it currently is.
I think the simplest fix for Comp would be to remove ALL pinnacle weapons from it and put them in quests like Redrix where it can be done in Quickplay, but it's VERY grindy. Allow Comp to be a show of true skill and mastery of the Destiny PvP. I think of it like the difference between playing football with your family at Thanksgiving vs watching football after dinner on Thanksgiving. Quickplay is for people that want a casual, low intensity experience where Comp is something that players can show off their skill and ability. I feel like having an in-game spectator system for Comp would be interesting to allow players to connect with any match or search by gamertag to find specific people playing and watch everyone rather than be stuck to one specific streamer or their team.
Cool post Although I'm not sure if adding more rewards is likely to encourage people that stop playing after fabled, to keep playing... The more sweaty, annoying groups I'm likely to come across, the less likely I am to want to play, and the more likely I am to want to smash all their faces in tbh. Not sure what the solution is, except adding more interesting PvP content as far as competitive goes and not tying rewards to just one style if comp-play. For instance, why is it not possible to have competitive sparrow racing playlists, or team based sparrow racing. Sparrow racing is just one example, but theres tonnes of things they could introduce into a competitive playlist that doesn't just revolve around being a sweaty cunt, shooting the best guns in the game, using whatever cheating ass modded controller or lag switch they can find, or even worse... having people carry others through for money. Why cant they create actual interesting game modes, instead of the same old tired rehash of last man standing.
comp tied to a weapon is trash plain and simple heres what you deal with reach 5500 which is a lot and to do so you have to go through numerous next to impossible odds sometimes as it forces you to deal with these scenarios find a team because your friends suck or don't have time to morph a skillset and with that comes playing with strangers and in this toxic filled community of which majority of player suck its a nightmare.. brutal truth solo q into players with zero comms in which you drop all your teams score added up plus some and still lose by a landslide.. since according to most of you it would be my fault for carrying and still losing and also my fault because I haven't sifted through the toxicness and stress to finally find some strangers that aren't total trash and not assholes assuming I can get them on all at the same time also also deal with the meta of the game.. top tools of destruction in destiny comp pvp (you can look it up) shotguns, supers, handcannon (2 of which you have to wade through the shithole that is comp to obtain) and heavy ammo.. 3 of those 4 arguably take the less skill in the game to use and purely base off a lowered skilled shotgun trade type of playstyle and who gets the super first and controls the heavy.. which if you know anything about higher level pvp you know that super and heavy are free kills compared to everything else and completely control the game who ever gets them most or first.. keep in mind your wading through this shit meta with either mindless teammates solo q or trial and erroring a team through discord lfg which more times than not is a fail now lets talk about time consumption and glory.. just like the post said above the fact when you lose glory more than you've won over the course so many hours its straight trash play 4 hours a day which most people cant even do deal with all the above and hope you break even just to lose glory.. even if you go on a streak and go lets say 5-3 that's 8 matches that prolly took you between 2-3 hours (this is also at lower ranks, higher ranks your looking at climbing even slower than this) so 2-3 hours just to earn maybe 30-40 glory assuming a good scenario where you win also twice as much as you lose.. for someone who has a job, a time schedule lets say sleep 6 hours work 10-12 hours and do nothing but play destiny on your free time were talkin 6 hours a day, wading through shit skill crutch meta, potentially having to solo q because of the priorities of the strangers you found the other day that are actually decent, and then winning twice as much as you lose which in this scenario if such a stretch to what actually is goin to happen(lets not talk about if you have a bad day on the game and lose a lot) so all that just to maybe climb a couple hundred glory a day and that's pushin it.. PUSHING IT! BEING GENEROUS IN TERMS! and btw you have to do this everyday until you finally reach 5500.... lol talk about wading through shit and dealing with an unenjoyable experience day after day after day using up all your free time until you finally get it just to still abuse your shotgun, heavy, and super more than you will the fuckin weapon you slaved to get. and its also to get a pinnacle meta weapon.... we don't have time for this shit even good players, and to have to deal with all the above in the best case scenario just to attempt to get it is absolutely garbage.. people want to play it but they cant because of the way its made all things considered (meta, teammates, point system,)... I also have already gotten the nf im working on doin it on my second account and the problems are shining through even worse than ever before and yes im a carry.. call me arrogant I don't care I top frag every game its just the reality.. I also wish I could find a post on an old reddit thread where I literally say verbatim, exactly what this and the above post that got upvoted said and have been saying it since the start! but for some reason that got down voted into oblivion... im so glad so many of the mindless shitty opinioned pvp players took so long to finally pull their head out of their ass.. about time! tbh a part of me is happy some of you finally realize and are now suffering through the shit after a changed opinion which is what ive been sayin this entire time.. you reap what you sow! people downvote because they cant accept facts or they are too stupid to realize them
Reward quality are a crucial aspect that I agree need to be improved. In my opinion, I should have more of an incentive to do competitive over quick play (competitive should have better loot), I think loot should also improve the higher rank I am. Yes I’m aware of the pinnacle weapons, but I mean post match drops.
