[2022] [Dev Blog] Removing Tuning Orbs

Thank you for your feedback on our latest dev announcement, specifically regarding the removal of Expedition tuning orbs and the new rate limits.

The limitations of an entry mechanic for Expeditions allows us to provide great loot and progress on the expertise system. For example, acquiring tuning orbs required players to utilize the game’s other activities, such as crafting, Faction Missions, and closing Corruption Breaches. Those activities make instanced farming inefficient for bots. It also makes economic and power progression less severe between players who have time to play dozens of expeditions a day from those players who don’t have as much time.

Looking back, we missed the mark with the initial implementation which had much more friction to daily play than intended. After hearing your initial feedback on tuning orbs, we added them to the faction shop as an interim step while we worked toward goal of removing the orb requirement altogether.

The intention behind daily/weekly limitations was to remove all the friction from entering the Expeditions, and give players an ample opportunity to optimize their reward gain while leveling the playing field with players.

On average, our data shows that less than 5% of players who run mutated Expeditions run more than 25 mutated Expeditions in a given week. The majority of our players that do run mutated Expeditions complete 5-20 each week. We initially chose 20 per week as that accounts for 85% of the mutated expedition runs per week. We’ve heard your feedback and are raising the limit on mutator runs from 20, to 25 per week to better accommodate the 95% of players running mutated Expeditions each week. This limit ensures a more equitable progression for players who do not have time to run more than 25 per week versus those that do.

We hope that this increase will give more players easier access to Expeditions and their loot, along with keeping the progression disparity acceptable between players who can play dozens of hours per week and those who cannot. Our PTR with these changes opens soon and we look forward to hearing your feedback on the new changes.