'Destiny 2' Is Making Big Changes to Competitive Multiplayer

Destiny 2 is as much a video game sequel as it is a promise to improve. Bungie plans to improve the original Destiny formula in several big ways, including some much-needed additions to the game’s story campaign and newly introduced subclass redesigns — both of which players got to experience for the first time at the gameplay premiere.

Regardless of how you feel about the Destiny experience, there’s no doubt that Bungie is hoping to pull you back into its science fiction world full of endless loot, fellow Guardians, and loads of baddies to destroy.

But if you’re more of a Crucible player who tends to avoid most of the usual environmental objectives in favor of eliminating your friends with powerful class abilities, Bungie has you covered too.

The Crucible experience feels completely different in Destiny 2. A series of significant changes are designed to make the Crucible a more competitive environment that levels the playing field.

Here’s a look at some of the largest changes coming to the Crucible that developer Bungie has discussed so far.

Giving Players Awareness of Super Abilities

There’s no questioning just how dangerous a Guardian’s Super Ability can be in the Crucible, as many of them allow players to obliterate the competition in a matter of seconds or clear out an entire objective with a single Nova Bomb. The problem with Destiny however, was your team didn’t have any clear indication as to when they should be on the lookout for enemy abilities or back off an objective to retaliate with their own Super Abilities. In Destiny 2, that’s completely changing with the introduction of a Super Ability display.

Now, whenever you’re playing competitive matches in the Crucible, you’ll notice there’s a new display towards the top-center of your screen that highlights the Super Abilities of your team and the enemy team.

This shows you every player’s subclass and thus the Super Ability they have equipped, allowing you to strategize based on the enemies you’re going up against and the teammates you are teamed up with. You’ll also be able to see when a player has their Super Ability charged, which gives you a heads up that instant killing abilities are on the way. That allows players to prepare the best counter on a heavy push or clutch moment in the match.

Changing Weapon Slots Around

One of the most significant changes coming to Destiny 2 is how the weapon system feels and performs compared to the original.

In Destiny, players had three weapon slots for each of their characters: primary, secondary, and heavy. Primary weapons were guns like automatic rifles, hand cannons, and scout rifles. Secondary weapons included sniper rifles, fusion rifles, sidearm pistols, and shotguns infused with elemental damage, while heavy weapons like machine guns, rocket launchers, and swords were designed to eliminate the enemy competition quickly.

In Destiny 2, weapon slots are separated into kinetic, energy, and power weapons. Kinetic weapons all feel like the standard primary weapons from Destiny without any sort of elemental damage attached to them. Elemental damage weapons are then reserved for the energy slot that replaces your secondary weapons. Now, previous primary weapons like Fatebringer or Vision of Confluence can only be equipped in this slot, giving you access to loads of new combinations for Crucible combat.

What’s more is that certain secondary weapons that were previously considered too powerful in the Crucible such as shotguns and fusion rifles are now appropriately considered power weapons and require power ammunition pickups to use. That’s right, Matador 64 will no longer smite you down consistently.

Plus, only one player can pick up power ammo packs when they spawn on the map, which limits how much is spread across each match to a manageable amount.

Reducing the Team Size

In the original Destiny, the standard Crucible team size was six players for competitive multiplayer, with the only exception being the weekly Trials of Osiris event that exclusively revolved around 3v3 elimination matches.

Due to the larger team sizes, each of the Crucible’s game modes often got a little too chaotic with 12 players tossing around rockets, Super Abilities, and a dozen different grenade types. Not only did this tend to remove strategy from the Crucible equation, but it also turned the competitive multiplayer into a gigantic pool of death which wasn’t fun to sift through.

Thankfully Bungie listened to community feedback for Destiny 2 and decided to reduce the team size to four players across every single Crucible mode available.

This resolves the issue of consistently spamming power weapons like the Rocket Launcher and Super Abilities to win rounds, to some degree, while bringing a whole new sense of focused strategic play to competitive multiplayer.

Combat feels slower in Destiny 2’s Crucible, namely due to the weapon restructuring, and supers retain a significant presence on the battlefield without being consistently available to a team of players.