Next Tuesday’s update to Destiny 2: Shadowkeep will introduce a new experimental Crucible mode, along with some desperately needed improvements to the game’s subtitle system, according to the latest This Week at Bungie.
Momentum Control, the new Crucible mode, is the first Destiny 2 PvP format brave enough to ask the question, “What if we just turned all the gun numbers way up?” Your Fireteam’s goal is the same as in vanilla Control — capture locations on the map and hold them to earn points — but now all weapon damage has been dramatically increased, to such a degree that “everything in your arsenal is a contender,” according to Bungie. Not only that, but Heavy Ammo dispensers recharge faster and grant more ammo when used, and even if when you do die, respawns are now instant.
Bungie has even made control zones faster to capture in Momentum Control. Just about the only thing that isn’t cranked up to 11 are your ability cooldowns, which now only recharge when you eliminate another player. This is a huge departure from the time-based cooldowns players are used to, and Bungie doesn’t specify if armor mods that alter ability recharge rates will function normally in Momentum Control. Bungie has also disabled player radars and increased damage resistance while performing Supers.
This all sounds very ridiculous, which can be an extremely good thing for Destiny 2 PvP, provided that Bungie handles it properly. If the numbers on my off-the-shelf SMG have been cranked up to match The Recluse, that’s good! If the Recluse has also been cranked up by an equal amount, that’s bad. (The bullets are also cursed.)
Elsewhere in next week’s update, Bungie plans to finally address Destiny 2‘s tiny, unreadable subtitles. “It has always been important for us that we make Destiny’s UI accessible to the widest range of possible players as we can,” Bungie says. “Later this month, we’ll be releasing an update that adds more options to let you change the look of subtitles in Destiny. Five different sizes to pick from, a variety of text colors, and a few different styles for the background.”
Said background styles include “Faded” (shown above), a solid box, text drop shadow, or text outline, and you can alter the opacity on any option to suit your needs. This, along with the color and text size options, take Destiny 2‘s subtitles from “bare minimum” to “actually useful,” which is obviously a great thing. Players will be able to access the new subtitle options through the Accessibility settings tab on consoles, and through the Gameplay settings tab on PC, because different platforms need their subtitle options sorted into different buckets for some reason.
Bungie says that this is just the first in a forthcoming salvo of accessibility improvements for Destiny 2. “This is just one focused update on increasing accessibility options in Destiny, with plans for additional updates in later releases. (A small example that didn’t quite make this next release is a fix for subtitles disappearing when navigating between menus). We’d love to hear your feedback on these changes, as well as what other accessibility improvements are important to you.”
