Bungie has disabled the text chat in Destiny 2 thanks to a game-breaking exploit that was causing players’ clients to crash. The exploit surfaced early this weekend after players noted increased crashes and error codes in Destiny 2’s competitive game modes. The common denominator was always a string of text whispered at the player immediately before their game crashed. In order to avoid this, Guardians shared tactics on social media that could protect themselves, such as turning off whispers and avoiding public spaces where your Bungie name would be viewable.Bungie was notified late last night and immediately moved to suspend the in-game text chat on all platforms. Players won’t be able to use text to communicate for the moment, meaning Guardians will have to resort to voice chat for raid callouts.
Speaking of the next raid, there's some controversy over Season 18's reprised Destiny 1 raid. Not for the raid itself, but for the date the raid drops. The next World First Raid will arrive on Friday, August 26, a major swap from Destiny 2's traditional Saturday start to a World First Raid day. Fans have expressed outrage that they'll now have to book off a Friday in order to stand a chance at winning the next World First Raid. Bungie community manager Liana "Hippy" Ruppert fired back on Twitter explaining Bungie also works Monday through Friday, and having more staff available for the World First competition means Bungie will be better able to respond to any unforeseen technical issues.
Bungie is also taking a crack at rebalancing Destiny 2's competitive modes starting next season. Crucible's Control mode will have skill-based matchmaking starting in Season 18 in contrast to other game modes which will continue to use connection-based matchmaking. Bungie will use a number of player statistics to determine a player's "skill" before each match.
Although initially limited to Control, Bungie already has plans to expand skill-based matchmaking should next season's experiment prove successful.