Why is blizzard so against making escort quests that move at least at a similar pace to the player.
NPC walking? too fast for your walk, WAY too slow for your run .
NPC running? Either a little too slow or way too fast unless you are a rogue, shaman or druid.
NPC mounted up? Apprentice level riding speed
During the final stage of the Battle for exodar, Velen speeds you up faster than he moves, and if you get too far away from him he stops moving all together.
Is it that hard to make an escort type quest that doesnt require you to move awkwardly because the escort decides to power walk instead of walk or run?
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But waiting endlessly for Thrall to escape from Durnholde Keep on the world’s slowest pony is so exciting!
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Classic has those escort quests where they walk at a snail’s pace up until they spot a pack of enemies, then they charge in head first.
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It’s not just wow. Alot of games fail to make npcs the same speed as you
Its always good when there your speed. Walk when you walk, run when you run
Remember the classic Tanaris one where you had to cross the entire zone.
Checks out. I know that the last time that I was rescued from a dark dungeon where I was being tortured and held against my will, I walked, whistled, and monologued loudly to make my escape known to all while being led to safety.
God I forgot how annoying he was. He also couldn’t walk 2 feet w/o running off to kill some threatening spider or patrol about a mile and a half away. He can move when he wanted to.
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Slow and steady wins the race? idk.
Reminds me of mods in skyrim that make it so you walk the same speed as npcs. Since it had a similar problem.
I know people rag on Ashley’s AI in Resident Evil 4 but at least she stayed with you at a reasonable pace
Yeah and they did it different ways for different quests. Wasn’t it firelands where you can save a deer and then fly back and the deer would be basically plowing through the world like a banshee?
In general I found nearly every escort quest just an annoyance that doesn’t do what they want - I never felt “emersed,” i felt played - an obvious and gross time-sink.
Kinda wished you could give her a weapon to help with enemies. Albeit the game isn’t hard at all, but the extra firepower would be helpful.
She’s a kid.
From the game designer’s point of view, it’s to let people catch up if they fight a mob or do whatever else than following the guy along.
I’ve seen kids her age and younger kids with guns, swords, ect. Hell there’s an old sega game where it’s the law to have a sword at age 10 (figure that out). So age doesn’t really mean anything in fiction unless the creator wants it to mean something.
Still. “hi child that has never used a gun. have a gun”
That’s a bad mix
it’s pixels who cares
There is a special place in hell for NPCs that move faster than your walk speed, but slower than your run speed.
I don’t even care if you make me RP walk the entire thing. Just let me move at the same speed as the NPC.
They need these gimmicks to make us play longer. The rp value does not fit the rp abilities the players have.
let me quote a reddit post:
I keep seeing this point when people complain about escort quests. But I’ve been thinking about it and consider the alternatives:
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The NPC moves at your walking speed. Clearly this is a terrible option. Nobody has ever willingly moved at their walking speed in a video game unless they were trying to finesse something or sneak. a walking speed escort quest would be terrible. The fact people even mention this point when talking about NPCs is insane. The actual complaint is “NPC is slower than my run speed”. If the NPC exclusively moved your walk speed it would be worse.
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The NPC moves at your run speed. This seems better at first… but it means that you can’t pull ahead of the NPC if you want to, or catch up to them if they ever get ahead of you because you stopped to do anything. They’re moving at 100% of your max speed. Monsters up ahead? That’s a shame because you don’t have time to run up and pull aggro on them if the NPC is behind you and you aren’t going to be able to intercept them in time.
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The NPC moves at your exact speed behind you following your pathfinding and dynamically navigating traps/moving parts to keep a uniform distance from you. This renders the escort quest pointless. This is a solution to a different problem (that escort quests are just terrible). If having to escort and NPC doesn’t have any effect on your gameplay decisions they’re a pointless inclusion. The NPC is generally SUPPOSED to require your attention. After all, the only reason you care that they move slower than you is because you have to watch over them. In games where you don’t you just run ahead and let them be slow and it’s no problem. If you need to watch over them, then they need to act in a way where you can’t just ignore them.
Like, if you want to say escort quests are just terrible in general then I’m on board. Escort quests suck. But if you have to have one with an NPC that has their own movement and pathfinding then they need to move close enough to your run speed that you aren’t walking, but far enough from it that you can control your distance from them to some degree while ahead and can catch up when behind. Of all the options available for NPC movement speeds “about 75-85% of PC run speed” is the best for escort missions both in terms of being least annoying for the player and most able to create the gameplay changes the devs want to create with escort quests.
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I’ll just leave this here.
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