Destiny 2 crossover play will arrive “early” in the upcoming season and will receive additional features in the coming months.
Bungie outlined its long-term plans for crossover play in its latest blog post. The studio didn’t commit to an exact launch date and time for the crossover game, but it did talk about the features it has in store. There’s a lot of focus on the social aspects of crossover play, but let’s put one of the hottest topics aside first: how does matchmaking work?
The short answer is that all PvE activities will have a shared matchmaking group. But in PvP modes (including Gambit), PC players will only play with other PC players, while console and Google Stadia players will have their own group. If you are in a pre-built fire team consisting of PC and console players, you will enter the PC matchmaking pool.
Now, to keep things simple as various platforms merge their naming conventions, Bungie issues new identifiers appropriately called Bungie names. You will keep your old display username, but your Bungie ID and number tag will also be attached to your account.
Sadly, as a result of this unified friendly language, the many meme names that have popped up since Destiny 2 hit Steam, you know, the ones that are nothing more than a bunch of symbols like sniper rifles and Halo energy swords, already they will not be viable. If it has a name like that, it’s best to manually update it now before cross-play hits; otherwise you will automatically receive a standard name that you will get stuck with for a while as the renaming option will not be available immediately after the crossover game starts.
This new ID will also be a cornerstone for cross-platform friend invitations. Here are the top three ways you can add Bungie friends across platforms, right from the studio notice:
- “Log in to Destiny 2 on a device where you want to make friends on the platform Bungie friends, and then submit requests through our list screen.”
- “Find your friends by searching for players on the Invite screen.”
- “Use the Bungie.net friend finder, where you can link all of your platforms and then send Bungie friend requests to all of your friends on the platform.”
Bungie also shared an image of the new Fire Team Invitation UI, which has been slightly expanded. It has also gained a lockdown system and additional privacy tools “so that players can protect themselves.” This is how it looks in-game:
Photo via: Bungie
“Shortly” after crossover play arrives, Bungie plans to add cross-platform voice chat. This winter, it looks to further expand the game’s social features with the display of text chat on consoles (plus USB keyboard input) and the aforementioned renaming feature.
