Please give +Perception to NPC Allies and hostages

[RogueWolf]

It's a major pain for those with stealth defense powers to go through missions having to constantly worry about losing our NPCs and hostages that we're trying to rescue.

[krj12]

It would be nice if they could just convert those missions to completion on defeating the enemy mobs in the same room as the hostage.  Having to lead the hostage to the entrance is very annoying and nothing more than something they implemented to consume time due to lack of content when the game first came out.

[Greycat]

Eh, yes and no. It's easy to lose hostages/rescues even in later-implemented missions, as I recall, too. They should just "latch on" to you.

 

The only issue I'd have with +per for them are the ones where you rescue combat... "assistants." They don't need any help seeing targets to run off and suicide in the middle of. 🙂

 

 

[Oginth]

57 minutes ago, Greycat said:

The only issue I'd have with +per for them are the ones where you rescue combat... "assistants." They don't need any help seeing targets to run off and suicide in the middle of. 🙂

TBH, the combat NPCs aren't that useful, as long as there is no badges tied to their survival, I couldn't care less of their survival.

[Greycat]

52 minutes ago, Oginth said:

TBH, the combat NPCs aren't that useful, as long as there is no badges tied to their survival, I couldn't care less of their survival.

Yeah, they're not useful, but generally if they die the mission fails, and I try to avoid that. (I'd forgotten about it in Serpent Drummer's ... second? Third? mission, actually, which was irksome, and Lady Jane is just itching to get herself killed in her rescue mission - I usually bypass her group and come back if I play that arc.)

[FrauleinMental]

I'd rather have a stealth debuff applied (call it Clingy?).  After all, you're dragging someone around with you who doesn't have stealth.  The only time I have major issues is when I'm on a team with people running AoE stealth and refusing to turn it off.  (I can turn off my own stealth powers, but I can't turn off someone else's.)

 

It seems like some of the combative NPCs already have quite an aggro radius.

[Ashington]

It could be worse

 

 

Spoiler

Source: Golden Eye for Nintendo 64

 

Edited August 1, 2020 by Ashington

[FoulVileTerror]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDIgS-Soo9Q&t=7s

@Ashington

[RogueWolf]

I think they figured out how to do it at some point. The New Praetoreans are all surprisingly good at following. They sometimes run into pathing issues, but they always know where you are.  But hostages always get lost. And what prompted me to post this was Daedalus in Cimerora. He was constantly falling behind and just sitting there because of my shadow fall. So whatever they did to the NPCs in the Marchland arc they need to do to the rest.

[Lazarillo]

18 hours ago, Greycat said:

Yeah, they're not useful, but generally if they die the mission fails, and I try to avoid that. (I'd forgotten about it in Serpent Drummer's ... second? Third? mission, actually, which was irksome, and Lady Jane is just itching to get herself killed in her rescue mission - I usually bypass her group and come back if I play that arc.)

The RWZ is teeming with "failable" escorts and useless combat support NPCs, but those two issues are related but ultimately sorta different problems just in general, I feel like.

[Greycat]

52 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

The RWZ is teeming with "failable" escorts and useless combat support NPCs, but those two issues are related but ultimately sorta different problems just in general, I feel like.

Yes and no. Yes as in it doesn't fix suicidal "helper" AIs that will fail a mission when they die. No in that +Per means they will see more things to rush off and die fighting.

[FoulVileTerror]

I would gladly take a Prestige Power which floors my Defenses and Resistances, but allows whatever NPC is following me to never lose sight of me.

[SurfD]

Pretty sure it has something to do with the kind of pet they are coded as.

I think they are all (hostages, rescuees, combat-assistants, etc) treated as some form of a Pseudo Pet or another, but there are different levels of how "pet like" they are.   I know from experience on my stalker that some of them (hostages / Rescuees especially) will literally lose focus on you from mere inches away if you activate stealth, while some of the combat assists seem to have no problem finding you from half way across a map, either in or out of stealth.

[FrauleinMental]

My least favorite is Sister Jocasta, in "Your Life Story! Wait, What?" (Extract Sister Jocasta from the Knives of Artemis).  Sister Jocasta is literally the only character on the map who can't see through stealth.

[JayboH]

On 7/31/2020 at 5:47 PM, krj12 said:

It would be nice if they could just convert those missions to completion on defeating the enemy mobs in the same room as the hostage.  Having to lead the hostage to the entrance is very annoying and nothing more than something they implemented to consume time due to lack of content when the game first came out.

The point of that are the ambushes which is a different style of play that would be removed, and I'm not sure that's a very good idea at all.  That's also potentially lost xp/inf/drops. 

 

Yes, escort missions are notoriously annoying in most video games, I agree.

[aethereal]

I have heard someone assert that non-combat, non-targeting NPCs such as hostages are coded not as normal characters but their own thing and don't even have stats like perception.  Can't personally verify.

[Grouchybeast]

13 hours ago, SurfD said:

while some of the combat assists seem to have no problem finding you from half way across a map, either in or out of stealth.

Not only that, they have ludicrous aggro ranges, which is especially galling when letting them be defeated fails the mission. I have no idea how Aarons possibly survived long enough to become a General.

[RogueWolf]

5 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

Not only that, they have ludicrous aggro ranges, which is especially galling when letting them be defeated fails the mission. I have no idea how Aarons possibly survived long enough to become a General.

Gah. Yeah. Some of those supposed helpers are like having Leroy Jenkins on your team. They need a tighter leash so they don't chase runners across the map.

[SurfD]

3 hours ago, RogueWolf said:

Gah. Yeah. Some of those supposed helpers are like having Leroy Jenkins on your team. They need a tighter leash so they don't chase runners across the map.

Don't remember which one it was, but I am positive there was one mission, where I had to rescue some guy from a longbow base, and he was scripted to basically SPRINT for the exit as soon as you broke him free from confinement.  He didn't wait for you to escort him, he just started running and would engage in combat with every enemy he encountered.  You also got the "bad" ending if he died.   Which was super annoying because it basically meant that if you, for example, stealthed to him without clearing out every spawn between him and the exit, you spent the rest of the mission desperately attempting to kill EVERYTHING in his way before he got to it.   Especially annoying if you are a stalker with no heals and no way to get aggro off of him when he facepulls a 4 man spawn.

[RogueWolf]

Adding to pet AI woes... Why do they get aggro'd by prison doors?

 

I was on Ghost Widow patron arc. I had one freed pet with me when we ran into the prison area of the base. After we cleared it of Longbow, she got fixated on one of the cell doors and I could not get her to leave. She was going to kill that force field come hell or high water. I had the difficulty set where I really kinda liked having the backup against all the bosses. So here I am like an idiot attacking a cell door so we can clear the last level of the base. Thank God it was the last one at the end so she didn't decide another cell door had to pay.

Edited August 3, 2020 by RogueWolf

[Soulstinger]

I support giving escort NPC's perception. Ohpleasegod

[captainstar]

On 7/31/2020 at 7:34 PM, RogueWolf said:

It's a major pain for those with stealth defense powers to go through missions having to constantly worry about losing our NPCs and hostages that we're trying to rescue.

I thought about making your same suggestion today. It would be great if we didn't have to ask a distracted person to turn off his stealth power on all rescue missions ... almost.

[Dragon Crush]

I think (but would need to use power analyzer to check) that many of the combat escorts have player perception levels, so they can spot and run off to attack stuff from a range for 500, while normal NPCs and hostages have a perception range of around 65. Maybe if those perception ranges could be flipped, then yeah stealth would be a problem for getting combat escorts to follow you, they at least won't always run off and die.