The Official Escape Plan Discussion Thread!

[SqueakofDoom]

Please use this thread to discuss the Escape Plan Quest!

We would also appreciate it if you would fill out the Escape Plan Survey

[~swimmingjellycube]

Nobody likes protection quests.

Why would you make one?

[Captain_Wizbang]

Way too short.
Like driving through a town that only has one stop sign, Don't blink you'll miss it.
But it is nicely done.

[~Hexfax]

I ran this on Normal with a freshly rolled Bladeforged with no additional gear.

Surprisingly, I liked this quest. Even though it was a "protection quest", I thought this was a nice twist. Beating back mobs as they try to free prisoners. I can already tell that this will be one of those quests that I like but others hate, much like Spinner of Shadows.

As Ferd said, this quest felt short. It took 7 minutes for me to complete while soloing with no hireling. The search and destroy second half of this quest felt very tacked on.

No new gear was dropped.

===
In my opinion, the XP was bad, but not horrible for the amount of time it took to run the quest. However, I can see this will be one of those quests that people will avoid running. The reason: it's a "protection" quest with bad XP. That's two nasty humps to get past. No matter how much I like this quest, I don't foresee me running this quest much with other players because of those two reason. And I don't foresee myself running it much solo since the XP is just plain bad. No matter how fun a quest is, XP does matter.

[GoldyGopher]

Bladeforged Iconic Character - Level 15 - somewhat appropriate gear.

Completed - Normal, Casual, and Hard

This is a quest where the double scaling seems to get in the way of the quest. You get fewer mobs and they have fewer hit points as you change difficulty, and I suspect the number of people in the party too. Thus casual is an extremely easy level 13 quests with 40 mobs all of which have 200 or so hit points, normal had 50 mobs at 350, hard ~60 at 450 HP and elite (which I failed) I encountered way more mobs all of which had in excess of 1000 hit points. Like raids you have cakewalk, easier, easy and pretty difficult settings. I wish this was more of a linear progression in the way difficulty worked.

I don't mind protection quests, they aren't my favorite but it not like they drive me insane like they do some of my guildies.

When Srass shows up and grabs Dedryk after the fight on the river bank, it needs something. The minute long monologue where nothing happens is uninteresting or boring. Let us either fight him and his body guard or make a better use of the D-Door or ...

The trip to the Lizard Camp is the issues I have with lots of quests, you cannot get lost as there is only one path, you cannot sneak by, and in some cases the trees were not drawn in. While the trip is a little more difficult on the hard and elite its a bolt on to the quest. looks good, but boring as ... See my comments about Srass and D-Door. (Humm Sariss is the Lizard Dude in Galaxy Quest)

I spent a few minutes trying to figure out if I had to do something with Dedryk after beating down Srass. "Shar will be my Deliverance" is the only reaction I could get out of him.

I completed the quest a dozen times looking for named loot, but got nothing.
The XP seems a little high in comparison to other level 15 quests, considering how easy the quest is.
Realizing I am in on the quest with a self healing Iconic Bladeforged, but on normal I took 300 points of damage, without healing I made it all the way to the final fight on Hard (had to heal up there). So there could be something wrong with the scaling and damage. I failed a single bear trap DC (held) and did not fail a single cometfall DC or other check.

[FalseFlag]

Poor XP. Even worse, this is yet another quest that suffers from "Stay on Mah Railroad!!!" Syndrome. The inability to stop the lizardman from taking the prisoner through the dimension door is bad design. "Oh, look, suddenly I am helpless in the face of plot!"

Better design would be to swarm the PCs with Lizardmen at that moment, some still trying to free prisoners. Then the players either have to split their resources to keep the prisoners bound and stop the main guy from being taken through the d-door, or they stop the prisoners from being taken, and then have to go after them as per the story design.

That simple change takes it from being a boring, way too often used lately railroad to a choice of skill, manpower, and resource management.

And seriously, you've got to up the XP on these quests. You're still lowballing things way too much.