When Bungie first announced that Destiny 2 would be bringing back the Trials of Osiris mode, players were excited to see one of their favorite endgame PvP experiences return. At the same time, though, there was concern that the rampant cheating on PC (as well as a few other factors) might hurt Trials’ appeal. Now, two months after the release of the Season of the Worthy, the Trials population has dropped to only 10% of the daily Destiny 2 players.
At Trials of Osiris’ initial launch, there were about 380,000 players participating in the Crucible mode. There was a lot of excitement surrounding the mode, and players were also curious to see how Bungie had changed it for Destiny 2.
However, it wasn’t long before players started to realize that there wasn’t a lot about Destiny 2’s version of Trials of Osiris that was new. The armor and weapons were reskins from Trials in Destiny 1, the mode’s approach was practically the same, and Bungie even used D1 maps for the Trials of Osiris rotation.
Even without the cheating on PC and the connection errors, Trials of Osiris simply doesn’t offer anything compelling enough for most players to want to participate in the mode. It makes sense, then, that with each week the player base for Trials of Osiris would drop to the point it is now.
According to the Charlemagne bot that regularly tracks daily player numbers in Destiny 2, there were about 95,000 players in Trials of Osiris yesterday. And the bot reports that about 1 million Destiny 2 players logged on for Saturday, May 10th.
Destiny 2 Player Numbers for May 9, 2020
Total Players: 1.02 M
PvE: 913K
Crucible 469K
Trials of Osiris: 95.8K
To Bungie’s credit, the developer has tried to better understand what players do and do not like about the return of Trials of Osiris. A few weeks back, the studio released a blog post detailing how it plans to offer more incentives to play Trials of Osiris on a weekly basis, and to keep players coming back. Most of these changes won’t go live until next season at the earliest, but one of the most appealing is the addition of adept weapons similar to what was available in Destiny 1.
Ultimately, Trials of Osiris has a long way to go if it wants to meet the same level as its predecessor. Even when Destiny 1 was at a low point, there was a lot of excitement surrounding Trials weekend, but now, as evidenced by the low Trials player numbers, a lot of players are choosing to stay away.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.