Yeah, so I started playing Dauntless when it became available for the PS4. I never played MHW or any other game like it, so the concept/genre was new to me and I was intrigued.

I've been playing games on the PS4 since day 1 and I've made a good bit of PS4 gaming friends over the years. I enjoy playing online multiplayer games with them and I was hoping Dauntless might be another one that we might enjoy playing.

I got roughly ten of my closer gaming buddies to try out Dauntless and they played it for a while, but at the moment, none of them are playing it any more. They have all moved on to other games.

I guess I'm a lot more tolerant of a game's faults than most. I played Orcs Must Die Unchained for a loooong time (Empty Pockets, yo!). I can deal with a game that has shitty and inconsistent frame rates.

Most of my PS4 gaming buddies aren't so forgiving though. If PHX wants to grow the Dauntless player base, they really need to prioritize the game engine performance to stabilize frame rates. $.02

That said, there is, IMO, a deeper design issue that doesn't become apparent until you reach mid/end game. The Mastery system provides goals and incentives for completionists and that's great. But the way the game works, the Mastery system actually discourages cooperative play.

Progress towards the mastery system (especially the Behemoth Masteries) is a zero sum game. Every hunt, you are competing against any hunt partners for damage, experience and applying status effects (wounding, staggering, booping, breaking parts). Folks playing the game to complete mastery milestones are encouraged to either play solo or play selfishly in a coop setting.

There are two additional Mastery milestones for most Behemoths that require (or strongly encourage) solo play. I get that they are supposed to be end game goals, but it further reinforces that Dauntless isn't really designed to be a mutiplayer coop game beyond the very beginning.

Trials were introduced as end game content. Instead of introducing mechanics that encourage (or require) a team of four to work together to beat it, the focus is on playing the same game as perfectly as you can. It rewards not getting hit (and some RNG luck). To top it off, half the leaderboard space is dedicated to players who play it solo.

The end game focus on kill times is a huge turn off for me. I don't enjoy games that require perfection or near perfection to achieve goals. That isn't fun. That's work. Maybe that's why it appeals to streamers and such that play games all day long as a job. But as a filthy casual, just no. Stop please and reevaluate what you are doing here.

One of the first games I played on the PS4 was Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag. It had a competitive multiplayer with an ELO ranked leaderboard that reset once a year or so. For folks who need leaderboard validation, I don't see why that approach couldn't be adopted for Dauntless. Instead of focusing on kill time, a ranking system could be devised that scores players across several metrics such as damage dealt (or % of total), damage received, reviving other players (not grouped - just random teammates), etc.

So I've ranted a bit (politely I hope). I'll try to distill my thoughts into a few actionable bullet points of constructive criticism:

1. Prioritize game engine performance (stable frame rates) to grow the player base (to retain the players that try it out).

2. Change design that discourages cooperative play:

   1. Status effects and experience should be shared amongst all players that contributed to achieving it (wounding, staggering, part breaks). Increase the mastery milestone thresholds if necessary, but encourage people to play together instead of solo (or playing selfishly while with a group).
   2. End game content like trials should include hunt mechanics that require teamwork to beat. For example, behemoth begins phase (animation clues) where players need to hit him in certain spots near simultaneously (front and back, head and tail, etc.) or behemoth cycles weak spots for one player at a time (ie. player one hits weak spot only available to him, weak spot appears for player 2 and so on).
   3. Design fun goals, not work (perfection) goals. Seasonal leaderboards that aren't based upon kill times would work IMO.

Sorry for the super long wall of text. I've enjoyed playing Dauntless and wanted to give some constructive feedback that wasn't available as an in game survey answer.