Early Friday, Destiny 2 community manager Cozmo said that the development team was aware of player complaints and was looking into disabling the mode in the Competitive playlist. And not long after Bungie made it official, putting Breakthrough back on hiatus with the likes of Trials of the Nine.
Breakthrough returned to Destiny 2 Competitive play with the October 30th update, albeit with some changes. However, most of those changes did not address the key flaw in the mode, which is that the team that claims the Breaker is typically at a disadvantage.
The defending team usually can sit back and gain enough points to win a round, while the team that actually played the objective is seemingly punished for doing so. At its core, the scoring in the mode needs some reworking and thankfully Bungie acknowledged. Now, those who are trying to earn their Luna’s Howl hand cannon can go back to Comp knowing Breakthrough is gone.
Interestingly enough, the first time around players complained about Breakthrough being an easy way to farm Luna’s Howl and Not Forgotten hand cannon kills. Since stronger teams could simply prevent anyone from winning, they could farm kills and pad stats. That was the first time around for Breakthrough and then Bungie put it on hiatus.
Now, the problem is more about the mode favoring the team that plays passive rather than aggressive. It actually punishes those who capture the Breaker, especially if the defending team knows what it is doing.
In truth, it might be time for Bungie to call it quits on Breakthrough after two attempts to get things right. The Crucible Labs playlist was said to exist for this very reason – to offer Bungie a testing ground for PvP modes. Unfortunately, Breakthrough returned right back into Competitive without any opportunity to see if the improvements made the mode better.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
