☕Bungie's Commitment to Trials

is just as strong

☕Trials of Osiris has lost 40% of players, causing old problems to return.

What does Bungie have to say? Bungie Community Manager, DMG, offered some hope on Reddit.

Why aren't we talking week over week about a population dip?

It's expected that the Trials population decrease week over week. The team is doing work to see what can be done to reduce the decline (or even increase population on occasion), but right now we're in a period of trying new things. Between the rework to rewards and Trials Labs every few weekends, we're getting a ton of great data to inform potential changes to the mode in the future. We want Trials to be the best it can be, as we want Destiny to be the best it can be. There will still be bumps. There will be hiccups. We're excited about the knowledge we're gaining and what could come about in the future.

Why aren't we talking about feedback concerning the Flawless pool?

Flawless pool will be enabled on Sunday. The team is cooking up changes for Trials matchmaking, and we'll provide additional information when we have it. I mentioned in another comment, it's looking like we may have it for the TWAB next week, but can't make the promise just yet.

Why aren't we talking about blowout matches?

In terms of "uncompetitive matches", team is investigating. As we introduce more Labs weekends and address feedback from previous, we're still digging through the data. In terms of "players are resetting at 6 wins", it seems that a miniscule population of players is actually doing this in practice. Yes, it's an issue that needs to be addressed, but it's not burning down the playlist to the extent that some are stating.

Does This Offer Hope?

Honestly, this is reassuring to hear.

They see and know the population decline is nose-diving. They’re smart people. If I and many other people can identify the main problems with Trials (no new loot, not enough incentive to farm Flawless pool, not enough loot quantity), I’m sure Bungie can too.

Hearing that they’re going to keep working on the health and success of Trials is reassuring. Especially right after they mentioned it was going to be on cruise control for a while.

Freelance Trials

There’s going to be a lot of data for Bungie to parse through this weekend. On Sunday, Trials will have FOUR player pools running at the same time.

  1. Flawless + Freelance Pool

  2. Non-Flawless + Freelance Pool

  3. Flawless + Non-Freelance Pool

  4. Non-Flawless + Non-Freelance Pool

Out of the 450,000 players that played last weekend, if that gets split equally (it won’t, but let’s pretend it will), each pool will be about 112k players large.

Now break that number down into the different regions of the world for connection quality and it’s tiny!

Spooky Trials

It looks like Bungie is going to bring back Spooky Trials from years past, judging by what they teased.

Good luck this weekend. While there (thankfully) won’t be any spiders clouding your view, I’ve heard our setting this week is a little spooky. Be careful when you open doors. Could be a normal 1v1 engagement with an opponent, or you could find yourself staring a bullcharging Striker Titan in the face. Just the thought is terrifying to me!

Years ago, radar was disabled on Cauldron and a spider would crawl across your screen with a scary noise. It sounds like Cauldron will be back with disabled radar but no scary noise.

Do me a favor and share this with your friends 🥺

I’m going to play a lot of Freelance Trials this weekend. Expect some posts on Twitter that will help you get more solo wins.

Have a great day!

~☕Legionless