No reexpeditions this year?
No reexpeditions this year?
I have been playing NMS via GOG off and on since release day. I completed the first expedition and then have not played another one until the most recent three, which I did on my PS5, and the most recent one I did also on Mac via Steam. I have been looking forward to playing older expeditions I missed in years prior, plus being able to have them done on both Steam and PS5.
But in looking at the last two years both times the expedition replays started in November. I am slowly losing hope that I will get to play them this year.
It's odd they don't run re-ecpeditionsv regularly. It's kind of cool being online with lots of people in the same systems, in addition to the expedition exclusives.
Like what's the cost of re-running expeditions? The work is mostly done. You could argue that it makes them "less exclusive", so less FOMO. But seriously, it's still pretty damn exclusive if you have to wait a couple years or more for an expedition to repeat. How many people play a game that long?
Some players aren't find of expeditions, but you can always just not do them, and besides they will likely be less crowded on Redux runs.
Oh well.
Personally, as someone who has unlocked every single Expedition item legitimately, I think exclusivity culture is lame and dumb. I don't like these things more just because I know other people don't have them. If anything, it makes me feel slightly guilty for using them lmao
I think Hello Games is doing something big behind the scenes. Last Expedition was the worst one so far imo, it was the first one to have ZERO narrative of any kind, 100% just chores and fetch quests. PC received an Experimental update weeks ago that Console still hasn't received. And this next update represents part 4 out of 4 of the Void Mother narrative, the grand finale.
All of that makes me feel like a lot of the core team is working on something else.
So I don't have a direct answer to your question, but I will say, to me, it's another indication that something huge is on the way.
Heh, you called it.
And they're re-running Expeditions!
If I had to speculate, I think there could be a couple things at play...
- They have been focusing on bug fixes and stability lately as seen in the experimental branches on Steam instead of new features. They added support for MacOS and iPadOS earlier this year, which I'm sure complicates ongoing development.
- There have been many game releases lately that may have pulled people away from NMS, like Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, etc. It may not be worth it for them to invest resources in re-running the expeditions if people are currently focused elsewhere.
Personally, I am on a NMS hiatus until the next expedition or major update.
I knew it was on macOS, i had no idea it is available on ipad.
How does running another expedition cost them anything once it's already created?
I am still speculating but...
- You have to push out an update to re-issue the expedition(s) on a shortened timeframe. While the development cost itself may be minimal, there's still a cost associated with doing the release on various platforms.
- I assume expeditions cause a spike in usage. Since this is a multiplayer game, it has to be hosted somewhere and that isn't free, especially when traffic increases.
Both of these may be very low cost but it still may not be worth it for them to do it. They continue to release new content for free, which is great, except it's also not a sustainable business model. They probably have to keep it as lean as possible.