Hello, I’m struggling to understand the difference between Solo Ops and Fireteam Ops and was hoping someone could help me out.
On initial glance, it seems like Solo Ops is simply Lost Sectors and Fireteam Ops is past seasonal activities? Is this the correct understanding? I guess the confusion lies with how in Fireteam Ops, you can also set the activity to be “solo” and yet, it’s called “Fireteam”. From a player perspective, it *feels* like a duplicate of functions that adds to confusion. Could they be combined into one? But then the term “Fireteam Ops” doesn’t quite denote “solo-ness”. And yet, under “Fireteam Ops”, not every activity is matchmade. It also appears you’re trying to phase out the term “Strikes” (or maybe “Strikes” means something else?).
The same could be said for “Arena Ops” and “Crucible Ops”. I haven’t tried playing Arena activities yet, but when you first launched it, I kept clicking “Arena” thinking it was “Crucible” the first day or so. Yet, “Pinnacle Ops” is really clear to me (dungeons & exotic missions). I think as a general observation, everyone knows what a “dungeon” is because most FPS games use the term “dungeon” quite consistently. This might be why I understand what “Pinnacle Ops” has for activities, easily.
Maybe the bigger question I’m missing is, what is “Portal”? When I go to the Portal, I (personally) think of a shortcut place where all the activities are available (in an organized way) for things like equipment farming, light level ranking, rewards farming, material/consumables farming, triumph achievements, etc. (Is this how you envisioned the Portal to be for players?) So I can select any category and expect matchmaking by default (for the most part). And I wouldn’t have to go to the specific map (such as from the world map) and run a couple minutes to the activity entrance itself. And if I want to, I can opt to play solo as well. But at the same time, I don’t expect auto matchmaking for strategic team-based activities (like raids where you might want to filter out the players based on experience & knowledge). So it makes sense to me to click on a dungeon or exotic mission and expect it to be “solo” by default. If I want to play with others, then Fireteam Finder is used. (Except for the new player, I’d have no clue that there’s a “Fireteam Finder” feature in the game from the activity box itself!)
Also, if I were a new player, I personally would go to the world map or the timeline to check things out by default behaviour as this is the traditional, sort of intuitive way of playing games of these genres. Even long-term players would like to use the world maps/timeline to check out different activities the more “exploratory” way from time to time.
Hoping I’m making some sense with all the word salad as to where the confusion is potentially occurring! (Video attached.)
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Fireteam Ops allows up to 3 players (a full fireteam) either with matchmaking or by joining others, while Solo Ops only allows single players.