I’ve been seeing this same quote being thrown in multiple threads now to “Play for fun” and then usually this is continued with the everlasting suggestion of going for the objectives.
This is causing a big oversight that this game is supposed to be a team game and succeeding alone can be difficult (especially in BTB that I usually play most often).
But it is difficult to play for fun when the opposing team is steam rolling and having actually team work in an objective mode, while my team is trying to play Slayer and doing whatever challenges they have (like the shade turret one).
I even had a match where the final power seeds got stuck to the roof on Fragmentation (in the middle room, not sure was this intentional but this happens across multiple BTB maps).
Both teams were tied and our team had 4 power seeds and the opposing team had 1. Only option was to steal the last one from their base and win the game… Can you guess what happened? We lost. No one protected our base and no one except just me and two others tried to steal the last one. Nothing could be more frustrating to see that the enemy is stealing our power seeds and juggling the seeds past our teammates.
What were the others doing? They were just playing Slayer around the edges of the map no where near the bases. No attempt to stop them or doing the objective what so ever.
And during that time I myself didn’t do any challenges and instead just played the game “for fun”. And what did I earn? Just 50xp. And that match took over 20 minutes since it went to overtime multiple times. So yeah… time well spent.
After having this god awful match, I’ve ever since wanted this challenge system changed. Or at least shift it towards the objectives of the gamemodes.
But hey… now with the latest update I can earn 300xp! Hooray… from the first match… And then less and less… and then its the same story all over again.
So all this update did was to speed the progression of the battle pass so we don’t need to complete challenges for the rest of the season 1. Except if you want those damn weekly rewards that are either color coatings (which should have been implemented in a better way, just look up all the customization threads).
This is the reason I want the performance based XP gaining. Challenges should be a side-dish rather than the main course of the game. And if money is what they want, then why do they even give out this XP so generously now? Isn’t this latest change counter-intuitive towards selling the challenge swaps and XP boost they’ve been trying to sell in the overpriced store? Now we’re gonna be done with the pass even faster.
And don’t get me wrong. I enjoy a good challenge… against an actual opponent. Not against some janky system with a set of random challenges and lacking rewards. I’ve had couple games where both teams were really close to victory and that was what felt good (even if I lost or won). But these sort of games are the minority. Most of the matches I’ve had where we are either losing a match since no one is even attempting to do anything objective related. Or overwhelmingly winning a match where the opposing team is not trying to stop us at all. These sort of matches aren’t fun at all.
So can you please stop with the “Play for fun” excuse since people that are complaining about the current progression are trying to have fun with the game.
PS. I don’t have any problem towards the gameplay, this is on a totally different level of its own and is actually keeping me playing this game. So I am very grateful to 343 for succeeding in making the gameplay feel awesome.
And the challenges aren’t hard, that is not what I’m trying to point out. The main problem is that most of the players (other than me) are trying to do them in every single match. Which has turned the game into a wild goose chase around the map to complete challenges rather than focusing on the objective.
And yes, this latest update is a “band-aid” as many have pointed out, but to me it feels like they are just deepening the wound rather than batching it up.
(Sorry for the long post)