I can understand removing the single player time limit. Some people don't like the time pressure. In stark contrast to this they removed the campaign co-op and added 4 player multiplayer missions that are time limited. A short amount of time, I might add (like, 5 minutes per day). This design decision seems completely insane to me. You remove the time limit so people can have fun killing zombies without the time pressure but doing that with friends? Nope. Not for you. Dead Rising 2 Off the Record contained free roam multiplayer that still had this game's focus on missions, but players opted in to them at will by locating medals in the world. Seems like the best of both options.

What were they thinking? Who thought this was a good idea? It seems contradictory to their own ideas about what this game should be.

Note: Not an excuse for general bashing of this game, save that for elsewhere. Discussing the multiplayer here.

Are these missions in small, discrete areas, or the whole open world? I wonder if they ran into some weird error with their network code and the open world, or maybe a framerate issue.

If not, and this is a purely design based decision, then yeah. It seems baffling.

@mooseymcman: Not necessarily small but there are sectioned off areas of the game. Like, 2 combined sections of the mall and then rubble blocking off access to the rest of the areas. You play a sped up 5 minute day and have to complete objectives in that time. There is also a shocking lack of zombies unless they populate a certain area for you to clear out. I played a few sessions and other than for missions I spent a lot of time looking for zombies to kill.

Having played some more single player I get the sense that the multiplayer maps are indeed fairly small. Which is even more frustrating. Having a lot of fun in single player. Definitely not in multiplayer.