My friends enjoy co-op games as well—Pandemic (though more fun with the bioterrorist IMO ;) ), Forbidden {Island,Desert,Sky}, etc. They tend to suffer from the quarterback effect, as you say—one player often has stronger opinions and is telling others what to do (and often why), turning it into a group-consensus exercise rather than individual optimization.
I’d need to expand “The Mindset” to understand what you mean there, but for myself and the groups I game with, the risk/reward/learning-feedback elements are simply nowhere near as strong in pure cooperative games, as it is in competitive games with cooperative elements.
My friends enjoy co-op games as well—Pandemic (though more fun with the bioterrorist IMO ;) ), Forbidden {Island,Desert,Sky}, etc. They tend to suffer from the quarterback effect, as you say—one player often has stronger opinions and is telling others what to do (and often why), turning it into a group-consensus exercise rather than individual optimization.
I’d need to expand “The Mindset” to understand what you mean there, but for myself and the groups I game with, the risk/reward/learning-feedback elements are simply nowhere near as strong in pure cooperative games, as it is in competitive games with cooperative elements.