Some who have played Payday 2 might get this point.
Let us perhaps use a bit of money to purchase a specific mission type and area like contracts.
Those could have special conditions/rules and cost more the harder the difficulty you want.
But would also yield more rewards at the end. Maybe 3 random Ascended items and you can pick 1 out of them, but you can also see all of their stats.
Maybe special contracts that have stages. Like Hunt and Kill a Chaos Space Marine.
Lore wise this would be a 3-5 stage mission, wearing down the Chaos Space Marine / preparing counter measures against it’s deadly aura. Since lore wise, a squad of skilled soldiers from the Morning Star would normally not stand a chance against one of those in one single fair fight.
Or maybe same but for an evolved Mecha Orc…
Obviously you would want to do those with friends or people you know but it’d be still possible to do it with Randoms, just don’t complain if they fk you over.