Escort Frustration Lowering Ideas

[SageAcrin]

While I understand that Escorts shouldn't be a free win-they're bonus resources that you're supposed to be skilled enough to save-many classes simply can't hack through, say, an entire pack of dragons spawning between you and the escort, in Daikara, and don't have a good targettable teleport they can save them with.

It'd be nice to have it so that enemies can't spawn within, say, ten squares of an entrance while you're on an escort quest, but even preventing enemies from spawning one square around the entrance would help quite a bit in Daikara, where this happens the most thanks to the very narrow, winding passageways at the entrances.

I know this is a fairly controversial subject-many people are bothered by losing Escorts at all and think they should be fairly guaranteed, while I'm personally fine with losing some. But there may be some areas of extreme frustration that would make it more of a skill endeavor, and less of a randomization issue. If there's any other ideas along those lines, it seems like centralizing them in one spot would be a good idea.

[edge2054]

Someone mentioned in IRC making the current escorts nobles instead of player classes.

Here's my thoughts on that.

Use the current model of escort quests with the save the noble idea. Change the reward to a charm.

Move the current escorts over to helper quests. Give them a shielding or regen inscription as appropriate to improve their survivability. When you encounter a helper quest the game will also spawn a random elite on the level that's the target of the quest. Helping the adventurer kill the random elite completes the quest.

This would give us more randomness in each zone (effectively doubling the number of escort quests without changing the reward structure much).

[Whitemend]

Another idea would be giving them some sort of AI that goes "Hey, I'm dying. Horribly. I should retreat instead of punching this Mountain Troll Thunderer!"

[stinkstink]

Or, better yet, gutting escorts entirely and replacing them with something more enjoyable, like a nice hard crash to desktop.

[omni]

As much as I may regret saying this...

Remove their talent granting, please.

Whilst rescuing them is well and dandy and good when it's possible, I find the absolute most frustrating thing is when at the beginning of the game I arbitrarily decide "Ok, I'm getting providence and investing in imbue" or whatever, based solely off escort trees, and abandon characters until I get what I want and achieve it.

I like random quests, that's awesome. Escorts rewards though are too min/max 'ish, though that may be my problem. I have a feeling I'm not the only one that just gets frustrated when they don't find that Anorithil, or alchemist, or that mindslayer that doesn't get their chance for mindstar mastery despite deciding arbitrarily "that's what I'm going to do."

[ohioastro]

I'd reallly like an option to balance out the places where they show up. Right now you're basically playing the RNG to get "good" artifacts in the early dungeons and lucky spots for escorts. All other things being equal, you have large edge in getting to the East (and surviving) based on completely random factors:

1) Did I get escorts in places where they can live, and were they useful?
2) Did the early major bosses (or random drops) give me a few key useful pieces of gear?

I'd like to see one escort guaranteed per dungeon where they can show up, including the tougher spots; and no escorts on the final level of any dungeon. This at least removes both of the undesirable tails of the random distribution (lots of easy ones, or few doable ones.)

[donkatsu]

Escort updates in SVN:
Escorts will flee foes instead of attacking them
Anorithil escorts do not provide Providence but Healing Light (you can still learn the tree if you need providence)
Alchemist escorts do not provide Imbue Item (you can still learn the tree if you need imbue item)

All major steps in the right direction. That said, I think the other incredibly amazing escort is your first Seer, which gives you 0.7 Premonition. For all non-mana classes, this is basically a free 10% or so resist all except physical. It's a bit more finnicky than that but whatever. It's still insane. I think a solution to this would be to, rather than remove or replace Premonition, just lower its base amount and have it scale better. It scales kinda bad right now, with most talent points invested granting an additional 1%, maybe 2% per point. That way the first Seer isn't so mindbogglingly good, while Premonition itself will still be good for the classes that have it natively.

[SageAcrin]

Alternatively, just make it Keen Senses. (Not that changing up Premonition's scaling is a bad idea, don't get me wrong.)

It's a perfectly good skill that provides advantages to every class without being strongly dominate for anyone. Raising the baseline of the See Invis/Stealth might be good, though.

The only real downsides are that, between Healing Light and Keen Senses, fighters would have gotten notably worse options for escorts. Then again, AM fighters just got their new set of goodies, and Fighter/Mages are still fine, so it's only non-AM fighters that would really suffer.

The other issue is that it's a lot like Piercing Sight.

[ohioastro]

I fail to see why "removing all good rewards from escorts" is a positive step.
Edit: Status effects in this game are a real nuisance, and removing one of the pathways to being able to deal with them is not a positive step. This basically forces some builds into needing to find (and wear) specific items, like the status removing light source.

