Example of Why the challenges are detrimental
I have been encouraging a friend to play DBD for a long time. They have been hesitant because they are usually more of the Call Of Duty type of player. I consistently preached the awesomeness of DBD. Didn't know it, but he had been trying it out for the last week. After trying it for a week he has no desire to play. Here's a copy and paste of what he said:
"Seems like a game that could be good, but most of the people playing it don't have any desire to accomplish the goal. People doing everything but trying to escape. They constantly quit in the middle of the game. They don't play with any strategy. If the people I play other games with played that way I wouldn't play those games. I won't say the people playing that game are stupid, but most of them sure don't play smart."
I explained there was a thing going on where people have to complete challenges and it was causing people to do those types of things, but it wasn't always that way. His response:
"I know you are trying to convince me to give it another chance and play longer, but what you just told me actually makes me want to play even less. Think about it. What you just told me is the company that makes this game intentionally created an event that encourages people to do challenges that cause them and their team to lose by giving them objectives that don't contribute to winning their current match or quitting when they can't complete the challenge. Not looking to get into a game where the designers actively create content that works against the objective of the game."
I hate to say it, but I think he has a point. I wonder how many of us that really like this game would have had the same reaction as my friend if our initial exposure to the game had been during these challenges. If I am being honest with myself I think my reaction would have been the same.
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Tell him it's because he is playing with rank 20's and that if he plays with your group it will be different than solo.
Or tell him to try killer.
Also mention to him the survivors are not a team. He's not obligated to make sure they escape. Tell him to worry about himself and only help others if it's conducive to his escape. If it's too much of a risk just let them die. His problem is he looks at this like a team game like COD when it's not a team game. Survivors all have the same goal (escape) but you're not a team.
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I think it depends on the player. My older brother has also recently got into DBD - he started playing about a week after the Archives released. He enjoys killer a lot more than survivor and only plays survivor for challenges. He doesn't dislike survivor because of the challenges or how they're causing other people to play, but just because he finds survivor boring and dislikes having to rely on other people for his success.
Most of the challenges can actually be completed by playing the game normally as long as you don't obsess over completing them as soon as possible. And that's what my brother does, he just plays the game with the challenge goal in mind and if he doesn't achieve it, it's not a big deal. He's completed the first two Tome levels and half of the third, and is around tier 40 in the Rift.
He has come from games like Dark Souls (which is notoriously deadly and unforgiving) and Hearthstone (which is notoriously RNG-based). So he has a mindset of wanting, but never expecting, to win. In fact, he expects that he will lose at least half the time, due to RNG or just a superior opponent, and that's okay. He still ranks up because he's a good player - he's at around green ranks with both roles at the moment. He's also the most tilt-proof person I've ever met, and doesn't care about taunts or tbagging or salt in the endgame chat. He just wants to play the game.
And he's been having a blast.
So I think a lot of it has to do with a player's attitude coming into the game and what they're expecting to get out of it, even if we're factoring challenges into the mix. If your friend is expecting his team to singlemindedly rush the objective the way they do in COD, then he is going to be disappointed because that's not really the way DBD plays. It sounds like his main frustration is with the way his teammates are playing, so perhaps you could suggest to your friend that he try playing killer instead. Not everyone enjoys both roles and that's okay too.
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I tried to explain pretty much all of that, and he wasn't under the delusion that it's a team game in that you are trying to make sure everyone else survives. However, when there are challenges that provide objectives that actively works against the goal of escaping I personally think he has a point.
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I would argue that the challenges don't work against the objective. They don't all work in direct service of the objective, in the sense that not every challenge is some variation of "kill all the survivors" or "do gens and escape" but all of the challenges either work within the objective, or are something that will just happen naturally over time if you play the game normally. There aren't any challenges that require survivors to die, or killers to allow survivors to escape.
The problem isn't challenges working against the objective, it's players doing that, and players do that no matter what - because they're silly, because they just want to meme around, because they're testing a new build, because they have a daily. That's why I suggested that your friend try killer, because the challenges aren't his real problem, the other survivors are.
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I also wanted to make it clear that I understand most of the challenges can be done without obsessing over them. The problem is there are lots of people that are singularly focused on completing a specific challenge.
I can play every match with the mindset that I am going to try to complete my current challenge if possible, but that isn't necessarily my primary goal. However, if I am playing with a couple of people who have the mindset that they are going to complete their challenge and it is their only goal it's still going to screw my game in a major way because they aren't going to be doing anything useful to anyone but themselves.
If their only goal is to complete their challenge and they are not going to do anything else, plus likely DC when their challenge becomes unattainable then they are actively working against the goal of the game.
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I think it's way more likely that he was playing with 20 - 15. He's not going to see coordinated game play survivor wise until he hits rank 15. And he's not going to see good survivors until he hits rank 10.
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While I understand the argument that as a new player he is playing with survivors that are also fairly new that really doesn't negate his point. The point he was making is that the people designing the game intentionally implemented challenges that encourage play that is against the objective of the game regardless of level.
I want to reiterate that I do understand it is people playing the game choosing to take the challenges so seriously that they intentionally throw games in an effort to complete a challenge and actively work against the goal of escaping. Once again though, that doesn't change the fact there would be no challenges to take so seriously had they not been there in the first place.
If you are reading this I want you to understand something. I have been a gamer for a very long time. This is the first game I have every played on a regular basis over such a long course of time. I am saying this because I legitimately believe things like this will be the death of this game. I realize it's going to end sometime. That's inevitable. I just don't want to see it end before it has to because of elements being added to the game that discourage people from playing. Once again, I say that from experience. I have considered no longer playing this game over the last few weeks because this rift/tome stuff has created a situation has made this game the least fun it has ever been for me. As I said in the original post I honestly don't think I would have given this game a chance past a few days if I had just started.
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