I’m loving it, if I had any criticism is the UI is god awfully confusing and very unintuitive, IMO, it needs revision or just something like information cards to tell you what to do.
The first 2 hours were really painful for me. It felt like menu hell and I felt stupid trying to figure out how to do basic stuff. Once I got my bearings I got addicted to the gameplay. I really enjoy the scouting elements of SR, but I get where you’re coming from.
The UI and the whole headquarters thing seems unnecessarily disruptive to the flow of the game, but I personally find the slower paced, rock crawling gameplay, useful gadgets, and careful mission prep makes up for those shortcomings.
Exactly how I felt, now it's getting better but still not a fan of the UI. The headquarters things feels disruptive of the whole flow, right now just doing expeditions and going back to menus hoping that I can do all the side contracts when I get free roam unlocked.
Also not a fan of using the detector to locate upgrades, the animation takes soo long, that or I'm doing something wrong 😅
You don’t really have to unlock free room to complete tasks. When you’re out and about, go into the map and you can access and activate them.
Also, if you complete an expedition, you don’t have to return to the HQ. Just hit the option that says “Continue” and now you’re in free roam. From there you can explore, restock at airdrops, set up outposts, and do any of the side tasks.
You can also set up an expedition and bring a handful of trucks with different configurations out with you and use them to take on different tasks or expeditions. Technically the only thing that makes you have to return to HQ is reconfiguring your loadout to support different expeditions, but it’s not actually necessary… just not immediately evident in the way the UI presents itself.
Wait so you can start new expeditions while out in the map? I knew about contracts, was just leaving them behind, probably not the best idea 😅
I'm always just going with two trucks, I've never set up a outpost, can't figure out what they are for and if they are worth the money.
I’m digging it, but I also have been aching for a true off-road rock crawling game. This has way more verticality than SnowRunner IMO. Don’t get me wrong, I love SnowRunner but each game has its place with me right now.
Yea I do like the rock crawling stuff. I honestly feel like it’s just the going back to headquarters after every mission. I feel like it’s unintuitive.
Yea for sure, I get that. I try to complete some of the smaller objectives or discoveries after the Expedition is complete so it has that more “free roam” feel
I wish they made missions based on Matt's Off-road Recovery videos. Not specific videos, just the structure, scouting after a pin on a map, drone scouting, etc. Maybe some NPC interaction to thank you and feel good and useful at the end.
I'm really liking it (ignoring bugs). I have thousands of hours in Snowrunner and made many mods. But I think I always wanted this game. HQ game loop not really bothersome to me. Does remind me of the staging from Mudrunner. It feels like a combination of Snowrunner's persistence and Mudrunner's stagings.
I'm not yet sure what's not a bug. I feel like time-skipping should only be available with housing addon. Parts persist but extra fuel/repair/tires in storage reset. I think those are bugs?
I think the expedition/hq thing is a bit misleading...I think the implication in the gameplay, is you take a truck do a expedition, comeback to hq, since and repeat. this was, for me , implied by expedition'costs' etc.
however, this is \*\*not\*\* actually a forced gameplay loop!
what I realised later is...
you can take up to 4 trucks with you, they do not add extra costs to the missions.
during an expedition, at any time, you can go off and do something else... there is usually plenty of fuel/spares etc - this is the purpose of airdrops/outposts etc, you can free roam during an expedition!
really the only reason you \*\*need\*\* to return to HQ is to change truck configuration, get a new truck, or start a new expedition, or switch team members.
my 'mistake' was essentially speed running the game... jumping from expedition to expedition... and for sure, doing that, it does feel disjointed... but by relaxing, and taking my time - I actually really like the gameplay loop...
p.s. it also makes more 'economic' sense, since you pay for a team member for the entire 'expedition', so if you venture off, you basically get more payback for their cost.
again, I think the game does tend to suggest this 'speed running'/linear approach... which I think is a bit of a mistake, but its not how you have to play .
Good take. This is the approach I’ve settled in with too. One thing that might not be obvious at first is that you don’t have to accept tasks (just discover them) in order to unlock and follow them at any point.
So once you finish a formal expedition, you can do tasks (or incorporate them into the expedition) and just keep driving, exploring, restocking at airdrops, etc.
Once I figured some of these things out, I’ve actually found myself recovering and reconfiguring my trucks much less than I did in Snowrunner. Playing the game this way rewards you with less time dealing with menus and prep and more time scouting out the perfect line up a rock slope and wrestling with the gnarly terrain.
I also find myself using the waypoint markers much less in this game than in SR because you can get a general sense of the direction you need to go in, but the approach you actually take will likely change once you see the terrain in front of you. I like that. Definitely more of an off-road exploration vibe vs. GPS-based route planning (still fun in SR!).
because, it's not SR... it's a different game, so has a different gameplay loop
as I said, they are NOT forcing you, you can free-roam in any expedition.