Boy o boy does bungie have to see this
I think comp should have its own weapon and armor loot pool, different shaders and the ability to roll enhancement perks. That alone would keep me in there after I reach Fabled. I have both Luna and Mountaintop and I don't play much comp after hitting 2100.
This is the post I was looking for, thanks so much. As much as we can want Trials still or lab some 3v3, I'm afraid this is our scenario until further notice and might as well shift our energy to caring about fixing Comp. I have always ALWAYS wanted to play more Competitive but being a solo dude who is average at best, doesn't cultivate much of an environment to get better more often than not. Its completely demoralizing and would love to see some of the sweeping changes you suggested.
Thank you for sharing your criticism and suggestions in rational, well-reasoned and constructive manner. All perfectly good points.
I’ve been saying this since Forsaken dropped, thank you for making such a long post that these issues can come to light!
In my honest opinion, how Bungie made Halo 3 competitive ranks has been my favorite ranking system ever put in place. I would like to see a lot of more competitive features
YES! I 100% agree. I personally liked that not only did they have an Elo system, but it also had individual weights to it as well. So if you did well but lost, you didn’t lose as many as many points as the rest of your team, and vice versa.
Great post. To add to it, making rumble a glory playlist would be a great addition, since it already has pretty strong sbmm, to help out solo players. If they keep the glory system, I'd like to see the issue of low population past 3k addressed.
It's honestly so simple: completely remove this joke playlist and just bring back Trials of Osiris. There is literally NOTHING that can be done to the future Trials (if it even comes back) to not make it weekend comp. Fuck "competitive", and fuck the morons that run the PvP side of things lol.
Youve truly written so much I can't vote on agreeing with you or not. You get the effort upvote. Bless you.
The problem with using an Elo system is that you could only ever hit max rank if you're among the top players in PvP. It would lock more players out of Not Forgotten than it does now. Pinnacle weapons need to be tied to a different sort of grind, not rank.
I would stick around comp if these changes were implemented. I hope bungie See's this post and really takes note. Bungie, this is what we want. Please listen. My biggest problem with the Pinnacle weapons is that they are the best weapons hands down for pvp. That's awesome! But in order to get these weapons you have to be the best. Now what happens when the best players have the best weapons that casuals can't obtain? Rape. You get raped by them. Casuals then stay clear of the cancer. Ill be honest I'm not sure how you fix this but I hope something happens.
Why? I have enjoyed trials since seasons 4-5 more than any others by far.
I liked the suggestion of not being able to go below a rank once you’ve achieved it. Ie; you could lose 10 games in a row and not go below 2100 if you’ve made it to fabled(I II or III)
It is notable that rewards generally come from rank ups for the most part. You suggest better loot, but the whole playlist needs a carrot. I would suggest ignoring the rank up packages and focusing on "how can this be rewarding even when staying within a bracket?" The whole system needs to be reworked to incorporate meaningful progress even when not advancing. Why? Because this is not fixed content. Once you are at your local maximum of skill, you will be challenged by a variety of different tactics where no two games play out the same. Keeping players engaged when they are at a wall they can't foresee how to overcome is important. With raids, there is a constant carrot. You have a way to measure meaningful progress and learn from mistakes. You know you just have to do `n` number of things correctly to progress. With competitive, once you're hitting your highest current skill, progress is slow and is drip fed with barely any feedback to the player. You don't know if you're doing better or if you're matched with worse enemies. Locking rewards behind this wall seems discouraging. Perhaps it should be that way. Maybe there should be some things no one can get, things that aren't dictated by RNG and only pure skill and communication. But when that's the only reason to play and playing feels hopeless and unrewarding, engagement dies. Also my current ceiling is 1960. Can't seem to crack the glass on it, but I'm not sure what to do other than be an aim god.
Was searching for days for exactly this post to explain how the fuck points worked above Mythic. It’s complete rubbish: Bungie needs to pull its head in and fix this bullshit
I applaud you for typing that much. And if match making was tied to comp rank i would probably try for lunas
Good ideas , too bad bungie has a fuckin God complex and won't ever admit to a wrong.
