Escorts Diversified: RFC

[cctobias]

This is a request for idea regarding a possible addon I may make.

So I use the very good Escorts Enhanced addon which makes escorts by deafult follow without any extra managmanet (i.e. telling them to wait) and adds a modest health regen, basically because I find vanilla escorts uninteresting. They are for the most part suicidal fools. That isn't interesting or challenging in and of itself, it might add adversity (or not) but that is not the same thing as challenge.

Escorts themselves are perhaps overly beneficial to some builds this addon would not aim to address this. You can use the Succor and Easement addon if you wish to make this particular part less random.

Escorts can spawn in pointlessly advantageous or disadvantageous places, this would not directly address this.


The aim of this addon would be to add more diverse personalities and and abilities to the escorts and further, since I do not consider randomness to be challenge, as much decent customization as possible. Variance is not challenge even when you get bad luck, its merely a variance in adversity. Some people enjoy variance especially when it has character rather than is senseless. The current problem with escort as I see it is they are simply a pointless added adversity with little in the way of interesting mechanics, you are burdened with a kamikaze fool who limits your tactics in multiple uniteresting ways. This potential addon would not prevent that from happening, rather it would make simply make it one possibility among many.

Currently in Vanilla you basically get a complete fool who attempts to rush to his death and thinks he needs to hurry even though he does not in anyway need to. Additionally they do certain things which are stupid or questionable, some escorts will shoot you others won't. They also have behaviors such as fleeing when they see things etc.

This addon would not attempt to make escorts less stupid rather it would give a range of stupid to smart of useful to worthless of strong to weak.

There are a few areas of variance that could possibly be adjusted:
1) combat talents
2) bravery; do they flee or do they attack?
3) how stupid they are; do they do dumb things like shoot you
4) teamwork; will they take commands, what commands can you give them?


For example here is an alternate escort type: The Lost Badass. He takes commands to target things or back off 5 steps, always listens to commands and doesn't flee. But he has no idea where the portal is and you can't even ask him, or possibly he tell you the wrong location whenever you ask because he can't admit he's wrong and won't ask for direction (since he's a badass).

So I would like some suggestion (preferably things that have a chance of being implemented, but don't that limit you) as to what kinds of personalities would be interesting for escorts. As a suggestion most interesting escort personalities should have at least one flaw. Also any sort of customization suggestion would be good. For example would this work off a pregenerated list of personailities or be purely random based on some grab bag? Or should these two things be options.

And keep in mind these people need help, so they must have some reason. They are hurt, they are incompetent (seems to be current reason), they are lost etc.

I will start this off with a list off the top of my head:

- The Weak Fool (current escort)
- The Strong Fool aka Leeroy (Similar to current, but better talents and never flees)
- The Professional (good combat talents, always listens, extra tactical commands. He's injured so he's permanently crippled, ie. slowed )
- The Crazy Person (possibly indistinguishable from current escort ); stronger than normal but does inconsistent and sometimes crazy stuff, hurts you/helps you, variable bravery etc. gets all tactical commands but you have no idea if they will do them.
- Lost Badass (see above)
- Obesseed Researcher; won't leave until you kill a certain type of creature that currently exists on the map, but otherwise competent all around. (probably too hard to implement but what the hell)
- Lone survivor of a team; good talents, excellent teamwork, lost in despair(random fears tree conditions)

Some types will be easier or harder than others. This is fine as escorts are currently a crap shoot anyway. Making them not a crap shoot is a different addon and also that is often based on map generation which I don't want to mess with. If the portal spawns in a vault; tough sh**. This addon would simply give you another "axis" for this variance.

[Zireael]

I like the idea!

[Bormoth]

Last type escort wouldn't survive for long: Last two fears would just kill him. And paranoia suits more to insane person. Hmm thinks how paranoya works on you, never was feared this way and had stuff to hit.

[Doctornull]

Some good ideas, I like the overall direction.

- The Weak Fool (current escort)
- The Crazy Person (possibly indistinguishable from current escort ); stronger than normal but does inconsistent and sometimes crazy stuff, hurts you/helps you, variable bravery etc. gets all tactical commands but you have no idea if they will do them.

These seem pointless.

- The Strong Fool aka Leeroy (Similar to current, but better talents and never flees)
- The Professional (good combat talents, always listens, extra tactical commands. He's injured so he's permanently crippled, ie. slowed )
- Lost Badass (see above)
- Obesseed Researcher; won't leave until you kill a certain type of creature that currently exists on the map, but otherwise competent all around. (probably too hard to implement but what the hell)
- Lone survivor of a team; good talents, excellent teamwork, lost in despair(random fears tree conditions)

These, I like.

