Friendly encounters with NPCs - specifically tasks.

[golden gazelle]

I did 4h of playing yesterday. Had a blast with the MCX. But one thing kept bothering me: "Please check up on xy, he lives here and there".
You get to the place, they are either dead or you gotta search for them. Rinse and repeat.
Absolutely no issue with this, I get to shoot bad guys.

But imagine how cool it would be if you were to meet up with a scared NPC in their house and you need to extract with them. Possibly even with the helicopter. Sure this is a huge task coding wise to get the AI to do what you want, or to not be in the way, you probably need some way of interacting with them again so you can tell them where to go in case theres a fire fight you gotta take etc.... To me the Hostage missions from Rainbow Six come to mind, although that was much simpler gameplay wise.
But this would make some of these tasks sooooo good. Especially those that are literally called Escort Duty.
I think this would make the world of GZW so much more dynamic.

What do you guys think about this?
Anyways, thank you.
https://youtu.be/jEX2ybyExlQ

[royal stirrup]

The problem is that people would also just shoot the NPCs.

Especially if it allows someone to grief your experience.

[arctic dove]

Please no escort missions 🙏

[golden gazelle]

Id be surprised if you cannot distinguish between a thug with an AK and a gagged woman on her knees

[golden gazelle]

whoever would be camping a mission site is as lonely and pathetic as those that actually camp extracts/landing sites

[royal stirrup]

I'm sure some of it might be accidental, but what i'm specifically calling out is the intentional behavior.

[golden gazelle]

Sucks, go play PvE

😅

There will always be a way to grief

in any game that is

First comes the idea, when you have a working version (either implemented or on paper) you think about how to prevent loopholes to be exploited

[royal stirrup]

Why would you expect this behave differently in PvE?

[golden gazelle]

I have yet to meet other players on PvE when doing missions. Only ever saw or encountered them when transitioning on foot

Also

You can definitely enable/disable who can damage who

[royal stirrup]

Sure, I'm not saying couldn't do that. You could do the same thing in PvP as well. But I'm not sure why you'd do that.

The only entities that are immune to damage in PvE are faction members. A random NPC in the would should, IMO, be just as vulnerable as any other NPC. Anything else would be REAL weird.

[golden gazelle]

What Im thinking of is that any PMC from any other faction cant hurt the objective, normal NPCs and yourself can

As long as they dont have the quest either

sure that would open up quite a big issue if multiple people have the same quest

But what are the chances of that nowadays with so many quests and quests that can appear at random times in random orders?

[clear jacinth]

Personally, to me it doesn't make sense to make a requirement that the NPC must be damaged, but also say it's a bad idea because the NPC can be killed. Just make it so the objective NPC can only be damaged by other NPCs

[golden gazelle]

That would certainly fix a lot of the issues

Like I was going to say, I feel like first youd need to find out if this type of mission would be cool or not

Regardless of the measures that prevent exploitation

[royal stirrup]

It would "fix issues", but it would also be very inconsistent with how the rest of the world is designed and feel extremely arbitrary.

Internal consistency is important. If you break it, then it feels like none of the rules matter.

[golden gazelle]

Fair point

But they did get COPs to work so

[clear jacinth]

It would feel consistent in PvE, as blue can't damage blue

[golden gazelle]

NPC is NPC

They should be able to get hurt or killed by anyone

Got a hostile faction jumping you? Too bad.

Thats my opinion

Not too concerned about griefers

Especially since you could just report them

idk, it was a thought

and i thought the suggestion could be entertained in what could be

[royal stirrup]

COPs work because those guards are faction members. It is entirely internally consistent.

[golden gazelle]

what i meant was gameplay wise

COPs are complex

[wanton wraith]

Not a problem if you they make the npc that you need to interact / extract with unkillable by PMC players and make the extraction point mission specific not the regular landing zones.

[wanton wraith]

I agree! This is what I dream about, having some life in the game because at the moment the world litteraly feels dead, everyone you have to meet / find is DEAD! Its so mind numbing and boring ffs 🙄

[royal stirrup]

We talked about that earlier.

[keen python]

you havent played very long then, i met 4 completely independent people last night who were running missions in the PLA/HP area

[golden gazelle]

i think i just got unlucky

[keen python]

if youre ever around PLA on OCE or NA-W we might meet, happy to run tasks w anyone in pve

[lime pine]

In PvE hostages could be invincible. In PvP... That's PvP - by default people try to grief others experience.