Thursday, January 29, 2015

Destiny Crucible: Doubles Skirmish - My Thoughts

As many of you are probably aware, this past week one of the featured Crucible playlists is Doubles Skirmish. Since its something that I spent a great deal of time playing, I thought I would give my thoughts and opinions on it.

For those who don't know, Doubles Skirmish was a new variation on the already existing Skirmish gametype for Crucible. There's no Zones to capture and control, just teams of two pitted against each other with teammate revives activated. Doubles Skirmish required that fireteams race to reach a score of 3500 points and placed a big emphasis on teamwork, strategy, communication, and area control.

Overall I generally enjoyed this game type. Nearly every Crucible game I played last week was  Doubles Skirmish, each time with the same partner. Like in Skirmish, its extremely satisfying to be part of a team that doesn't have to rely on a random teammate or two, like is generally the case in Control or Clash. It feels as though you and your teammate have much more of an impact on the course of events in the match, because you do.

Because of this Double Skirmish was a much more satisfying multiplayer experience for me. I felt that it really allowed great Crucible players to shine. And, because of the emphasis on team play and the smaller number of people involved, there were no indtances of any one individual carrying the team to victory or defeat. This made the outcome of the game more dependent on how you and your teammate performed. No longer was I easily topping the post game stats on my team, only to be met with a defeat because others on my team couldn't pull their wait. For basically every match, I got out what I put into it. A high number of kills generally meant a victory, and a poor performance from myself and my teammate led to a victory. It sounds like a simple aspect, but this idea at times can seem almost nonexistent in other game types.

Perhaps the only problem I had with this gametype in all of my matches was the often over-emphasis on area control. In short, it was easy for a game to become a camp fest, and mine times they did. After several dozen matches it quickly became apparent that my friend and I were one of the most mobile teams playing the game. A handful of teams would resort to camping a single area with snipers for the entire match. This made special ammo even more crucial in this game type, and for that reason I think it needs to be tweaked. At the moment, I think it is far too readily available, and it's abunfance led to what often seemed like snipers with unlimited over penetrating rounds.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed this game type. I'm sad to see it go, as participating in it was definitely the most fun I've had in the Crucible in a long while. I really hope it comes back sometime in the future. It was a nice and welcome change of pace to the usual lineup of Crucible playlists.

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