Destiny 2: Frontiers will add new activities targeting solo players

Continuing to inform players how Destiny 2: Frontiers will change up the game, Bungie has released another Developer Insight article announcing something called Solo Ops. The new activities are designed with solo players in mind, offering tailor-made content for those without a Fireteam. Solo Ops will be built to be replayed and are aimed to be around 10-minute excursions.

Solo Ops is the latest piece of news to come out of Bungie about Destiny 2: Frontiers. The studio has been particularly communicative about the future of Destiny 2, dropping Developer Insights on upcoming armor changes and addressing concerns with concept art and structure plans. Needless to say, Destiny 2 will be almost a different game by the time all of the Frontiers changes are implemented, including a greater focus on solo play.

What are Solo Ops?

Destiny 2 has plenty of content that can be played alone, like campaigns and Exotic missions, but none of it is really designed for a lone Guardian. While players often take up the challenge of running a Dungeon alone or braving high-difficulty Lost Sectors for Exotic Engrams, they must build around something designed for a group. Solo Ops aims to fill that void, offering something appropriate and worthwhile for players embarking without the aid of a Fireteam.

“Sometimes you just want to jump in and play for 10 or 20 minutes and feel like it was worth your time,” Bungie noted. “The activities best suited to solo players are time-consuming; story missions can take half an hour or more to complete, Lost Sectors require you to go into the destination to play them, and jumping into multiplayer activities as a solo player (for example, soloing a dungeon) can be stressful and take even more time than the activity would with a fireteam.”

To remedy this issue, the studio wants Solo Ops to be readily accessible, approximately 10-minute excursions that emphasize gameplay and fun over buildcrafting or reflexes. There’s also a focus on making Solo Ops enjoyable to replay. Right now, the team is experimenting with variable enemy factions and objectives. Solo Ops’s smaller, more intimate nature also allows Bungie to explore unused or forgotten locales, including some areas we’ve only ever visited during campaigns.

How will Solo Ops work?

Bungie explained that Solo Ops will be accessible through the upcoming Portal UI and be compatible with Frontiers’ new Challenge system. Through steadily increasing Challenge, Guardians can earn progressively better gear. The studio commented on how the player score will affect rewards, noting, “You’ll still want to play well in Solo Ops activities—your score will contribute to the quality of your loot—but we’re trying to construct these missions so that getting a good score is a matter of moving, shooting, and looting rather than being determined by what loadout and build you bring into them.”

Solo Ops are designed for one player, but they are not limited exclusively to solo play. Guardians can enter a Solo Op in a Fireteam of up to three members, but that’s the limit. Bungie explained that it’s working on implementing a system to scale up difficulty depending on the number of players. Similarly, the studio is looking into ways to add reactive enemy spawning instead of the fixed spawns that exist in most current Destiny 2 content.

While other players can join in on Solo Ops, Bungie noted that matchmaking will not be available for the activity. Instead, the studio recommends manually forming Fireteams for the content. Regarding the new Banes and Modifiers, Bungie said that it wants to include them in the content, but Modifiers couldn’t be transplanted as-is.

“We haven’t locked down any specific set of modifiers that we are going to support in Solo Ops,” Bungie explained. “We can’t just use the same modifiers as, say, strikes, because we’re really aiming at a tight experience that solo players can enjoy, and we want to make sure the modifiers we allow don’t push the missions away from that experience. We do plan to support Banes, as we think they offer an exciting way to increase the variety of experiences you have across multiple plays.”

With Solo Ops, it seems single players will finally have some niche content made for them. Alongside everything else promised with Frontiers, it seems players will have more ways than ever to engage with Destiny 2.