I got issues. Also with how Expeditions just reset and bounced me back to square one. It’s been about a month, maybe less, and now I’m expected to grind maps again? Pass. I only made it through a few maps to begin with, since it’s very hard to find matches (especially on specific maps) and I’m not really about speedrunning low difficulties for nothing dollars.
The silver lining is that the 2 million community points unlocked an advanced map which was quite enjoyable to experience. It also likely funnels most players into it rather than spreads them out across many, so I had a match that actually filled up (albeit halfway through and the last joiner had <1 wound lol) which was a welcome change from the usual lonely affair.
I can only hope that future map refreshes will simply continue to unlock the last map by default, and so concentrate players who aren’t interest in grinding but don’t mind dipping into the game mode occasionally. And that the lacklustre matchmaking data points to the fallacious premise of this game mode and suitable changes are made.
Someone at FS clearly has a playerbase splitting fetish. There are far more successful games with larger player counts that knew this kind of fragmentation was just bad news.
Hell, they seem to have known about the concept themselves when deciding not to do DLC content for DT.
I don’t even think a unified quick play option would help at this point.
Had to do 3 specific nodes to unlock the final one last night. All 3 games started with me loading into the map solo. By the time I did the first point of interest I got either a full team(2 games) or one other player(1 game). All 3 games ended with 4 players extracting.
It’s not as fast as regular mission board but so far my games do get a full team eventually. Might heavily depend on region and time of day though.
And if they did add Expeditions to QP, I would quit out of any I got sorted into. Honestly, that could literally be the thing that gets me to quit this game lol.
It depends on priorities but since I am just doing low level rushes for penances… and want the 18 grid points to unlock the maps I wanted more frequent rotations.
I would play the game mode on Auric as a quick play. I wouldn’t intentionally choose this game mode but I would be fine adding it to the pool. If I could do quick play for mortis trials, adventure mode, and expeditions, and just get thrown into whatever (with an opportunity to change my character or loadouts once I see what I am being thrown into) I would be happy.
Yeah that’s why don’t even think unified QP matters now. Enough players hate each of the 2 extra modes (or both) that it’s not likely worth the dev time anyway. Not without extra pieces like exclusion preferences and loadout selection as per brosgw above. And we know FS isn’t capable of doing it right in one go.
And you wouldn’t be alone with that fine and otherwise reasonable sentiment
However given the rather lukewarm reception for the Expeditions and having a reasonable expectation that your sentiment might be widely shared…wouldn’t that create a statistically noticeable pull on the QP in favor of the Expeditions?
God knows why Fatshark decided to treat the Mortis trials as something so special it needs its own console, mid-sized icon on the mission board would do just fine and the mode would likely be bit more popular
Wouldn’t it have the opposite? If less people are playing expeditions (and assuming a lot of people do quickplay, and most people do “adventure”) I would assume it would mostly be adventure games. I would want QP to look something like this:
I think you might mean there would be lots of empty lobbies in expeditions with 1 person waiting for 3 other QP people to join em, but I think if I pick a mission and someone also picks that mission (not through QP) it will throw us in the same squad.
This happened to vermintide as well. There are so many different modes that are all ghost towns now because people new to the game don’t even know how to access them in the menus.
Don’t look at the QP as something that starts but as something that fills. If less people are joining then every Expedition in the QP is a glass that is waiting to be filled. It takes just one person to start the Expedition for the QP to create a pull.
In the QP case less people is actually a bad thing, because it means that there are always slots to fill. And that is before we account for QP being a filter on its own, because QP can only work with people that QP in the first place!
And while the ability to opt out of it is certainly a solution for people who wants none of it, toggling it On also means there are less people in the pool for QP to draw from in order to fill the Expedition. So that’s another potential filter to pass thru!
Which means that its statistically plausible to see a tilt toward the QP favoring the Expeditions, nothing dramatic but at the same time capable of creating a vicious cycle of people having a QP streak with Expeditions and getting sick of it, opting out and shrinking the available pool even further!
I mean we don’t have to go too far for an example, everytime there’s an event the willingness to QP drops sharply with each passing day in my DT social circles, which indicates that deep down people are aware of certain processes that diminish the randomness of QP and act upon it by avoidance
I don’t know the actual answer here but if I am in expeditions and choose mission A, and another player, same difficulty also chooses mission A in expeditions, I believe we would be thrown into the same squad (assuming servers and whatever). That’s without any quick play. I personally get thrown into missions mid progress all the time without using quick play. So if there’s a small group of players doing expeditions, they could “fill their own cups” so to speak.
Yep! There are lightning strikes instead of dust devils now, which are pretty cool too.
I’d like this too. Just put a switch on game modes (like campaign toggle) and bam.
I’d still like a proper lobby browser more though. I’m quite flexible on what games I’d play, so it would be a real boon to see what’s going at any given time.
Heck, just give a player count indication. I didn’t mention it above, but the first thing I did was fish for matches on the last map by queuing repeatedly for Auric/Damnation and waiting ~10 seconds. When no match was found I started one eventually, but this is the kind of useful information that would continually save me time and frustration…
I like the fact that they switch things up. I just wish people played it. Every lobby I joined these past few days was pretty much dead, with a few running with some people. I play at a weird time for EU, but still. A shame.
I’m harsh on it, but I can see some potential. The switch-up is good, but imo the whole map grind process is bad. I actually feel like I came out ahead since I’m able to play an advanced map (the community goal one), whereas I would never have experienced Expeditions endgame otherwise due to lack of patience/players. I didn’t even know there were more than 3 expedition zones, lol.
Also not properly supporting <4 player count (bots are terrible, don’t keep up, don’t count for objective progress) while significantly fragmenting the playerbase (map + difficulty split, specific maps must be grinded) point to fundamental design flaws that erode player experience. Like yours!