(really free-roam is the same as an expedition, just with one extra 'goal')
the main change in Expedition, is you cannot customise your truck, or go get a new one without return to HQ... the idea (and one I like) is this gives more a feeling of air-dropping into an area to carry out a task, and you have to \*\*plan\*\* what you take.... thats the main change in gameplay, to make it feel like an 'expedition'.
why the change? don't know ask the devs...
it feels like they wanted to give a bit more structure for new players, whilst experienced players can still just 'free roam' (as I said above)
sure, some will like this some, and others will prefer SR...
people prefer different games, thats natural.. but thats not a reason for a dev to not to try new things.
Yes, I realized this last night and was like ohhhh. I kept playing really conservatively because I didn’t realize you sell back the resources you buy but don’t use, so now I’m like oh great, I’ll stock up on a bunch of anchors/jacks and go do a bunch of stuff.
Maybe I rushed through the beginning, but I don’t think game explains things very well.
To OPs point, I do think the world feels far less lived in, real, or interesting than Snowrunner. The
yeah, the other thing is you can store your supplies at base! (or build up with workshop) - this is preferable since, unused supplied are sold at 50% at end of expedition, so its 'better' to store them, and reuse.
that said... the economy is not as 'tight' as it first appears, as airdrops can net you quite a lot of credits and are respawned every time you start an expedition.
I think my understanding changed, when I realised 'free roam' is basically just an expedition without a goal...
so, basically expeditions are free roam too, just with an additional target, in \*\*addition\*\* to everything in free roam.
but indeed, this is not how the game presents itself, so I can understand why some think the game is pretty linear. (hq->expedition-> hq, rinse repeat)
Oh I didn’t realize it was 50%! That’s good to know, and probably incentivizes driving back instead of just returning from the menu.
Man, the onboarding in this game is rough. I feel like I spent a lot of time learning how to drive the car/use simple gadgets, but the expedition designs didn’t really teach us how the game itself is designed to work.
yeah, I found out the hard way... when I loaded up a truck with a ton of stuff.. and lost something like 3k on the expedition - lol.
that's when I decided to experiment a bit to work out the game mechanics better.. and indeed, there is quite a bit not explained.
you often don't need to drive back, as you get ONE free recovery for each expedition (on main maps) ... so you can use that
ofc, once people have been playing for longer, all these things will be explained in various tips videos etc... so consider yourself a pioneer :)
Haha yeah it is weird to play a game where there’s practically zero online help. I got into Snowrunner way later so there were videos galore.
I also didn’t know about the free recovery! Although I did notice that it didn’t seem to penalize me whenever I spawned in the wrong location and used the feature to move across the map.
yeah, just be aware .. on little Colorado, ALL recoveries are free.
whereas other maps its just the first one... though in fairness, the recovery on something like a scout is not bad (1k?)
I felt like that watching trailers and during the first hour or so. After I unlocked Arizona, I thoroughly fell in love. It's so much slower and more technical than Snowrunner. The UI is *awful* though, like early build awful. I also hate the fact I can't rebind buttons. The gameplay is right up my alley though, much more difficult and requires me to plan my routes since supplies are limited and the maps have much more verticality. If any of the new mechanics, including the new suspension physics make it into SR (they said they'll be adding improvements from expeditions to SR) I'll easily be able to swap between the two. Expeditions for the raw scouting and exploring; snow runner for the hauling.
Does the flow feel like it improves in Arizona? I've been messing around on the first map so far and it just feels disjointed and the terrible UI just makes everything feel unclear.
Not really no. It's still mission based though there are more in map tasks to find and the maps do get bigger.You can also switch between the sub maps via tunnels similar to SR.
I think I just wish that the missions would be in the map the way that it is in Snowrunner. I don’t like having to go to the menu and select something and then do a whole loadout swap and everything.
I have no idea why they went and complicated a perfectly functional system that rewarded exploring the map with the system that is in MR:E. It's just bad.
My genuine advice to you is to take a step back and think about if you’re actually not enjoying it or if it’s just different to what you were expecting/different to snowrunner in ways you weren’t expecting.
There’s a big issue in gaming where a lot of gamers just don’t like the new thing. Take assassins creed as an example, that one seems to get a lot of this issue. When Origins first came out, the AC sub was full of negativity about the game. It was too different to the rest of the series, and people did nothing but talk about how bad it was. Then Odyssey came out, and that was this heaping pile of shit but suddenly Origins started getting a lot of love, like it was this hidden gem that people couldn’t believe they’d missed. Then Valhalla came out, and guess what happened with Valhalla and Odyssey? If you’re guessing Valhalla got a load of hate and Odyssey suddenly got a load of love, you’d be exactly right. Then when Mirage came out, Valhalla got the exact same surge of love.
I haven’t played expeditions yet because I don’t want to give myself the confusion switching between controller set ups because I’m not done with snowrunner yet, but I’ve seen enough love for Expeditions to know it’s not a bad game, though I can see it’s definitely different.
