Destiny 2's Trials Of Osiris Changes Coming Next Season

Destiny 2's Trials of Osiris has been pretty contentious since Bungie reintroduced the top-tier PvP game type in the Season of the Worthy. Since it launched, Trials has seen some troubles, including a big uptick in cheating and a lack of rewards for most players. Bungie has changes planned for Trials in coming seasons which will hopefully mitigate some of those issues.

In a recent This Week at Bungie blog post, the developer outlined troubles it has been seeing since re-introducing Trials at the start of the Season of the Worthy last month. Trials encourages players to try to win seven PvP matches without losing one, and dishes out rewards at three, five, and seven wins. But participating also nets you "Trials Tokens" that you can use to purchase some of that gear, which has led to some high-skill teams playing only their first few Trials matches in order to just earn tokens. Because of the way matchmaking works, that results in lower-skill teams getting repeatedly stomped on by better players.

Bungie said it's hoping to adjust Trials to make it more rewarding regardless of your skill level, and to encourage you to play even if you aren't likely to earn a flawless run every weekend.

"Trials has always had a problem of being approachable for players who aren’t highly skilled PvP gods," Bungie wrote in the post. "We believe that players should be encouraged to make an attempt every week, regardless of skill. You should feel some value in dipping your toe in each week to see if you can get a little further than last week, to push yourself to improve and get better. While every single player won't make it to the Lighthouse, you should feel like you can get meaningful rewards by pushing yourself and still get some rewards for spending time in the activity."

The blog post also outlined how Bungie intends to change things in Trials going forward:

Problem: Token Rewards incentivizes players to farm to three wins and reset their card.

Solution: In Season 11 we're planning on creating token payout milestones at 3/5/7 wins that give successively larger chunks of tokens. Bonus Tokens Passage should increase these payouts, and on a flawless run it will generate a significant token payout.

Problem: Trials is unrewarding for players stuck at 1-2 wins.

Solution: Create a weekly bounty that encourages participation each weekend and does not require match wins. When redeemed, the bounty will reward the same item that comes from the three-win passage unlocking the engram for purchase that week.

Problem: Trials feels unrewarding compared to other endgame activities.

Solution: Inject more chances to earn Masterworking materials from Trials. Masterworking/infusion materials will come from 3/5/7 win payouts in Season 11. We’re also looking into possibly adding a new material-focused farming card in Season 12.

Bungie also noted that it's stepping up its efforts to deal with cheaters. The developer wrote that it's seen a 50% uptick in cheating throughout Destiny 2 in general, and much more than that in Trials and other high-skill areas. Bans have increased from about 600 a week to more than 2,000 a week.

To combat the issue, Bungie is looking into new solutions, but it's also changing policies. If you're on a fireteam with a cheater, for instance, it'll now be your responsibility to report the person--you can't claim innocence because you weren't cheating if you benefit from the cheating of someone else. Bungie is also adding more staff to work on the problem of cheating, and considering increasing how much time you have to put into the game before you can access Trials in order to discourage cheaters who use throwaway accounts.

Unfortunately, it sounds like most of these changes aren't due to start hitting Destiny 2 until at least next season. In the meantime, most players can only hope for things to get better as Bungie removes cheaters, or quit playing Trials altogether.