Conditions add novelty to old missions and can allow for a much greater range of gameplay experiences with small tweaks to various settings.
Currently conditions are on a very long rotation and 90% of the time it’s high intensity engagement.
This does not serve any purpose. It also makes conditions much harder to design. High intensity engagement has become part of the core gameplay experience. It is not providing novelty or variety. I haven’t seen power outage since the pre-order beta. I’ve seen ventilation purge on two days for a couple hours.
The longer a single condition hangs around and the more dominant it is in mission selection, the more important it is for that condition to meet the common standards of good game design. Players will become frustrated if they feel forced into conditions they don’t like. This limits the possible novelty and creativity of conditions, leaving less room for experimentation and ultimately reducing their impact on the game while increasing time needed for design and implementation.
If there was a greater variety of conditions available at any give time and if missions rotated faster (1 minute - 3 minute timer) than having conditions that some players don’t like is not a big issue. If someone sees a darkness mission but there are several other conditions available or they only had to wait 1 minute for a new set of missions then they will not feel compelled to play that condition.
As conditions would no longer dictate the core gameplay experience, the designs for conditions could be much more eccentric. You can then go for more wild ideas…
Off the top of my head
- Gravity disruption
- Plague Clouds
- Limited Deployment(2 players)
- Organized Opposition(Much greater frequency of traitor guard)
- Heavy Infantry(Much greater quantity of Armored Ragers, Crushers, Maulers)
- Endless Hordes(Fewer elites and specials, much greater frequency of hordes)
- Pox Hound Pack(much greater frequency of dogs)
- Resource Scarcity(fewer pickups)
- Warp disturbance (Psyker Peril Fluctuates up & down)
- Frenzy(Enemies move faster and are more aggressive, players move and attack faster)
- Maverick( Special ability recharges much faster when out of coherency)
These won’t necessarily satisfy good game design. Half of these will be hated by some players. But you should only see one for a minute then it’s gone. Obviously you should still aim for fun but you don’t need to be pedantic. Bad design for the core experience can be great design for a single 20 minute mission. You can produce them rapidly and tweak them based on player feedback if you need to. Over time you can build up a huge amount of variety/novelty and replay value.
Being able to iterate rapidly on conditions with minimal consequence will allow the game to function as a true live service, integrating player feedback and delivering content in a way that actually justifies the label.