"Why would doing this be fun?" If you can't answer this, then maybe the feature doesn't belong in your game?

has any escort mission ever been "fun"? <g>.

sometimes they are challenging. often they are frustrating or simply boring. it seems the reward is usually the prime motivating factor. whether it be treasure or simply being able to continue the quest line.

in this case its a one off, stand alone, "side quest". so the reward treasure is the motivation. i'm leaving it up to the normal operation of the game world simulation to make it challenging (random encounters and such). accelerated time should take care of the dull parts. which leaves avoiding frustrating behavior - such as slow suicidal NPCs you can't control.

I played Guild Wars 2 yesterday (for the first time in years) and one of the things I noticed about the escort quests there than I immediately liked was the NPC does not die completely. It can still go down but people could revive them just like they can revive other players. The only issue with that is the lack of failure so that would be more a design choice.

hmm.... un-fail-able quests aren't much of a challenge...

To be clear, many escort quests in Gw2 can be failed. For instance, if the NPC is not ressed within some timespan then the quest can fail.

If i implement the NPC as some sort of temporary follower, the player would gain all the follower interactions such as giving them medicinal hers, and staunching their wounds. along with all kinds of orders like wait, goto, follow, use missile/melee weapons, attack, target selection, use/don't use sneak mode, flee, maintain distance, etc.

Yes, and if you're escotring a trade caravan that has to remain on the roads, what then? Making the NPCs simply follow the player has always been one of those things that irritated me about some escort quests. Sometimes you just need to bite the bullet and realize that some escorts must run on a rail. Others can be a bit more freeform, but there still needs to be some sort of a gating concern to prevent the player from simply escorting the NPC to Timbuktu and back again, I.e. if I'm going from Divinity's Reach to Lion's arch, going via the Black Citadel is taking the long way round, and might not be the method most appreciated by the NPC. On the other hand, emergent gameplay can result when you allow arbitrary escort paths, such as assassin's on the way never being encountered, which can trigger other quest dialog (or future quest entries... such as lowing their guard because they weren't ambushed and thus thinking they're safer on the pot.)

Reviewing some of the games that made improvements to the standard setup would help a ton.

such as?

guild wars 2 has been mentioned. any others come to mind?

guess there's no way i can find out what they do without actually playing them, huh? unless i luck across a post-mortem or some other article

GC was to be an apprentice wizard whose master is suffering from rapidly advancing dementia, charging from adventure to adventure while his hapless student frantically tries to keep him out of danger.

sounds like crazy whacky fun! <g>

If I'm raiding a bandit camp, thrashing dudes and looting corpses, then I spring a captive from a cage and have to follow her at snail's pace through a string of scripted ambushes, it's a change of context that is actually kinda painful. But I don't think that really speaks to the escort quest itself being bad, just the juxtaposition of a slower-paced string of ambushes against the gore-splattered free-for-all that preceded it. It's jarring.

and often a disappointment to the player, who typically wants to "just kill stuff". - you know how players are - even me sometimes! <g>.

sometimes its funny how different my perspective can be on something from a gamedev vs a purely player point of view.

>> For instance, if the NPC is not ressed within some timespan then the quest can fail.

so its a time limited quest with an un-killable NPC. i assume the NPC is vital to the storyline eh? that seems to be the #1 reason for un-killable quest characters.

so far i've been able to avoid un-killable charaters. but you have to trap out (handle) more cases (IE characters getting killed - moving away, or otherwise "disappearing".).

i dont have any long storyline based quest campaigns (yet), so i haven't had to worry about storyline critical characters dieing at the wrong time.

>> Sometimes you just need to bite the bullet and realize that some escorts must run on a rail. Others can be a bit more freeform, but there still needs to be some sort of a gating concern to prevent the player from simply escorting the NPC to Timbuktu and back again

in this particular case, non-rails is acceptable. seems like the only things to trap out are "going to timbuktu", and "taking a million years".

hmm.... un-fail-able quests aren't much of a challenge...

Yes, but keep in mind that Guild Wars 2 is an MMO and the things in questions are in-world events, not "quests" in the traditional sense. They were design to be things you do as you wander the world, but not things you actively engage in the way you might a quest that was specifically given to you. Also they have to contend with anti-griefing, which is not a problem in a single-player game, and also some events do "fail" and chain into follow-ups. Also keep in mind that winning is not the same as not-failing. You can, for example, scale rewards accordingly in order to incentivize players to actually try, or to create a reason for there to be a challenge.

If your game is single-player, I'm not sure it's particularly worthwhile to look at the details of the gameplay ramifications of a massively-multiplayer game. Sure, look at the broad strokes, but be careful of the nitty-gritty details because the considerations are quite different once you have hundreds and hundreds of players with potentially competing interests.

Maybe the ability to arm and armour your escort to some degree and otherwise have them be able to use other items you might equip them with. And also the ability to get your stuff back at the end of the mission.

all that would come for free if they are a temporary follower, just have to get your stuff back before the quest ends, that's all.

Yeah, I know. "Just" get your stuff back before the quest ends. I often forget that sort of thing.

Escort: Thanks for the protection. Here's your $100 payment. See ya around.

Me: Yeah, no problem. Happy to help. Hey how about that $3000 worth of armour and weaponry I lent to you? Excuse me... Dude... Hello? [draw weapon to take back equipment by force and then reload from save point either on failure or other undesirable effect].

On the other hand, emergent gameplay can result when you allow arbitrary escort paths

My favorite is when they join the party temporarily and you are under no obligation to finish immediately, yet the character has a high level or specialized skill. I've played several games where you can leverage the temporary member to go back and resolve some side quests. Eventually when you've exhausted all the possibilities of having them with you, exploited all their skills and profit-generating potential, you return to the story line and they leave the party.

Think about good coop (2 player) games, and what's fun about having that second person playing with you... besides the human/social aspect, of course.

Perhaps your combat mechanics work better with two people - one on overwatch and one in the open / one defender and one attacker / etc...

Maybe you've got different abilities, or new abilities combined -- e.g. can boost each other over walls, or cast joint spells, etc...

i.e. are there new experiences that you can have with this temporary tag-along player that will mix up your existing gameplay and add flavor?

Yeah, I know. "Just" get your stuff back before the quest ends. I often forget that sort of thing. Escort: Thanks for the protection. Here's your $100 payment. See ya around. Me: Yeah, no problem. Happy to help. Hey how about that $3000 worth of armour and weaponry I lent to you? Excuse me... Dude... Hello? [draw weapon to take back equipment by force and then reload from save point either on failure or other undesirable effect].

BG!

yeah, definitely have to explicitly give the player their stuff back.

My favorite is when they join the party temporarily and you are under no obligation to finish immediately, yet the character has a high level or specialized skill. I've played several games where you can leverage the temporary member to go back and resolve some side quests. Eventually when you've exhausted all the possibilities of having them with you, exploited all their skills and profit-generating potential, you return to the story line and they leave the party.

i too enjoy that, but technically it falls under the category of completing the quest "not quite in good faith". maybe not a million years going to timbuktu - but definitely taking advantage of the situation.

from a gamedev point of view, as long as they don't take too much advantage of it, i don't see anything wrong with it.

but now think of it from the NPC's point of view:

" i'm paying this shmuck to take me to lalaland, not go traipsing across the world to some dungeon so i can help him kill some boss he can't take out alone!

2-3 hours of hiking the wrong way and i'm outta there! "

that's how it really ought to work. every few hours do a check, if the payer is not continuing on the quest, have the NPC call them on it - and bail if they're full of s--t.