Warframe “Hijack” Missions were pretty awful for multiple reasons:
The vehicle was slower. Slower than bullet jumping. Basically a specific shut-down for spoiler dash, speed frames (Volt, Wukong, Nova, Titania), etc. Some people jokingly compared it to Capture, the easiest mission type in the game as of The Old Blood (zoom to target, capture in 5 seconds, zoom to extraction). The punch line was that “capturing” simply took about 100 times longer…
Nullifier bubble that literally prevented use of abilities near the vehicle. The idea was to force you to “engage” more with enemies. Which really translated to Ignis/Acceltra (huge aoe weapons) spam by 1 guy standing on the vehicle, another guy running ahead on foot to use abilities, and the rest chatting or afk.
Player ES/hp leech to “fuel” the vehicle. This simply meant that Inaros (huge hp) or Harrow/Hildryn (huge ES) would be standing on top. One single Inaros was enough for the whole squad. In fact we often got a full squad of Inaros on these missions because he was easier to farm and required no ability usage at all.
Old thread and soon to be closed but hopefully I can pitch in my 2 cents here instead of creating a new one. Maybe someone will read this.
As I was playing through, I also had the idea to give Spire negative ailments to the player instead of direct damage. It would still make them best to avoid while fighting but would render them not dangerous when looting. It could be anything from resistance penalty, take 20% more damage, less likely to crit, Elemental Damage penalty, No Mana or/and Health Regen, Impossible to Leach, etc.
Poe fixed this by making the wagon slow down if we were behind it, and speed up if we were in front of it. When I first noticed this mechanic I was very pleased as I never felt I had to slow down so it would keep up.
Compare it to the oldie City of Heroes I’m currently playing and any escort is an exercise in frustration. It is not that is slower than when we use our movement travel powers, it’s that even using the basic run toggle we still outpace the NPC who has a tendency to run back a bit, then run after us, then run back a bit, then run after, all at a speed that does not accompany even the basic run toggle. So we run, pause, run, pause, and if we try to push the envelope we will get the NPC whining about being abandoned and stopping until we return to collect it.
Other games have the same though the biggest offender are the scripted path missions where the NPC does not follow us and instead follows the pre-programed path… and then walks slowly… but will dash like a furious harbinger to ineffectually flail at an enemy mob, only to run back and then return to slowly limp on the path (eff you, NPC, I just saw you running!!).
That’s why and in other examples escort missions are reviled. PoE did it better with Delve but it had a whole mechanic around it. Wagon was immune, wagon -will- slow down if we are behind it but it will not stop, which forces us to follow or die to the Darkness debuff.
Without the Darkness mechanic there would be little point in following an invulnerable wagon.
Perhaps the thing where the wagon only moves if we are inside its radius while keeping the slow/faster interaction.
