Currently trying to play the game on LASO, and all I can say is, GG trying to complete any side missions if you have cowbell on.
Whether I’m trying to capture an FOB, free captured marines, or kill a HVT, I keep “bugging” them. If I shoot an Elite or Brute with a rocket and send them flying , if they don’t die (either from the initial blast, or impact from hitting the terrain), you can’t progress with the objective. The amount of times I’ve cleared out an FOB fully, gone to capture the terminal and the AI to say “wait, we need to clear out this area first”, or have saved the marines / killed the HVT and their cronies, only for the AI to stay silent, rather than, “well done Chief…” is seriously frustrating at this point. And before you say “oh, you must be missing a grunt” or “the Elites turn invisible after so much damage” - trust me, the area is clear. But because I’ve shot one of the Elites or Brutes to the other side of the ring without actually killing them, I can’t progress. The only way I can progress is to fast travel back to the nearest FOB, run back and re-try. Oh, and hope the same thing doesn’t happen again.
Now, if that wasn’t annoying enough, I was having trouble killing a HVT, and saving a group of marines right next to each other. I could always complete 1 of the 2, but then would end up bugging the other one. After like 7 or 8 attempts, I finally managed to complete both, so I went on my merry way. Couple minutes later, I found an audio log. Proceeded to grapple up a mountain and assisted another group of marines. Managed to send another Brute or 2 into oblivion (alive, ofc.) so thought “great, I’ll have to come back here later and do this all again, let me move on”. Descended the mountain to find a Propaganda Tower - destroyed it, but shamelessly got stuck by a Grunt. Yep, you can already tell what happened next - I respawned back at my last checkpoint, before the HVT/Marines that I’d finally completed like 10 minutes previously.
It was at this point I rage quit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the campaign at the minute, but this really frustrates me. Why am I not getting a checkpoint after completing a side mission? Why am I not getting a checkpoint when I pick up an audio log / spartan core / armour locker? Why am I not getting a checkpoint when I’m just chilling out, not even in combat? I could understand it if there was an Iron skull. I thought it could be due to the Black Eye skull and me not having any shields, but I made a point of leaving a Grunt alive until last, to “heal up” after the encounter, but that made no difference - and I’ve also had this same issue on regular Legendary, so I’m fairly confident Black Eye isn’t the cause.
I know at this point, I’m probably one of only very few people suffering from this Cowbell/LASO problem, but I’m sure we’ve all missed out on checkpoints we probably should have had.
Rather than tie side missions to a kill count / the specific group of enemies at the scene, at least add an “area” for each objective, to say “if there are no enemies within X meters of the objective, complete the side mission”. And rather than give us seemingly random checkpoints, please force a checkpoint after every collectable / side mission.
TLDR;
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Add an “area” to side-missions to detect if there are any enemies within it - as Cowbell can blast enemies tied to that objective across the map, preventing objective completion.
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Force checkpoints after picking up Audio Logs / Spartan Cores / Armour Lockers & Side Missions