Curse

Darth Marth · Jun 28, 2006, 08:31 PM // 20:31

I used to think there was no way to get more frustrated by GW's AI than henching missions and quests, but I'm increasingly seeing another glaring flaw: defending NPCs. For something so important that you have to do dozens of times in the game, the NPC-defending system seems needlessly difficult and frustrating.

As a perfect example, take the Lambs to the Slaughter quest, in which you have to escort five Assassins to defeat a rival gang in the Undercity. Only one must survive; it sounds easy, and it should be, but the current system makes it far more challenging. The first few battles against Afflicted went well enough, but in one battle, my henchies drew another group while we were still fighting one; the Assassins all rushed in to attack this new group, and four promptly died. Being a Me/Mo with an almost all primary build, I was helpless to stop them from dying, given that you have even less control over allies than henchmen, only able to control the general direction they go out of battle. After they died, of course, they were gone forever, as the reusable resurrection skill I had brought only works on official Party Members and fails when used on anyone else. When we finally reached the rival Assassin gang, our one remaining NPC immediately ran out and committed suicide in typical n00b Assassin style. I had failed the quest and had to start over, simply because I had failed to protect NPCs whom I had no control over or ability to save.

Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this system? If you're escorting someone integral to the mission/quest success, shouldn't you be able to command him/her to stay safe and out of harm's way? Doesn't common sense demand this? And whose idea was it to make resurrection skills only work on party members; why should they be useless against anyone outside your party? Why should it be the end for an NPC when it dies, but not a party member? While I realize being able to resurrect NPCs outside your party would affect the difficulty of certain missions (*coughthunderheadcough*), there has to be a better way to make these missions difficult than placing such a nonsensical restriction on resurrection. With this concern out of the way, players would only have to worry about the survival of their party, not of one non-resurrectable and vulnerable NPC, and battles in these missions could instead be made harder and mroe exciting. In exchange, the ability to resurrect NPCs out of your party would make much more sense; a way to command them (maybe Alt+clicking on the minimap to move them around) is also glaringly missing. Who agrees with me?