For the Researcher, give it the Melinda AI, so it stays near you but usually not in the way.

Something else that might be neat, if escorts became more common and/or involved, would be to give more options on buff sharing. Like, if an Archmage could cast Heal or Shield on someone else, or if Spellcraft extended to all allies.

[cctobias]

Some good ideas, I like the overall direction.

- The Weak Fool (current escort)
- The Crazy Person (possibly indistinguishable from current escort ); stronger than normal but does inconsistent and sometimes crazy stuff, hurts you/helps you, variable bravery etc. gets all tactical commands but you have no idea if they will do them.

These seem pointless.

- The Strong Fool aka Leeroy (Similar to current, but better talents and never flees)
- The Professional (good combat talents, always listens, extra tactical commands. He's injured so he's permanently crippled, ie. slowed )
- Lost Badass (see above)
- Obesseed Researcher; won't leave until you kill a certain type of creature that currently exists on the map, but otherwise competent all around. (probably too hard to implement but what the hell)
- Lone survivor of a team; good talents, excellent teamwork, lost in despair(random fears tree conditions)

These, I like.

For the Researcher, give it the Melinda AI, so it stays near you but usually not in the way.

Something else that might be neat, if escorts became more common and/or involved, would be to give more options on buff sharing. Like, if an Archmage could cast Heal or Shield on someone else, or if Spellcraft extended to all allies.

Well first, I agree that the Weak Fool (i.e. current escorts) are useless but I figured I should keep the current as a possibility. In a similar vein the crazy person is not meant to be a "good" option. Its essentially a more random version of the currently bad escorts.

I guess as a customization it might be good to have some categories people could choose from, something like:
1) Balanced guys
2) Include stupidly burdensome guys
3) don't include strong types
4) remove suicidal types

or whatever. It seems that some people are amused by randomly getting a strong guy one time and batshit crazy guy the next. Personally I would disable the batshit crazy guy, but some people like that lack of control or whatever.

Using the melinda AI is an interesting idea.

Making escort more common, especially as a configurable option, is a rather interesting idea assuming we could accomplish the goal of making them actually tactically variable and interesting. The first problem with that I would want to solve is sorting out the rewards. In this case would be very very hesitant to change the basic 9 rewards in anyway. I would also be very hesitant to change the timing in which you get them in any way.

Perhaps it would be possible to run two tracks, the normally generated, but with personality added track. And a second track using essentially the same code with "extra" escorts and some sort of alternate fairly simple reward (like a free random red item). Or possibly not a reward at all. These could be essentially types of hirelings. If they were helpful enough maybe they even ask for a cut of the loot and there is not portal, they leave when you leave the zone. Or randomly any of these. That second hireling options seems more like a different addon, but there is not reason you can't add escorts to more zones as an option. And if they are sufficiently interesting it could be a desireable thing. Especailly if the reward is something like a random item where you don't mind if they die.

[Bormoth]

For now there are few classes strapped from free escort rewards. Cursed,Doomed, and Mindslayer. All other classes have their chance for free generic point present. Cursed and doomed had opportunity to get free point of curses at some time at graveyard. Not anymore.
And I quite liked Idea of getting Cursed aura there for other classes. Not like it is mandatory main quest dungeon, and it was worth risk if you wanted curses before Dreadfall(Though that curse of corpses).

[Nagyhal]

You've played escort quests in MMOs, right?

Usually, you meander through fixed terrain while pre-scripted ambush events are triggered as your escort reaches certain trigger points.

Based on this, I was thinking about creating an addon that adds escort "scenarios", perhaps self-contained mini-levels that interleave others within a zone (i.e. you go Trollmire 1->Escort Zone->Trollmire 2).

Of course this is a roguelike, so the terrain and the content of the ambush events would be procedurally generated.

After implementing something like that, your creativity can be left to run wild (and if the level difficulty is less "spiky", then that leaves you free to play with stronger escort "personalities")...

[Doctornull]

You've played escort quests in MMOs, right?

Usually, you meander through fixed terrain while pre-scripted ambush events are triggered as your escort reaches certain trigger points.

Based on this, I was thinking about creating an addon that adds escort "scenarios", perhaps self-contained mini-levels that interleave others within a zone (i.e. you go Trollmire 1->Escort Zone->Trollmire 2).

I have never played an MMO, but this sounds good to me.

Maybe make them like Damp Caves and have the escort zone entrances appear on the maps as optional side-quests?

[HousePet]

What so we have the spawns set up to actively try to kill the Escortee? I'm not sure that is an improvement.

I just had a thought that we could diversify the quests outside of Escort Duty. No specific thoughts on the task yet, but some classes/talents are better suited to Escort quests, so maybe we should have others.