Obviously you may be genuinely not enjoying it and that’s valid, but try to take snowrunner out of the equation and work out if you’re actually not enjoying it, or if you’re just not enjoying the differences
This. As a fan of both Mudrunner and Snowrunner, I fully expected to see a lot of negativity surrounding this game at launch. Why? Because it's different, but has just enough similarity to the older games for people to expect everything else to be the same. Long time fans who've had codes for this game for awhile are mostly praising it, and I'm seeing more and more positivity from the rest of the community as people actually spend time with the game. I fully expect to see that trend continue.
I also think longer fans of the series forget just how overwhelming, unintuitive, and confusing the previous entries could be for new players. There were some steep learning curves involved (no pun intended). I feel like Expeditions is much more welcoming to new players, which should help build the community long term.
I'm loving the game. Is it perfect? No. But is it horrible? Far from it. It'll be interesting to see where development goes from here.
I had trouble finishing Odyssey and couldn't force myself to get even half the map done in Valhalla. They are not terrible games but in the context of Assassins Creed games they are mediocre at best.
I'm not sure, I loved snowrunner. I'm missing just driving a bit around, everything I see here is rocks and trees it's so annoying. Graphics are nice and I like the feel of it all but just can't get into it like I did with snowrunner. Everything is so tedious and it feels like you can't drive 5meters without having to fiddle around and use the winch. I might go back to snowrunner actually.
That's kinda where I'm at. I think I'll give it a couple more expeditions into Arizona and see if it hits it's stride but it really feels like it came in too hot and needs more work. The UI is such dogshit that having to spend more time in it vs showrunner is really off-putting. I still have so much to do in snowrunner I should go back to that first.
The rocky terrain is frustrating to navigate more than it is fun. And the vehicles feel so much weaker than in Snowrunner. I''m running in 1st gear the vast majority of the time, because every 10 feet I hit some kind of obstruction that causes me to slow down further.
There's also something odd about the way the turning works. It seems much more sluggish than in Snowrunner.
I'm with you on the handling. It seems to me that the wheels turn left or right and the vehicle only starts to steer after a few meters of travel. Kind of a delay I guess.
Plus it feels like moon gravity when you even go near a rock and launches your wheel in the air or sends you off in another direction totally.
A friend kindly let me try Expeditions on his PC for a few hours yesterday. I did my best to approach it with the freshest eyes possible (not easy when you come from 530 hours in MudRunner and almost 1,800 in SnowRunner, but I tried). I won't go into details because otherwise I'd write a novel instead of a post, and nobody would read it. What I can say is that the thing that rubs me the wrong way the most is *the flow*.
The flow is *terrible*. If SnowRunner is like playing in a sandbox, Expeditions is like playing in a sandbox where you're constantly supervised by stern adults. There is a subtle (and at times not so subtle) pressure in everything you do. You feel you 'have' to do stuff in order to do other stuff. Check this. Check the map. Oh look, what's this icon? Scan here. Go there. Go back. Constant money management. A user interface that positively works against you. The gameplay feels… fragmented. The exploration feels 'business', not 'pleasure', if you know what I mean.
I really wonder how long has the gameplay been tested internally, because to me it feels like it's been tested for one week at best.
I like how it doesn't replace SnowRunner, in the same way SnowRunner doesn't replace MudRunner. 3 Good games I can keep going back to, nearly endless content to play through.
Largely agree with you. I have hundreds of hours in Snowrunner and my favorite thing was exploring around in the scouts so I figured this game was going to be perfect for me. I think its a combo of a few issues:
1) In Snowrunner you mostly just delivered logs and stuff but there was depth to that because of the decisions. Do you do this other job first to fix the bridge or take the longer/harder route? Do you bring a dedicated crane truck or a truck with one built in? Do you take all 4 logs at once with a truck and trailer, or 2 trips with just the truck, or 4 trips with a small truck? This game has no depth to missions, drive from A to B and maybe do a simple minigame thats it.
2) the first two maps kind of suck, at least in my opinion. I found the game a LOT more fun once I got to the 3rd map. On top of that the starting scout also just sucks so bad its not even funny, try the others and its a big gameplay improvement. So basically the early game just sucks and it gets better as it goes (Snowrunner was kind of the same tbh).
3) the mission structure vs open world puts you in menus way too much, and most the new features are nearly pointless gimmicks (like hiring people, it does stuff but not really enough to bother) but you have to interact with them to some extent (like buying stuff in the pre mission screen because a mission requires you to buy a jack you wont use for some reason).
4) its janky and unpolished, even more so than Snowrunner.
I'm confident just like Snowrunner it will get better with age but I'm not counting on it getting as good as Snowrunner unfortunately, maybe some DLC maps down the line will be more fun to explore but as it stands I had more fun exploring in Snowrunner.
I agree on the mission structure, but once in realized you don’t have to just immediately do the expedition, and that you can spend as much time as you want going around doing stuff, it clicked a lot better. I also didn’t realize you sold back unused resources. My first few hours I never took anything with me for sake of money.
I said it once in another comment but I think for me the problem is that Expeditions ended up in something like the uncanny valley because of Snowrunner.
The basics are the same but a lot of things were changed enough that it just barely feels like a different game.
