Right now the conditions are disappointing - both in terms of how they’re implemented but also their variability. It also really feels like they shouldn’t be.
I have friends who have ~25 hours since launch, and they haven’t seen a lights out or fog mission once. Why? Those missions are cool - I know they’re not everyone’s favourites but they DISTINCTLY changed up the formula on how to approach maps. Maps felt completely different and your playstyle also had to adjust. Having to adjust your playstyle is vital for longevity. But each time they came up, they were on short timers and everyone was at work. Why are the timers of these so short, but the higher/lower hordes super long? The horde variability is okay, but having them be the only ones isn’t that interesting and it’s a shame that my friends are missing out on content (for a game that they paid for) because those ones were on such short timers during arbitrary times of day.
For variability…it seems like there’s so many more tweaks that could add so much variety. Tougher enemies, harder hitting enemies, faster enemies, mutating enemies, more bosses, more crafting materials, low ammo, high ammo, guaranteed weapon drop, more gunmen, less gunmen, lower medicae stations, no health/ammo packs, etc etc etc. Yet…nowhere to be seen.
It seems to me also that it needs to be clearer on what the reward/stakes are. If more variations are implemented, I implore Fatshark remember that currently, if you’re at level 30, XP is useless, and Money is also very quickly obsolete. So we’ll need something more than just those if we’re going to want to try out these modes. These modes could be GREAT for providing endgame content as it adds variability to the formula - but there still needs to be a baseline reason for level 30 players to want to play them. Money or XP doesn’t do that - and I’d even hesitate to say that adding them to Melk’s quests could be dangerous if you make the number too high or specific. (remember that a major issue currently is that people can’t play the missions they want/need at the difficulty they want, which makes some of the current weekly quests awful to do).