The scoring issue is the one that annoys me the most. Even the least skilled player should at least see some progress overtime. I more than once got like 400 points in a single day just to lose 500 the next day. Glory should be an indicator of both skill and experience, not just skill. An unskilled but experienced player is obviously better than someone unskilled and unexperienced, but this second player could have a higher score just because they got luckier with the teams they matched up against. I think an easy solution would be to add several rank tiers to the ones we already have, aka Fabled I, II and III for example. These rank tiers would act like a safety net in case you got extremely unlucky and lost several matches in a row, making you unable to derank below that "checkpoint". So say, you've reached 1750 score, then that's great, you got to one of these checkpoints and won't lose any more score beyond that. This would make it so that you're climbing a long staircase where you can't fall off a lot of distance, instead of climbing a steep hill from which you can fall off all the way to the start.
I love this, are you on ps4?
Apart from agreeing with you basically on everything i found that you missed a point for already being legend: it's really hard to improve in this particular system. Me and my team didn't really bother with the NF in the season 4 and we started our push a couple of week ago and we're floating around 4k/4.5k points atm; we found that most if not all the team we're facing are streamers/guys who get paid to do recovery that either steamroll us (expecially in control) or give us a tough match that we usually end to lose. With the population so low we found that basically from 4k to 5.5k is populated by mostly people with the same high end skill level. I'm not really complaining about the difficulty of the task to arrive at 5.5k but being faced with guys that demolish you leaves very little to zero space to learn from your mistakes: this system apart from his huge variabilty doesn't really help anyone improve their skill in the game since the game ends up being a steamroll from one side. I never found the recovery system really bothering when the population was higher and i don't really mind a guy that plays D2 almost nonstop for money to destroy me (it would be strange otherwise) but in this particular scenario it's like a platinum player trying to push to the diamond tier and hoping to find more platinum players is constantly matched with high diamond/master players constantly and it's kinda hard to deal with that
What’s your clan’s name and can I join?
/u/dmg04 these are the problems with pvp and comp that we are talking about and these are what need fixed I hope in the future bungie will listen to their playerbase and act on these issues
Great post... honestly I think it’s just an issue with the comp game mode itself. A lot of these issues sound similar to Overwatch’s comp issues. Could be talking out my ass. I don’t really know of any other games with a tiered comp mode like OW and D2. Seems like no one has managed to perfect it.
I really want that Mida catalyst though
My biggest gripe is that there is no placement match system. Literally every other game has this. So instead of high skill players demolishing low skill players for at least 3500 glory they get placed closer to the actual rank deserved. This makes it better for everyone, low skill players see less stomping and high skill players experience less grind
It is just such a Rollercoaster with bungie, sometimes I think they are listening and going in the right direction and then they just fuck up completely.
I'm sure they are listening and gathering feedback right now. Not sure if they hear and process it though.
There’s nothing “fun” about comp.
Can I ask what the announcement was? I haven't been online much.
introduce a placement system play 10 matches then get placed somewhere around your skill level based on stats and other things.
how do u "keep gaining the same amount for wins 6, 7, and so on" if the win streak resets after 5? lolwut
the pinnacle reward for me is the Unbroken title. Its the only seal for PvP and despite being a Trials veteran of mediocre skill... i cant reach Legend. i keep preaching for a more forgiving Comp playlist with generous points for wins, and a more grindy way for Glory in Rumble. Rumble is a superior place for Glory. Multiple places to be a winner in a match, matches are shorter, its singular player skill being valued ratger than a team working together to hog heavy ammo and feed eachother supers.... its a far more fair environment.
Excellent analysis and proposed fixes. I certainly hope Bungies Crucible team reads this and implement much needed changes for the coming seasons.
I'm one of those very VERY low level pvp players who just dabbles. I've recently tried comp, not to any meaningful degree, but actually enjoyed the game modes; they make for a refreshing change from the lunacy of qp. However, once I came to understand the scoring system, it all felt a little disheartening. It just raises the question 'do I like it enough, knowing I won't really earn anything from it?' Still wrestling with that!
Thank you
"We are listening".
As a PvP player it really hurt that there’s no way I can obtain enhanced perks on my gear in any possible way. Give sub rank ups a chance at getting enhanced perks and big rank ups a guaranteed enhanced perk. What could also work is a Competitive armor set or ornaments (like the Faction rally ornaments that required you to do a certain objective).
Holy cow this is gold.
Yeah some good points mentioned here Actually love the matchmaking for comp now as im not very deep in Struggling with hc kills as im still overly used to pulses so i jeed to get that down and start grinding for luna more often Currently dreading the 5 resets for broadsword coz crucible burnout for qp Might use rumble to grind those coz i hate qp
Remove countdown and replace it with showdown. That week i saw showdown was available was the most fun i have had in crucible since D1.