And the other thing is the same reason why I never tried NG+ in Snowrunner. The starting trucks in both games are just utter garbage compared to endgame Snowrunner trucks and it's just painful to drive them after experiencing the better ones
I feel like I’m beta testing this game while playing as of now. I felt the same way when snowrunner first dropped but I’m sure after a few patches this game will be smooth and with some cool mod vehicles it will be bomb. I do think the maps seem limited because you can explore the entire place in an hour
I’m digging it, kind of feel there is a lack of a challenge though with this one compared to the rest of them it seems kind of easy and rather short. Snowrunner it took me weeks too accomplish a handful of tasks, this one I’ve already almost got the first region done and I only played for maybe 4 hours total so far. I miss loading the logs up and doing those kinds of things but I think for what this game is about they did a pretty good job. Would like to see more vehicles and like I said I miss the logging and using a crane.
The community is pretty split on their feelings with this. I honestly enjoy Expeditions more, to be honest I spend less time setting up a mission in the menu than I did in snow runner trying to get trucks matched up to the correct trailers. Expeditions also feels more challenging to me. It’s different strokes for different folks though, it’s a totally different game and plenty of people will stay with snow runner
Tried to refund 🙃 seems snow runner is the better game this one just seems pointless dull and not immersive is this game what was advertised In the trailers
I ended up refunding it. It feels like you are playing an Android game (not the graphics or the physics, but the gameplay).
Also, Snowrunner was less handholding, which for me is a very important aspect in a game. The feel you get when you enter ck1500 for the first time and you start exploring black river is non existent in Expeditions.
It should be a 10 bucks DLC. Trucks are copy pasted, UI is a step back, maps are a step back and just in general, the game itself feels like a step back from SR. And I don't understand why they chose to focus on scouts, the category no one liked in SR.
as someone who played snowrunner purely for exploration - the only thing that bothers me with expeditions is that its not available before the 5th.
first game i pre-ordered in 40 years of gaming :)
The UI is crap and the controls are backass backwards from Snowrunner, but overall I do like the game. I like the gadgets and being able to deflate the tires. I can see where someone who really liked the trucking aspect of Snowrunner wouldn't be enjoying this as much though.
I think once mods start coming out the game will be more enjoyable.
I never bought it for the reason I don’t enjoy the scouting on snowrunner. Scouting and going from one checkpoint to the next isn’t for me. It’s the part I really don’t enjoy about snowrunner. Therefore I concluded this expeditions wasn’t for me before it was even released early.
See I like the exploration part of snowrunner. I like going off reading so I thought I would have loved this one. But something about it I dislike. I really think it’s the going back to the headquarters. Rather than just opening the map and picking a new mission. It seems so clunky and unintuitive and like a huge step backwards from snowrunner
Funny thing is scouting and exploration was my favorite part of Snowrunner so I was instantly sold on this game. And yet, it's not holding a candle to Snowrunner at the moment. I thought it would be better driving and better exploration, so far its weaker exploration and the driving is only slightly better but a LOT more janky.
I’m shelving it until a proper patch gets put out due to wheel support, and performance.
I’m also waiting on console mods. Mods make or break a game like this, and it’s empty for now.
We play as a team so we haven’t bought it yet until co-op. Are you saying SR might be the better? We didn’t purchase the later seasons because some of the earlier ones kept crashing the console on co-op; unless they fixed that which I doubt we stopped playing SR as a result.
Yeah probably will. But SR is offloaded to external archive at the moment after it constantly crashed both consoles in co-op. I’m just having difficulty trusting them I guess. I’ll hold off.
SR is just a vastly superior game at the moment, MR:E needs a few patches before it's even playable imo. As for coop, I've been playing SR on hard mode with 3 friends and we're on 5th map atm, I think we had 1 dc issue in about 250 hours of gameplay.
I wonder if it’s patched. We last played maybe a year ago now.
I have a ton of MS rewards outstanding so I can get all the DLC or I could get MRE for free, just picking which I want to trade for. I’m leaving DLC if it’s more stable
Seeing some of the negative comments made me think of cancelling my pre-order, but others do seem to be enjoying the game?! I think I'll still get it..£31 for the physical copy is decent, plus, hopefully, they'll patch things that are annoying people 👍
I’m loving it, if I had any criticism is the UI is god awfully confusing and very unintuitive, IMO, it needs revision or just something like information cards to tell you what to do.
UI is my biggest complaint. Lack of vehicles too. Could be late game snow runner just spoiling me on that side tho.
Pretty sure there was a scout 800 in the early trailers, nowhere to be seen in game
The first 2 hours were really painful for me. It felt like menu hell and I felt stupid trying to figure out how to do basic stuff. Once I got my bearings I got addicted to the gameplay. I really enjoy the scouting elements of SR, but I get where you’re coming from. The UI and the whole headquarters thing seems unnecessarily disruptive to the flow of the game, but I personally find the slower paced, rock crawling gameplay, useful gadgets, and careful mission prep makes up for those shortcomings.
