Leachim said:Tigersin said:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug-DZM2bhmo
OK guys stand infront of the link so Kils doesn't see it...
Yes Tigersin! Love some Epic NPC Man. If anyone here hasn't seen these yet, do yourself a favor and look it up.
EDIT: Adding info
That clip brings up another fix needed. Besides making the NPC's walk speed = PC walk speed. NPC needs ablility to clitch/phase through object to maintain proper follow distance from escorting PC.
Love that channel. They have a bunch of great videos but I can think of a few more that would be awesome candidates.
In concept I don't mind the escort quest but I have to agree with everyone else that usually they just end up not being fun for technical reasons.
I don't feel like the concept should be thrown out entirely but if Pantheon is going to do this, it needs to take a different approach. Here's a few that I think might be worth looking into.
1) Wildstar had an instanced "adventure" based on the Oregon Trail (game) where you were escorting a caravan across the desert. Periodically the caravan would stop and make camp - you'd have to defend it and go out and forage for food, water, medicine, and so on before breaking camp and continuing on the next leg of the journey. The caravan was a big group of NPCs and you could lose a few and still succeed - in fact, that was kind of the point. The goal wasn't "get all the NPCs to the end successfully", the goal was "get as many as you can to the end".
2) EQ2's early access quests had you riding ships to new lands where things would happen during the transit. The ship would be attacked, etc. To me this feels like a sort of reverse escort quest where you're not following some NPC but you're along for the ride and helping fend off whatever may come. One of the dungeon instances in FFXIV recreates this sort of experience, where at the beginning of the dungeon your group is on a ship that gets pulled into a ship graveyard by an unnatural storm. You then have to explore the island and defeat the creature that's generating the storm so your ship can escape.
3) I forget exactly which game it was (I think EQ) but I distinctly remember doing a quest where I was escorting not one NPC, but an entire squad of them on their way to assault another group of NPCs. Depending what was pathing nearby they could sometimes make it to the assault on their own, but the way to insure the assault worked was to screen them as they marched - grab the bigger monsters and kill them so that the NPC troops didn't get themselves killed before the final battle. Then of course you helped during the final battle. What made this ok to me was that it was multiple NPCs. You could lose a couple and still be ok at the end.
So, just some thoughts. I guess you can boil it down to escorting single NPCs = usually bad, escorting multiple NPCs = not so bad.
Pretty much what Nephele said.
I can also think of a Quest that was kind of a reverse. You had to hide, listen in on a conversation and then follow that person, and they were running. if they saw you, the quest failed and you had to wait for it to reset to try again. It was really cool because you had to stay X distance away but they could lose you around corners. it was in town with Lots of buildings and alleys etc.,
I thought it was really cool when I did it. it was an Elder Scrolls Online low level quest in the dark elf area. I would love it if there was something new in escort quests. I really don't hate them. They just need an interesting twist or whatever. I have no idea what to add. salt?
Nephele said:1) Wildstar had an instanced "adventure" based on the Oregon Trail (game) where you were escorting a caravan across the desert. Periodically the caravan would stop and make camp - you'd have to defend it and go out and forage for food, water, medicine, and so on before breaking camp and continuing on the next leg of the journey. The caravan was a big group of NPCs and you could lose a few and still succeed - in fact, that was kind of the point. The goal wasn't "get all the NPCs to the end successfully", the goal was "get as many as you can to the end".
For the records, when the game launched the adventures required a 100% completition to obtain the epic reward, and it was not uncommon when using the accidented ship to skip some part of the trail that a npc was dropped during the fast travel, resulting in an irrecuperable loss of the 100% reward and often pugs would just leave because it was no longer worth the time remaining.
This little anecdote just to show how it was badly designed at start, and players farmed epic gear that way during weeks before carbine changed the way adventures worked and untied the gold accomplishment from having every NPC rescued, while making the guaranteed epic no longer tied to it (and way less frequent with more RNG). The escort at first, as every "max level adventures" was extremely bad designed due to rewards beeing too constitent and a few bugs in the matrix.
To return to the main subject, the main problem with escort quests is as stated by others, revolved about the fact NPC AI is usually weak, and the npc to escort is not strong enough to survive the trouble he will put himself to. Anyone who played Wow at it's release might remember Marshall Windsor's escort, and how it was a pain you had to plan for at least one hour by killing every mob in the dungeon on his path or be sure he would simply aggro everything and die / wipe your group and fail the escort, requiring to start over the dungeon.
