We Need To Have A Serious Talk About Rescue Missions.

[TinyLesbianRobot]

Personally, I quite enjoy Rescue type missions.  I like trying to find the prisoner in the cell block, and I like the idea of adding an extra party member that needs protection.  But from where I'm standing, one of two things needs to happen: either it needs to be impossible for Rescue missions to spawn secondary objectives, or the hostage NPC needs to get a LOT less useless.

Honestly, I'd be okay lugging the hostage through the ship as I hunt down the reactor core or fetch datamass units, if they could actually keep up.  As it stands, the hostage is slow, defenseless, gets confused in certain tilesets and gets hung up on every single object in the game world at every available opportunity, and at least ONE of these needs to change, on top of the last one, which just needs to get fixed no matter what.  

If the hostage could move as fast as the Tenno and stick with the group, I wouldn't mind them being low on shields/health and defenseless.  If the hostage could fend for theirself (using that gun they're carrying, for instance) then it wouldn't be so catastrophic if the hostage gets hung up and the Tenno don't notice in the heat of battle.  And finally, if the hostage wasn't so prone to getting stuck on terrain and running in circles perpetually, then the Tenno wouldn't have to check their map every five seconds to make sure their $&*&*#(%& third wheel isn't eating glue in the corner again.

As it stands, the hostage isn't just a liability.  If they were a liability, that would be okay.  The hostage is much, much more than that - they're an impairment.  And if it's just a matter of escorting them from the cell block to extraction, that wouldn't be a problem - but babysitting the stupid S#&$ through what may as well be an entire other mission tacked onto the end of the Rescue one is a major problem on higher difficulties, where letting the hostage out of your sight for five seconds can lead to mission failure.  Even that wouldn't be such a big deal if you didn't lose all your loot when the mission is failed.

So DE, please, PLEASE do something about the hostage.  Increase their running speed.  Let them use that gun of theirs.  Figure out a way to keep them from derping out and getting stuck.  If even one of these things was fixed, it would be fine, but as it stands, surviving a high-level Rescue mission with a secondary objective is about luck, not skill.

Thanks for your time.  If you have anything you'd like to add, leave a comment.

[AndryB94]

I'm throwing +1s at your thread but I can't add more than one.

[Rydian]

Last I checked (so unless they changed it recently), the hostage doesn't need to physically make it to extraction.  They just need to be alive when the players get extracted.  So leaving them behind (accidentally or on purpose, say with an elevator) is fine.

[AndryB94]

Last I checked (so unless they changed it recently), the hostage doesn't need to physically make it to extraction.  They just need to be alive when the players get extracted.  So leaving them behind (accidentally or on purpose, say with an elevator) is fine.

That could, however, get them killed. Somehow.

[TinyLesbianRobot]

Last I checked (so unless they changed it recently), the hostage doesn't need to physically make it to extraction.  They just need to be alive when the players get extracted.  So leaving them behind (accidentally or on purpose, say with an elevator) is fine.

This often gets them killed, as enemies spawn in rooms behind the Tenno, particularly on higher difficulties.  As it stands, if the hostage gets pemenantly stuck, your only option is to pray nobody spawns in the same room or one nearby.

[Inberun]

There is a bug that allows you to leave the hostage inside his/her cell.

[AndryB94]

There is a bug that allows you to leave the hostage inside his/her cell.

I confirm.

In some rare cases, you will "find" the hostage when you haven't unlocked his cell yet. So, technically, you could simply have him stay there. GG.

[MJ12]

You should be able to heal downed hostages. Also, some hostages should be 'renegade' Corpus/Grineer (who thus have guns, shields, armor, and more, but get more attention) or even Tenno (the Stalker shows that you can have Warframe-like AI). As a bonus, having rescuable Tenno lets players preview other Warframes in action.

 

Imagine a rescue mission where you end up "rescuing" a lv45 Rhino who then proceeds to bull-rush the entire level and practically escort you. It'd be an awesome change of pace.

[Inberun]

You should be able to heal downed hostages. Also, some hostages should be 'renegade' Corpus/Grineer (who thus have guns, shields, armor, and more, but get more attention) or even Tenno (the Stalker shows that you can have Warframe-like AI). As a bonus, having rescuable Tenno lets players preview other Warframes in action.

 

Imagine a rescue mission where you end up "rescuing" a lv45 Rhino who then proceeds to bull-rush the entire level and practically escort you. It'd be an awesome change of pace.

Rescuing a Frame would need a different map. But I like the idea. Something like a laboratory where the Frame is chained and stuff.

[MJ12]

Rescuing a Frame would need a different map. But I like the idea. Something like a laboratory where the Frame is chained and stuff.

 

Well more important is the idea of healing downed hostages. Honestly I always wondered why you couldn't do that. The code's in the game (if you use a Revive just as the hostage dies but before the mission failed screen shows up, you can revive the hostage) and it'd provide a buffer against frustration, especially if you were told when the hostage went down.

