New World devs say to “expect to see more Expeditions and Mutators in the future”

pcgamesn.com:

Earlier this month, New World developer Amazon Games pushed a whole bunch of changes to the MMORPG’s public testing realm (PTR) for fans to test-drive ahead of the next major patch. Among a bunch of balance changes and updates, there’s a significant new feature coming that’ll shake up endgame combat called Expedition Mutators – and it sounds like this is something the devs want to introduce even more of in the future.

“We love variety!” world experience lead Mike Willette tells us. “There are a ton of different MMOs, roguelikes, and action-adventure games that inspired our first steps in developing Mutators. We wanted ways to challenge players and give them awesome rewards. We developed layers of challenges through the many afflictions, family types, and abilities offered in the game. Each one needs to be dealt with differently, requires better gear and teamwork, and gives better rewards!”

For context, Expedition Mutators are essentially modifiers that add some variety by “augmenting ‘normal’ and ‘named’ enemies found within Expeditions, changing the way encounters play out and what strategies players should consider before battle”, as Amazon initially explained. Unique combinations of Expeditions and Mutations rotate each week, and players battle their way up a ladder of difficulty, up to the top encounters which should be “extremely difficult”.

There are a select number that have been up for testing so far ahead of the major update, with Dynasty Shipyard, Garden of Genesis, and Lazarus Instrumentality rotating every 48 hours on the PTR, and a “total of eight different mutation combinations” randomly cycling alongside those. But, it sounds like these offerings are just the beginning.

“We are continually looking for ways