How to fix Crucible: Three key ways Bungie could improve Destiny 2's floundering PvP mode

In Destiny 2, PvP has taken a backseat against PvE for many years now with it receiving a fraction of the amount of content and development updates.

This has led to the current situation where even though playing within The Crucible can still be a somewhat enjoyable experience, it has lost all of the incentives to play when compared to the PvE sandbox.

The Crucible does not need a complete overhaul but there are quite a few simple adjustments that would go a long way to making competing within The Crucible a more worthwhile endeavor.

1. Loot Incentive

At the start of the previous Season of Undying, Bungie made the decision to change Pinnacle weapons earnt within Crucible, Strikes, and Gambit into Ritual weapons.

The reasoning behind this was that certain Pinnacle weapons were so powerful that it created a stale environment in which there was simply no reason to not use these Pinnacle weapons over more traditional weapons.

Ritual weapons were meant to be a more balanced replacement to Pinnacles that allowed other weapons to thrive while still taking some time to earn. The problem here is that from Season of the Undying to Season of Dawn Bungie has significantly reduced the time it takes to earn the season’s Ritual Weapons.

A somewhat skilled player can acquire all 3 of these weapons within a single day of solid play time with the Crucible Ritual weapon taking maybe 4 or 5 hours at most. At the start of Season of the Worthy players soon noticed that even these simple to acquire Ritual Weapons had also been removed.

Even though the power of previous Pinnacle weapons was fairly unsustainable, they atleast took time to obtain them which would keep players within The Crucible playlists. Bungie simply needs to strike a fine balance between the lethality of Ritual weapons and the time investment required to earn them, admittedly this is not as simple as it sounds. 

During the early few seasons of Destiny 2, Lord Shaxx stocked a set of ornaments for the current Crucible armour that could be obtained through certain objectives such as claiming Crucible engrams, winning Competitive matches or defeating enemy Guardians.

This was a great system as it gave players an additional incentive to play Crucible throughout the season to earn these exclusive ornaments.

This system could be reimplemented with something as simple as earning an ornament piece for every Valor reset within a particular season, or at every tier of Glory starting at the Brave rank. Even just implementing the exact same system as the early seasons with an updated ornament set would go a long way to drawing players into The Crucible.

The Crucible also lacks a direct pathway to earning Pinnacle gear and upgrade materials. The Crucible contains not a single way to earn Pinnacle gear with even a full Valor reset, which takes a few days of solid play, only rewarding the player with standard Powerful gear. PvE activities such as Strikes, Nightmare Hunts and Raids all contain ways to earn Pinnacle gear so it is imperative that the same treatment be given to The Crucible. Even if it is just a single Pinnacle piece rewarded on a Valor reset. 

Within Nightfall: The Ordeal there is a simple to read interface that shows what the player will earn in terms of upgrade materials within each difficulty of the playlist, this mode can also be farmed endlessly for as many materials as the player needs.

The most Crucible players can earn in the way of upgrade materials is 10 Enhancement Cores after resetting their Valor. This is an abysmal reward system for Crucible players. A full Valor reset should at least give an Ascendant Shard with some of the lower rank ups giving Enhancement Prisms as well.

2. Removal of Skill Based Matchmaking (SBMM)

Skill Based Matchmaking is a term used to describe a certain matchmaking system within Destiny 2 where players are matched up within The Crucible based on their individual, invisible skill rating that Bungie has applied to them. This skill rating is based on many factors such as KDA ratio, damage per minute and score per minute. 

On the surface, SBMM always seems like a great idea as this will create even matches for all players. The problem here is that when every match you play is extremely close and tense it can be simply exhausting to play. Having to play at the top of your game, every game, to even snag a win with a decent KDA will drive players away.

A secondary problem with SSBM is that it creates a self-fulfilling cycle with meta weapon load-outs.

If a player is trying out a new loadout in The Crucible that they haven't quite got the hang of yet, they are still being matched up with players equal to their skill level when using a more traditional loadout.

After a few games of this player getting annihilated trying to test out their new build, they will inevitably go back to their more powerful weapons that are within the meta. In essence, SBMM kills all diversity within The Crucible as players are forced into using certain load-outs in order to properly compete.

The final problem with SBMM, and possibly the most damning, is that it creates matches with poor connection for those with a higher skill level. As a player improves at the gamel, it becomes harder for the matchmaking system to find players of an equal skill level within the surrounding area.

The system then begins to search for players from a further distance away with it being entirely possible to be matched up with players from halfway around the world. This means that matches containing high skill players also usually contain many high ping players creating a poor game experience.

A simple solution to the SBMM problem is to have this system activated in the Survival playlist, as that is the competitive ranked playlist but removed it from other game modes such as Control or Clash. The matchmaking for these latter modes should be based entirely on a connection.

3. More Frequent Updates & Content

As stated before, PvP has always taken a backseat when compared to PvE activities and this is especially true when it comes to actual content generation. Here is a list of all the PvE activities that have been released since Shadowkeep:

• Shadowkeep Story Missions
• Moon Destination
• 2 Strikes
• New Raid
• Vex Offensive
• Nightmare Hunts
• Exotic Quests
• New Dungeon
• Saint-14 Story Missions
• Sundial
• Planetary Obelisks
• Seraph Tower Public Events
• Warmind Bunkers
• Legendary Lost Sectors

Here is a list of all the PvP content that has been released since Shadowkeep:

• 7 New Maps
• 2 New Modes
• Trials of Osiris (With its exclusive armor and weapons)

It is immediately obvious where Bungie’s priorities lie.

The most current numbers for total players within Destiny 2 are 607.6K tracked within PvP and 698.0K tracked within PvE. It is clear from the numbers that PvP is not a small section of the player base and yet Bungie continues to ignore the problems facing The Crucible.

There simply needs to be more frequent balance updates and content releases for this section of the game.

It has already been touched on in another article that other games are able to release updates every two weeks so why can Bungie not do the same? If there is something wrong with their development tools then something simply has to change. 

Bungie stated in their previous Shadowkeep ViDoc that in the coming year there would be a greater emphasis on The Crucible but we have yet to see any evidence that this is the case.

Addressing even one of the problems listed above would go a long way to ensure The Crucible is a much more enjoyable experience, lets just hope Bungie decides to listen.