I’m not sure whether I’m in the minority, or part of a (very) quiet majority, but yeah, I really enjoy Expeditions. It’s a nice change of pace compared to the usual missions, the equipment you can buy are pretty fun (I wish you could find some, like the mines or the voidshield generator, in normal missions as well).
But the last few days, almost every single game was the same: people rushing through the map, each on their own, ignoring sites of interest, and only picking up salvage. Once we reach 400 (sometimes “giving up” at only 380 or 390, so at least most of them are probably not using cheat mods that show you the location of all that stuff) they just beeline to the sanctuary door, buy everything and repeat, until the last sanctuary where they just quit.
That 100.000 salvage penance has truly become the bane of Expeditions. What’s even the point of grinding it at this point, when you can’t even get the one for 18 grid points yet the first place?!
When designing penances they should probably consult with a behavioural psychologist first tbh. They always seem to introduce a bunch of perverse incentives.
Given they already walled off one major penance behind an expansion of the game mode, presumably on purpose, they probably should have done something similar with the Salvage Spend and Tech Remnants collection penances.
I totally agree!! I was playing with some guys on and off and hadn’t heard from them in awhile. They got me on to just penance run in Expeditions o Malice. Im gonna get my 100,000 the old fashioned way!!
The distribution of salvage/remnants throughout the map should be more even. Higher values of tech remnants for exploring and they should put roughly half the salvage of the zone directly inside the deadsider caches so you have to play the objectives to get it. But yeah the penance design is terrible for this game mode, I will admit I already don’t do most points of interest. I can visually identify which ones are ‘wait and holds’ and ignore those, focusing on hidden caches and salvage. I’ll do the ones where you have to decode because you can set the skull, loot the area and come back to open it for the remnants. I’ll do those, the stashes you just access and loot directly or the climbing ones. It isn’t disruptive to the ‘grab the breadcrumbs’ game mode pacing. I don’t quit out before the end though, since I’m mainly just playing because I like playing.
I’m personally about 99k tech remnants and have played it a fair bit now with all classes.
I have tried every difficulty with pick up groups and had various levels of success. Similar to adventure mode I thought queing auric would have the more competent team members. This was definitely not the case.
I didn’t expect it but Malice had the best teams, probably due to players working on the penances and no difference in the amount of tech remnants. Smooth sailing and pulling in 6000 on the big map (5 zones).
Heresey, I don’t know what it is about this difficulty but if you are looking for a bad time, this is where it is. They should just remove this difficulty and force these players to get better and move up OR move down. They would be better off learning from the experienced penance hunters.
Damnation was totally fine and seemed to attract those not wanting to inconvenience those in auric as they learn the mode.
Auric had the most unpredictable outcomes, everything from players splitting up and going down to speed demons that could clear all the remnants while I put the smack down as arbites and rack up 1200 kills and over a million damage. Obviously it has the highest chance to fail and you have to decide if the experience is worth your time and effort.
I’ve accepted that I’ll probably not get the expedition penances done. Game mode just doesn’t click with me. But who know, maybe there will be fun modifiers added.
“Let’s add boring grind / loot hunt that only gives you worthless abstract points instead of proper rewards, to a regular DT’s mission experience… Wait, are people bypassing the grind and just only do the fun part of the mission? BUT WHY???” the thread
It probably started as a mainboard map but got made into a new game mode part way through development.
That the no mans land map has some quite open areas feels like thats the direction they wanted to experiment with for main board maps.
It could have still worked as a new game mode, but they very much underestimated what the expectations are for a new game mode vs a new map and how much more work is needed. I think thats what it all ultimately boils down to.
I got salvage lord the other day on auric, I’d only really salvage-scavenge in dead lobbies and I’d still do most points of interest (I would ignore any capture objective since they’re way too long solo, you waste like 2+ minutes on each). This mod and a lot of others really are cheating but we’re never gonna make headway convincing people to interact with the game modes as they were designed. We have people running danger zone and spidey sense and then whining of lack of challenge on this very forum, they’re a lost cause. But honestly I think the lack of difficulty scaling is what’s ruining expeditions more than this mod. I wouldn’t mind if they actually had to survive in auric to grind this getting shot at by hundreds of gunners and pulling elite patrols every corner. But the entire idea behind large scores is pointless with no reward for playing the difficult content, imagine if you could get the Havoc 40 clear playing on Uprising. Everybody would be playing it and Havoc 40 would be dead.
