Destiny 2 Competitive Crucible: Everything You Need To Know

Destiny 2 Competitive Crucible: Everything You Need To Know
Images via Bungie

Written by 

Dave McAdam

Published 

8th Dec 2022 14:35

The new Destiny 2 competitive Crucible mode has made some significant changes to the competitive system. Destiny 2 is a broad game with a lot of modes, and now it has a competitive PvP mode similar to many other shooters. Competitive Crucible brings several previous playlists into one, all under a new ranking system. Here is everything you need to know about the new Destiny 2 competitive Crucible.

  • Learn more about the special weapon awarded for playing competitive, the Destiny 2 Rose hand cannon.

Destiny 2 Competitive Crucible: Playlist Changes

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Before the latest changes, Crucible was divided into two types of progress, Valor and Glory. Valor ranks come from regular Crucible, and Glory comes from competitive play. The only difference between the two is that you could lose Glory ranks by losing competitive matches.

This system has been completely changed. In lieu of Valor ranks, the Crucible now has an overall reputation system in the same way that other activities have. Any Crucible matches played will add to your overall reputation, meaning your efforts are no longer divided.

For competitive Crucible, instead of linear progression, you now have a ranking system. The system starts at Copper, and goes to Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Adept and finally Ascendant. Each rank has three levels, so for example, if you are in Silver I, once you rank up you will go to Gold III.

Destiny 2 Competitive Crucible: How Progress Works

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The first thing you need to do in competitive play is complete your placement matches. Completing seven matches will get you your initial rank, depending on your performance in those placement matches. Once you have your rank, you can gain or lose places by competing in more competitive matches. Whether you go up or down is dependent on winning or losing, but how much you go up or down is a more complicated system.

Competitive Crucible uses skill-based matchmaking to match players together, but also to determine how much ranking progress is made. For example, you might win a match and only gain a little progress toward your next rank, then in another game, win in similar fashion and gain much more progress.

This is because the SBMM system evaluates the differences between players, and adjusts how many points are won or lost. If the game expects you to win because your skill rating is higher than your opponents, then you might not gain as much for winning. Conversely, if your opponents are rated much higher than you and you manage to beat them, you will gain a lot more and likely increase your rank.

Over time, this system will separate players and ensure that everyone is playing with and against others of a similar skill level. Anyone who is in the wrong place in the skill system will quickly be moved to where they are better suited.

That is it for the Destiny 2 competitive Crucible update. For more of the latest updates, check out our Destiny 2 The Manticore explainer.

Dave McAdam
About the author
Dave McAdam
Dave is a Senior Guides Writer at GGRecon, after several years of freelancing across the industry. He covers a wide range of games, with particular focus on shooters like Destiny 2, RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, and fighting games like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8.
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