Feedback Escort missions need to be reevaluated...

The current escort mission in the game are in need of heavy consideration. There is just so much wrong with them.

Point #1
The first thing is that the chance of getting them from NPC's seems to be a lot higher than most other quest. I can walk into a village on any of the 12 planets I've decided to go to at random and of those at least 9 are populated, and of those 9, at least 70% of the populace have a friend or someone that's gone missing. The sheer level of incompetence there has to be to have an entire village-worth of people go missing and no one has sent out a search party or makes any effort to do so is something to be questioned with vigorous shaming and finger-pointing.

Point #2
The second thing is that more than 60% of the total 23 escort missions i've done in the last 5 hours (they are really that frequent), have had the escort put at some place that is halfway around the planet. Sometimes its not so bad, because some planets are small, but most of the planets are large and it takes way too long to get there. Then you have to acquire the person (usually going through a hostile temple or something). Then you have to get them out of said area, which is usually covered in traps. And -here comes the fun part- the traps don't hurt the enemies, but they hurt both you and the escort. Meaning you can't just jump the traps and expect them to follow your mad parkour skillz. No. They jump as good an infant does over a tub of boiling hot water at the circus. So you have to disable traps by destroying them. All of them. And even then, there's the randomly generated danger of monsters outside of the area that you have to fight off all the way back to the quest giver. Which brings me to my final point.

Point #3
The AI for escorts is some of THEE worst i've seen. Now to be frank, the AI for companions in general needs some improvement, but the escort's AI is particularly lacking in the mental facilities. They cannot defend themselves which means that you are their shield and sword in the face of ultimate danger. But it's hard to be someone's sword/shield when they throw themselves at the enemy without regard for personal safety. The AI will always get caught in the crossfire since a majority of the mobs charge you thereby also charging the eescort. Other times, the escorts try to walk ahead of you and end up aggro'ing mobs; iincreasing the danger in their haste. The rest is just you being flanked by multiple mobs at once, regardless of you running into them headlong (even if you're a walking arsenal) or just happening upon them. Eventually they end up dead, and then you get that smug message about how maybe they'll end up in a safer place next time, like you're some sort of idiot for not being able to protect them from their own clumsiness and nature. It's even worst when you note that you're also trying to keep yourself alive along with them, and if you're like me you play on survival and are worried that not only will they die but you'll die and drop all your things(i have no problem with that, just I don't want to lose my stuff and then have to trek an entire half a planet to get them and be reminded that I'm making this walk because i failed to guard some idiot who still died.

These missions are a hassle and they take time and effort that would be understandable if the rewards were either less random or overall better worth their repeated existence. That's not to say that you can't get anything useful from them(the loot is random so you might get lucky), but that's not a consistent enough case to make.

Suggestions:

My suggestion is that the quest type is removed, and reviewed for further evaluation. As they stand now, the missions present a challenge that is less challenege and more choir. and not the fun kind of "choir" like cleaning grandma's living room for that cheap candy she bought from the corner store up the street(oh, how I miss my youth). I recommend reviewing escort missions in other games and seeing their pros and cons there. One game I can think of is Warframes. In that game, escorts are defenseless and the mobs in that game are designed to swarm you, but the player is well equiped with powers and wepons to deal with that. The escort can be given your side-arms to protect themselves until you reach the exit, making your offense a bit more bearable. Mot only that but they don't die though I feel that's because the player is killable and without the player the mission ends.

Nevertheless escort's can be downed rather than killed outright. something like having them lose a sort of life from the first downing, and after that, they die. that way, the player feels like the game gave them a chance to keep the escort alive even when faced with heavy opposition. adding to that, having the escort down could result in a loss of credit from the reward. or possibly the player could use their own medical supplies to revive the the escort costing them resources in return for keeping the escort safe. Overall there are plenty of ways to go about this, but as it is now, I cannot approve of the escort quests.

tl;dr please read it. I know it's a lot but i'm making some valid points.

 

the TL;DR here can be; Starbound's escort missions, YMMV'

What you describe is certainly not akin to anything I have experienced. I feel like all my wards have been pathing rather intelligently (albeit, excruciating in their enthusiasm) and can take quite a beating (although, largely unable to return it). I get escort missions more seldom than others and they all often want to go to the same prescribed landmarks relatively nearby. Considering that all these quests are procedually generated, it is certainly conceivable that a player might simply get a giant crap stack handed to them but, it is not to imply that EVERYONE will or has.

