Bungie is bringing more changes to Destiny’s Crucible; adjusting Guardians’ special ammo allocation, introducing new playlists designed for solo players, and further fiddling with matchmaking in an attempt to combat lag.As documented in “This Week at Bungie” (the new name for the Weekly Update), Guardians will not spawn with special ammo in the 3v3 modes Skirmish, Salvage, Elimination, Trials, and any rotating 3v3 playlists.The change is designed to force players into using their primary weapons more at the start of matches. 6v6 game types will stay the same.Elsewhere, Bungie is also introducing a couple of new mixed mode playlists for solo Crucible fighters: Freelance 6v6 and Freelance 3v3. The move is intended to make Crucible a more inviting place for those without a team. You can only join these playlists solo and you won’t come up against squads.Freelance 6v6 features a mix of Clash, Control and Rift. Freelance 3v3 features a mix of Elimination, Salvage, and Skirmish.Now on to the matchmaking stuff. The new, supposedly connection-based matchmaking algorithm introduced recently has been rolled out to Trials of Osiris (which kicks off again today), while a new feature is coming that should reduce lag even further. It’s called Damage Referee.“‘Damage Referee’ is our code-name for upcoming changes to the way Destiny handles things that can go wrong when you’re playing games online,” said Bungie Networking Engineer Paul Lewellen. “Our goal is to give you a better experience in the Crucible when there are Internet problems outside of your control.”“In short, we're trying to fix the Internet. BAN ME PLEASE, wireless connections, the speed of light, and a host of other things are all conspiring to harm your online experience. Normal network latency is bad enough, but even simple problems become extremely complex when the information your console is sending and receiving can be unexpectedly delayed, dropped, duplicated, folded, spindled, or mutilated. It's impossible to solve completely, but Damage Referee is our latest attempt to improve things for the vast majority of you.”How this will be achieved isn’t precisely detailed, but it would appear that if you’ve got a poor internet connection, your Crucible experience is about to get worse. And if your internet connection is good? Everything’s going to feel better and more fair. That’s Bungie’s plan, anyway. More here.Last up is a fix coming to Destiny PvE. Bungie is working on removing the annoying teleporting ogres during the Oryx fight in the King’s Fall raid, as well as the weird perspective shift suffered by runners in the Daughters of Oryx encounter.All of this stuff and more is coming next week, alongside the Crimson Days stuff, as part of Update 2.1.1 on February 9th. You’ll be able to download the update from about 10AM PST. Full patch notes soon.
