How does the Rundown System work?

[Dracos]

Recently learned Rundown 3 is about to come out, which is cool, but I also just learned that all the stuff currently in the game (Rundown 2) is going away. I thought the rundowns just added more stuff, but I guess they're like seasonal levels?

A friend told me how to save the Rundown 2 version so I can still play it, but I'm kinda sad those later levels I haven't gotten to yet will be mostly gone

Is it that they just want to replace the old levels with new stuff they feel is better? Just a little confused

[It's Adam Lazlow]

https://youtu.be/qHZwiPVOVvA
Here's the devs explanation.
In short, the Rundown is a set of maps. A Rundown is only avaliable until a new one comes out, after that the previous Rundown missions will no longer be playable.
Rundowns can last from weeks to months, depending on it's size.

[RooBubba]

Yeah, the rundown system is simply game-breaking in its current format, and utterly ruins the experience - at least for me.
I enjoy the challenge, but have little time to play it. If the old rundowns were still available, I'd be happy with the game - or if all the levels were available to play without having to complete the tiers to unlock the lower levels in the rundown, then even if we didn't have time to finish them all we'd at least have time to *play* half the content we paid for.
As it is, the rundown system forces you to play the game at the pace the developer dictates, then robs you of content you paid for if you weren't prepared to sacrifice your family life.

[Dracos]

Originally posted by RooBubba:

Yeah, the rundown system is simply game-breaking in its current format, and utterly ruins the experience - at least for me.
I enjoy the challenge, but have little time to play it. If the old rundowns were still available, I'd be happy with the game - or if all the levels were available to play without having to complete the tiers to unlock the lower levels in the rundown, then even if we didn't have time to finish them all we'd at least have time to *play* half the content we paid for.
As it is, the rundown system forces you to play the game at the pace the developer dictates, then robs you of content you paid for if you weren't prepared to sacrifice your family life.

Yeah, me and my friends who I've been playing with haven't been together for a couple weeks, and play casually. I thought we'd be able to build up to the cool stuff later but I guess it'll be gone =/

[It's Adam Lazlow]

The Rundown system works well. I know it may look strange, but it's unique and it's the way the developers choose to keep the game fresh.

Since with each Rundown new gameplay elements and objectives are added, always having new maps with improved design is the way of doing it. And we gotta consider that they are still a small team, and only thanks to their tools they are capable of generating new expeditions so quickly.

I do agree on one part, the Rundown system may not work in, for example in 5 years, so at one point they gonna have to bring back old Rundown missions. Rotate them monthly or something.

But right now, as the game is still in Early Access and new gameplay features are constantly being added, old rundown missions can't stay as updating them constantly with new features/objectives would just take more of their resources.

[RooBubba]

Sorry but you appear to be missing the point:

if you don't have much time to play, you miss out on the harder content of the game: both the levels with their inherent different game modes, and the enemies that appear on later levels.
Without any mechanism to play older content, or having all the levels unlocked so you can choose to tackle later levels to at least see what they are like, those of us who don't play GTFO every day have our available content limited to the early missions.

"Early access" and "small team" are not excuses for this setup. Actively blocking your customers from accessing content they paid for in this way is bad. Rewarding players for spending longer in the game is fine; purposefully **removing** half of the levels from the game from people who - for whatever reason - do not have enough time to play during your arbitrary time period is not.

I've offered 2 reasonable solutions to this problem:
1) Make older content available (eg through steam workshop if you're bothered about it taking players out of the matchmaking pool but having it there by default)
or
2) Don't lock harder content within each rundown, so even if you don't get time to practice and complete, at least you can actually play all the levels you paid for.

[Skavn]

Well said RooBubba.

[kenneth]

Play one level every month is your problem ? Like the R2 been out for maybe 3 months.

[It's Adam Lazlow]

Rundown 1 was avaliable for 112 days between December 9th to April 1st, and Rundown 2 for 71 between April 1st to June 11th.
Calibrate your expectations for this rundown's length to something similar, maybe include a possible vacation from the devs part. (they took July out last year)
Some people can't play much and I respect that but then, maybe try a different game?

[Dracos]

Part of my problem is I had no idea content was going away until I someone who played the game more than me told me. If I would've known, I would've busted my butt getting to those later levels

[arsenicBumpnip]

Really doesn't seem like a sound decision for the longevity of the game to just outright remove levels like that, and honestly learning this has caused this game to drop from near the top of my wishlist straight down into "not going to buy this unless something changes" territory.

Like some other people have said, it's not unreasonable to keep the old Rundowns available to play after the new ones release, and there's not much logical reason to remove them to begin with other than to try to force players into playing by the dev's schedule instead of whatever their personal life more reasonably allows for.

