Escort missions

[Elhazzared]

I'm sure everyone has been through this. You are given an escort mission and either the starting place is absolutly surrounded by enemies making sure you don't even stand a chance to save the escort, or the exit is put next to the end boss of the area. On other cases the escort just runs off happly when you are forced to deal with monsters and then you just get the message of it dying to some other monster somewhere. Even times when it runs off, you try to find it but to no avail.

The idea is that the escort mission is somewhat of a small buff to you, but shouldn't be imposible to protect the escort so I feel a few changes to the escort/map generation should be made in order to make this more fair. Because one thing is you failing because you did wrong, another is just being presented a no win scenerio.

First off let's start with what makes sense. If a guy asks you to protect him till you get out of there, then he isn't going to run ahead of you like a mania thinking you can protect him when you can't even see him. To this effect the escort should work exactly like melinda. It will follow behind you and once you reach the exit circle you talk to the guy to finish the quest and get your reward. This not only makes much more sense even from a realistic point of view.

Next what needs to be done is tie the escort and the map generator together so that when an escort mission is given, the starting area has no enemies whatsoever so that the escort won't die without ever having had a fair chance at it. Another thing is that the exit circle should never be put in a room or near the end boss. Many times bosses have ways to CC you and while you are CCed, they will happly kill the escort, again without giving you a chance of doing anything about it... Similarly the exit portal should not be somewhere that you have to traverse through the boss room to get to it, even if not in the boss room itself. The better way would be that if an escort is present and this is the end of the dungeon boss level then the boss should have no chance to be spawned near the entrance and the escort destination is in a completly opposite direction as to the boss room.

I understand some people will think of this as making the game easier but it really is about giving the player a fair chance at not losing his escorts to the RNG but rather having the mission completation be entirely up to whether they are capable players or not.

[Wolls]

Hmm I tend to view the Escort missions as more of a your the hired help whose working for them and if you succeed in your contract you get paid rather than a rescue the poor bloke/damsel who if you succeed are so grateful; well gollygosh here's a reward. If anything the poor escorts family should sue the silver tongued hustler for making false promises they were obviously incapable of fulfilling. Just look how quickly the Escort will disappear when you decline, they know they can't do it on their own.
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Three thoughts on Escorts in general:

*I actually like that you are forced to keep up with the Escort, it kinda throws a player out of their comfort zone and forces them to adjust their game play to a play-style that is well, harder. Of course it's still ridiculously easy to block the escort and in that regard it would be better if the Escort made more of an effort to go around you rather than *NAP TIME* zzZZZ.

*Sometimes even, you are going back out of the dungeon and get an Escort in an area you have already cleared. No challenge there and those types certainly help balance out the others. Just saying for balance wise, if you get rid of the impossible you should also get rid of all the absolute freebies. Or perhaps as gentleman adventurers we all should be declining those.

*Of course, the difficultly is variable depending on the make-up of your adventurer but with more experience the Escorts missions do get easier. ( Just practice killing ..er practice at watching what doesn't work...see you've been doing it the whole time! Good Job!)
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I don't know, I don't have the complete stats so manually looking back over write ups for the past few winners ( admittedly a tiny sample size) wherein most of the nightmare/insane runs seem to have done quite well at the Escorts; that is at least 2/3's or better. With the exception of the Archmage and Madness and madness arch-magi. ( It cannot be proved but many a keen mind suspect they simply roast the Escorts alive for not getting out of their self fueled righteous path.)

What do you think a good completion rate for the escorts should be? For that matter what percentage of them are completely no win scenario impossible? Should it matter if it would be doable with a different class/race? Or doable if you had better leveled / the right talents?

[Davion Fuxa]

Escorts could definitively always use improvement, but there should be some noticeable risk for the reward the player gets from saving them successfully. The Random Number Generator should come into play in having an easy time with escorts or a tough time.

Now, something I think would be worth doing in light of the RNG is making the decision making about refusing/accepting the quest in the first place matter. Entrance is surrounded by enemies? No Worries, just crack the escorts head open and take some rewards for your trouble.

As to Escorts just heading to the exit destination on their own, that perhaps could be worth changing. Right now it is a little 'gamey' in that those who know how to abuse Escorts save them easily - Wolls pointed out one way simply enough. It might make sense to perhaps change the setup a little:

Maybe make escorts work similar to Melinda, but make enemies have a chance of switching to target the Escort if they are a Critter, Normal, or Elite ranked enemy. If necessary, maybe give Escorts a little more health - or a Healing Infusion or something to compensate.

[Doctornull]

I like the idea of a more-Melinda movement mode Escort.

