'Destiny 2': More Changes Are Coming To The Third Week Of Trials

“Destiny 2” developer Bungie will continue to tweak Trials of Osiris in the following weeks after the game mode’s popularity skyrocketed thanks to a few welcome changes to its core formula.

This weekend, Trials of Osiris will be shifting to an experimental game mode called Capture Zone, which is essentially a more dynamic version of the default Elimination mode, according to Bungie’s latest TWAB. In Capture Zone, teams will fight over a single capture point in the middle of the map. Whoever captures the point or eliminates the enemy team first wins the round.

Capture Zone already sounds like a more interesting version of Elimination, but there’s more to it than just a new objective. The capture point’s spawn location changes after every round, and the team that lost the previous round actually spawns closer to the objective.

This new concept forces players to fight over the capture point, and it falls in line with Bungie’s attempt at making Trials a better experience for the average player.

The two previous Trials of Osiris weekend runs saw the highest population of players the mode has ever seen in “Destiny 2’s” past thanks to the implementation of skill-based matchmaking, anti-cheat and the ability for solos and duos to join the fight without a dedicated three-man group.

However, the developers weren’t satisfied with the overall quality of matches. In the second week of Trials, Bungie implemented the Flawless Pool, which ended up cutting post-flawless player retention down to 16% from last week’s 56%.

The Flawless Pool matched players with seven-win streaks against other similar players only. This resulted in extremely competitive games that many players considered to be “tournament level,” which led to many players quitting the game mode after reaching the coveted seven-win streak.

Bungie addressed this by saying that they want to eventually remove the Flawless Pool by October as they deemed it unhealthy for “friendgame” content. The Flawless Pool will still be present this week, but it will only be activated after the Sunday morning reset.

Other Trials-related tweaks were also implemented in the recent hotfix as well. The weapons in the Trials rank reward track will now have their Masterwork slots active, and Special ammo will no longer be replenished after getting revived. A “hold” functionality was also added to Saint-14’s inventory to prevent accidental purchases.