Although really, there is no fix for escort mission (any of them in any game, ever)--escort missions in general exist right up there with crates, giant spiders and sewers as far as things that are terribly over-done 'BECAUSE VIDYA GAMES'--that can be put to rest, forever.

 

escort missions in all games EVER sucked because AI was always derp beyond belief.

I remember just Skyrim where I took that temple guy with me as he wanted to go somewhere and he really thought he could deal with a dragon, at least he had a knife.

what wonders me in Sb is sometimes the characters following you take damage from environment, sometimes not.

generally missiosn lack variety, you meet too many of the same at the same time.

 

Until anything is changed (if it ever will), just spawn your trusty hoverbike, and dash from where you found those incompetent fools back to the village. They will teleport to keep up with you in quick enough succession that anything that manages to actually hurt them must have reflexes on the level of professional CS player.

On another topic, it would be nice if they could actually get inside that hoverbike with you, however they apparently have not yet evolved such advanced motor functions.

 

Alternatively (patience provided), you could simply clear a planet of the more pressing hazards before taking on any potential escort missions. I mean it was probably going to take several trips to clear that dungeon of loot anyways. But yeah, really exceptional NPC scripting is usually not worth the results it provides as players are always going to see it as 'dumb' behavior simply because it is out of their agency. It's often more effective (and a lot easier) just to give em really fat health bars or simply make them indestructible.

 

I know that quest, it's best to have that grove discovered for fast travel so you can get him there instantly with no hassle.

 

I just run as fast as I can to the quest giver. The escortee will just teleport to me if I go to far. Heck, one time I beamed up to my ship and back down and the quest still completed.

 

I also just tried to do a escort mission and I got cancer from it in real life ..

 

Agreed. The AI for escorts is absolutely retarded. Whenever escorts are being attacked they just stand there and soak up all the damage like there's no tomorrow. Sometimes they would also run into lava and they don't even try to get out of there.


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You kind of explained it yourself, right? They are just not that smart.

Yes, these missions get annoying really fast. I even considering building an underground tunnel to easily walk the distance, but them I decided to just ignore the quest givers.

I didn't read all the dev post about it, but it seems they will improve it.

 

It almost feels as if they WANTED to die. The most ridiculous thing is that they only move out of the traps when you move away, as if staying at a specific distance of their rescuer was more important than their own lives.

 

I have to question who at CF thought implementing escort quests at all was a good idea.

 

While the AI for NPCs does indeed need to be improved I think that escort quests should be worth significantly more favor, too. Saving the life of someone's best friend really should count for more than giving them 1 corn and 1 carrot.

 

In reply to all of the negative things that were said about the escort missions, you forgot about one thing. When you make a village, or in my case: a hotel for tenants to move into and live in, there is a chance you get the quest. Although I don't exactly know how their "friend" got lost somewhere that I just founded, I found out that when you rescue them the people stay in the village with the other tenants.
They don't ask permission. They don't pay (which I don't mind because I don't need MORE Pearlpea seeds). Most importantly, THEY DON'T LEAVE. My hotel is barely big enough to have one room for each of the 8 tenants, but now there's 11. Some of them are ugly too! Also, I might want to get rid of the friend but not the tenant. HALP!

 

What I do is I just plop a flag in the town I'm doing quests in and teleport to the ship, then back to the town after I "save" the person. The AI is dumb for the whole escort mission; because I don't even have to bring them back as long as I just talk to the quest giver after talking to the "escort."

 

i seriously hate this, i made a little farm and i decided to put 1 tenant to live there just because i wanted a new crew member, at the end of the day i had 5 OF HIS FRIENDS running around repeating the same text line and acting retarded to the monsters, i decided to remove the thing that gives you tenants (forgot the name sorry) and they didnt leave, its horrible

 

Yeah, I do this all the time. I like to think they've "decided" to colonize whatever dungeon ive saved them from.

 

But wait, there's more! The quest NPCs can also give quests, so they can also give Escort quests. At least, you can also recruit them.

 

If I could simply tell my escortees where to stand relative to me, or, in the case of my crew, what sort of formation they should attempt to keep (preferably in a general crew menu, which would get rid of the "crew spreading out makes things unclickable" problem), I'd be pretty darn happy. And of course, simply staying out of hazardous liquids in general is something the AI needs to learn. Heck, given what point I'm usually at when I'm doing quests, I might as well have the option to loan them an extra set of armor. Let's see those random mobs try to kill slow-to-teleport escortees now that they're wearing full Perfect Sets.

 

This is the best way to do it. walking the planet many times just takes to long.