Rescue missions need to be reworked to actually require protecting/escorting the hostage.

[The-Song]

Every rescue mission I do, everybody just takes off like they're on fire and the only way to put it out is special water only available at extraction.
They speed across the entire map, leaving the hostage in the dust, getting to extraction asap.

If you're doing a rescue mission, and you do that, you should FAIL.

Problem one: The hostage should not teleport across the map to stay with the players like pets do.

I understand this was done to prevent them getting stuck but it was taken way to far. Just provide a way to move the hostage a couple feet just like the /unstuck command moves players.
Whether the player stays with them or takes off, the hostage should actually have to physically travel all the way from the cell to extraction. If the players take off without the hostage, the hostage should be left behind, trying to catch up on foot not with teleportation, and get killed since the players aren't defending it.

Problem two: With the first issue being fixed and the hostage not teleporting around: The goal of a rescue mission is to extract the hostage, not yourself.

If they players are at extraction and the hostage isn't there yet, nothing should happen. They should not extract until the hostage actually makes it there, on foot, without teleporting.

Also, with this needed change, the hostage should be programmed not to attack unless the player has already been caught, to allow for a stealthy escape. Perhaps it already is coded that way, and I just don't know because everyone just sprints away setting off every alarm anyway.

Edit/Addition: I am aware that people dislike escort missions, even if I don't fully get why (don't you want to feel like a protector at least some of the time?).

However, same as how people who don't like defection don't do defection, people who don't like the fixed rescue missions wont do those either. Ergo fixing them doesn't have a negative impact on anyone, no matter how much they dislike escort missions.

Some people hate and never do spy missions. Would you say Spy missions should stop being spy missions and just be sabotage missions with flavor text of "we stole data" just to make those players happy?

No, of course you wouldn't , or at least I hope you wouldn't.

I am using that same logic for spy missions and applying it to rescue missions.

Before anyone says it, the fact you have to do each mission once to clear the node A) applies to all missions, so you can't make it a complaint with one type, and B) is only once so it's really not an issue anyway.

Edited March 12, 2018 by The-Song

[motorfirebox]

Counterpoint: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. You're talking about bringing back everything that everyone HATES about escort missions. Escort missions would go back to being a cross between mind-numbingly dull and hair-tearingly frustrating, instead of their current state of being only slightly dull and frustrating.

[Giantconch]

Yes, definitely! Lets make rescue missions as tedious as the babysitting hell that is defection! That will surely make it better somehow!

 

/s

[Fishyflakes]

I agree that would be nice if the mission was cool and actually required some escort shenanigans.

But it would prevent me from getting my dang Fissure rewards faster as well.

[xBelgabor]

Considering how mind-numbingly dumb and suicidal the AI usually is, hell no XD

[Raspberry]

AI fix needs to come first. BADLY. Rescue hostages in a Kuva Flood will willingly walk up to Kuva Guardians unarmed and try to say hi. Even outside of a Flood, they'll make no attempt to avoid their Wardens.

Maybe once AI is smarter, OP's suggestion might be taken more seriously. Also, rewards would need an upgrade to make up for the lengthened mission time.

[Siilk]

I really hate how extraction is actually "find the hostage and then cheese out to extraction". Yeah, babysitting AI might seem like a chore but at least that makes sense(and hostage AI is not that bad actually). So what can be done here? Firstly, let me be clear that I will ignore the "babysitting is a chore so to hell with it, keep the cheese" arguments, simply because I think that keeping two broken mechanics(bugging-out AI and teleporting hostage extraction cheese) to negate each other is a bad game design. It should either be a proper escort mission or, if that is impossible to do right or lead to unpleasant gameplay, something that does not involve extracting the hostage at all.

My personal preference is with the former, I really do think that with a combination of a buffed hostage health, improved AI and removed hostage teleportation it can create a challenging yet satisfying gameplay. Hostage health should probably scale with enemy(or avg tenno) level to avoid them being one-shotted all the time but otherwise I see no reasons for this approach not to work.

However, with lost of variables to account for(randomized map, enemy level, mission mutators, AI bugs etc), this approach might end up being unbearably tedious or way too hard for what it is supposed to be. In this case, I suggest removing the hostage escort from rescue missions entirely, replacing it with regular extraction after hostage is freed. For immersion reasons, hostage can either escape on his own into an air vent or something(effectively disappearing from the map, leaving tenno free to extract at their own pace), get "pocketed" by a tenno(same way capture targets are -- cruel but probably better than rotting in grineer prison) or be teleported away, at which point mission will work as a mini mobile defence with defence target being hostage themselves. Yet another option, albeit the more complex one, is to let the hostage board a transport of some kind and make extraction play like a hijack mission, with tenno guarding an advancing transport.

[Eirshy]

Meanwhile there's people like me who Limbo it and just make the hostage invulnerable...

Checkmate, material plane.
 

As for blitzing through without stashing the hostage in the rift.... I've seen that fail so often it's not funny.
Point is, even if you try to make it "harder" by making people crawl to the exit, you'll at best just make the mission slower rather than harder for vets, and at worst you'll make the cheese strats us vets have access to mandatory depending on sortie mutators.

 

EDIT: As for why people hate escort missions, it's because they're generally really slow and really frustrating because the AI is almost always suicidal.
And as for the hostages not shooting if the alarms haven't gone off, they have no weapons unless you give them weapons, and you can take said weapons away again.

