It looks like I found a small trick to take something back, manually.
Early today I tried a new strategy to play solo. I lowered the power level and selected one of the strikes that are directly available in a planet, instead of the random playlist. This indeed landed me in a solo strike, but it lasted half a minute because as soon I re-equipped my default gear other players joined in.
One of the things I really wanted to do and resented the game for not letting me, is playing the “Broodhold” strike. It’s a “new” strike because it was an exclusive PS4 a year ago, and it’s quite nice, it has an expansive area at the beginning with groups of enemies fighting each other, even a system of caves.
…But the strike itself is set in a inside a hole in the ground nearby, so what happens when you play in a group is that everyone beelines to the objective. I simply wanted the opportunity to explore the whole area at my own pace, and jump in and out of those fights just for fun.
I eventually tried the only solution left: set the Windows firewall to block the internet ports.
And it actually seems to work.
By default in the incoming connections tab I had a bunch of automatic Destiny 2 rules. This because I changed the client, so there were rules for the old Battlenet version too. I simply erased all of these, and then created two new ones. One for TCP, one for UDP. I set the rule to work on the Destiny2.exe only, and to block local and remote ports: 1935, 3097, 3478-3480
Then another two rules for the outgoing connection section too, same as before. I tried at first only with the two rules for incoming connections, but I still was getting matchmade. When I added the two outgoing ones instead it seems to have have done the job.
Now whenever I want to get back to default I just need to deactivate those four rules.
I didn’t have the time to test that strike to the end, but for the first time I was able to explore the area and realized there’s even a public event that can be triggered. I don’t even understand how it works, maybe strikes still have parts of the map shared with a public zone. In any case I was able to begin and complete the public event, solo, and from within the strike instance.
It’s something. Having some way to play the strikes is a very nice option to have at least a section of content that is fun to solo. Since this works for strikes then it means it works for Nightfalls too, the easier levels. The Nightfall version of the strike SHOULD also have level scaling, so I think there are options to manipulate those accurately. …Unless they have removed those too with the new patch.
Next time I want to figure out why the wikis list 17 different strikes, but the “achievements” in the game only show 15.
