It feels like Destiny 2 and Bungie are going through a never-ending torrent of struggles as of late, ranging in severity from downright catastrophic to mildly annoying. Somewhere closer to the annoying side of the scales falls the recent Checkmate PvP mode issues, which Bungie is now trying to alleviate.
Notably, Bungie admitted in mid-December its relatively newfangled Checkmate multiplayer mode didn’t quite pan out. The community was so unhappy with it, in fact, that Bungie updated PvP to allow players to choose between Checkmate and the regular Control modes, which was a reasonably timely bandaid in its own right. Now, however, a new series of changes is coming to Checkmate, which may well be what the mode needed in the first place.
How Destiny 2’s Checkmate PvP is changing
As per Bungie’s latest Reddit post, players can expect a fairly hefty array of changes coming to Destiny 2‘s Checkmate PvP mode as early as today, January 9. The weekly reset brings with it a slew of potentially crucial improvements, such as:
- An adjustment of primary weapon time-to-kill, with the goal to bring all weapon classes up-to-par with the hand cannons
- Clash and Control Checkmate now starts players off with two kills’ worth of special ammunition (e.g. 2 shotgun cartridges)
- Increased special ammo credit for assists and deaths, leading to more frequent ammo drops
- Reduced special ammo drops (to balance out the change outlined in the prior entry)
- Ability cooldown penalties reduced from 30% to 15%
- Increased melee damage (leading to two hits being enough to take a Guardian down)
Players can expect a more detailed summary of what’s changing with the specific weapon archetypes as part of the January 9 patch notes. As it is, the changes do sound good on paper, but Destiny 2‘s meta is a fickle and finicky thing, so there’s no telling how it’ll all pan out until players get to spend some time in the new gameplay sandbox.
