Bring Everyone Back Home

[tanglin]

Is there anyone like me who can't stand story NPC allies dying during the mission? It's not necessarily because I need their firepower, it's just not very heroic to not be able to bring everyone home with me.

 

For instance,  in the mission where you confront Mot with Lady Grey, Lord Recluse, Blue Steel, Hero1 and Devoured Pyriss, I lost Pyriss when she aggroed a new group while I was cleaning up another one and she fell to their alpha strike. It can be maddening trying to shepherd them and the toon I've been most successful in doing this with is my permadom Dominator, by locking down everything before the NPCs aggro them; but even then I still lost Pyriss due to that accident. On my scrapper, almost no one survives till the end. On my Ill/Rad controller, I'd try to use PAs to absorb the alpha strikes and heal everyone whenever I can, but my poor DPS prolongs the fights, making the chance of an NPC dying higher if they're spread out (which they love to do).

 

Some of them even have powers that raise the chance of their own demise, such as attacks that have knockbacks. They'd knock an enemy back, chase after it, aggro a whole new group, and then go splat.

 

Does anyone else aim to bring everyone home, or do you treat them as fodder?

[KC4800]

Heck, I TRY to get Sefu Tendaji killed. Could never be so lucky.

[JnEricsonx]

Hell, semi-related, first time I played Mass Effect 2, I got the "No One Gets Left Behind" achievement.   I tend to try to keep the NPC's going unless their AI goes completly pear-shaped.

[The Chairman]

I too try to ensure my NPC allies survive. I find the main difficulty in accomplishing this is the difficulty settings I use. I almost exclusively solo, so there tend to be far too many enemies for the NPC to survive at +X/8. My Tanker is the only one that even comes close due to Taunt and Invincibility. Even then, Ms. Liberty seemed to have a death wish in the Infernal mission during Maria Jenkins' arc.

 

Her wish ended up being granted...

[The_Warpact]

I sacrifice them for my gain...if I could in game I'd sacrifice all of them on an altar to Mot for dark powers muahaha!

[Arbegla]

1 hour ago, KC4800 said:

Heck, I TRY to get Sefu Tendaji killed. Could never be so lucky.

doesn't he

Spoiler

die to plot death anyway?

 

[ZorkNemesis]

1 hour ago, KC4800 said:

Heck, I TRY to get Sefu Tendaji killed. Could never be so lucky.

 

Don't know what you're doing different but this guy always gets himself killed whenever i'm not running his missions on a Support AT.  He's not as sturdy as your typical Longbow Ballista when he's a "pet", so he tends to rush in to large groups and die quickly.

[Luminara]

3 hours ago, tanglin said:

Does anyone else aim to bring everyone home, or do you treat them as fodder?

 

I avoid taking them along whenever possible.  If I can't bypass or avoid them (i never accept "help" from NPCs when it's optional), I try leading them back to the entrance and Stealthing away at maximum speed.  And if I can't dump them that way, they follow me until they get themselves slaughtered, and I don't sweat it.  I don't like NPC allies.  They aggro too quickly when I'm approaching a spawn, which throws off my opening sequence, and they run close to other spawns and pull aggro, which fucks with my key mashing Zen... they're not helpful, they're a hinderance.

 

Except Fusionette.  ❤️

[Lens Perchance]

Pendragon is a lost cause, I don't even try to save him, the sooner he dies the sooner he stops aggroing everything in sight.

[MTeague]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

I don't like NPC allies.  They aggro too quickly when I'm approaching a spawn, which throws off my opening sequence, and they run close to other spawns and pull aggro, which fucks with my key mashing Zen... they're not helpful, they're a hinderance.

 

 

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

Except Fusionette.  ❤️

 

I remember how many headaches she caused me in the Faultline 20's arc.

But she surprised me by being pretty durable near endgame.  Or maybe I just did a better job of establishing aggro / control in the RWZ arcs. 

 

No Mind is the most basketcase of them all in the current lineup, I think.

[MTeague]

5 hours ago, tanglin said:

Does anyone else aim to bring everyone home, or do you treat them as fodder?

It depends if I like the NPC's or not. 

 

Heather Townsend arc. I hadn't read up on it, didn't realize what was coming. Got to the point of choice. Choose who to die, try to save both, and the game basically warning me if I try to save both I better be able to kill them all FAST.  I was on a Mind/Kin controller. Not prepared for it, on a high difficulty setting, just my alpha unlocked, and I'm not sure it was even giving me a level shift yet. 