You can't benefit from the tree if you need to pump a stat that you're not using high enough to be able to tap a 4th level talent either.

[edge2054]

As much as I may regret saying this...

Remove their talent granting, please.

Whilst rescuing them is well and dandy and good when it's possible, I find the absolute most frustrating thing is when at the beginning of the game I arbitrarily decide "Ok, I'm getting providence and investing in imbue" or whatever, based solely off escort trees, and abandon characters until I get what I want and achieve it.

I like random quests, that's awesome. Escorts rewards though are too min/max 'ish, though that may be my problem. I have a feeling I'm not the only one that just gets frustrated when they don't find that Anorithil, or alchemist, or that mindslayer that doesn't get their chance for mindstar mastery despite deciding arbitrarily "that's what I'm going to do."

Because omni is right. If some of the rewards are so good that players feel they need to scum for them than they're too good. Escort rewards are meant to be a nice addition to the game and not something people should feel robbed of when they miss out on them.

Escort success rate is meant to be low. You're not supposed to save them all. Darkgod has the rescue statistics and they're about 60% a number that he's happy with but the player base isn't. That means players are putting to much stock in escort rewards which means they're too good.

So yes, removing some of the better rewards will help to fix the problem. If players can't get by without Providence that's another issue that needs to be addressed in a way that's not so reliant on randomness.

[SageAcrin]

Yeah, it makes people less concerned about them.

It *is* one way to attack the issue, psychologically. I'm not entirely sure I agree with it, but I suppose something needs to be done if people are this annoyed about it, and I think DarkGod wants it to be a specific kind of challenging, not-always-cleared subquest. This limits the options for how to change it.

If people feel like they need a specific reward out of a small subset, that they can't even always get, to clear the entire game, something needs to be done about that. And one way to do so is in fact to just remove it and see if there's any actual reason to assume that. And, if that's actually so, people probably ought to try to make good arguments for replacements of the skill before b41, if they're worried.

The only thing I'm worried about right now is Ghouls, which have relatively few status cure options. Ghoul mages can just take the category to fairly strong effect, but Ghoul fighters pay a hefty cost for...mostly just Providence, to do that. There's Clear Mind Torques and they do resist Stun, but it's still very limited. Skeletons get a fairly strong status duration reduction, which generally can serve with careful play up until you get Relentless Pursuit(Which, thanks to the same skill, usually fully cures status, from my recollection), but Ghouls have some problems.

[edge2054]

On that point I mentioned adding torques, wands, and totems to shops. So players would have an easier time filling in the holes.

Rune shops could sell wands (or do staff shops still do this?)

The gem shop could sell torques and infusion shops could sell totems.

[ohioastro]

I agree with the randomness critique. However, in some cases it can
be true that players have identified a frustrating problem with the game.
You can just as easily make things available (but less random) as remove them.

There is precedent; there are some important fixed artifacts that a lot of builds rely on too.
I think the status problem will be tough to fix. Rather than removing rewards perceived as nice,
I'd look at making the relevant escort normalized and placed early in the experience (second dungeon.)

[omni]

If you'd like to do charms as the reward, that's well and great (and probably thematically appropiate).

So far the tool slot appears to be pretty competitive. I like that, it's a tactical pre-choice.

Meanwhile the things that charms do mimic a lot of the utility you get from some of the most highly sought after rewards.

I'd urge you to consider having them offer a choice of charms to choose from though. Also, that idea is going to have some potential conflict with Antimagic and its reward structure from escorts. Frankly I'd let them continue betraying escorts and throw the talent granting onto a 'trainer' in Zigur that they earn 'prestige' at who'll train them in whatever based off of how many they capture for Zigur.

Puts a more bloodthirsty spin on Zigur (imo thematically appropiate and needed), strengthens AM's position (arguable whether that's neccesary now), reduces randomness offering more dice to choose from for the rescuers, and a lot more exciting for the warrior that gets offered the conjure bolt charm.

Charms may need to be looked at a tiny bit overall though (bloat mainly, perhaps some balance), but that's an object of another discussion.

[Ed:] Actually throwing in some kind of bonus for how *many* escorts gotten could be nice. Otherwise you run the issue of 'ok, got my perfect charm, screw you escorts.'

[Grey]

There is precedent; there are some important fixed artifacts that a lot of builds rely on too.

A bad precedent. That's something that needs to be fixed in the game, most likely by nerfing the appropriate artifacts and giving more options to deal with the related statuses (or reducing the risk from them).

The problem with both escorts and these artifacts is that people are planning to have them at the start of the game to build their character, but it's silly to build your character around something you may not get. The way to fix this is to make the rewards less predictable. Making a charm as the escort reward would be perfect.