EDIT 2: Oh and it's not a problem with unlocking nodes, it's a problem with sorties. There's already two sorties I don't bother with ever (Defection anything, Mutant Salad assassinate) and one I only sometimes bother with (Corpus/Grineer Energy Red Spy). I don't wanna add "Rescue" to the sometimes list as that's actually common.

Edited March 13, 2018 by TheBlueJelly

[motorfirebox]

21 hours ago, Siilk said:

My personal preference is with the former, I really do think that with a combination of a buffed hostage health, improved AI and removed hostage teleportation it can create a challenging yet satisfying gameplay. Hostage health should probably scale with enemy(or avg tenno) level to avoid them being one-shotted all the time but otherwise I see no reasons for this approach not to work.

Escort missions that aren't at least borderline godawful, in any game, are extremely rare. It's a very difficult mission type to make enjoyable. I like Warframe, but until they do a massive, massive overhaul of the entire AI system, making escort missions fun is a pipe dream.

 

Here's how I'd make escort missions fun. First, you have to have an enemy AI that's smart enough to be trickable. You have to be able to convince enemies to go in one direction while your hostage runs in the other direction. Second, you need maps that aren't linear. You need to have multiple routes to get from point A to point B, without being chokepointed every time you need to move from one room to the next.

With these two changes, escort missions could be interesting. The idea is, you have to make a big distraction in one place, so that your hostage can go another route and avoid getting shot at. You'd have to still keep an eye on them, either splitting the team or running back and forth, in case a mob doesn't get the memo.

That way, gameplay would actually require a bit of strategy. You'd have to figure out the best route for the hostage to take, and the best place to set off the alarms and make a temporary stand.

Warframe is, like, ten billion miles away from being able to do something like this. So until then, let's just keep our teleporting hostages.

Edited March 14, 2018 by motorfirebox

[Siilk]

8 hours ago, motorfirebox said:

Escort missions that aren't at least borderline godawful, in any game, are extremely rare. It's a very difficult mission type to make enjoyable. I like Warframe, but until they do a massive, massive overhaul of the entire AI system, making escort missions fun is a pipe dream.

 

Here's how I'd make escort missions fun. First, you have to have an enemy AI that's smart enough to be trickable. You have to be able to convince enemies to go in one direction while your hostage runs in the other direction. Second, you need maps that aren't linear. You need to have multiple routes to get from point A to point B, without being chokepointed every time you need to move from one room to the next.

With these two changes, escort missions could be interesting. The idea is, you have to make a big distraction in one place, so that your hostage can go another route and avoid getting shot at. You'd have to still keep an eye on them, either splitting the team or running back and forth, in case a mob doesn't get the memo.

That way, gameplay would actually require a bit of strategy. You'd have to figure out the best route for the hostage to take, and the best place to set off the alarms and make a temporary stand.

Warframe is, like, ten billion miles away from being able to do something like this. So until then, let's just keep our teleporting hostages.

I may be a bit more optimistic but I understand what you mean and I think you're more likely to be correct about actual escort mission viability as an engaging ending to rescue. However keeping the teleporting is, as I mentioned, having "two wrongs making a right" which in my opinion should not be how mission should be balanced. Have you considered any of my replacement proposals("pocketing" the hostage, defense stage, transport hijack)? What are your thoughts regarding those?

 

[Ham_Grenabe]

No goddammit, Escort Missions need to be excised from the gaming world, not emphasized.

Companies that have escort missions in their games need a steady flow of criticism until we, god-or-other-deity-of-choice willing, finally see an end to the long dark time of escort missions. 

[motorfirebox]

1 hour ago, Siilk said:

I may be a bit more optimistic but I understand what you mean and I think you're more likely to be correct about actual escort mission viability as an engaging ending to rescue. However keeping the teleporting is, as I mentioned, having "two wrongs making a right" which in my opinion should not be how mission should be balanced. Have you considered any of my replacement proposals("pocketing" the hostage, defense stage, transport hijack)? What are your thoughts regarding those?

 

I'd be fine with that.

[NoSpax]

Am 12.3.2018 um 22:13 schrieb Raspberri:

AI fix needs to come first. BADLY. Rescue hostages in a Kuva Flood will willingly walk up to Kuva Guardians unarmed and try to say hi. Even outside of a Flood, they'll make no attempt to avoid their Wardens.

Maybe once AI is smarter, OP's suggestion might be taken more seriously. Also, rewards would need an upgrade to make up for the lengthened mission time.

Tried playing Kuva Rescue once. 

Never again. 

Times played Kuva Mission = 3

Times failed Kuva Mission = 3

1. What am I supposed to do there?  

2. Riven in possession = 2, Riven used = 0

3. Don't need Kuva at all. 

BtT:

When I have a hostage, i dont run ahead. Even with the Old 1.0 rescue. There should be a penalty for keeping a distance between hostage and the player the hostage follows. 

We are here to escort, not run ahead. Maybe have increased exp gain near a hostage to encourage doing so? 

Edited March 14, 2018 by NoSpax

[motorfirebox]

1 hour ago, NoSpax said:

 

We are here to escort, not run ahead. Maybe have increased exp gain near a hostage to encourage doing so? 

Why? Players don't stick around the hostage because playing that way is vastly less fun, on top of being less efficient. Piling rewards onto doing it the "right" way doesn't make it more fun. Making gameplay fun should always be the priority.

[nerfinator6]

Yeahhhhhh....no