Greedy backstabbing mercenaries

Last time I played Gloomhaven with my four person group we got beat.  It was our first loss, though I have seen three other occasions where we won the game on our last action, so we have had our fair share of tight victories.  I couldn't quite figure out how we were supposed to win as there were 15 enemies on the map at the start and while we managed to defeat them all we were absolutely ruined by the end of it.  Two of us staggered across the line into the final room and immediately exhausted and the third had only one action before keeling over.  Needless to say the single remaining person (who had lots of cards left because he never took a turn getting pummelled) was unable to defeat the last room solo.

But it turns out we screwed up.  There was a tile in the middle of the two rooms that was supposed to act as a doorway but we treated it as a pillar instead.  We should have had a room with 5 strong enemies and then another room with 10 weaker enemies in it, and given that we survived fighting all of them at once I am sure we would have defeated the scenario handily if we weren't cheating terribly in the monsters' favour.

This has gotten me thinking a lot about the difficulty level of the game.  We are currently playing on normal difficulty and it seems far too easy.  While there have been some close shaves they have been close mostly because we have been playing like garbage much of the time.  We are often taking terrible actions just to farm experience or fighting one another over loot.  Instead of really pushing ourselves to fight optimally we fuss over battle goal and life goal progress.  This is what has led to us having several extremely close wins when we clearly could have clobbered the zone if we just worked together.

The contrast to my 2 player games is stark.  When I have been playing Gloomhaven with OldHobo or Wendy we absolutely smash the monsters.  It feels like a seamless team effort where we grab money and experience when it makes sense to do so but we focus on winning as cleanly as possible.  A part of this is just that we are happy to watch anyone advance so if one of us vacuums up all the cash in a scenario that isn't a problem - we know that someone else will do it next time.  Nobody is wasting actions trying to grab a coin from somebody else.  Why would we do that, when a coin in my friend's hand is one that will buy them better gear to fight the monsters with?!?

The end of the two player games is almost comical.  We always end up with one monster left alive haplessly chasing us around the dungeon while we wander around picking up every piece of loot and farming experience with move actions.  One of my characters even has the goal of watching 15 exhaustions, which would take a lot of time in a 2 player game, except that we just let the last monster beat my friend into exhaustion while we pick up the loot and I kill it at the end.

Gloomhaven is so well balanced that I don't think this is just 2 player mode being super easy.  I think it really is about cooperation being stronger than competition.  There is also an argument to be made for experience, because Wendy, Oldhobo, and I have all played a lot more Gloomhaven than the other 3 players in my 4 player group.  But the key to my mind is that when people are focused on their own advancement and keeping themselves safe rather than trying to maximize the group's effectiveness the group suffers greatly.  When everyone plays together the increase in group power is incredible.

The question is, what is the goal?  If we are all trying to roleplay greedy, morally questionable mercenaries with a specific life goal that takes precedence over all other things, then we should be competitive.  That description really does fit with the way the characters are portrayed in the intro to the game, so it seems quite reasonable.  But it is certain that playing this way makes us vastly less effective and honestly isn't as much fun. 

I really like it when we play a cooperative game rather than a cooperative/competitive game.  I have found that true with many other games that are mostly cooperative but involve competition at the end where it ends up feeling crappy.  I don't mind pure competition, or pure cooperation, but when we cooperate until defection I don't much like it.  There are some examples that are fine, like Diplomacy, because that game is a pure competitive game where cooperation is allowed, but mostly I want my games to be neatly divided between coop and competitive.

In any case I may need to ratchet my 2 player games up to a higher difficulty level.  It is fun to smash things but at some point I crave a properly challenging opponent.  On the other hand our 4 player group of greedy backstabbing mercenaries certainly can't handle more difficult opponents as we spend too much of our time fighting amongst ourselves!