You know, if we only collect Tech Fragments to unlock the next map stage, it’s completely meaningless.
Collection should be for progression, just like in the Chaos Wastes mode of Vermintide 2: collecting silver coins is for upgrading weapons and buying buffs, allowing you to beat higher-difficulty levels and earn better rewards, such as red-tier gear. However, in Darktide, collecting Tech Fragments offers no progression elements at all—other than refueling at the Hub. What’s the point of gathering these fragments?
Number go up. The cosmetics for collecting 250k are great, but it’s looking like that will take well over 100 matches unless tech remnant amount scales higher in the later maps.
To be honest, veteran Darktide players don’t lack any materials at all right now. Without progression elements, this new mode lacks long-term replayability.
Chaos Wastes is so popular because of its roguelike elements, which give players the thrill of constant growth. You also get reward crates that can drop red weapons. But this new Darktide mode? Sorry, it really doesn’t seem interesting at all so far.
You’ve got a small bit of misunderstanding: Tech Fragments are the “meta” currency, while “scrap” is the in-run currency for those safe house refills.
From what little we’ve seen, tech fragments are supposedly used to unlock more missions on your expedition map. We can HOPE this means harder/more fun/worthwhile missions with interesting modifier combos deeper on the tree, but hope leads to disappointment.
This game mode is to prepare us for the dark days of gaming, where you will be forced to dumpster dive in search for working hardware, especially RAM sticks, SSDs and GPU components.
This has been my concern with the mode since FS started talking about. In every other modes, completing the mission/surviving is the goal. That’s the whole point. That’s why people still play Havoc and the mission board even after they have everything.
But for expeditions, the point is to collect scrap. But outside of penances, the only point of scrap is to unlock new missions to play in the current rotation. So after you unlock all the missions in the rotation, there’s no reason to play unless I’m missing something. You would just load into the mission, and speedrun until the first extract because scraps are a useless resource.