V501stLegion

They have done such an absolute shit job with this first episode. Even just explaining what expeditions are and what they intend for them seems to be beyond their capabilities at the moment. Are there other expedition sites coming? When is this one coming back? And what would be the purpose or incentive to actually do this again? They really should have spent resources building an Underground 2.0/Infinite Dungeon type thing.

Expedition is what has been seen in the game so far but it's currently missing the Mastery system. The plan is that Kenly College will be the returning Expedition in the future, once the Mastery system is ready.

We had two options before the release of Episode 1:

• Not release Kenly College without the Mastery system
• Release Kenly College without the system and get player feedback on the basic experience

We decided to go with the second option. Player feedback has been pretty much what V501stLegion has summarized and we understand that it's not a gameplay experience that many will repeat often. Therefore our thought was to not do the planned cycle (3 Investigation Areas open one after the other, Kenly closes for a couple of weeks, 3 Investigation Areas open one after the other, Kenly closes, etc.) but wait for the Mastery system to be ready.

We don't need to close Kenly College for a long time now if players feel like they're missing out, the option will always be there for us. We expect that the Mastery system will be an incentive for some players to return but might not be enough of an incentive for everybody.

The current plan is:

• Kenly College will return with the Mastery system and then go on a cycle as described above.
• There won't be other locations added in Year 1.
• We're open to bringing it back without the Mastery system if the community wants the current version of Kenly College to be available, probably still on a cycle.

Thanks for the feedback and I'll keep you updated what we're doing with Kenly College going forward.

Simon-says-what

We had two options before the release of Episode 1:

Please stop always painting these scenarios like they're dictated by god or some other higher power. You had plenty more options, like:

• Finishing the content before release
• Delaying the release of the title Update
• Delaying the release of just Kenly college

You regularly do the same thing with bugs and all sorts of issues, and it starts to feel disingenous (to me). You make this game, you have all the options in your hands, and noone else is dictating your actions, and noone else is to blame for your mistakes.

Yes, true. I oversimplified our options. It's true that we could've just not released Kenly College at all until the Mastery system was done. But as it's not ready yet we'd have no new content at all until that point. While we could've made that decision, I personally don't think it would've been the correct one.

future_glory

Thanks for commenting on this thread Chris. Please know that I think that Kenly College is beautiful, just unfortunately not enough to do. The Expeditions feel like drawn out missions with little to no connection to the world of DC (it’s an abandoned college but we need to dump a bunch of toxic chemicals so that we can save Kenly College and thusly DC? Why?). The puzzles are too simple and not engaging (follow this color and turn this knob/press this button).

I would love for this area to be repurposed for Underground 2.0 (minus the procedural generation of the tunnels). Utilize the great layout of these buildings to have new and exciting fights/waves/spawn locations/etc. Scrap the idea of the Expedition and bring it back as something that is manipulatable, like the Underground directives, so that there can be long-lasting replayability.

Is this, by chance, what you intend to introduce with the Mastery system?

I would also love to see the outdoor areas in between buildings populated so that it matches what is going on inside of the buildings and keeps the immersion.

Also, if specific brand sets, gear pieces, or weapon types were featured for each building for a given time period, with scaling for better drops based upon harder difficulty/modifiers, it could also give people a reason to farm these areas to get the loot they are looking for.

I love this game and want with all my heart to see it grow and succeed. Thank you for the hard work, heart, time and energy you and the rest of the devs are putting into this game that we love. God bless.

The story behind Kenly College made sense to me but I can see that it's not super clear if you don't see the College location as valuable with the functions it has. The audio files from the convoy give a pretty good overview, but I don't think that how important the College is for the D.C. survivors makes a big difference for how fun it is to play, at least for most players.

Changing Expedition into something completely different is unlikely as it would require a lot of work. The Mastery system would give you challenges to finish the Investigation Areas more quickly, more skillfully and then measure your success. It's not going to make Kenly College to a completely new mode, if that makes sense.

In terms of what loot is dropping where, that's a a different topic and definitely something we're looking at for possible improvements of the loot gain. But not just for Kenly College.

Cinobite

Could you explain a bit about what this "Mastery" system is?

We're still refining it and the feedback given right now will likely also impact it. That's why I'm vague about it, since it could still change. It'll likely ask you to finish the Investigation Areas more quickly and challenge you with your own completion time. Other challenges are also possible but we'll have more details in the upcoming weeks.

AtheonsLedge

If only there were some sort of ...server where the public could maybe...test things?

We did test the Expedition and the feedback was similar to what we've seen now. On top of it we now also received feedback from console players about their experience with Kenly College.

wmandra

First, there was a ton of player feedback offered on PTS forums that laid out just how poor of an overall experience the Kenly expedition was. That you chose to ignore that feedback and release the expedition anyway was bad decision #2. (Bad decision #1 being how the expedition even made it to the PTS in the first place). Episode 1 should have been released with just the new main missions (Zoo and White Oak) and new classified assignments.

Second, no type of "Mastery" system is going to fix the fundamental replayability problems with the expedition. At least for myself, the Shepherd system helps offer some replayability as I can gain Shepherd rank while helping others through the expedition.

Given where we are at now with poor decision making, removing the expedition in its current form is just insult to injury. Here's my suggestions on what the correct (or at least better decisions would be now):

1. Forget the weekly rotation of expedition areas. it's dumb.
2. Leave the full Kenly Expedition with all areas open in the live game.
3. Pause development on the mastery system and instead shift efforts into improving the basic expedition game play (more on that below).

You commented elsewhere in the thread that "Changing Expedition into something completely different is unlikely as it would require a lot of work", and while I agree that changing it into something like Underground from TD1 would be a massive undertaking I also don't think its necessary. Here's some thoughts on what I think are reasonable changes to the Expedition:

- There are currently 3 basic investigations in the expedition that seem essentially copy/pasted into each of the 3 different areas. Expand this so that there are more possibilities. Sitting in box killing enemies until timer runs out is fine in one area, it's just repetitive and lazy development to make players do essentially the same thing again in the next area.

- Add normal, hard, and challenging difficulties

- Once the pool of basic investigation types are expanded, make which 3 spawn for any given area either random or change on a daily rotation.

- Separate the single echo at the beginning of each expedition area into 3 different echos. Then have the 3 echos spawn at random locations within the expedition area. Make us hunt to find the echos so that we can complete the investigation.

Thanks for the detailed feedback, I'll make sure to pass it along.

cfox0835

Ohhkaaayyy, so..... how long until the Mastery system is ready? Seems like a pretty important detail you left out.

For good reason, we don't announce these things in a comment chain on reddit. Once we have a good understanding of what goes where we'll make sure to announce it.