Anti-Social Goal System - Please address!

[Ralphy2009]

But people are joining HIS goals, not the other way around. He can't really do anything about that.

So is it his fault for starting that goal?

No one can join your goal and complete it for you until you actually start the goal yourself. It is extremely risky to start a goal a long time before you start to play. If he's willing to take that risk and comes out of it for the worse, then that's his choice. The other choice is to start the goal shortly before playing the game.

Obviously a restricted system to prevent unwanted joining like Casto said would be best, but unfortunately that doesn't exist at this time. So the only way to combat unwanted joins is to minimize the time other people can join and start goals shortly before playing the game.

[A_Drunken_Smurf]

I address both issues - joining early, and starting a goal early. I can certainly understand why joining a goal early is my risk - however STARTING a goal early should not be "my fault" if RANDOM people join my goal and complete it.

This thread is talking about how the current goal system encourages anti-social behavior - ie: not wanting to join or create goals for fear they will be completed by the time you get started on them. Not joining or creating well ahead of time is not a viable solution for me - not for the limited time I get to play - the 20 minutes out of the 1-2 hours I have in a day to play games should not be spent preparing to play a game.

This could easily be resolved by allowing players who contributed nothing to re-do the goal. There's no harm in this.

The BEST solution would be to allow players to replay any goal at any time. You only get coins for the songs you haven't played in previous attempts. This would solve all problems.

[jeronemitchell]

I kinda wish I knew the coins for goals were split. I don't mind working together for a goal that I don't have all of the songs for. However, as Red Hot Chili Peppers is my favorite group to make Rock Band, I would have done the Blood Sugar Sex Magik goal by myself with no problems. As-is, an evening's work for 5,000 coins became a short but fun session for 1,700 or so.

I feel sorry for the poor guys that played one song and then went to work or something...

I understand how it could still be cooperative; I wish I could have joined with someone to finish Parenthetically Speaking, and I'm sure it is worth it to do the Dave Grohl goal... but I wish I had some advance notice.

[osteofight]

Here's the problem - I was at work today, and got invited to join a friend's Dave Grohl goal - I join, and see a bunch of other friends in the group... By the time I get into the game, the goal is complete. I have been awarded 0 coins for the goal, and it is no longer available for me to select again, since it's considered complete.

Ditto for me. I checked out the group system at work and signed on to a few. My groupmates banged out a few before I got home. I was pleased as punch until I saw I had a 0 coin payout.

[Meat-Popsicle]

You joined a goal? Must be nice. Wish I could do that.

Yeah, I think they need to overhaul it a bit, and they likely will.

Just to confirm: joining / inviting others to join goals doesn't work at all with PS3, right? At least not if your only Facebook friends that have Blitz are on the 360?

[CJHobbes]

There are really two issues I have with the Group Goals as they are.

1) I wish it was communicated more clearly that your payout is based upon your contributions to the goal. I don't remember seeing anywhere on the Goals page that tells you this. I only knew that it worked like this because I read the forums, which not everyone does.

2) I wish you could help out a friend with a goal even after you've completed it. I don't care about being rewarded a 2nd time; I'd play songs for free to help a friend out if I could.

I think it could be a neat feature, but I don't think it was implemented all too well. There's room for improvement.

[Bront20]

Just to confirm: joining / inviting others to join goals doesn't work at all with PS3, right? At least not if your only Facebook friends that have Blitz are on the 360?

No clue, I can invite 360 folks on the PS3, but I have yet to get a join to work.

[MurphyRock]

Wow, when you share a goal with someone the payout is split? I had assumed that each person would get the full payout! What's the point of giving anyone else the chance to join your goal? Also, I sense that "goal sniping" is going to become a major sport of some Blitz griefers out there...

Harmonix, you're being WAAAAAAY too stingy with the coins! This problem wouldn't even be a problem if everybody who joined the goal got the full payout when the goal was completed. You realize you don't want to be a miser? How come everybody wanna keep it like the Kaiser? Give it away, give it away, give it away now!

[A_Drunken_Smurf]

You realize you don't want to be a miser? How come everybody wanna keep it like the Kaiser? Give it away, give it away, give it away now!

Not bad, but you do know it's Linkin Park week, not RHCP, right? :P

[HMXMister_Game]

This is a totally valid complaint about the system, but I don't have a good solution. The point of this was to get people to cooperate on songs. It's really unfortunate that you didn't get to participate especially since you had all that DLC.

One of our original designs had a more "leader/follower" model of the group, where one person got to decide who was invited/kicked. But it had such a large requirement for explanation and messaging that we went with a much simpler/cleaner system where everyone is basically equal.

One solution: if you don't contribute anything you get to re-do the goal, seems very reasonable. I just wonder how often that's going to happen in practice.

Another solution: allow you to replay the goal but only get credit for songs that you didn't do the first time. Whew! That seems like a great deal of work, and also hard to make the players understand what's happening on subsequent playthroughs.

As for allowing people to just replay goals: central to the design of the goal system was to make it a single shot reward, as a way of keeping the goal content fresh.

And there's another reason that we don't want repeat completions which will be revealed in the near future.