Destiny 2's Trials Of Osiris Could Be More Forgiving Later This Season

Big changes are on the horizon for Destiny 2's PvP, including its weekend mode Trials of Osiris. After several changes were made to the multiplayer offering throughout 2022, Bungie plans to improve Trials with updates to its matchmaking, an update to Passages that will potentially make it easier to unlock a Flawless run, and the introduction of an experimental game mode later in Season 20.

Passages, which log how many rounds and matches you've won, will receive two updates, according to Bungie. Wealth Passages will reward extra Trials rank on every win, and the amount rewarded will increase as your major rank goes up. Mercy Passages will now forgive two losses if you have not been Flawless for the week, and reverts back to its old behavior of forgiving a single loss once you go Flawless. This will potentially make Trials more forgiving and give players a better chance to earn some of the best loot in the game, including Adept-class weapons.

For matchmaking, Bungie aims to allow players to play with friends without worrying about whether they have gone Flawless, remove the motivation to reset cards in order to farm or carry players, and better protect players who are struggling to find success in the playlist. Season 20 has seen the introduction of Fireteam matchmaking, which heavily prioritizes matching like-sized teams against each other, and after the mid-season patch, Bungie will use its experimental Trials Labs mode to gather feedback on a new Trials matchmaking system which will remove the Flawless pool and ticket-based matchmaking in favor of something different.

Two active "soft" pools will be introduced to Trials, Challenger, and Practice. Bungie describes soft pools as matchmaking that generally avoids blending pools unless a match needs to be established quickly. The Challenger Pool is where most players who currently play Trials on a week-to-week basis and who want to go Flawless will play and matches players based solely on connection. There is no matchmaking based on tickets, wins, or skill, and who have any card with no losses--including a card after reset--or those playing with someone in their fireteam that has a card with no losses, will be placed in this pool.

The Practice Pool is targeted at new or less experienced players and creates matches based on connection and weekly performance. Only players with a Flawed card or those on their first game of the week can play in this pool, and this version of Trials will include stomp protection if you consistently struggle, throwing you into slightly easier matches until you recover. If the system detects that you or a fireteam member are attempting to use the Practice pool to farm wins, your matchmaking times will be slowed down and you'll be locked into the Challenger pool for the remainder of the weekend, regardless of your card state.