NEW WORLD EXPEDITIONS
So as a level 58 character of New World who must run Dynasty Shipyard as part of my main story quest, and either not in a company, or at times in one full of 60’s (with high gear score who get no benefit at all in running lower area expeditions for new company members), it is almost impossible to proceed in the main story quest. Everyone is so focused on mutated, higher level expeditions now.
I think the idea of mutations is a cool idea and neat feature, but it doesn’t address the main problem with expeditions in lower level areas.
Here would have been my suggested possible solutions to this, and not sure based on how the expeditions are designed if this is entirely fixable using this method but I believe if done correctly it could be:
Staying within the theme of New World using quests (both story and side quests) to help you explore the beautiful and awesome world of New World, I don’t like the idea that the developers may just remove the expeditions from the main story quest and make them side quests. There must be some reason they originally wanted them to be a part of the main quest, and that’s because they are a big part of the main story!
What if instead of expeditions being tied to a set level based on their particular location on the map, the expeditions themselves have the ability to scale and modify the number of mobs, as well as the difficulty level of mobs (and bosses) based on the total level, and total gear scores of the combined group running it.
So for example say a group of 4 go to run a particular expedition, forget where it’s located in the world. The 4 are all around level 30 characters, so their total level score is around 120. Next, you sum their total weapons gear score, total armor gear score, and total jewelry gear score. From here you use a formula that takes into account the total level score, and the total gear scores from the entire group, and it changes how many mobs per room, per wave, for bosses who spawn mobs it also changes the number of spawns per wave and their difficulty. More importantly, it changes the loot tables, scaled for each player according to their own personal level and gear score but also scaled to the difficulty level of the expedition. So if you have a mixed group, say like a level 20, with some 30’s, a 40, and a 60, the loot they get will each be appropriate for their character and scaled with the expedition difficulty. Think about this, for resources you still have to use low level resources to craft higher level items, regardless of your crafting skill, so shouldn’t that be the same for PVE combat in instances like expeditions. Many other games have gotten this right.
Now if you throw on TOP OF THAT the new mutators, and I think you have a flexible expedition system that entices higher level players to still run expeditions located in lower areas, Perhaps they could even add some type of buff to your group if every member of your group is in the same faction, thus a unified faction group. This would give benefit not only to companies that run expeditions together for their members, but it would allow people whom are in the same factions to meet up for mutual fun content through the upcoming group finding system who are in the faction, regardless of their levels.
Adding a SCALING expedition system regardless of it’s location, and not typing it to the level of that location, combined with the new mutator system and the supposedly upcoming group finder system, I think you have a perfect dungeon system → Scaling + Mutating + Grouping amongst people of all levels for all expeditions, with a bonus for factions running content together!