I attempted Trials at the weekend, it didn't end well. We won our first 2 games, but then Bungie decided to match us against full teams who had gone flawless before. One team was so good the match was over before we'd barely got a shot off. Then we were matched with them again! It was ridiculous. I don't mind playing against people a bit better than me, it encourages creative thinking to try to get some wins, but these guys were so good it was ridiculous, and fairly soul crushing. Normal crucible can make me feel like I'm rubbish at times, but this was the first time I'd ever felt completely inept. It wasn't a nice feeling!
There are various conversations about this on reddit, and there seems to be 3 camps of players when it comes to those that are good at it.
Those that can go flawless on multiple characters per week who are really good at PVP and love dishing out the beating. They detest the thought of people getting to the lighthouse that aren't as elite as they are and will deliberately play when they don't need to to try and make it harder for the casuals. They love that others can' get the loot that they can, and see it as some kind of status symbol that they have "paid the iron price" (as one put it) and have earned it.
The other camp is those that feel that there needs to be something done to make things a bit fairer. I suggested skill based match making like CS or Dota or Legends has, but was promptly shouted down by the above camp. Another person suggested that the hardcore try hards leave monday to the casuals to fight among themselves, to which the above camp said they'd play extra hard on monday to make sure nobody had it easy even though they had already got all rewards they could get this week.
The third group have taken it upon themselves to try and "sherpa" those that aren't the best at PVP through the lighthouse. Apparently the guy with the most kills in trials of osiris and ranked #1 is a notoriouos youtuber who has been taking people through and carrying them to help them get to the light house. Unsuprisingly, the top crowd don't like this at all.
Its properly split the community. Unsurprisingly, those dishing out the beating love it, those on the end of it getting nothing out of it don't. I'm somewhere in the middle having gone to 8 wins, 5 wins, 7 wins etc.. so I've got 3 pieces of trials armor, and 3 weapons, a class item and a shader, but I've never got that exotic emblem and got to the lighthouse.
They really need a ladder system for Trials, with some kind of ranking and increasing reward tiers. Reset every week as usual.
Gives the uber-PvP teams a challenge and reward for their skill, but gives the poor newblets a chance to compete in the game mode. Having these pro teams stomping newbs isn't good for anyone.
I imagine this will go down the same way as my suggestion of skil lbased match making will go. The PVP elite don't want any concession and argue that there should be no reward for anybody in the trials unless you can beat the best, if you want to play anybody other than the best, play iron banner or regular crucible.
Bungie really needs to clarify what they see the trials as. Is this a competition designed to only give the top 1 % of destiny players the best loot ? or is this something that any top ranking player (no matter their PVP skill) should be able to find a reasonable challenge and get some rewards when they beat other players on their level.