[CRAGNAR]

Enjoys reading player complaints that new content is such a terrible thing.

[arsenicBumpnip]

Originally posted by CRAGNAR:

Enjoys reading player complaints that new content is such a terrible thing.

Nice strawman, no one is complaining that new content gets added, we're complaining that when new stuff gets added old stuff gets removed for no good reason.

[Bombardiro Crocodilo]

Originally posted by CRAGNAR:

Enjoys reading player complaints that new content is such a terrible thing.

Enjoy reading people not understanding what people are talking about and then thinking their thought matters

[Leonardo808]

Originally posted by RooBubba:

Sorry but you appear to be missing the point:

if you don't have much time to play, you miss out on the harder content of the game: both the levels with their inherent different game modes, and the enemies that appear on later levels.
Without any mechanism to play older content, or having all the levels unlocked so you can choose to tackle later levels to at least see what they are like, those of us who don't play GTFO every day have our available content limited to the early missions.

"Early access" and "small team" are not excuses for this setup. Actively blocking your customers from accessing content they paid for in this way is bad. Rewarding players for spending longer in the game is fine; purposefully **removing** half of the levels from the game from people who - for whatever reason - do not have enough time to play during your arbitrary time period is not.

I've offered 2 reasonable solutions to this problem:
1) Make older content available (eg through steam workshop if you're bothered about it taking players out of the matchmaking pool but having it there by default)
or
2) Don't lock harder content within each rundown, so even if you don't get time to practice and complete, at least you can actually play all the levels you paid for.

If old rundowns are going to be brought back they will probably come after EA. The main focus of the game now is to develop on it and make it a full fledged game. Previous rundowns aren't that important, the game isn't even a year old yet. The reason old rundowns aren't implemented is because this game is in EA, meaning that a lot of things change along with bug fixes. This makes each rundown a completely different version of the game, and it would not be worth it to go back and make it compatible with the current version, which is always changing. I think that something like the steam workshop or the game being able to cycle through rundowns would be fun, but this should happen at least after this game leaves EA. The top priority is to make the game better and add quality of life changes such as matchmaking, bug-fixes, and optimization along with new content. I highly doubt that the old rundowns will be lost forever, eventually a fan or the devs will make them playable again. The only thing is that they wouldn't change at all, meaning that there would still be the same bugs/optimization/exploits/weapons/enemies. I really hope this gets added but now is not the time to look back at old content.

[arsenicBumpnip]

Originally posted by Leonardo808:

Originally posted by RooBubba:

Sorry but you appear to be missing the point:

if you don't have much time to play, you miss out on the harder content of the game: both the levels with their inherent different game modes, and the enemies that appear on later levels.
Without any mechanism to play older content, or having all the levels unlocked so you can choose to tackle later levels to at least see what they are like, those of us who don't play GTFO every day have our available content limited to the early missions.

"Early access" and "small team" are not excuses for this setup. Actively blocking your customers from accessing content they paid for in this way is bad. Rewarding players for spending longer in the game is fine; purposefully **removing** half of the levels from the game from people who - for whatever reason - do not have enough time to play during your arbitrary time period is not.

I've offered 2 reasonable solutions to this problem:
1) Make older content available (eg through steam workshop if you're bothered about it taking players out of the matchmaking pool but having it there by default)
or
2) Don't lock harder content within each rundown, so even if you don't get time to practice and complete, at least you can actually play all the levels you paid for.

If old rundowns are going to be brought back they will probably come after EA. The main focus of the game now is to develop on it and make it a full fledged game. Previous rundowns aren't that important, the game isn't even a year old yet. The reason old rundowns aren't implemented is because this game is in EA, meaning that a lot of things change along with bug fixes. This makes each rundown a completely different version of the game, and it would not be worth it to go back and make it compatible with the current version, which is always changing. I think that something like the steam workshop or the game being able to cycle through rundowns would be fun, but this should happen at least after this game leaves EA. The top priority is to make the game better and add quality of life changes such as matchmaking, bug-fixes, and optimization along with new content. I highly doubt that the old rundowns will be lost forever, eventually a fan or the devs will make them playable again. The only thing is that they wouldn't change at all, meaning that there would still be the same bugs/optimization/exploits/weapons/enemies. I really hope this gets added but now is not the time to look back at old content.

That the game balance/mechanics/etc are being significantly tweaked with each new rundown actually makes them being replaced like this a bit more understandable, though I still hope the devs consider eventually taking the time to tweak the old levels to be playable again under the new systems.

Still, one thing that irked me was that, if I read another thread correctly, each new Rundown expands on the story from the previous Rundown, meaning players who join late are missing out on experiencing the full story. Is this actually the case, or am I just interpreting it incorrectly and it's actually some sort of system where you can learn both the old and new lore in the new Rundowns?