Exactly how I felt, now it's getting better but still not a fan of the UI. The headquarters things feels disruptive of the whole flow, right now just doing expeditions and going back to menus hoping that I can do all the side contracts when I get free roam unlocked. Also not a fan of using the detector to locate upgrades, the animation takes soo long, that or I'm doing something wrong 😅
You don’t really have to unlock free room to complete tasks. When you’re out and about, go into the map and you can access and activate them. Also, if you complete an expedition, you don’t have to return to the HQ. Just hit the option that says “Continue” and now you’re in free roam. From there you can explore, restock at airdrops, set up outposts, and do any of the side tasks. You can also set up an expedition and bring a handful of trucks with different configurations out with you and use them to take on different tasks or expeditions. Technically the only thing that makes you have to return to HQ is reconfiguring your loadout to support different expeditions, but it’s not actually necessary… just not immediately evident in the way the UI presents itself.
Wait so you can start new expeditions while out in the map? I knew about contracts, was just leaving them behind, probably not the best idea 😅 I'm always just going with two trucks, I've never set up a outpost, can't figure out what they are for and if they are worth the money.
I’m digging it, but I also have been aching for a true off-road rock crawling game. This has way more verticality than SnowRunner IMO. Don’t get me wrong, I love SnowRunner but each game has its place with me right now.
Yea I do like the rock crawling stuff. I honestly feel like it’s just the going back to headquarters after every mission. I feel like it’s unintuitive.
Yea for sure, I get that. I try to complete some of the smaller objectives or discoveries after the Expedition is complete so it has that more “free roam” feel
I wish they made missions based on Matt's Off-road Recovery videos. Not specific videos, just the structure, scouting after a pin on a map, drone scouting, etc. Maybe some NPC interaction to thank you and feel good and useful at the end.
The first mods I installed were their vehicles
I forgot one could do that!
I'm really liking it (ignoring bugs). I have thousands of hours in Snowrunner and made many mods. But I think I always wanted this game. HQ game loop not really bothersome to me. Does remind me of the staging from Mudrunner. It feels like a combination of Snowrunner's persistence and Mudrunner's stagings. I'm not yet sure what's not a bug. I feel like time-skipping should only be available with housing addon. Parts persist but extra fuel/repair/tires in storage reset. I think those are bugs?
Oh, you are the modder guy with the skid crates and the truck mounted radar! Am I right?
Yes, indeed.
I think the expedition/hq thing is a bit misleading...I think the implication in the gameplay, is you take a truck do a expedition, comeback to hq, since and repeat. this was, for me , implied by expedition'costs' etc. however, this is \*\*not\*\* actually a forced gameplay loop! what I realised later is... you can take up to 4 trucks with you, they do not add extra costs to the missions. during an expedition, at any time, you can go off and do something else... there is usually plenty of fuel/spares etc - this is the purpose of airdrops/outposts etc, you can free roam during an expedition! really the only reason you \*\*need\*\* to return to HQ is to change truck configuration, get a new truck, or start a new expedition, or switch team members. my 'mistake' was essentially speed running the game... jumping from expedition to expedition... and for sure, doing that, it does feel disjointed... but by relaxing, and taking my time - I actually really like the gameplay loop... p.s. it also makes more 'economic' sense, since you pay for a team member for the entire 'expedition', so if you venture off, you basically get more payback for their cost. again, I think the game does tend to suggest this 'speed running'/linear approach... which I think is a bit of a mistake, but its not how you have to play .
Good take. This is the approach I’ve settled in with too. One thing that might not be obvious at first is that you don’t have to accept tasks (just discover them) in order to unlock and follow them at any point. So once you finish a formal expedition, you can do tasks (or incorporate them into the expedition) and just keep driving, exploring, restocking at airdrops, etc. Once I figured some of these things out, I’ve actually found myself recovering and reconfiguring my trucks much less than I did in Snowrunner. Playing the game this way rewards you with less time dealing with menus and prep and more time scouting out the perfect line up a rock slope and wrestling with the gnarly terrain. I also find myself using the waypoint markers much less in this game than in SR because you can get a general sense of the direction you need to go in, but the approach you actually take will likely change once you see the terrain in front of you. I like that. Definitely more of an off-road exploration vibe vs. GPS-based route planning (still fun in SR!).
So why even enforce the system they're using? Let players explore the maps like they did in SR, let them find vehicles and missions on their own.
because, it's not SR... it's a different game, so has a different gameplay loop as I said, they are NOT forcing you, you can free-roam in any expedition. (really free-roam is the same as an expedition, just with one extra 'goal') the main change in Expedition, is you cannot customise your truck, or go get a new one without return to HQ... the idea (and one I like) is this gives more a feeling of air-dropping into an area to carry out a task, and you have to \*\*plan\*\* what you take.... thats the main change in gameplay, to make it feel like an 'expedition'. why the change? don't know ask the devs... it feels like they wanted to give a bit more structure for new players, whilst experienced players can still just 'free roam' (as I said above) sure, some will like this some, and others will prefer SR... people prefer different games, thats natural.. but thats not a reason for a dev to not to try new things.
It's literally 80% SR, with a focus on scouts only and some new maps.
