There is a serious design flaw in the current implementation, where the optional objective goal is set to a specific mission.
This means that friends you play with have a very high chance of being directed to a different mission with the same contract. This separates team cohesion and makes it a chore rather than something fun to tackle together.
As a side effect, you respect the players time this way, and the new players will enjoy this particular contract more.
Not helping is, imho, that the side objectives we have so far are… lame.
They are two things that used to be an otpional thing in every mission in VT 1 and 2. Under the optional objectives as an “actual” part of the description, i think it’d be more fun if missions where an optional mission is active ACTUALLY had a divergent route where you would, for example, have to salvage something. Or scan or hack something.
In general, it feels like this particular contract, and ONLY this particular contract is Anti-Co’op. It just doesn’t mesh in friend-based play, and can actively impede the team’s goal and waste their limited available playtime.
It’s true that the reward for completing the current two optional objectives are underwhelming. The exp and coin from them are poor to say the least.
Not to mention that they are HARDER than in vermintide 1 and 2. Due to the variables of random locations, meaning you have to scour everywhere each time with no hint system in place. The grimoires in particular are MUCH harder due to the corruption getting worse over time, and chip damage being able to kill through toughness.
A bounty of crafting resources could help there on the rewarding side.
ya know… the bounty comment gives me an idea for what could be an actually nice side objective:
An “actual” bounty hunt which causes a guaranteed miniboss (not monster, more like the bosses on the boss maps, but a bit weaker) spawn at some point on the map.
And if bosses also actually gave a reward, it’d be even better!
Or if completing a secondary objective gave you a guaranteed or VASTLY higher chance of a gift from the Emperor.
This is especially infuriating if the mission you need to do is removed from the queue for some reason (Hab Dreyko).
It’s also just boring, making you do the same mission over and over again.
Finally, it’s very dependent on what the mission map gods will give out, which is a quite annoying.
Honestly, something as simple as “Kill the plague ogre/monstrosity at X map” would be great. It would allow players to (assuming they take it) have a guaranteed spawn for penances and/or practice fighting them. Or “Kill the enemy strike team” which is a set of different elites for psyker and veteran stuff, ect.
I love the ones that are just super grindy for a class and that you have to go out of your way to play suboptimally to complete.
Like, kill 1000+ scabs with ranged. As ogryn. Fun times.
Oof, yeah. The heavy stubber can do some work there thanks to the metric tons of ammo and it’s ability to turn things to paste at close range, but having only ONE weapon that can effectively shred at medium-close range is a tough situation.
