* Players cannot dismiss or add party members while undertaking exploratory missions.

[Culfinrandir]

I suppose it depends on whether chest drops are locked out like that. If they are, that means someone's going to have to take the hit for the team and lose out on the potential best armor options in the game in order to meet gathering goals.

Not really because you don't HAVE to do everything on every run. What happens if nobody has gatherers levelled? You're not going to fail. It may even be set up that you have to choose which goals to go for, or they may be random, or weekly. It wouldn't surprise me if the reward for each goal is minimal, say 10 eso, but that the reward is the gear gathered or looted itself. I think they've thought about the situation.

[Tilgung]

Not really because you don't HAVE to do everything on every run. What happens if nobody has gatherers levelled? You're not going to fail. It may even be set up that you have to choose which goals to go for, or they may be random, or weekly. It wouldn't surprise me if the reward for each goal is minimal, say 10 eso, but that the reward is the gear gathered or looted itself. I think they've thought about the situation.

Of course you don't have to. But if doing so is going to shaft someone, why would they do it?