 

I knew I was going to lose both of them if I tried to save both.

I was unwilling to lose either one. 

And I wasn't willing to drop the difficulty down to easymode. 

So I used Alt-F4 to terminate the game, waited a bit, and logged in with the mission reset. Did not fail yet. 

 

Bamphed to Ouroborous, and started a MARATHON of Flashback arcs. One after another after another, cleaning up all the Ouro badges along the way.  But picking up lots of incarnate threads and some shards as I went.  Staying in Ouroborus, so I could tell myself the quesiton of Kadabra Kill / Sigil was frozen in time.

 

I went back as a fully T4'd out incarnate, with a Shivan Shard, a War Wolf, an HVAS, a summoned Amy, my Lore pets, and the temp power Clockwork pets from Penny.  And a row of Team Inspirations. Speed Boosted them all. THEN started teh dialogue with them all prebuffed and ready to kill. 

 

Overkill. By TONS.  But I saved them both 😄

[Snarky]

I did a redside mission where we gathered citizens up for live vivisections by Vahzilok minions.  Does that count?

[Lazarillo]

If you stealth past NPC allies so they don't follow you, you don't lose any!

[Haijinx]

If I couldn't save Dogmeat in the original fallout, I don't care about any of these others.

[MTeague]

44 minutes ago, Snarky said:

I did a redside mission where we gathered citizens up for live vivisections by Vahzilok minions.  Does that count?

they were safe and sound until you got your pay. I think it's good.

[Crysis]

I’ve played the missions so many time I honestly don’t even notice if I have a “helper.”   They are just disposable, non targetable NPC’s to me.  Kill speed is so fast that I never usually even acknowledge I have on in the map unless I happen to notice them idle after wiping up a spawn.  “Oh look, there’s Manticore.”

[InvaderStych]

12 hours ago, MTeague said:

I went back as a fully T4'd out incarnate, with a Shivan Shard, a War Wolf, an HVAS, a summoned Amy, my Lore pets, and the temp power Clockwork pets from Penny.  And a row of Team Inspirations. Speed Boosted them all. THEN started teh dialogue with them all prebuffed and ready to kill. 

 

This is objectively awesome.

[Haijinx]

1 hour ago, Crysis said:

I’ve played the missions so many time I honestly don’t even notice if I have a “helper.”   They are just disposable, non targetable NPC’s to me.  Kill speed is so fast that I never usually even acknowledge I have on in the map unless I happen to notice them idle after wiping up a spawn.  “Oh look, there’s Manticore.”

Wait.  I'll go out of my way to make sure Manticore dies.

 

Hate that guy. 

 

 

And he isn't fooling anyone, that hair is fake.  Dude is bald.

Edited May 14, 2021 by Haijinx

[Greycat]

I've ended up developing ways around some of the more annoying NPC "allies" - things like leaving Lady Jane with her babysitters (or going past then killing them from a distance) so she doesn't get a chance to go suicide somewhere. Same with the negotiators - or they get dragged back to the entrance. I hate failing a mission because the AI decided to chase a rabbit somewhere and died.

 

[VulnaviaPhibes]

I think it's based on archetype and difficulty, honestly. I usually play support characters and typically on default difficulty or slightly higher, and I often find the NPC allies kind of carry me! Especially once buffed they're usually stronger and tougher than I am so I can hang back and let them do a lot of the fighting. So I both really love them and kind of rely on them. Plus the missions can be so lonely without them! I love having like, Becky or Ohmtown to hang out with as we brawl through some losers together.

[RikOz]

19 hours ago, MTeague said:

Heather Townsend arc. I hadn't read up on it, didn't realize what was coming. Got to the point of choice. Choose who to die, try to save both, and the game basically warning me if I try to save both I better be able to kill them all FAST.  I was on a Mind/Kin controller. Not prepared for it, on a high difficulty setting, just my alpha unlocked, and I'm not sure it was even giving me a level shift yet. 

I was not able to succeed at that on my first three 50s (fire/fire blaster, DB/SR scrapper, MA/Nin scrapper). But my fourth 50 was my SS/Inv brute. Popped Unstoppable right at the beginning of the fight, and that settled matters, because they couldn't kill me. My fifth 50 was my energy/energy brute, and the new Energy Melee features helped me by letting me one-shot several of the baddies.