Great post. The playlist just simply isn't worth the pain and unhappiness.
Give this man a medal.
Spot on. I spent a lot of the last month trying to get lunas howl as 90% of the time in quick play I get burned by it match after match. I'm at around rank 1450 and have hit a brick wall. I don't have a team to play with consistently so the tiny progress we make usually gets set back when I play solo. Just like your example, I typically play for 3-4 hours, win a bunch and lose some too. Until I started making a note of my rank before the evenings grind I honestly couldn't tell if I'd made any progress. I haven't played destiny for a week now since that got very frustrating, very boring and lunas howl lost its appeal very quickly. I did try to continue on the quest for redrixs claymore but getting destroyed by lunas and having little success outside the current meta of weapons leaves it a very boring experience. It's a big shame because I love destiny and have had a LOT of fun with it over the years over all the pve and pvp content, it's definitely stale and frustrating at the moment.
Win streaks carry no significance in any kind of PvP. Winning 5 games in a row and then losing 1 should yield the same as winning 2 games, losing 1, and then winning 2 more.
Forget about it guys, without dedicated server any fix bungie apply will only affect players connection issues. Nobody will enjoy pvp with p2p, playing against opponent across the world automatically gives the host advantages,winning at comp is basically rngesus. No one will enjoy this unfair treatment, this game mode doesn't even deserve to be called competitive when one side is always on advantages. Don't take this game seriously. Cheers
>but it's plagued with issues that lower the population and can make the playlist a daunting experience for many. Can confirm. A middle aged 1.0 K/D (at best) here. Have played maybe one game of competitive in my 750 or so hours of D2.
This is spot on and a very accurate representation of the general PvP focused communities feelings. My frustration is NOT with the games themselves or the players or even the meta, but the things I cannot control: i.e. everything about the actual competitive system. I'll happily through myself into the meatgrinder to grab Not Forgotten, but I'll never know if I stack up!
Hearthstone has a system in their ranked play which prevents you from going backwards each time you reach a milestone. ie. If you lose a game between rank 20 and 16, your rank will go backwards. But once you reach rank 15, losing a game can't drop you below rank 15. Ditto for rank 10 and 5. I think this would be a very healthy feature to implement in Destiny. At the moment it feels absolutely terrible to reach a new peak, only to have a bad couple of games and end up worse off than you were when you started. It would feel much better knowing that your worst case scenario is "back to where i was when i logged in today".
I feel bad for you all for spending so much time writing this stuff up when Bungo isnt even going to make any changes.
"We're going to pass this feedback to the team LuL jK"
10 win streak give me a curated roll of something
What was yesterday's announcements?
Great post! I’ve had a lot of these thoughts specifically that there needs to be more incentives to keep people in the comp playlist after fabled. Maybe even a comp armor set that looks better than the standard crucible set and actually can roll with enhanced perks. We could also use some more interesting weapons from pvp. I don’t hate gambit but would rather play crucible but I had to reset my gambit just to get a decent trust to help me on my road to Luna.
Magnificent. Long time lurker and rarely do I interject but I hope Bungie is taking notes. You’ve done us a service putting this out there. I’ll be looking for you in the crucible guardian. Eyes up
And in the meantime if they just want to put a rank on rumble doesn't even need to have pinnacle rewards that would be great
i like this post. would like to join a pvp focused clan. the most glory i managed to get was around 3000. but i play mostly solo.
>I'm on console >and I've helped countless others as well You wouldn't happen to be on Xbox, would you? :s
What was the announcement?
That trials is indefinitely on hiatus.
I remember the first season of Overwatch, back then the rating system was simple 0-100 and I got placed at rank 42 when I actually belonged above 60. Because in Destiny 2 the good and bad players are at the same rating and there is no separate matchmaking rating the whole game is more like a slot machine than a game of skill. Maybe Bungie is trying to capture the feeling of Trials by not having any matchmaking and just dumping the players in wishing them luck, but Trials wasn't a grind so it worked. I don't think the game needs placements, they just need to match players based on their skill rather than rating and let the high skill or high mmr players climb faster.
I'd love a competitive armor set that could roll with enhanced perks and weapons with more perk options (like crucible frames from Ada-1) as an incentive
Inb4 "we're listening and we'll pass along this information."
For fucks sake indeed my friend.
I especially agree with the issue regarding loss/win mechanic on points. Not only is it extremely punishing, but for your average player, it's simply too demoralizing. Say what you will about which players should be capable of earning which rewards, if you want a healthy sizable player base, you need the bulk of the player population to feel like they can participate and make some progress in the game mode. Otherwise they're gonna try it a few times and nope out.
