For most of Destiny 2's lifespan player-vs-player mode Crucible has taken a back seat when it comes to content generation and balancing when compared to player-vs-environment activities, with the most significant changes coming in the former of minor tweaks across the board.

Now, Bungie has confirmed a new line-up of changes planned for the release of Shadowkeep, with major aims to create a "healthy" PvP environment.

The first change to PvP will be an entire overhaul of the Crucible Director, as well as shifting around of available playlists. The overhauls are as follows:

  • Quickplay and Competitive nodes removed
  • Classic Mix added (similar to Quickplay - includes modes Control, Clash and Supremacy)
  • Competitive replaced by 3v3 Survival (awards Glory)
  • Solo Queue Survival (awards Glory but cannot be in a fireteam)
  • 6v6 Control has become its own playlist
  • Weekly 6v6 rotating playlist added
  • Weekly 4v4 rotating playlist added

To foster variety within these new playlists Bungie has decided to bench some of the less popular PvP maps in order to fine-tune them for a later release. The first four maps that are being removed from the above playlists are:

  • Dead Cliffs
  • Legion’s Gulch
  • Retribution
  • Solitude

To offset this removal of maps Bungie is introducing 2 fan favourites from Destiny 1, Widow’s Court and Twilight Gap, as well as a brand new map, Fragment.

As well as the map changes, Bungie is also bringing in a heavily requested feature in Glory 'floors' in the competitive playlist, which will become 3v3 Survival post-Shadowkeep.

Starting in Season 8, once you have reached the rank of Fabled you cannot be demoted below Fabled. This means if you have enough Glory points to just be on the lower end of Fabled but then lose your next match, you will not be demoted below the Fabled rank.

Glory, Valor and Infamy streaks are also being slightly tweaked to be more resilient to losses. Instead of a loss completely resetting your win streak it will instead lower your win streak by 1, within the Glory playlist a loss lowers the streak by 2.

Another change that has been requested by the more highly-skilled PvP players that is making its way into Season 8 is for their ‘skill-rating’ or ‘match-making rank’ to influence their Glory rank. A players average kills, deaths, damage dealt and assists have long been tracked by Destiny in order to assign them a hidden skill rating.

With these skill ratings Bungie has now mapped them to Glory ranks with the lower end of skill ratings being mapped to Guardian I and the higher end being mapped to Legend.

This system is explained by Bungie Community Manager “Dmg04” with him saying:

“As you play in the Survival playlist, the Glory system will accelerate you to the rank that corresponds to your skill rating," Dylan "Dmg04" Gafner explained.

"If your current rank is below where your skill rating says you should be, you’ll earn extra Glory based on the criteria above so you can get to your expected rank faster and lose less Glory so you don’t fall farther away. Once you reach your expected rank, gains and losses will normalize.”

These Crucible changes will go live alongside Shadowkeep and Season of the Undying on October 1 October on Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC.