Try Harder

Brother Vance has been idle in the Reef for too long. Tomorrow morning, Trials of Osiris will resume. Be ready for action on Friday, October 30th at 10AM Pacific. Since its hiatus during the launch of The Taken King, we’ve talked about how this competitive event will be different in Year Two. If you missed the Patch Notes for Update 2.0.1, here are the bullets we aimed at the PvP endgame:

Trials of Osiris

Requires a minimum Character Level of 40
Requires a minimum Light of 251; Recommended Light is 290
Winning teams now receive Trials gear rewards directly at the end-of-match completion
Players that go undefeated on their Passage will continue to be invited to The Lighthouse
Players may continue to play in the Trials past 9 wins (but rewards are maxed out at 9 wins)
Trials Passages now have a Details page containing your Boons
- Player must now purchase Boons from the Details page on their Passage instead of from Brother Vance
- Boons can no longer be applied to Trials passages after starting a run
Trials gear can be purchased from Brother Vance (including some items found at the Lighthouse)
Brother Vance now has Bounties that award Legendary Marks
Crucible Bounties can now also be completed in Trials of Osiris
Matchmaking has been updated to make it more competitive to reach The Lighthouse

Them’s the facts. If you want a more philosophical explanation of our goals for the competitive event, we scared up Senior Designer Derek Carroll to share some thoughts about our hopes and dreams for your next trial.

Derek: The original design for Trials of Osiris employed no skill-matching whatsoever. Instead of expecting teams to win roughly 50% of their games (the goal of most matchmaking systems), you’d expect above-average teams to win and below-average teams to lose. While this was generally interesting, one of the side-effects was that a capable team could breeze though a field of challengers to reach the Lighthouse without really breaking a sweat. PvP Sherpas were even conducting Lighthouse safaris for players who couldn’t get there under their own power.

Tomorrow, we’re hoping you’ll find the competition a little fiercer. With the changes we’ve made to matchmaking, there will be a greater chance that the other team will be on the same rung as the ladder as you, making your climb to 9-0 much more meaningful, and those last few matches much more fun for everyone. Well, almost everyone. Half of everyone?

With greater risk will comes even greater reward. For those of you who can go the distance, we’ll be dropping endgame gear that will rival the Light of those Guardians who have been defeating Oryx in King’s Fall Hard Mode. Because we’re dropping the gear into the end-of-match stream, you’ll be able to lord your rewards over the losing team.