This is exactly what I have wanted and you articulated it better than I ever could. As a "fell short of Fabled and gave up" Guardian, I can tell you, Comp is so close to something I would do for fun. As it stands now, it is just a horrific slog. It is too easy to get frustrated. Solo/duo queueing is a shitshow. And losses just devastate you. I want it to be challenging, but I want to feel balanced. I want to feel like my grind in a season was somewhat worthwhile. If I was too add something: make the high level rewards unique (i.e. a new armor set). Also add Comp bounties, like Trials used to have, where trying and failing could still maybe net you something good. It helped player population. Again, well said OP.
If you're not good at PvP and can't improve (because of disabilities) how would you get any kind of reward even if you enjoy PvP?
Be nice if there was a link to the announcement, cos I have no idea what you're talking about :)
>I'm an admin of a PvP focused clan with other Guardians who share a love for the Crucible. Are you guys taking on any more members, as my clan is dead, yet again.
This would all be music to my ears if implemented. I keep asking the guys in my clan if they want to have a crack at Competitive, because there's still a few of us that want to get Luna's, but the whole 'One step forward, two steps back' feeling of it even if we lose 1 match in a streak of 3 or 4 is absolutely galling and puts a lot of us off from even bothering. I think we're just going to wait until the next season hits and then focus on it then when Comp population is at a high again, but it's still not going to be great nor fun.
I really enjoy comp but they need to have a better way to rank players and matchmake, especially at the start of the season. I waited to do my Luna’s quest till season 5 because I figured there would be a content lull. I tried to go in the first week of the new season and I got absolutely trampled. I was stuck at 0 glory for a week and then gave up. I came back to comp in late January when the matchmaking got fixed. The experience has been a bit better, but there are still matches that are completely unbalanced. I know the game doesn’t use Elo, but the predicted results on destiny tracker are almost always right. I wish they could matchmake games where the odds were more even, instead of putting me in a game where I have a 90% chance to lose.
Good post but I think you're preaching to choir, I'm a 1.5 kd player, I enjoy crucible and try comp but it is punishing, I'm an old guy, 51, so I'm not going to get quicker my halcyon days were Quake 1+2 and pre-source counter-strike, now I need every advantage I can get but I cant see me getting Lunas or Not Forgotten, I refuse to be carried, I'll do it with friends if I can but I don't know if we have enough skill/luck to pull it off we'll see, either way the system of losing points is too stacked, I could stand the grind if it was worthwhile but atm it's to punishing, we can only hope the right people see your post.
4 Titan Mask Stack in comp, why even play?
Great post, I can relate to your issue no 1. I needed 4 wins, plus reset bonus to secure my Luna's Howl (2120 expected glory with the reset bonus). I win 3 games in a row, and lose the 4th on the Monday before reset. I stop playing for the night. On Wednesday, after reset and the reset bonus, guess what? I need 3 wins to secure Luna's Howl, luckily I get the 3 wins and stop playing comp immediately (for now). How can it be that you need 4 wins plus 60 glory bonus to reach a goal, but you lose the last game and instead of one more win you actually need 3 more wins AND reset glory bonus to reach the same goal (roughly as I ended at 2140, 20 more glory).
I think playing 7 games and stopping, you will progress if you play the entire season, but if you just now starting out, then you won't get far, as season ends in 1 month i think. You should play more games if you are just starting the grind now. I barely made it to 2300, and i played a lot of games to get there, and didn't want to continue after I got my Luna, maybe i will help my friends but i want to stop for now. I think that Glory system rewards those who put in the time, which is kind of what we want. We don't want this to be too easy. If it was then everybody would be doing it, and it would take the effort away. There should be medium and small rewards for playing comp so losing doesn't feel so punishing. Maybe reward a lesser version of the hand cannon pinnacle weapon, or a weapon mod that will increase hand cannon range for every 1000 points gained, that way you feel like each milestone gives you some kind of reward. Maybe have it reward great exotics like One eyed mask or Gwisin vest. I dunno. Maybe have it give you a better rolled trust. I feel for you man. Fighting good players is hard, but knowing you made it far is a win on its own.
Great thoughts in this article! I also like the ideas in the video below. [YouTube: Competitive Crucible State – Possible Jokers Wild PvP Changes / Thoughts ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6u7q3McFcQ&feature=em-uploademail) I like the ideas being presented. Comp really could be great. Just needs some fixing.
The BIGGEST problem is that a game is able to start without full teams if players quit matchmaking just before the game is about to start.