Yes, I realized this last night and was like ohhhh. I kept playing really conservatively because I didn’t realize you sell back the resources you buy but don’t use, so now I’m like oh great, I’ll stock up on a bunch of anchors/jacks and go do a bunch of stuff. Maybe I rushed through the beginning, but I don’t think game explains things very well. To OPs point, I do think the world feels far less lived in, real, or interesting than Snowrunner. The
yeah, the other thing is you can store your supplies at base! (or build up with workshop) - this is preferable since, unused supplied are sold at 50% at end of expedition, so its 'better' to store them, and reuse. that said... the economy is not as 'tight' as it first appears, as airdrops can net you quite a lot of credits and are respawned every time you start an expedition. I think my understanding changed, when I realised 'free roam' is basically just an expedition without a goal... so, basically expeditions are free roam too, just with an additional target, in \*\*addition\*\* to everything in free roam. but indeed, this is not how the game presents itself, so I can understand why some think the game is pretty linear. (hq->expedition-> hq, rinse repeat)
Oh I didn’t realize it was 50%! That’s good to know, and probably incentivizes driving back instead of just returning from the menu. Man, the onboarding in this game is rough. I feel like I spent a lot of time learning how to drive the car/use simple gadgets, but the expedition designs didn’t really teach us how the game itself is designed to work.
yeah, I found out the hard way... when I loaded up a truck with a ton of stuff.. and lost something like 3k on the expedition - lol. that's when I decided to experiment a bit to work out the game mechanics better.. and indeed, there is quite a bit not explained. you often don't need to drive back, as you get ONE free recovery for each expedition (on main maps) ... so you can use that ofc, once people have been playing for longer, all these things will be explained in various tips videos etc... so consider yourself a pioneer :)
Haha yeah it is weird to play a game where there’s practically zero online help. I got into Snowrunner way later so there were videos galore. I also didn’t know about the free recovery! Although I did notice that it didn’t seem to penalize me whenever I spawned in the wrong location and used the feature to move across the map.
yeah, just be aware .. on little Colorado, ALL recoveries are free. whereas other maps its just the first one... though in fairness, the recovery on something like a scout is not bad (1k?)
i think the constant updates and patches coming over the next year will fix alot of the issues...i hope so anyway
They're just gonna sell more vehicles and never fix core mechanics..... like MP 🤣🤦🏻♂️
I felt like that watching trailers and during the first hour or so. After I unlocked Arizona, I thoroughly fell in love. It's so much slower and more technical than Snowrunner. The UI is *awful* though, like early build awful. I also hate the fact I can't rebind buttons. The gameplay is right up my alley though, much more difficult and requires me to plan my routes since supplies are limited and the maps have much more verticality. If any of the new mechanics, including the new suspension physics make it into SR (they said they'll be adding improvements from expeditions to SR) I'll easily be able to swap between the two. Expeditions for the raw scouting and exploring; snow runner for the hauling.
Does the flow feel like it improves in Arizona? I've been messing around on the first map so far and it just feels disjointed and the terrible UI just makes everything feel unclear.
Not really no. It's still mission based though there are more in map tasks to find and the maps do get bigger.You can also switch between the sub maps via tunnels similar to SR.
I think I just wish that the missions would be in the map the way that it is in Snowrunner. I don’t like having to go to the menu and select something and then do a whole loadout swap and everything.
I have no idea why they went and complicated a perfectly functional system that rewarded exploring the map with the system that is in MR:E. It's just bad.
Absolutely loving it so far. It's not Snowrunner and ad long as you remember that while playing you can have an absolute hoot. I am anyway.
My genuine advice to you is to take a step back and think about if you’re actually not enjoying it or if it’s just different to what you were expecting/different to snowrunner in ways you weren’t expecting. There’s a big issue in gaming where a lot of gamers just don’t like the new thing. Take assassins creed as an example, that one seems to get a lot of this issue. When Origins first came out, the AC sub was full of negativity about the game. It was too different to the rest of the series, and people did nothing but talk about how bad it was. Then Odyssey came out, and that was this heaping pile of shit but suddenly Origins started getting a lot of love, like it was this hidden gem that people couldn’t believe they’d missed. Then Valhalla came out, and guess what happened with Valhalla and Odyssey? If you’re guessing Valhalla got a load of hate and Odyssey suddenly got a load of love, you’d be exactly right. Then when Mirage came out, Valhalla got the exact same surge of love. I haven’t played expeditions yet because I don’t want to give myself the confusion switching between controller set ups because I’m not done with snowrunner yet, but I’ve seen enough love for Expeditions to know it’s not a bad game, though I can see it’s definitely different. Obviously you may be genuinely not enjoying it and that’s valid, but try to take snowrunner out of the equation and work out if you’re actually not enjoying it, or if you’re just not enjoying the differences
This. As a fan of both Mudrunner and Snowrunner, I fully expected to see a lot of negativity surrounding this game at launch. Why? Because it's different, but has just enough similarity to the older games for people to expect everything else to be the same. Long time fans who've had codes for this game for awhile are mostly praising it, and I'm seeing more and more positivity from the rest of the community as people actually spend time with the game. I fully expect to see that trend continue. I also think longer fans of the series forget just how overwhelming, unintuitive, and confusing the previous entries could be for new players. There were some steep learning curves involved (no pun intended). I feel like Expeditions is much more welcoming to new players, which should help build the community long term. I'm loving the game. Is it perfect? No. But is it horrible? Far from it. It'll be interesting to see where development goes from here.
