Each of these game modes have the necessary foundation for Chaos Wastes:
Mortis Trials: Buffs / Boons
Havoc: Challenging Difficulty Modifiers
Expeditions: Exploring a RNG map with resources to pick up and using some of them to buy “supplies”
The assets are already there. If you combine them all together, we can seriously have our own chaos wastes now. But apparently fatshark and their creative Hubris separated them all so that we have different points of replayability paths?? Whats going on behind the minds in Fatshark???
I’m really happy with Darktide as it is now. Everyone can play the content they want in their own preferred mode, and there’s no need to merge them together.
If you enjoy Chaos Wastes so much, continuing to play Vermintide 2 is also an option.
The year is not yet over, and if we recall that we are going places this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s either more Expeditions content, or this be a stepping stone for Chaos Wastes-like mode.
Come to think of it - I think the biggest opportunity Chaos Wastes had lost at its premise is hold interest of people mainly involved with Adventure mode, and Expeditions are doing just that - it seems like it would be plausible to start featuring Adventure-like premise with open-y maps, and eventually evolve into something bigger, for people wanting rogue-like elements in the gameplay, while keeping the non-Rogue like Expeditions for people that don’t want any of that nonsense.
Rogue Core by GSG is making an early access in May and it would be a shame if FS didn’t want to chime their creative minds into creating something that would snatch some of people looking for that kind of gaming experience. But we’ll see - I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
At this point I think asking for CW is counter-productive. All the feedback that arrives at Fatshark must be “we want a new gamemode!” and then they’ll make stuff like mortis trials or this.
I really have to question how feedback gets mutilated if the end result that reaches Fatshark is ‘we just want new game modes forever’ rather than ‘make it like the thing you already made and stop adding new ones’.
Honestly I do actually see a couple of reasons that would prevent a Chaos Waste style game from happening:
In game explanation of the boons: Unlike Fantasy’s Gods, the Emperor isn’t delivering boons like they’re hot bread, and GW could strike against that.
Weapon altars:
Needing to introduce lore explanation for the weapon change mechanics
Larger pools of weapons: With for example VT2 has at most 13-ish weapons being used in the random pick (if melee); in comparison, here you’d have for the Veteran 38 melee weapons…And I won’t be counting the rest
Curses: Chaos Waste has the easy explainaition for the different curses, 1 it’s the bloody End Times, and 2 the Chaos Waste were cursed by the Chaos Gods a long time ago.
Fatshark likes doing everything except what players want.
Like giving us the solo mode they promised, or an actual Chaos Waste-esque mode.
Both would reward them great favor from players, yet they choose to do other stuff instead.
I don’t understand the logic.
They are run by arrogant morons. Anyone who openly states ‘we don’t give players what they want but what we think they need’ shouldn’t be trusted with sharp objects let alone game design, but here we are.
…or it’s just FS over-hyping things again, and that’s exactly what they meant - Expeditions. Then new class in summer, then may be a new map, a weapon or two, a few rebalances. That’s it. I would rather bet on that scenario.
And all of them can be written around within existing lore really, really easily.
Boons - small, temporary or jerry-rigged bits of tech for weapons or for yourself. Paying scrap to open or repair caches or tech-shrines containing them
Weapons - Again, it’s a weapons cache that you use scrap to open or repair. Have expedition-only blessings and traits or values that you won’t find outside of expeditions. Since the pool is so large, allow you to choose the base weapon out of a choice of 3 with the ability to switch or buy marks.
Curses: Environmental and weather modifiers caused by radiation and derelict tech-shrines or Dark Age facilities, cultist rituals, random providence from the Emperor as ‘tests’.
If I can come up with that, a professional writer with any familiarity with the universe should too.
Just like Mortis Trials this mode is actually incredibly close to being genuinely good, it’s just lacking depth. The salvage mechanic exists but the only things you can buy with them are reskins of existing grenades and standard consumables.
If the salvage mechanic instead could buy you some interesting cool buff, or you started with gray weapons and salvage was used to upgrade/random shrine them a la CW with some unique blessings at the highest level, it would already be far more interesting.
Or if you could maybe pick a different spot to do the next scavenge with different modifiers but different risk:reward that stack, there could be a compelling element of compounding risks and reward even in the relatively short, standalone format.
But just like Mortis, 90% of the parts are there, but they decided not to connect them. In the case of Mortis Trials, they have the boons and they have the waves but they decided to just give them to you randomly and there’s no control over risk vs reward, making it boring. In the case of expeditions we end up with a flat gamemode that doesn’t really feel different and they had to pad out via big grind to unlock another modifier. Which is in itself disappointing, because you’d think those tech remnants would have another purpose than unlocking exciting new modifiers such as HUNTING GROUNDS after doing a couple dozen missions.
There is story with every mode. Havoc introduces the commissar and mobeian 53rd I think. Mortis introduces behind the scenes dialogue for the major characters. Expedition will probably flesh out the Admonition and one of the cult leads in it.
the thing is with every new mode, they always fumble the gameplay and its replayability. a 1 step forward, 2 steps back…
Honestly they shouldn’t have made Havoc or Mortis.
With the benefit of hindsight, both should have been folded into the Battle For Tertium campaign and built in more organically. They didn’t need to make new game modes to advance the story, adding new missions was how they did it for a while.
100%. I think the VT2 approach (missions are more story heavy, ordered into chapters, and end up with fighting a story boss) was far better for this.
In fact I can’t really see how expeditions could be built out to have any story. The gamemode is, frankly put, just a couple of re-used auspex objectives in a dustbowl. I don’t think there’s any room here to add story.
Well, yeah. I think Expeditions are better for the ‘play forever’ approach (especially if FS actually puts in the work to make more than just the desert) rather than pushing a story forward.
Solve two problems at once, collecting tech remnants unlocks lore bits you can read and/or listen to back on the Mourningstar. More Lore + Something to work towards. All it’d need is the right presentation and explanation as to why we’d be told anything as expendable grunts.
For example, Swagger could become an information broker, passing us secrets under the table as some quid-pro-quo for giving them a lucrative scrap market. Or for unexplained mysterious reasons, which is why Swagger does anything it seems. (Personally, I think it’s all about the scrap trade, always has been).
Alternatively, it could be represented as mission reports, complete with redactions and the like, given to us begrudgingly on a ‘need to know’ basis, with our efforts reflecting how much we need to know. I mean, they are sending us out there to more-or-less operate independently and we have the suggestion of mission briefings during the campaign.
Or every report unlocked could be given to us by different characters, for different reasons. It’d be quite the challenge to write a bunch of different documents, with radically different writing styles, and radically different explanations for why so-and-so would be telling us such-and-such. But I’d love that one personally.