Alternately, let the player give them "Stay" / "Follow" / "Go Ahead" orders without restrictions, but each order costs the player a turn (like using a talent), and Silence prevents any new orders.

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In either case, though, I do agree that Escorts should try to force you into taking more risk than you otherwise would. So if the Escort interface no longer constitutes the challenge, then something else must. Some ideas:

- Escorts are clumsy and loud. They occasionally spend a turn making enough noise to wake up nearby monsters, or maybe they randomly impose the Hunted effect on the player with a limited duration.

- Enemies. Each time an Escort spawns, the map also spawns between 2 to 4 Adventurers which start somewhere random (but always out of sight) and hunt the Escort. They always know where the Escort is.

- Life Link: when you receive healing, the Escort gets half. This is great for keeping the Escort alive, but not so great for keeping you alive.

[Elhazzared]

Alright so going in order.

Wolls - I will disagree with you on the notion that you are just hired help on the message you get at the begining. They are stuck there with no way to get out alive. They are pretty much a damsel in distress, at least that is what the game clearly tells you. If you refuse to escort them, yes they disapear immediatly, but that is just the game saying the escort has died or just that you leave it to it's fate and it will not get out alive. Course the last part is pretty much my own interpretation rather than anything the game clearly shows.

AS for what I think a good completion rate for escorts should be? So long as you are doing things carefully and play pretty much like you do when you play the rest of the game, you should have a 100% completion rate. This does not means that the game shouldn't throw at you a bit of a harder time than normal to keep your escort alive of course, but the base idea is that every single escort mission should be fair in the way it's thrown at you and with such notion in mind, you should be able to get all completed so long as you aren't derping around.

As for how many impossible scenarios... I can't say for sure I haven't been counting but between 10% and 20% of my escort missions I lost purely because there was either too many enemies on the spawn and it was impossible to kill all fast enough or I just turn a corner, get CCed and the monsters kill the escort, this happens a bit too often with the dungeon boss actually and a few times to the escort running ahead like an idiot just to get killed... Sure you can stop this many times but sometimes you just can't.

As for whether it should be more or less doable depending on your class or race... No! That would be an unfair favoring of certain races/classes. They all should have the same chance at finishing it but my sugestions, especially the escort actually follows rather than going on it's own helps a lot several classes to keep it safe but again, there are the other points I made to be ironed out.

Also I've never found an escort going out of a dungeon already cleared. Still, this being the case then that should be changed too. A cleared dungeon should under no circunstaces throw you an escort quest.

Davion - Yes the RNG should come into play, but not so much as to make it completly impossible or a complete breeze. it comes into play as with the enemies it throws at you but it shouldn't make it too easy for the enmies to just kill the escort eforthlessly.

The lack of healing for an escort is also quite problematic. They have very little life and just one poison attack can make sure they won't make it.

Doctornull - I belive the difficulty of the escort is already keeping it alive. Yes, sometimes you get a good RNG with nearly no enemies and a very close exit portal but that could easily be change by making sure the portal is never close to the starting location.

I don't agree on the adventurers. Adventurers are incredibly powerful and could with extreme ease go up to the escort invisible or stealth and oneshot it. This not to say that many times you die to adventurers on the map by simple bad luck of them having the perfect set of skills to completly destroy you and even start already on top of you and sometimes even go first in combat landing things like stuns and silences even before you got the chance to act. Adventurers hunting for the escort is even more overkill than having the escort wander into the boss room.

Life link is a pretty good idea. A shared infusion and possibly even shared damage which would be good news for the escort but bad for you, especially on tanky characters who can be getting unmitigated damage since the escort isn't tanky and the damage is simply transfered over with no resistences coming into play.

[HousePet]

I find the current setup for the escorting quests to be fine as is.
My only issues with them are that a lot of abilities will kill your escortee without telling you that they can.
The other is that some people obsess with needing a particular reward for a build.

[Davion Fuxa]

It's fine if Escorts aren't 100% save able in every instance the player gets them. Circumstances should be present to force the player into an unfavorable position that will result in the death of their escort, or even the death of their own character. It makes saving the Escort a challenge, and if you succeed in the challenge you get a suitable reward. Having some more significant decision making for initial entry when in an already bad situation would do well to improve the current situation.

Depending on class and race, it's fine if they skew how difficult protecting Escorts will be - a Ghoul should have a hard time due to Retch hurting its friends, an Archmage can have an advantage in being able to tactically change their Escorts position with 5/5 Phase door.

In regards to the significance of the rewards, I still don't think this is the case with any of the rewards.

