Destiny 2 Players Are Losing It Due To A Sudden Stealth Change

Destiny 2the crucible has seen better days. It rarely seems like PVP offerings go down well with anyone. Hardcore players complain about gun balance, while newcomers are quickly beaten and resigned to never coming back. But today, many players are united in being pissed off about the latest change to Crucible: getting banged for leaving Control, its biggest mode.

Bungie’s latest patch for the loot shooter went live yesterday, and while it was primarily aimed at fixing bugs, it didn’t take long for players to discover a change that wasn’t explicitly mentioned in patch notes. Now whenever players leave a control match, they will receive an angry notification telling them not to start again. If they start again, they will be seated in a timeout and will have to take a brief break from matchmaking. I tested it recently and the suspension lasted almost 30 minutes.

The idea is to discourage players from switching to AFK or leaving matches early and thereby putting teams at a disadvantage, but some players feel that’s too much to ask for a casual mode. Twitter lit up with streamers complaining about the change, and one of the fastest growing threads on the Destiny 2 the subreddit is a warning against abandoning matches.

“OOPS!” reads a first warning. “You left a competitive match before it was completed.” But many players think this is a bad categorization of the mode.

The control is Destiny 2the basic PVP mode. A riff on Call of DutyIn Domination mode, players compete for points on the map in order to increase their scores until the end of the match. It has the biggest icon of the PVP modes in the game and is the easiest to use to complete daily bounties and get weekly Crucible Pinnacle loot. Even players who don’t like playing PVP will play a few control matches each week, as it benefits them in the game’s PVE progression. For many, this is the definition of casual fast play.

This contrasts with Survival, a more focused three-on-three mode that operates at a much higher skill level and even has its own dedicated competitive leaderboard. There is also the trial of Osiris, Destiny 2The famous weekend tournament where diehard players try to rack up winning streaks over multiple matches to secure the most coveted loot in the game.

Players also point out that there are many legitimate reasons for leaving a regular Check match. Maybe someone’s internet connection is having issues or they need to step back to help their child or take care of something in the apartment. Or maybe you just want to leave the match early because you’ve finally unlocked the Exotic Catalyst you’ve been chasing and want to return to the Gunsmith in the Tower to move on to the next step in the quest chain. Control has always been a low-stakes PVP grind that way, which makes it so odd that Bungie decided to enforce the new penalties there of all places.

While the move surprised many, Bungie actually teased it in a blog post a few weeks ago on adding skill-based matchmaking to PVP. Sadly, this comes right after the first week of Season of Plunder’s Iron Banner which ended up being a recent high water mark for Destiny 2 PVP. The event featured a new mode called Eruption in which players become more powerful as they go on a killstreak, but lose their bonus if they stall. The design rewarded players for staying closer to each other and not dying, and ended up being a lot of fun. Hopefully the rash returns soon and the AFK control penalties go away for good.