Current design feels like a waste of existIng content.
There is no motivation and value for replaying much. In the end it will die, it can’t compete with regular runs on replayability. So it’s kinda doomed to be dead activity.
Starting from the reward - sigil, well ok, we can see it in the pre-mission screen, not so cool. Will new players replay it 5 times for example while they are learning and progressing through the game? Ehhh, not sure.
Reward should be more meaningful, like armor set for every class, as with Pennances, killed twins with zealot on normal mode - here is your set, killed it with zealot on hard mode - more fancy set (like give us Moebian armor ok?)
After you’ve earned armor set from that boss, you can farm it for another reward, more practical than status - some material to remove weapon locks for exapmle, but it shouldn’t be the only way, so not to force people grind 1 mission again and again.
Or make it a weeklie with some big ammount of tokens reward, dump some color palettes in Twins drop pool so i can farm 50 shades of grey and black of Moebian color scheme.
it’s a storyline mission, it’s not there for replayability it’s there for special lore events that make especially little sense to be repeated. didn’t you figure that out from all the special voicelines for that mission?
One one hand, slow release of content means there’s a lot of time for the content to be completed (if the intent is for it to rotate). On the other hand, for a GaaS game the content roll-out is pretty glacial and the communications barely exists.
You are talking nonsense cause there is no difference from other maps. You destroy stimm facility over and over again in Warren, or what, do you want to say the whole stimm arc isn’t a part of the story?
And from the gameplay point of view it’s a waste of time and resources to develop such a unique boss map just for a few runs and not being a part of the maps rotation system and overall game’s loop.
DT is a GAME with GaaS model, not TV series or webtoon where if you’ve seen some episode then that’s it you can move on now.
So I think the existence of special assignments is a good thing, because it allows for:
Content that’s more curated than the usual content drip we get, and
Addressing inherent randomness of the mission table so boss levels can work
To me, I assume special assignments will (or should) stick around like season “chapters” that anyone can go back and replay.
The problem here is, as some have addressed, the lack of players doing this content as it’s separated from quickplay and map rotations. The system would need a redesign to include generous quickplay options for the time and effort spent in doing these boss battles.
The problem there is that Fatshark doesn’t want to encourage people grinding boss maps that are on average significantly faster than normal missions. I’ve brought this up before with incentivizing quickplay by adding a ‘daily bonus’ that only rewards you once per day, but gives everyone an incentive to queue for boss battles in this scenario.
Boss missions only worked in VT2 because the entire structure was made for you to choose which mission you wanted to do. Quickplay was dead and the majority of players at one point were only farming select missions for how easy they were, hence why they eventually added significant bonuses to quickplay.
It’s a shame that a latrine and trench digging shovel, as well as a five-bullet revolver, will outperform the Hellgun or Hotshot if they’re ever released.
Content like this exists solely to attract those players who have stopped playing. It’s why it’s time limited. They know people will only play it until they’ve got their reward, it’s part of the design. They’re supposed to play a couple of rounds of this, then go back to the regular game.
Didn’t get the reward in that first week or so? Too bad. Enjoy your fomo and get into the next event the day it drops.
I, for one, do not want anything that promotes playing any single mission on repeat. This mission in particular just isn’t fun enough for that.
I played once. On Damnation. First try quick play group cleared it.
I didn’t bother playing again.
I’ve considered playing hard mode for the shiny “best” sigil… but, I’m pretty lazy and that would require me going into the discord to get a group – it’s a whole thing that I don’t actually care enough to bother with at this point.
It’s a matter of design, even if not with Twins, then next seasonal content should be replayble. Especially if they are planning to do more such special assignments. Either way they should spend their time for regular maps. But just creating unique boss enocunter you will play few times for sigil…again it’s just a waste of time and resources they can spend on regular maps.
I don’t see cons, only pros, if it’s not mandatory to play, but just an alternative option you have.
It’s just a healthy way to keep people playing by giving different options and activities they can choose, not the current design of crafting. Instead they drop a mission that will cause player count spike maybe for a week, but in the end noone will play it after some time.
As long as there’s a unique reward you can get for it and a time limit attached, people will feel compelled to play it whether they enjoy it or not. That’s literally the purpose of these sorts of events.