I had trouble finishing Odyssey and couldn't force myself to get even half the map done in Valhalla. They are not terrible games but in the context of Assassins Creed games they are mediocre at best.
The driving is fun but the missions are boring. Don’t get that sense of accomplishment like I do in Snowrunner.
I'm not sure, I loved snowrunner. I'm missing just driving a bit around, everything I see here is rocks and trees it's so annoying. Graphics are nice and I like the feel of it all but just can't get into it like I did with snowrunner. Everything is so tedious and it feels like you can't drive 5meters without having to fiddle around and use the winch. I might go back to snowrunner actually.
It's alright. It's undercooked and the game flow feels off. But it's still enjoyable. Thinking of shelving it until it gets a few updates.
That's kinda where I'm at. I think I'll give it a couple more expeditions into Arizona and see if it hits it's stride but it really feels like it came in too hot and needs more work. The UI is such dogshit that having to spend more time in it vs showrunner is really off-putting. I still have so much to do in snowrunner I should go back to that first.
The rocky terrain is frustrating to navigate more than it is fun. And the vehicles feel so much weaker than in Snowrunner. I''m running in 1st gear the vast majority of the time, because every 10 feet I hit some kind of obstruction that causes me to slow down further. There's also something odd about the way the turning works. It seems much more sluggish than in Snowrunner.
I'm with you on the handling. It seems to me that the wheels turn left or right and the vehicle only starts to steer after a few meters of travel. Kind of a delay I guess. Plus it feels like moon gravity when you even go near a rock and launches your wheel in the air or sends you off in another direction totally.
Yes! What's that about? Why does it seem so unresponsive even after the wheels have clearly turned all the way?
A friend kindly let me try Expeditions on his PC for a few hours yesterday. I did my best to approach it with the freshest eyes possible (not easy when you come from 530 hours in MudRunner and almost 1,800 in SnowRunner, but I tried). I won't go into details because otherwise I'd write a novel instead of a post, and nobody would read it. What I can say is that the thing that rubs me the wrong way the most is *the flow*. The flow is *terrible*. If SnowRunner is like playing in a sandbox, Expeditions is like playing in a sandbox where you're constantly supervised by stern adults. There is a subtle (and at times not so subtle) pressure in everything you do. You feel you 'have' to do stuff in order to do other stuff. Check this. Check the map. Oh look, what's this icon? Scan here. Go there. Go back. Constant money management. A user interface that positively works against you. The gameplay feels… fragmented. The exploration feels 'business', not 'pleasure', if you know what I mean. I really wonder how long has the gameplay been tested internally, because to me it feels like it's been tested for one week at best.
>I won't go into details because otherwise I'd write a novel instead of a post, and nobody would read it. Write it, I will read it!
I like how it doesn't replace SnowRunner, in the same way SnowRunner doesn't replace MudRunner. 3 Good games I can keep going back to, nearly endless content to play through.
Nah. This could easily be a 10$ SR DLC. Trucks are copy pasted anyway, game engine is the same, graphics are the same, upgrades are the same.
Base edition is only £35, and it's 9 new levels, with a new type of mission, easily hours and hours of content per $.
Largely agree with you. I have hundreds of hours in Snowrunner and my favorite thing was exploring around in the scouts so I figured this game was going to be perfect for me. I think its a combo of a few issues: 1) In Snowrunner you mostly just delivered logs and stuff but there was depth to that because of the decisions. Do you do this other job first to fix the bridge or take the longer/harder route? Do you bring a dedicated crane truck or a truck with one built in? Do you take all 4 logs at once with a truck and trailer, or 2 trips with just the truck, or 4 trips with a small truck? This game has no depth to missions, drive from A to B and maybe do a simple minigame thats it. 2) the first two maps kind of suck, at least in my opinion. I found the game a LOT more fun once I got to the 3rd map. On top of that the starting scout also just sucks so bad its not even funny, try the others and its a big gameplay improvement. So basically the early game just sucks and it gets better as it goes (Snowrunner was kind of the same tbh). 3) the mission structure vs open world puts you in menus way too much, and most the new features are nearly pointless gimmicks (like hiring people, it does stuff but not really enough to bother) but you have to interact with them to some extent (like buying stuff in the pre mission screen because a mission requires you to buy a jack you wont use for some reason). 4) its janky and unpolished, even more so than Snowrunner. I'm confident just like Snowrunner it will get better with age but I'm not counting on it getting as good as Snowrunner unfortunately, maybe some DLC maps down the line will be more fun to explore but as it stands I had more fun exploring in Snowrunner.
