If you’re like me, you’ve probably been spending a lot of time in Destiny 2’s new season: Season of the Chosen. There is a lot to love and appreciate during this era in Destiny 2’s life and how Bungie has been reshaping their seasonal model from the past. For the sake of time, I’ll just reaffirm that this season is excellent, and now is the time to jump back in if you have been on the fence.  

Phenomenal narrative delivery aside, Destiny 2’s most significant change this season comes by way of Seasonal Challenges. If you’ve played Fortnite, you’ll already have an understanding of how these weekly challenges work. Every week Bungie adds new challenges to the game that incentivize participation in all kinds of activities for a large portion of XP and Bright Dust. The XP gains alone make participating in these seasonal challenges worthwhile.

Suppose you have been participating in these challenges every week. In that case, you’ll no doubt have come across a particular one that requires five significant rank-ups in Gambit, the mode that everyone loved in Forsaken, but now Bungie treats as an ugly step-child. Rather unfortunate, to say the least, as Gambit remains one of the three pillars of Destiny 2: PvE, PvP, and PvEvP. 

Bring a sword!

As someone who fell in love with the mode during Forsaken, it is sad to see how far from grace Gambit has fallen. Don’t get me wrong, it is much better than it was during the Prime/Regular Gambit days; however, the honeymoon phase has long ended, and all that is left is two people waking up from a bad drunken night in vegas with wedding bands on their fingers. It’s not to say we need to get this annulled immediately, but counselling is definitely recommended. 

As of right now, Gambit and Gambit Prime have been fused together into a hybrid mode unofficially dubbed “Gambit Perfected” by the community. Perfected may be the wrong word to use, but it’s close to what the mode can be with just a few tweaks. Many of the features found in Gambit Prime have been incorporated into the regular mode, such as blockers locking the mote bank, one round matches, and frequent spawning envoys. What has left, for good or bad, is the role play system that encouraged team synergy and composition. 

At one point, Bungie teased the possibility of revisiting the role mechanic in Gambit with mods instead of full armour sets. I think this should return as soon as possible if the mode is to ever find greatness again, as it truly added another element to the game that was not found in anything other than maybe Raids or Grandmaster Nightfalls. Mind you, the mechanic was far from perfect and certain roles were too overpowered, but there is potential in bringing them back as mods. 

Reaper

Many of the mods can serve their original intended purpose while adjusting the ones that were overpowered. For example, Reaper can generate special ammo on elite enemy kills, Collector can pick have a chance to generate more motes on enemy kill, and Sentry can prevent the bank from being locked as long as they are within a radius. The more overpowered Invader mod can be tweaked to drain motes whenever invading and near the bank. To compensate for this, instead of regularly draining motes with two blockers up, allow blockers to just lock the bank or drain when there are three spawned instead of two. Having these mods will significantly intensify the game mode and allow for team-based coordination to return to Gambit. 

Returning these mods to Gambit will help steer it in the right direction of being classified as a pillar of Destiny 2. But the addition of the Prime mods will not solve all of the problems with this game mode. The greatest issue Gambit faces on a day-to-day basis, in my opinion, is heavy ammo. As it stands, Gambit has always been the mode that is primarily dominated by heavy ammo, which can easily turn the tide of any game very early on depending on who invades with the most heavy ammo first. The solution is rather simple, I feel: eliminate the heavy ammo spawns on each map. Let me explain before there is an uproar on Reddit. 

Grab Them Motes!

Ever since the launch of Gambit, heavy weaponry has dominated the playing field. From burning bosses with 1K Voices, or more recently, hopping in the invader portal with Eyes of Tomorrow to get a full team wipe in less than 30 seconds, heavy ammo has been the deciding factor for almost every Gambit match. By eliminating the recurring heavy ammo box that spawns near the bank, the only way for players to receive the ammo is to pick it up off the ground in the random chance a brick spawns from an enemy’s death. 

This simple change will drastically alter the flow of the match and can easily eliminate the problems Bungie is constantly facing with balancing heavy weaponry in Gambit. There are no heavy ammo boxes in strikes. Therefore they should not exist in gambit either. Heavy ammo boxes encourage a PvP playstyle that solely relies on heavy kills, diminishing the experience for anyone who tries to go toe-to-toe with an invader. Removing the box not only encourages more skilled invader gunfights it also forces teams to strategize more during the mote collecting and boss damage phases. 

While on the topic of balancing, I feel it should be briefly mentioned that the enemy variety in Gambit could use a massive balance overhaul. As of right now, players can expect to encounter all enemy types in the mode, with Scorn and the Cabal requiring the most adjustments. The speed and enjoyment of a Gambit match can often be determined by what enemy type enters the arena. If Fallen or Hive are around, the enjoyment factor goes up significantly (of course, this is subjective, but I don’t feel like I’m that far off here). Regardless of which enemy type is faced, however, none can deny that another change that needs to be implemented is how fast the higher-tiered elite enemies spawn. Whenever a Gambit match is launched, players can expect to see orange and yellow health-barred enemies within the first two minutes of play. Adjusting this slightly to make it so that they do not enter the area until 50% of the motes have been banked will help balance the fun-factor and difficulty of the mode. 

Bank Those Motes!

Finally, and I believe it goes without saying, but there needs to be a Gambit Freelance option added to the directory. I believe Bungie has stated this is in the works; however, there was no timeline given. Playing Gambit solo is one of the most soul-crushing experiences in Destiny 2, and if matched up against a 4-stack, well, at least you tried. A byproduct that I feel the Freelance option will alleviate is when Bungie decides to add a bounty or Ritual Weapon that requires a specific playstyle to be used in order to progress and unlock. I’m sure many of you know what I’m talking about when I say it is frustrating to be playing the mode to win, and someone on your team is running only bows to satiate the requirements of their bounties, while the enemy 4-stack has summoned a Prime Evil and you are not even at the first invade portal. 

I could go on about Gambit and the small things that can be tweaked and improved on, such as map variety, however I feel like you get the point. Gambit has had a long downward trajectory in popularity with the community, and while many of these adjustments I’ve recommended are taken straight from the Prime days, it’s only because Bungie is so close to revitalizing the mode and rescuing it from the meme state it’s currently in. They’ve done enough to make it feel as good as it once was, but in doing so, stripped away the minor adjustments from Prime that improved on the core mechanics. I genuinely believe that making changes, like removing the heavy ammo spawn and finding ways to reward team composition, will re-establish Gambit as a mode that everyone flocks to regularly instead of just being a checkbox to grab a pinnacle reward once a week. 

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