[Tulzscha]

I always play my maxed-out Loki in high level rescue missions. If the bug shows up that the hostage can be left behind in his cell, hooray! If not, I usually look for some absurdly near-inaccessible spot on the map, wallrun/switch teleport my way there, and then switch teleport the brain dead hostage there.

 

Voila, I can now leave him there to rot while I go about my business of killing everything and going to extraction.

[rksk16it]

You can also leave hostage in elevator rooms, just rush into elevator and pull the switch. Although enemies can spawn in that room in theory, I never had my hostage got killed when I left him at elevator.

[Tulzscha]

Whoa, brilliant. Will give that a try sometime.

[TheHeraldXII]

Well more important is the idea of healing downed hostages. Honestly I always wondered why you couldn't do that.

I've revived hostages on more than one occasion so either this already is a feature or I am just the luckiest abuser of bugs.

 

Edit: No, seriously guys, you can revive the hostage, I just went and did exactly that on my last mission.

Edited May 13, 2013 by TheHeraldXII

[Slaskia]

Escort missions is my most hated mission/quest type of any MMO, because the NPC you escort is almost always an idiot, especially if they can attack enemies (so please, don't let the hostage be able to attack!).  Not that long ago, I did rescue mission with a couple of clan mates and the little pest got stuck, really stuck, so stuck you couldn't move him (and we didn't have a mag or loki).  We also had the misfortune to end up having to collect datamasses after rescuing him, so I stayed behind to ensure no mobs spawned behind us.  Good thing I did, because after the datamasses were collected, we had to go back through the room the NPC was stuck in.  Yeah, not fun.

 

It wouldn't be so annoying if the NPC wasn't killable.  Hell, I wished they hadn't made it killable until all the bugs in the AI were worked out first: I hope they don't fix the 'found but didn't 'find'' bug until those bugs are fixed.....

[Minnow23]

Last I checked (so unless they changed it recently), the hostage doesn't need to physically make it to extraction.  They just need to be alive when the players get extracted.  So leaving them behind (accidentally or on purpose, say with an elevator) is fine.

 

You can do this, but doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? I want to finish the mission the right way, not exploit a bug.

[CookieStorm]

Leaving them at an elevator is a possibility, but I have had a hostage get killed once when I tried that.  It doesn't matter though because if a mission has so many problems that the best way to complete it is to exploit bugs then there is something horribly wrong.  I just hope that DE fixes the underlying problems with escort missions before they fix the bugs we use to be able to actually complete them.

 

I really like the idea of being able to revive hostages.

[TinyLesbianRobot]

You can do this, but doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? I want to finish the mission the right way, not exploit a bug.

I agree.  If you need to exploit a bug to reliably make it through a mission, then something is wrong.

[Llyssa]

Personally, I'd say give us an item at the start to take with us for the hostage. A "life preserver" of sorts. You don't *have* to take it, but you can if you want to.

 

We rescue them, toss them the "life preserver", and it gives them some shielding and regen... perhaps have an expensive upgrade that even gives them ghost--a disposable shade sentinel, basically.

 

This would keep them from attracting fire by shooting, and make it okay if they "derp up" their pathing, without them becoming over-powered. They'd still need protection, and they'd still be a liability, but they wouldn't be quite so squishy.

[finalgenesis]

If I can suck enemy VIP into my suit and spit him back out for interrogation later, why can't I do the same with the prisoner?

 

But yes, the prisoner path finding and frequency in getting stuck is rage inducing. I can't count how many times he/she derped on me and start humping a wall in some corner non-stop.

[Mak_Gohae]

Escort missions always revolve around keeping enemies away from a slooooooow moving target and i dont think that will change since that just throws off the difficulty and can be easily exploitable.

 

The only thing they need to do is to slightly fix the places where he gets stuck. And that is usually a problem because the prisoner is following some one that is way too far ahead and as it tries to get to him by taking a shorter path it ends up getting caught on something and the AI doesnt reset the path he is taking.

[Worira]

Escort missions have also always revolved around being terrible. Ideally, this game should be not-terrible.

[Neuhnee]

I don't know how escort missions keep getting put into games. The timed run tests your ability to eliminate/avoid threat. The endurance run tests your ability to manage resources. The escort mission tests your ability to not snap your keyboard in half, throw your mouse through a window, and combine swear words in new and inventive ways while beaming pure rage into the soul of the developer who put this pine-cone in your salad and hoping they they get cancer.

 

And there's no solution to this problem. Make the NPC faster, you've got an ice cream run. Give them a gun and at worse they aggro everything on the map while constantly moving in front of you blocking your lvl 5k shot so they can paint a smiley face on the baddie's armour with their spit wads, or at best they become a barney who refuses to get on the elevator with you b/c there's an enemy puppy asleep under a desk three rooms away that has aggroed *them*.

 

In all my years of gaming there have been exactly two escort missions that didn't make me want to punch a baby. The first was in Requiem: Avenging Angel (google it kids) where the person you're meant to rescue "get's on you back" piggy-back style and for all intents and purposes disappears. The second was BioShock Infinite, and that was b/c princess Bell was invulnerable and got the hell out of the way when the bullets started flying. So basically the only good escort mission is one that's not actually an escort at all.