It's all on VR's shoulder to find a better ground, withouth making NPC Overpowered to compensate for weak AI (or you begin to wonder why you're here) and a human in speedo running fists ready in 4 or 5 ennemies at a time.
Another point is that in many games, you cannot heal NPCs. So even if you're a , you have to helplessly watch as the HP of the NPC drop and drop until he dies. It might help if healing/buffing NPCs was possible during escort missions.
Maybe they could even become members of your group while being escorted? Like mercenaries in EQ? So buffs/heals would work on them..
Sarim said:Another point is that in many games, you cannot heal NPCs. So even if you're a , you have to helplessly watch as the HP of the NPC drop and drop until he dies. It might help if healing/buffing NPCs was possible during escort missions.
Maybe they could even become members of your group while being escorted? Like mercenaries in EQ? So buffs/heals would work on them..
A fun thing related to this in EQ is if the NPC you are escorting or defending casts an AE damage spell and it hits your pet, your pet will kill the NPC.
Don’t hate the Quest, hate the AI ( or Programed Stupidity in reality).
As usual Neph has a really good post outlining some key points on both why people dislike escort quests and how they can be done well.
If you break down quests into “Kill quests”, “Fetch quests”, “Commerce quests” and “Adventure Quests” almost all good/difficult “Adventure Quests” include some form of escort. In truth an escort quest is just a quest where the players are supposed to move from one location to another completing objectives in a timed manor. Due to both the timed nature and the dynamic location that can cause open world added challenge escort quests of one type or another are often the most difficult of quests.
Bad NPC pathing, suicidal agro protocol and extreme fragility of protection objectives can make a poorly scripted escort quest very frustrating. Good scripting on the other hand can make escort quests the most satisfying to succeed at and if the increased challenge is properly rewarded it can be the most lucrative.
I actually hope that most “quests” center around dynamic content in one form or another and that low reward tasks are the only ones with static objectives and rewards.
here's an escort quest:
the player needs to deliver to flowers to the local alchemist and is accompanied by an npc escorter. the escorter is such a boss that he is one shotting everything and going so fast that the player has a hard time keeping up. if the player falls behind he gets 3 shotted by quest specific mobs. the whole time the npc should complain about how this quest sucks and the player needs to keep up with him.
eat your heart out escort quest haters. you have become the escortee.
stellarmind said:here's an escort quest:
the player needs to deliver to flowers to the local alchemist and is accompanied by an npc escorter. the escorter is such a boss that he is one shotting everything and going so fast that the player has a hard time keeping up. if the player falls behind he gets 3 shotted by quest specific mobs. the whole time the npc should complain about how this quest sucks and the player needs to keep up with him.
eat your heart out escort quest haters. you have become the escortee.
O.M.G. can we make one of these happen, please? Like, I need this for the purely satirical aspect alone.
Leachim said:Tigersin said:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug-DZM2bhmo ;
OK guys stand infront of the link so Kils doesn't see it...
Yes Tigersin! Love some Epic NPC Man. If anyone here hasn't seen these yet, do yourself a favor and look it up.
EDIT: Adding info
That clip brings up another fix needed. Besides making the NPC's walk speed = PC walk speed. NPC needs ablility to clitch/phase through object to maintain proper follow distance from escorting PC.
LOL, not seen these before.
I like escort quests. The "bad ai" is all that makes them challenging usually. If the escort avoided all danger then it's not an escort quest. You could accept it, go afk, and just accept the reward when you came back. There were a couple escort quests in Lord of the Rings Online that made me laugh. They may had been tuned before launch but in beta there was one where you meet Gimli and have to make sure he does die during thr event, and then a similar quest with Legolas ( goalwise it was similar, not the actual area and enemies ). Gimli was the typical escort quest npc, intentionally running off into trouble even though it made sense for him kind of. Legolas was also true ot the movies and pretty much out damages your whole group and almost made me wonder if he was escorting us. It made me laugh at the time.
Percipiens said:They're kind of meh for me, as well. So, how could they be made fun and worth it? Maybe make certain ones (and enough completions of it) required to open/access new areas?
Whaaaa?!? So let me get this right... most agree that escort quests suck so let’s make doing a crap-ton of them a requirement gate to other, important game content. /boggle