[Wolls]

Personally I like escorts, some others feel like they should behave like Melinda in Dark Crypt, while still others that they should be viable combatants. So for example ( Loremaster and Alchemist are just rough examples of type, ditto the DRs) :
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Mission: (Loremaster) Help the Loremaster track down some obscure long forgotten lore. Spawns lore, lore guardian and loremaster. Track down and kill the guardian to collect your reward. --> Mission Escorts are offensive Ally working as team towards goal.
Decline Reward: Well the lore and lore guardian still exist..

Rescue: (Alchemist) Save the Alchemist from a creature / nest of creatures. The Alchemist was out collecting ingredients and has been trapped, please help! There's an escort somewhere in the level, find the Escort and lead them to the exit. --> Once found the Rescue Escorts are defensive Ally hiding behind the lead player and following.
Decline Reward: A bunch of Alchemist ingredients for the sidequest??

Escort: Are Timed escorts where you take them from A to B. ( If you don't like the timer give them phase door rune or torque and with no enemy in field of view but if their movement remains blocked after 4? turns have them vocalize and on 5th use it) --> Escorts are in charge and like to lead the way. Often to everyone's peril. ( Although this feels a little bit white rabbity.)

More just to break up the A to B nature of 9 Escort missions and to help with their difficulty on higher levels. Perhaps 4 Escort, 3 Mission, 2 Rescue? Rescue are the only ones where you start separate, giving the player an opportunity to scout and clear out the level before hand. Mission would give you golem(esce) control and the Escorts would remain essentially the same.

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on a side note my naming scheme sux, you either end up with mission mission or escort escort meh
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Viable rewards for decline would be awesome and go a long way towards allowing the player to make valid situational choices. Maybe its never ideal to decline escorts but as you say if the escort and you're both completely surrounded by goons. It'd be nice to get something from a situation like that.
Oh and Rewards for Declining,, yes.. perhaps with say the Mercenary Outfit: Zone starts locked and if you decline all or half of the escorts it acts as a global unlock. ( after all rogues do it alone)

[Wolls]

@Elhazzared I think my expectation of play differs, "So long as you are doing things carefully and play pretty much like you do when you play the rest of the game.." -- To me the Escorts are clearly separate from the main campaign. I do not want more of the same, I want different. Then again I actually liked the whole concept of Caldera. There is just so many opportunities during the game to play the same style, why shouldn't the game occasionally force players gamestyle into area's that makes them uncomfortable? I think the game and player are better served when they are asked to go outside of their usual 1-2-3 methodology.

I dunno, the Alchemist starting from lvl 4 gains an ability to turn their throw bomb into a completely friendly eco-nuke. No self harm no friendly fire. Its also its biggest attack. Room clearing as what the Alchemist does, and better then any other class. If you remove all groups of enemies from the start, along the pathing and then in the exit it feels like you are no longer rewarding classes for their strengths and occasionally their perks. I'd rather throw a class the occasional perk and fully allow/accept that sometimes the RNG will render a situation highly unfavourable for other classes. It largely depends on how often it happens.
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I also feel like 100% completion rate is wrong. When a person is being challenged, doing things in a new manner they will almost naturally fail. A sense of growth and mastery is pretty much guaranteed from that point. But 100% is, well its like tic-tac-toe. You can 100% of the time never lose. Most people play tic-tac-toe for a reasonable amount of time which translates into not long. That said, you can't build a system thats entirely exploit free. People are always going to find ways to game some mechanism or other so you need some RNG. I mean if a card player puts themselves in a position with a 95% percent chance to win it all? They applaud themselves regardless if they lose that 5% of the time. It's the earlier positioning and play not the actual result that matters and makes the difference.
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Not every class starts out with a heal, but you can get rings/amulets/totems that have it, and some of them at heal at range 9. Now are you actually going to find this item in stores or laying about before you get your escorts or remember to keep it just for escorts and remember that you have it and equip it on these escorts? lol I don't know. Me? Probably not.

You can try putting the escort to sleep, there are items that grant you that. Ice wall is another delaying talent/protection for the escort although only one class has access. You can teleport the escorts back behind you to safety. You can combine things like Track so see whats ahead in the direction you are going in and a Movement Infusion or speed boost to get there early with time hopefully enough to deal with it. There are map showing talents which allow you to see the layout and give you a better understanding of which path the escort may take. Sometimes you can alter the pathfinding by opening a door or creating an opening. I haven't played many classes so I don't know, but it seems like Escorts could be used to expand the players tool-box, or even just to help make use of what they already have. But if you are never asked to, it seems unlikely. Although simply forcing them may not be the best or preferred way. *shrug*

[Elhazzared]

Escorts aren't separated from the game. In fact they are pretty much a necessity in which you get several bonus from them which are pretty much needed. in many cases getting the right escort out safely isn't simply a bonus, it is a required part of the meta or you go back to the drawing board.

