Expeditions game mode is pretty bad. Player count has increased to around 15k from an average of 6-7k, but this is nothing compared to the release of Arbites, which brought numbers to nearly 45k.
I, personally, do not want to touch it again and others are saying they can’t even find full lobbies now! Anecdotes are best taken with a grain of salt, but this does raise a question:
What should be done with Expeditions? Fatshark tends to quietly listen to community advice but also just implement it however they want, which is their prerogative.
First, a question:
Do you want more effort to be put into Expeditions?
No, I think leave it as it is
No, I would rather that effort go elsewhere
Yes, please just add more in the same vein
Yes, please change it substantially
0voters
If we think along the path of the last option, what changes should there be?
IMO, the first is just greatly expanding if not outright removing the timer. It adds very little to the game mode, other than annoyance. I do not expect FS will actually remove it; they have always seemed adamant, despite player feedback, to actually remove unfun systems. They just nerf them a great deal.
I haven’t even had a chance to play yet… Not till Friday.
These polls read like fox news online polls. “People say Politician X likes to kicks puppies, do you support their three cent titanium tax?”
OP’s got an agenda and it’s pretty obvious. It’s just silly at this point. Good thing FS doesn’t listen to most of the stuff that gets posted here because it represents a fraction of the actual people who play this game.
The timer is the mode though. Without it you lose critical pressure to keep the intensity up, and make meaningful prioritisations. Although it would be interesting to have such an open map that you could just fight and fight and fight on…
What I think should be added is relevant comms wheel options, so you can communicate more effectively in the thick of things.
The amount of effort they’d need to put into it to make it good is probably substantial enough they’d’ve been better off releasing a DT spinoff game and letting it cook for far longer. Just cut losses.
Also without the timer this mode would be even less engaging.
Voting to change it substantially because I want them to remove the grind-to-unlock structure. If you can just pick a mission you wanna play without that stupid remnant grind and instead make the tech remnants do something else, it’d qualify as a major change and make the gamemode the bare minimum to be an enjoyable side mode to sometimes hit up. It’s still pretty shallow in-mission even then but that’s the bare minimum they need to do before abandoning it.
If FS removes the timer, the mode is actually going to be dead. I don’t remember for sure if there’s a regular low-rad mission, but the low-rad nighttime mission is a massive snooze fest. You fight almost no enemies, and you have all the time in the world to explore every single rock on the map. We managed to finish 2 out of 3 zones with a whopping 30 minutes of bonus time After a short while i started shooting poxbursters with the DB, hitting them with the special, blowing up barrels and etc just to feel something. Uprising is more fun than the low-rad nighttime expedition (on Auric).
The time constraint, combined with the randomized environment, is basically the main thing holding the whole game mode together.
I really want to try the one with 7 or so zones or the one with 3 modifiers - those feel like they should be much more interesting.
And the mode isn’t terrible, far from it. It’s just not Chaos Wastes, and it’s buggy - very buggy. Enemies bug out constantly, crashes happen, doors get stuck, and the tornado was bugged until today’s patch. The only saving grace with the technical issues is the overall performance - it somehow manages to run pretty well.
I see only one decent course of actions without changing the very essence of the mode. Without strong enough incentive and reward for all the not-so-fun extraction shooter-like activities during the mission, it just won’t make any sense. Here is what could work as reward:
Add “Red Weapons” gear tier (how exactly it’s implemented is irrelevant, besides that it must not contribute to powercreep substantially or at all; there are ways to do that, but that’s a topic of another lengthy discussion; suffice to say it could be just QoL improvements of various kinds, or slight buffs which not really empower player that much, or ability to apply custom color patterns to your weapons and armors (or all those at once); so it would be just a nice ephemeral carrot for player to pursue, not something they really need, they can play game as before with their old weapons)
Convert relics you extract with into new currency “Research Points” used to upgrade your existing weapons into “Red Tier”, but also to swap stats on your existing weapons and upgrade your Curios
To not force players who don’t like Expeditions’ experience into playing them, make it so that you can convert scriptures / grimoires collected in Adventure Mode and Havoc into Research Points too, so that they still could get red weapons by playing what they like; the benefit of playing Expeditions will be that your efforts during the misison directly translate into amount of Points you get, you can get much more than in the base game
Oh man, my agenda of being curious is out of the bag. XD
EDIT: I’ve been posting polls largely because I want to gauge people’s views at different points, from announcement to launch. I’ve been on this forum for years, since VT2 closed alpha, and I find it interesting to see how people react to content along the way. THat’s it.
I am sure my questions are biased, but this is fulfilling personal curiosity, and perhaps make some conversation. I am negative in general lately, though, because I’m recovering from an injury and in pain. It makes me a little more grumpy.
No, I don’t. That’s my opinion, I have never, since VT2, been a fan of new modes. I did not even like Chaos Wastes. I am allowed to hold any opinion I want.
EDIT: If you have suggestions on adding some new, more ‘balanced’ poll options, I’ll see if I can add them in.
If you were truly interested in other opinions, you wouldn’t front load your own opinion into the poll. You’ve made up your mind, that’s fine. But please stop pretending like you’re trying to be an honest broker here.
As someone who loves Expeditions and for who the mode has replaced the base game, Expeditions gets better with the right modifiers, particularly the combination of more ‘salvage zones’, which allow you to return to the safe house five times and the ‘more time’ modifier.
I hope that Fatshark will continue working on Expeditions, and especially; add more tiles or if that won’t happen; modifiers.
One change I would do to expeditions is the way you unlock new grid-points. Currently you have to get a certain amount of loot on specific grid-points to unlock a new one, if the playersbase dwindle that can make progressing really hard. I think it would be better for the modes longevity if it was just total loot that unlocks instead.
Increase starting timer to 20-25 minutes, but make corruption tick x2 (or even x3) as fast when time runs out
Dead players should count towards action progress of others (for example, if only 1 person is alive and said person is trying to get into the sanctuary, said person should count as x4, and shouldn’t be blocked by “majority required” issue)
I might be in the minority, but I quite enjoy it so far.
The timer is fine, the mode would be pointless without it. What they need to do is fix the glitches, maybe lower the grind a bit (both for unlocks and for penances), and add more content - more “tiles”, more objectives, more equipment, more modifier. More replayability. Also more comms-wheel options, because most players sure as hell don’t like to communicate.
the issue isn’t people running off to the 4 winds, it’s that the game expects you to care about that idiotic behavior once you’re to your own devices and try to salvage the shitshow.
randoms dying in a corner of the map they chose to venture to, I dont give 2
at the same time the game denying me access to the sanctuary with a tech relic crate in hand to actually do the content proper?
who thought of that crap?
randoms aint a team, randoms seldomly cooperate if not funneled through the same corridors.
you allow them to stray but expect others to care for the stragglers, that aint working this way
a simple “this way “ I put out seconds into the games start is often times too much for them to follow suit.
but “ooooh your lvl 2300 that’s a lot of playtime” banter, yeah no sherlock, maybe follow the one with 2k hours then?
this, in a sea of dumb decisions this is among the worst.
been grinding like hell for I saw an imaginary timer above the starting areas, when everyone rushed off to beta, gamma, kappa etc.
After a short while i started shooting poxbursters with the DB, hitting them with the special, blowing up barrels and etc just to feel something. Uprising is more fun than the low-rad nighttime expedition (on Auric).
