Expeditions and other playable modes

[molivious]

I wanted to reply to @Szczuku's topic since the ideas dawned on me after reading it, but felt like this should be another topic altogether.

Since Daily Runs might become a thing for farming gems, artifacts, ingredients, cosmetic materials and whatnot, I thought we could have different playable modes which have distinct features from the dungeon runs. Perhaps they can even be used to expand the lore in different ways.

Expeditions

So the idea is that expeditions are about exploration rather than extermination which means they will have very few power and core drops (as a result of exploring places less infected by rot/teffra*) while introducing new types of path options like campsites (replaces NPCs from core maps) where you can:

• a) rest, which offers free healing through camping/sleeping like Doc Huggable's clearing without the potion refill; and
• b) cook and eat, where you and your party can gain temporary powers (think like the game Hades, where some power can only last for x amount of encounters)
• * side-note: less infected areas could simply mean old ruins or hidden places that (if any) are still not fully infected by Rot. 

Expeditions could also offer new sets of missions, such as escorting a survivor caravan over longer arenas (anyone here ever play Patapon?) or protecting an immobile object/artifact from hordes of enemies (kind of like Plants vs Zombies except more chaotic and coming at you from every side)

• Maybe it can even include sub-challenges that yield better rewards if you meet certain conditions (e.g. defeat x enemies in y seconds, or if the caravan has more than 50%/80% HP then you get additional loot)

"?" Path options may now include encounters with local bandits and scavengers, as well as non-combat encounters that straight up just yield treasure and other goodies.

There could also be timers and no fixed paths:

• Timers would be a limit to which players can complete the expedition before failing. This is basically just there to emulate the limit of rations your brought for the journey (i.e. skipping the micromanagement of the Darkest Dungeon).
• No fixed paths makes it less linear and more of a dungeon-crawl experience where your party might have to go back after being lead into a dead end and trace your steps to the last fork you found. 

Survival/Hard Mode

Basically shares the same idea as @Szczuku (linked above), where it is an endless run that gets harder after each completed phase/segment, except with a few adjustments.

• If we currently have an average of 16~18 path choices in the current core dungeons, Survival Mode maps could be more like 10~12 against heavily-infested rotten areas per "segment". So naturally, you will have fewer powerups, core stones, and teffra to acquire, making it a lot more challenging than regular dungeons.
  • Perhaps an entry requirement (like at least defeating the first/second frenzy level of the map) should be placed for players to be able to join these lobbies/runs as they are much harder than the normal runs.
• Each new segment of the run comes after a short break/pitstop (see campsite notes in Expedition section) and adds new difficulty settings/frenzy levels every time.

Arena

Just a mode where players can brawl it out with objectives we've seen in many other games (death match, capture the flag, defend the throne, etc) or even compete through other types of minigames, like a first-person Duck Hunt type of game except you're using Striker balls.

Cons: There's that bit of a worry that certain Arena games might become more popular than others, causing some games to never get the attention they deserve. Balancing is also going to be super difficult and deviates from the main game, and it also might just end up in a very unfun and one-sided competitive meta. So unfortunately, idk what else to pitch here...although the idea where friendly fire exists sounds fun. VS Mode where everyone's equipped with a banana cannon (which also drops peels everywhere), please?

[gibberish]

I totally agree with pvp mode being easily exploitable with just using better gear. Banana cannon sounds like something i wanna try though lol