Destiny 2 Crucible matches are getting a bit of a refresh once season 18 rolls around, Bungie announced in the last This Week at Bungie blog update of July. Bungie is bringing skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) to select Crucible playlists in the space game, with the intent to roll the feature out in more playlists in season 19. Bungie went into quite a bit of detail about what to expect from Crucible SBMM matches, including how they differ from the current connection-based matchmaking.
When Destiny 2 season 18 releases on August 23, Bungie will add its new form of SBMM to Control playlists. Previously, the team’s guiding philosophy was sacrificing match fairness in favor of good connection and quick matchmaking speed. The standard moving forward will be: “Start with a broad definition of match fairness and compromise on matchmaking speed in order to keep match fairness and connection quality high.”
The wider skill curve is meant to give players at the lowest and highest ends of the skill spectrum a better chance of matching.
Bungie said it inevitably means longer matchmaking times, but the returns will hopefully include matches that feel better balanced. Bungie said they want 90% of matches to have less than a 20-kill difference between the top and bottom players on a team and aim to have most matches end with less than a 10-point difference between teams.
Bungie also said the team will be balancing the settings during the first few weeks of season 18, so expect matches to potentially change quite a bit until things start to settle.
We’ll likely hear more about these and other changes, including Lightfall, during the big Destiny 2 showcase on August 21.
In the meantime, make sure to do your usuals – check on Xur’s location and get the Nightfall weapon for the current week.