14 DAY TRIAL // Destiny is getting a special Valentine's Day event for the first time in its history, and the development team at Bungie is planning to deliver a new game mode called Crimson Doubles to celebrate the occasion, which will involve 2 versus 2 battles.
The new Weekly Update for the social shooter explains that it has been tweaking the matchmaking system to make sure that the matches that players get into in the Crucible are both challenging and balanced.
Lars Bakken, the design lead working on this side of Destiny, explains that "We have super-secret mathematical systems that measure your performance and rate you as a potential combatant. It is constantly being re-evaluated after every match, and we even use different skill buckets depending on what playlist you’re in. For example Iron Banner playlist skill ratings are not the same as normal Control."
According to Bungie, the player base was not involved of the big changes introduced to matchmaking to make sure that the data gathered from gamer activity was as unbiased as possible to see the improvement that it managed to deliver.
Apparently, the team plans to become more transparent from now on, as it continues to find new ways to improve the Crucible experience, with the first priority for the short term being the reduction of lag.
The company is not saying how it plans to achieve this aim or how much the changes will affect the way players are paired with one another for matches.
Crimson Days will be as big as Festival of the Lost
The Valentine's Day event in Destiny will probably consist of more than the new 2 versus 2 mode, which means that gamers might get access to new emotes and extra items for their Guardians like they did for Halloween in late 2015.
Bungie will offer more information in next week's update, given that the planned start for Crimson Days is on February 9 when the special monthly update for the social shooter is also expected to arrive.
Between January 26 and February 2, gamers will be able to take part in a new installment of Iron Banner, which comes complete with a list of rewards that gamers can pick up if they perform well.
During the spring of this year, Bungie is also planning to deliver a bigger expansion, which is supposed to feature about the same amount of new content as The Taken King.
It will also be free for all those who play Destiny, funded by the delivery of more content via the Eververse Trading Company, which allows gamers to pick up a range of items using real world money.
According to Activision, there are plans to introduce a paid expansion for the social shooter at some point before the end of 2016, even if no details about it are expected to arrive until the middle of the year.
As per long-running rumors, Bungie is already working on a second Destiny video game, which is also set to launch this year for the PC, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.