 

I do like to keep my NPC helpers alive, just for story reasons. So...

 

My wish for "helper" NPCs (and I suppose for hostages that I have to lead back to the entrance as well) is that they would make it so that they can actually keep up with me. This is especially true when I'm playing my Super Reflexes alts that have Quickness, because I can't turn that off and I just leave the helpers in the dust. The worst "offenders" here are Miss Thystle and Frostfire in one Hero alignment mission, and Silent Blade in another. But even my non-speed-boosted characters outrun them. For hostages, there was one redside mission where I had to kidnap or rescue (can't recall exactly which in that specific mission) a guy on an outdoor map. My character had no speed boosts at all, but I ended up having to turn on Walk to lead him out because, even at normal Run speed, I literally had to stop and go back to him about every 15 steps because he would fall behind and get "lost". And this was on an open, unobstructed grassy field. I mean, I know the game code can do it - Mr. Yin, an old man, stays right on my heels after I rescue him from the Lost.

 

I also wish that helper NPCs simply would stop Flying in indoor missions. It gets really tiresome when I enter a room with a high ceiling and multiple balcony levels, and Overdrive jets up and away from me to attack somebody on the third level instead of helping me with the mobs I'm fighting. I don't see where she went, so I can't come help her, and she always dies. She also has a bad habit, in the alignment mission where you have to get the two cops away from the Carnival and the Whispered Hand assassins, of zooming all the way to the other side of the big warehouse room to attack an Illusionist that I had planned to ignore because I've already defeated the mobs guarding the last cop and that Illusionist was well out of aggro range. Overdrive yells something like, "I'll hold them off! Just get those cops out of here!", and in that case I just take her at her word and leave her to it.

 

There's one mission where I avoid rescuing Overdrive if at all possible, because in that mission one of her guards has a "you can't touch this" ability, and I just really hate mechanics that amount to "wait for a timer to run out so you can start punching again". Unfortunately, Overdrive and her guards sometimes spawn right in, or very close to a doorway that I have to go through, so it's impossible to avoid aggroing her guards.

[Black Zot]

I avoid tagalong NPCs if at all possible, in any game, unless I have some measure of direct control over their actions.  Their "help" is trivial at best, counterproductive at worst.  If an NPC "ally" gets forced on me, they'd better hope their survival is a mission objective, because otherwise they're on their own.  I am just that sick of putting up with braindead helper AI.  I leave Levantara's mission chain untouched other than the one mission I need for the Vanguard badge, because LIKE HELL am I putting up with those two morons again.  

 

No word of a lie, if I could Thanos-snap all escort missions out of every video game ever made, I would do it in a heartbeat - and if that ends up dusting some of those games outright, they didn't deserve to be made in the first place.

[MTeague]

4 hours ago, VulnaviaPhibes said:

I think it's based on archetype and difficulty, honestly. I usually play support characters and typically on default difficulty or slightly higher, and I often find the NPC allies kind of carry me! Especially once buffed they're usually stronger and tougher than I am so I can hang back and let them do a lot of the fighting. So I both really love them and kind of rely on them. Plus the missions can be so lonely without them! I love having like, Becky or Ohmtown to hang out with as we brawl through some losers together.

 

Having support definitely helps. 

Keeping Lady Jane alive was dicey on my Claws/SR scrapper.

It was easy-peasy on the Mind/Kin contrller or even the Storm/Sonic Defender. 

And the Beast/Empath MM, heck, I just treated Lady Jane like she was another pet and tossed her a strip of bacon for every few enemies she killed.

[Tahliah]

I run away from Fusionetta as fast as I can, and then I laugh when she shouts "Lost!".  She can be fun, but what a pain in the butt on maps with baddies on multi-levels or whatever, she just flies off and gets herself killed.  So I just leave her behind (or save her last).

[VulnaviaPhibes]

The most interesting thing about this thread for me has been the number of people who play at absurd difficulty levels. Even my incarnate level controller doesn't go higher than +1/x2. I find the game's combat system a little tedious, honestly? I enjoy some combat to help with the rp experience, so it can create cool emergent moments and awesome animations and stuff, but I can get that spectacle easily without turning up with difficulty, and NPC allies tend to be a really fun part of it! (Plus, it gives me someone to heal and buff when I'm not teaming)

Edited May 15, 2021 by VulnaviaPhibes