1999 design flaw: Individual Goals competing with Mission Objectives

[VeraelHasta]

Mission Objective: destroy the gate/get the cache/defend the cat
Individual Goal: Get 300 Melee kills for your calendar progress

I'm not sure if such clash of goals occured snywhere in previous updates, but it definitely shows up here.
I think this causes friction in the gameplay, because you are encouraged with rewards to prioritize what you want, instead of fulfilling the mission objective.

Of course you can do something solo or with a party, but for casual pub missions this design approach is kinda annoying.

It makes players compete for kills much more than normally, especially if you don't have that much time to do everything solo.

[PhellAsleep]

For your calendar bounties, you don't have to get all the kills in one mission.

People play for whatever their own reasons are. Some people are looking to speed run for mission rewards. Some want to hunt for the cache keys for the arcane. Some wants kills to level equipment. Some want faction rep. Some want to break containers for materials. Some want to farm kills for rare mod drops. You can all end up in the same mission at any time. This is a long establish given of the game in general.

If you want everyone in a mission to be working toward whatever goal you have in mind, it is your responsibility to either assemble or find a group for an expressly agreed upon purpose, or solo.

If you don't have the time to get things done in the game. Then you may want to consider that you don't have time to play the game.

[VeraelHasta]

Originally posted by PhellAsleep:

For your calendar bounties, you don't have to get all the kills in one mission.

People play for whatever their own reasons are. Some people are looking to speed run for mission rewards. Some want to hunt for the cache keys for the arcane. Some wants kills to level equipment. Some want faction rep. Some want to break containers for materials. Some want to farm kills for rare mod drops. You can all end up in the same mission at any time. This is a long establish given of the game in general.

If you want everyone in a mission to be working toward whatever goal you have in mind, it is your responsibility to either assemble or find a group for an expressly agreed upon purpose, or solo.

If you don't have the time to get things done in the game. Then you may want to consider that you don't have time to play the game.

Yes and no. The difference here is that the progress towards the calendar is personal.
- if a rare mod drops, you can mark it and everyone gets it
- if you open the cache, everyone can pick up the arcane
- if you gather rep items, everyone gets them
- if you kill enemies near others, they get the affinity
- if you break a container, everyoe can pick up resources

The issue here comes down to it being personal progress. If you kill enemies with melee, other players don't get the progress with you. Which encourages competing with other players for progress. I personally think it is a flaw in the design of a coop game due to that.

The only system in game that sounds similar to that is Nightwave. But Nightwave isn't something you do every day like Bounties, so the friction there is way smaller - especially that not every challenge in nightwave is individual.