I understand what you mean with them being a challenge but then I ask you. When it's 100% impossible to save an escort either because it runs off, it starts in the middle of a large room with more than a douzen enemies and many almost within mellee range (not to mention portential ranged enemies) or just get kill by a dungeon boss which literally was lying in wait behind a corner to freeze you and then kill the escort without giving you the slightest chance. Well what kind of challenge is that? They might as well ask you to leap to the moon or drink the ocean.

Everything should be completable. An escort mission isn't something that puts your life at risk, on the contrary, it only makes it easier for you to survive as several monsters just aggro the escort and almost every single time we are talking about stuff that wouldn't kill you either way but killing the escort is just beyond easy... What provides a challenge in the escort mission is keeping the escort alive, but giving you the 100% no win scenarios is just a no go. you are already being given the challenge to keep the guy alive and he dies rather easily. There is no need to make him behave like a moron running off on his own after asking for help when he knows he can't survive on his own and again, getting him in rooms where he cannot survive on his own is again just not logical.

Also you are saying that the normal game boils down to 1 2 3 in your normal play. I don't know about you but I play mainly an archmage and never has it been like that for me. Most monsters don't require much strategy, just beams are enough to deal with them but there is always the bosses and adventurers party not to mention several creatures that have their workings. i simply adapt my strategy to whatever situation and this simply is the same when escorting the guy to the portal. You chose what is most effective at dealing with the situation as you learn how each monster behaves and develope your character to deal with a multitude of situations.

Because this is what a roguelike is like. You are supposed to learn how to deal with stuff and once you do... Some RNG is involved, usually where gear is concerned and not much more, but once you learn how to deal with things and a combination of multiple things, you pretty much have good chances of winning every scenario presented so long as they don't present you with an unwinnable scenario which frankly, just ruins the game for everyone.

[Wolls]

Escorts aren't separated from the game. In fact they are pretty much a necessity in which you get several bonus from them which are pretty much needed. in many cases getting the right escort out safely isn't simply a bonus, it is a required part of the meta or you go back to the drawing board.

If you're telling me that players have a specific design layout in mind and thats what is applying limits; then yes, I agree. In normal difficulty I'm not convinced this is neccessary nor the whole maximum/minimum only optimum+ will suffice. But if you see it that way you'll play it that way and it will be that way. It is a self set limit and honestly it is the same behavior that ppl who want to challenge themselves exhibit albeit in this case its more aptly described as wanting to maximise the odds / chances of winning combined with the conviction that anything less is unwinnable. But if I told someone that following a specific build was actually making your game harder I doubt they would listen.

There is a line of experience where new players die then they get told their build is wrong so they apply those build concepts and hopefully succeed where upon they .... loosen up. What I'm trying to say is that new players die primarily because they are new players not because their build happens to be sub optimal. Or at least I believe that I have lost in situations where a more experienced player; had I been able to hand over the controls, would have been able to succeed.
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I actually dont know what a roguelike is. I will say that there is a difference playing adventure vs roguelike. A casualness vs the finality. It makes it easier to shrug off those 100% loss scenarios where frankly I'd be happy to just get out alive or that I didn't die that many times. Its a sort of 'oh no you didn't' charm I feel whilst the game proceeds to punk me. A ridiculous over the top 1000+ hit combo finishing move when one would do as I run from one rare into 2 more and escaping that only to have the weakest enemy on the board deliver the final killing blow. On a good day how can I not laugh and grin as maniacs do plotting revenge? This is easily the only roguelike I've ever played. [ Even if by certain definitions I'm not really playing it.]

Not sure of the weight / precedence but I assume as long as both modes are supported there's a form balancing one against the other. So if it seems like we're talking across each other?? I don't disagree with your points and strongly support the direction; order should rule the day .. so long as it doesn't completely remove the madness.
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Heh, sorry about that. My reference of 1-2-3 was in regard to the micro management of escorts and as pointed out gamey. More of a 'whats the point' of there being an escort if it ends up playing the same as when there is no escort??? I don't know the exact number of zone/levels in the game but only 9 of them have this defining factor and when the solid strategy is to effectively minimize the escorts presence it very much feels like I am getting the very least from these events. It really feels wrong to me and all issues I have with the escorts stem from this.


Also - I don't know if anyone is following but HunterZ recently published an Escort addon that looks helpful.: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=42059