Destiny 2 hits new Crucible player record after Bungie disables SBMM BungieDestiny 2 has enjoyed a monster spike in its player-vs-player playlists this week, after Bungie\u2019s decision to disable the controversial skill-based matchmaking feature in Crucible and Iron Banner game modes last month. On June 11, the Destiny developers made a big call for their long-standing title. They flipped the switch on skill based-matchmaking, which has been one of the most controversial topics in gaming over the past few years. There were a few reasons Bungie decided to remove the unpopular feature from all but their most competitive PvP modes. The devs admitted it would primarily \u201cshorten all queue times\u201d and \u201cimprove connection,\u201d both of which had been big problems for the title. At first, it didn\u2019t look like the change had really helped much. A few more people were playing Destiny in general, sure, but that always happens when a new season begins. Others came back amid the growing hype for Beyond Light too. This week, however, that all changed. Iron Banner, one of Destiny\u2019s biggest PvP modes, was re-added this week with new rare rewards. It was the first time Iron Banner had landed without SBMM since Destiny 1, and Guardians loved it. During the first days of Iron Banner, nearly one million players piled in to play. According to player stat-tracking website DestinyTracker, the Crucible \u2014 which includes both PvP modes and Iron Banner \u2014 spiked at 942.8k concurrent players. For a long time, Destiny\u2019s PvE side has stood head and shoulders above PvP; missions, Strikes, Raids, and world-zones are all included in this bundle. Yesterday, it had 956.3k, just 13,500 more than player-vs-player playlists. Now, Bungie\u2019s much-praised choice to remove skill-based matchmaking from the Crucible likely wasn\u2019t the only reason the game hit the hefty spike. Iron Banner also offers mega-sized rewards many other playlists don\u2019t, so even PvE players load in. This time around, Guardians can collect \u2018Forward Path\u2019 and \u2018Fool\u2019s Remedy\u2019 as drops in Iron Banner. Enhanced armor mods have also been added as rewards, Bungie confirmed, and players can collect pinnacle gear there too. Iron Banner is back. Make the wolves howl, Guardians. \ud83d\udca0 Flashpoint \u2013 Nessus \ud83d\udca0 Nightfall: The Ordeal \u2013 Strange Terrain \ud83d\udca0 Crucible Playlist \u2013 Iron Banner, Mayhem pic.twitter.com\/xalUFaKUNl\u2014 Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) June 30, 2020 That said, Destiny still has had a boost since SBMM was stripped from most of the Crucible playlists. In June alone, the title\u2019s PC player count went up 49.60%, SteamCharts revealed, with an average of 25k more players logging in every day. Whether or not that is directly attributable to skill-based matchmaking\u2019s removal or not, it\u2019s still great news for Destiny. The sequel is headed towards its fourth year, and isn\u2019t going anywhere, so a growing population is always a good thing. The Iron Banner-driven player count spike isn\u2019t the only thing worth celebrating in the world of Destiny 2 this week either. Earlier, popular streamer Sean \u2018Gladd\u2019 Gallagher broke his own record for Twitch\u2019s biggest ever sub-train. In the end, Gladd raked in just under 30,000 subscribers thanks to Bungie\u2019s new gifting program. It doles out in-game cosmetics and banners in return for gifting subscriptions on Twitch. He said was was \u201cblown away\u201d by it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Destiny 2 hits new Crucible player record after Bungie disables SBMM BungieDestiny 2 has enjoyed a monster spike in its player-vs-player playlists this week, after Bungie\u2019s decision to disable the controversial skill-based matchmaking feature in Crucible and Iron Banner game modes last month. On June 11, the Destiny developers made a big call for their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}