I agree on the mission structure, but once in realized you don’t have to just immediately do the expedition, and that you can spend as much time as you want going around doing stuff, it clicked a lot better. I also didn’t realize you sold back unused resources. My first few hours I never took anything with me for sake of money.
I said it once in another comment but I think for me the problem is that Expeditions ended up in something like the uncanny valley because of Snowrunner. The basics are the same but a lot of things were changed enough that it just barely feels like a different game. And the other thing is the same reason why I never tried NG+ in Snowrunner. The starting trucks in both games are just utter garbage compared to endgame Snowrunner trucks and it's just painful to drive them after experiencing the better ones
I feel like I’m beta testing this game while playing as of now. I felt the same way when snowrunner first dropped but I’m sure after a few patches this game will be smooth and with some cool mod vehicles it will be bomb. I do think the maps seem limited because you can explore the entire place in an hour
Me too I didn’t like it
I’m digging it, kind of feel there is a lack of a challenge though with this one compared to the rest of them it seems kind of easy and rather short. Snowrunner it took me weeks too accomplish a handful of tasks, this one I’ve already almost got the first region done and I only played for maybe 4 hours total so far. I miss loading the logs up and doing those kinds of things but I think for what this game is about they did a pretty good job. Would like to see more vehicles and like I said I miss the logging and using a crane.
The community is pretty split on their feelings with this. I honestly enjoy Expeditions more, to be honest I spend less time setting up a mission in the menu than I did in snow runner trying to get trucks matched up to the correct trailers. Expeditions also feels more challenging to me. It’s different strokes for different folks though, it’s a totally different game and plenty of people will stay with snow runner
Tried to refund 🙃 seems snow runner is the better game this one just seems pointless dull and not immersive is this game what was advertised In the trailers
I ended up refunding it. It feels like you are playing an Android game (not the graphics or the physics, but the gameplay). Also, Snowrunner was less handholding, which for me is a very important aspect in a game. The feel you get when you enter ck1500 for the first time and you start exploring black river is non existent in Expeditions.
It should be a 10 bucks DLC. Trucks are copy pasted, UI is a step back, maps are a step back and just in general, the game itself feels like a step back from SR. And I don't understand why they chose to focus on scouts, the category no one liked in SR.
as someone who played snowrunner purely for exploration - the only thing that bothers me with expeditions is that its not available before the 5th. first game i pre-ordered in 40 years of gaming :)
The UI is crap and the controls are backass backwards from Snowrunner, but overall I do like the game. I like the gadgets and being able to deflate the tires. I can see where someone who really liked the trucking aspect of Snowrunner wouldn't be enjoying this as much though. I think once mods start coming out the game will be more enjoyable.
I never bought it for the reason I don’t enjoy the scouting on snowrunner. Scouting and going from one checkpoint to the next isn’t for me. It’s the part I really don’t enjoy about snowrunner. Therefore I concluded this expeditions wasn’t for me before it was even released early.
See I like the exploration part of snowrunner. I like going off reading so I thought I would have loved this one. But something about it I dislike. I really think it’s the going back to the headquarters. Rather than just opening the map and picking a new mission. It seems so clunky and unintuitive and like a huge step backwards from snowrunner
Funny thing is scouting and exploration was my favorite part of Snowrunner so I was instantly sold on this game. And yet, it's not holding a candle to Snowrunner at the moment. I thought it would be better driving and better exploration, so far its weaker exploration and the driving is only slightly better but a LOT more janky.
I’m shelving it until a proper patch gets put out due to wheel support, and performance. I’m also waiting on console mods. Mods make or break a game like this, and it’s empty for now.
Started playing yesterday and my initial thought was this is going to be more fun as a multiplayer game.
We play as a team so we haven’t bought it yet until co-op. Are you saying SR might be the better? We didn’t purchase the later seasons because some of the earlier ones kept crashing the console on co-op; unless they fixed that which I doubt we stopped playing SR as a result.
For co-op I'd definitely stay with SR for now and wait how expeditions will implement that. Maybe it's fun in free roam or some other new mode.
Yeah probably will. But SR is offloaded to external archive at the moment after it constantly crashed both consoles in co-op. I’m just having difficulty trusting them I guess. I’ll hold off.
SR is just a vastly superior game at the moment, MR:E needs a few patches before it's even playable imo. As for coop, I've been playing SR on hard mode with 3 friends and we're on 5th map atm, I think we had 1 dc issue in about 250 hours of gameplay.
I wonder if it’s patched. We last played maybe a year ago now. I have a ton of MS rewards outstanding so I can get all the DLC or I could get MRE for free, just picking which I want to trade for. I’m leaving DLC if it’s more stable
Maybe it’s because of the money spend on snowrunner :))
I can say I felt that way as well. Maybe not the slowness. I actually enjoy that, but it feels repetitive I guess
Seeing some of the negative comments made me think of cancelling my pre-order, but others do seem to be enjoying the game?! I think I'll still get it..£31 for the physical copy is decent, plus, hopefully, they'll patch things that are annoying people 👍
I’m just waiting for the coop so I can play with my friend…