It depends on reward, if they will drop something necessary to grind or optional. And i didn’t say it should be time limited. The whole my point is such seasonal content should be integrated in the whole game loop and scheme, like stimms. Either way it will cause player spike, that maybe will be involved in mtx, or maybe not so it’s questionable how are you gonna support your game, just by milking 1,5 whales? It’s a short term tactic, that brings nothing to the game in the long term perspective.
How many such unique encounters they will drop do you think, before they will relize it brings players back for a few days? Like game will have 10 of specials assignments noone is playing? What is the goal to even develop them?
Reply above is an example
Not everyone cares about sigils, diffetent people care about different stuff.
Even if they will drop color palettes or another cosmetics, it’s not mandatory to have, it’s not locking you from progression and core expirience.
Again, matter of design, reward, and alternative activities, i’m personaly even ok if you can buy cosmetic stuff, or just grind them as alternative.
It is still better and compromised variant than the current one when 99% players will not play existing mission after few runs and when player involvement metrics caused by mission board timer and gacha, but not by content that have replay value.
I agree with the general idea that making these events more replayable/enjoyable is desirable, but you have to understand that they are not meant to replace the main game modes or act as an alternative to them. They are designed to fulfil a requirement of the business model, not because the devs want to give us something special every once in a while.
The cynical viewpoint, but also one I tend to share.
On the one hand: I hold out hope that they’ll drop the FOMO practices… on the other: I’m fully aware that it’s an extremely lucrative model (in the short term), which is why corporations in literally EVERY SINGLE FIELD adopts the model in some way shape or form.
Corporations could drop this practice and see profits extend out into the years/decades, but they’re mostly concerned with YOY profit to take back to Daddy Shareholder and say “Look, daddy! I made you money you don’t need!”
I mean, I don’t think devs are deliberately trying to make the events unfun or anything (though I certainly wouldn’t put it past them, if there was evidence that there was engagement gains to be made from doing so), I just recognise that their primary purpose is business-motivated, not player-motivated.
I completely understand they are pro-investor, and anti-player. The thing is it will not work for them even in this case. Cause such interraction doesn’t bring players for a long term perspective.
You need for GaaS model to keep players online, so the higher chance someone will see fancy skins on other players and want go buy it too. Such missions like The Orthus Offensive will not work for that. 10 missions like that will not work, cause people will not play them so will not stay online. And i don’t believe this mission is pure marketing, cause it’s kinda too good for that reason, and even if it is, then it’s faild. There wasn’t huge player spike like when they released skill tree.
So they just doing a mistake, all Tide games are made from people who don’t play games, it’s obvious.
Such approach with time limitted content was in another coop PvE - GTFO, and it failed.
Destiny 2 is killed by the same deccision, greed, removing existing content.
And 99% of them failed. Sometimes it works as a fast cashgrab, like Diablo 4. But with price of loosing reputation.
If you want too look at healthy GaaS - PoE. Every league brings some new mechanics and content. Sure ARPG has more replayibility anyway, but in its core this is the way if you want to make money on mtx - you need to keep players online. And so far - they can’t.
Fact is: Rockstar set the precedent for GaaS with heavy digital customization (albeit cheap and dirty) leading to content releases supported entirely via micro/macro-transaction.
Epic & APEX preying on children and whales with FOMO tactics to exploit vulnerable individuals has proven highly lucrative. The practice is so effective that we’re seeing situations where children literally bully kids IRL for being too poor for their parents to afford DIGITAL SKINS.
It may not work for MOST companies that try it, but that doesn’t stop profit-motivated organizations from risking the ire because their short term gains are still enough to make shareholders happy. If they miss the goal, they’re not even changing tactics, they just absorb it as the cost of doing business and load up the catapult yet again to hope they’re the next Epic or Rockstar to get their hooks in deep.
That’s just in the games industry, widen that to entertainment as a whole and we have a culture built around FOMO to such an extent that Hollywood has hordes of folks freaking out over tiny bits of information “ruining” their pristine experience of some garbage Disney franchise nobody should actually care about.
The fashion industry with fast fashion and limited time products, collector culture, etc.
FOMO is everywhere.
It’s short term, but the reality of corporate greed is that they only really care about the short term. Until consumers as a whole start rejecting this tactic wholesale, it’s going to continue being utilized.
I remember back when video games didn’t have MTX Cosmetics because the Cosmetics that came with the base games were already cool. Throne, just saying that made me realise that I’m only 23 but I already sound old
