ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

so I got this here idea:
what if every escort had a "personality" that affected their behavior, and in some cases comes with in-combat dialogue for the escorts?

some examples:
[type 1]: the current escort behavior
[type 2]: is extremely overconfident, and will go out of the way to personally fight every enemy that he or she sees until all enemies that got onto the escort's aggro table are dead; will not step onto the portal on purpose until all aggroed enemies are dead, and will, instead of waiting, call you a coward if you ask him or her to wait(even though he or she wanted help)... comes with in-combat dialogue; will otherwise act like a normal escort
[type 3]: immediately makes a mad dash for the portal, attempting to run around all enemies, and disregarding any and all danger; will not wait if you ask him or her to do so... comes with in-combat dialogue
[type 4]: unusually timid; will constantly hesitate to move, and will run away very quickly if an enemy is spotted to the last known safe location... this escort will only wait if asked to WHILE there are no enemies in sight of the escort, and this escort will cry for help more often than usual
[type 5]: stays as close to you as possible until the portal is in sight, but will wait if asked to; this escort is very scared, but trusts you to keep him or her safe
[type 6]: the current escort behavior, except that this escort almost constantly blabs on about stuff that you could REALLY care less about(especially when the escort is told to wait) if there are no enemies in the escort's line of sight; might say something relevant to the zone that you're in(one "line" of zone-specific dialogue per zone, don't stop the escort form repeating him or herself)and make sure that none of the dialogue has anything to do with identify politics, not even the in-game kind
[type 7]: the current escort behavior, except that this escort forgot where the portal is and will expect you to follow him or her; don't be surprised if this escort explores 80% or more of the map before finding the portal, as this escort will randomly wander the map until the portal is discovered(by the escort), then the escort uses the normal escort behavior after the escort finds the portal
[type 8]: see the third reply to this thread
[type 9]: same escort as usual, except that this escort has more and different talents, and can and will actually put up a fight on normal difficulty; this escort asks for help because his or her friends died
[type 10]: this escort has a rod of recall and used it few turns ago; all you have to do is make sure that the escort survives until the teleports away(and accept the quest), then you get the reward; for whichever reason, you can make him or her teleport to zigur instead as the antimagic option

also something else: if you decline an escort quest, the escort will not despawn, and will still attempt to find the portal; if the escort makes it there alive, you will not get a reward, and helping or killing the escort or letting the escort get killed will not count towards any achievements

I like.

How about an escort that betrays you instead? To orcs, vampires, Zigur patrols, genetically engineered humans, alien robot werewolf strippers, whatever F you #southpark

pizdabol wrote:I like.

How about an escort that betrays you instead? To orcs, vampires, Zigur patrols, genetically engineered humans, alien robot werewolf strippers, whatever F you #southpark

12 btw haHAA

anyways to OP, I personally dislike it, as to me escorts are annoying enough as it is. While I don't think escorts are in a terribly difficulty or really easy, there's no need to slap double rng on top of them (getting the escort you want and getting a personality that doesn't - you over).

pizdabol wrote:I like.

How about an escort that betrays you instead? To orcs, vampires, Zigur patrols, genetically engineered humans, alien robot werewolf strippers, whatever F you #southpark

perhaps if you and the escort survive, the escort will teach you something if you let the escort live and it isn't the antimagic option... then you could have an option to kill the escort after getting the reward if you don't pick the antimagic option
as so:
at the start of the zone:
a: take the escort to the portal
b: take the escort to the portal, antimagic option(if available)
c: decline the quest

if a, there'd be an ambush waiting for you around the portal, whether the escort makes it there alive or not; after defeating the ambush without killing the escort, the escort says that he or she will teach you something if you let the escort live(with an option to kill the escort without a reward)
after picking the reward, you get to pick
a: let the him or her go
b: kill him or her anyway

if b, there'd be an ambush waiting for you around the portal, whether the escort makes it there alive or not; after defeating the ambush without killing the escort, the escort says that he or she will teach you something if you let the escort live... but you don't get to pick a reward; you instead sabotage the portal and push the escort onto the portal, granting you the antimagic rewards

if c, there'd be an ambush waiting for you around the portal, whether the escort makes it there alive or not, and you will receive no reward if the escort is alive after the ambush, but the escort will still ask for mercy without offering a reward for his or her life

for a, b, and c, when you are ambushed, there will be an option to give them all of your money in exchange for their mercy(which prevents you from getting the escort reward), but if you only have (clvl*15)g or less, the option will turn into something like "I don't have that much gold..."

now to think of another "good" escort and another "neutral" escort...

I have considered making a Wilder Escort who has a 50% chance of being a Zigur ambush when you get them to the portal (if you have arcane abilities). You obviously kill them and it doesn't actually count towards the number of escorts you get.
The other half of the time they would thank you for helping them and note that you were more merciful that they would have been, and maybe they need to think about this.

Overall though, people seem to want Escorts to be guaranteed rewards and don't seem to like their random nature. :/

I think Housepet just nailed the 'guaranteed rewards' bit on the head. While Escorts are annoying in how they work right now, making them even more random is probably going to annoy players -

Likely these ideas could only work if that rewards they give are removed - but then no one would likely care about escorts so why bother.

Dang, RNG is one of the reasons I love this game so much. If anything, you guys should make it so that it's biased towards F-ing you over more often ! Why, it feels so good to feel so sad.

Cool idea, should be a part of a free patch accompanying an expansion that finally takes us to the place escorts are headed to, because it's certainly not Maj'eyal anymore seeing how Aeryn reacts and that they are nowhere to be found after being escorted.

I hope they are okay tho and not kidnapped by the poetic space spiders bunch that tinkers with wormholes or something.