Prime Elway

PART 3: THE IMPORTANCE OF MISSION GOALS AND DETAILS After you’ve filled out all your text and chosen a map, click the #2 on the storybook icon to add details. Remember when I told you to make a note of how many details your map allows? Here’s where that comes in handy, as instead of using the generic “Enemy Group” to spawn enemies, we’re gonna use mission details to do it. Basic Mission Goals Bosses In my opinion, bosses are the most versatile objectives in the game. They can be set to allies or rogue (rogue means they attack both you and enemies), and they can also be given cool animations to do. Most of all though, they’re mobs that you can control. Here’s what I mean: Say your map allows 9 boss, patrol, or destroy object details (3 front, 3 middle, 3 back). Create a boss detail and click the button that says “Required for Completion” to make it an optional objective. Make any enemy the boss (on lower difficulties, he’ll even spawn as an LT OR if he’s a custom character, you can just CHOOSE an LT or Minion to be the boss). After that, set his name. He could be Guard, or something to that effect, if it fits. Set his quantity to 9 and now you have the same number of mobs that would’ve appeared in the mission before, only now... you can make them talk, you can make them do animations, you can make them have names that could hint at your story. (I.e. Crystal Holder, means he’s got the crystal) It adds flavor to the mission and makes it more unique. Rather than taking down random, wandering mobs, your bad guys will talk, or they’ll be doing some cool animations in preparation for the fight! Let’s take it one step further though. Create a boss objective, set it to optional, and make its quantity three. Set its placement to Front and make it’s alignment Ally. The front of your mission will now have mobs conning as allies, which is a great way to set up the mission’s story. For instance, you could make ally Police bosses in the front, who are waiting for you to head in and take on the big bad who is still causing trouble in the back of the mission with his cronies. It is touches like this that make a mission unique, as suddenly “just another boss fight” has become much, much cooler. As long as allies and enemies remain confined to different spaces (I.e. Allies in front, enemies in Middle and Back) the two groups won’t fight as they won’t spawn close enough to each other. Though if you want them to fight, you can spawn them close anyway and create your own battles. If you put this stuff to the test, you can make some truly unique missions. Think of it like this: You enter a run down lab, cops are at the front, waiting for you to head in and take out the bad guys. In the middle of the map, you encounter Freakshow, who are being hired as bodyguards by the true villain. Way in the back you find the true boss (i.e. the one set to required and needed to complete the mission). He’s Lord Recluse surrounded by Crey! You can do it if you want! It doesn’t end there, these tactics can be applied to pretty much every mission detail. Collectibles Collectibles are better known as glowies. Things you have to click. Glowies/collectibles are great because they can act as great triggers or even as set dressing. Say you want to make your mission take place in a military surplus warehouse, but no maps seem to match that setting. Take the “Military Weapon Rack” glowie, make it optional, set it to the maximum quantity the map will allow, and then make the collection become active off an objective that is impossible to complete (i.e. an ally boss). The glowies will never glow, and instead, they’ll just spawn in the map and make your bland warehouse look filled with guns! Apply this to any of the collectibles and you can come up with something really cool. Defeat All Enemies Remember the golden rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Would you like to do a defeat all? Probably not. Also, this objective tends to glitch out when filling the map with details and canceling normal spawns, resulting in the mission never completing. But if you make the mission exciting enough, through varied enemies, cool animations, and interesting dialogue, chances are people will want to defeat all enemies anyway! Free A Captive Captive frees run off a separate spawn number than bosses do, meaning their max quantity will be different and unaffected by the number of bosses in a mission. Captives can also be set as allies, meaning the enemies surrounding the captives will con as allies. The captive will con as an enemy, but be unattackable. This is a cool way to create atmosphere in a mission, you can have a criminal being arrested by cops, or you could have reporters interviewing someone. It all depends on what you want to do. Advanced Mission Goals Ally Allies are captives that follow you and can be set to attack. Be sure to check under ally settings that their combat behavior is “Aggressive or Defensive” if you want them to fight alongside you. Otherwise they’ll just follow you (Non Combat) or take blows until they die (Pacifist). Allies default to “Non Combat” for some reason, so make sure that is changed. Allies have the unique mechanic of betraying, which is very cool. You can set an ally to betray after an objective is completed, meaning they will attack the player. (They can even shout some dialogue as they do it). However, beating the ally will not count as a required objective so if you plan to make them attack at the end of the mission, be sure to make players only able to exit through the mission’s front door, as that will make them unable to just click the button in the Nav and port out, negating the betrayal. Ambush Ambushes are mobs that spawn and “ambush” the player. Perhaps the glitchiest detail in the game, they can sometimes spawn in crazy places. The thing that makes them most troublesome though is that they negate triggers. Triggers are the option below the required/unrequired button on most objectives that say “This Mission goal created when...” (For glowies, it reads “Collection becomes active when...”)They allow you to spawn objectives AFTER completing a different objective. You could make an entire mission map empty and then go to the very back and touch a glowie which spawns bosses all over the map. You can set as many different things to spawn off a trigger as you want UNLESS you want to add an ambush. Ambushes immediately become the only spawn available on a trigger (this was done to combat ambush farms back in the day which were massive resource hogs). Escort Escorts are like allies, they can even be set to combat. The only difference is an Escort needs to be lead back to a certain location to complete the objective. That doesn’t just have to be the mission door though, you can make an escort be taken to a collectible. It’s pretty cool way to vary up a mission, you could make the escort a hacker who needs to be taken to a terminal instead of just some dork who can’t find the exit. Adding a required escort means you will need to write Return Fail Dialogue, even if you set the escort to Non Combat. Patrol Patrols are enemy mobs that walk around the map. They’re best used on outdoor maps, as they have plenty of room to walk around without doing stupid stuff like getting stuck on walls. If you have ally objectives in your map, refrain from using patrols as they may walk in range of those allies, even if they spawned in a different placement area. Battle A battle is two sides fighting. These can be replicated by spawning opposing alignments next to each other, and in some ways the replication proves to be better as battles can sometimes spawn before the player is near them, meaning by the time the player reaches the action...there is just half an enemy mob left with less health. Kind of underwhelming. I find them best used on outdoor maps or in the front of indoor maps. Destructible Object Destructible objects are very cool. They’re basically everything taken straight out of mayhem missions being used as objectives. They can’t be set as allies, but they are definitely more interesting than just a mob. They’re a mob crowded around something! When I’m making arcs, I will usually add mostly boss details with a few destroys peppered in for variety. Defendable Object Did I say ambushes were the glitchiest detail in the game? Scratch that, these are. Know why? Because everything about them works off ambushes. They’re destructible objects that you have to defend from ambushes. The objects are pretty brittle too so they can be easily destroyed by AoEs. Bottom line, they’re frustrating and a surefire way to get a team to fail a mission, meaning someone will actually read that oh-so juicy Return Fail Dialogue. My advice for this objective is to never make it mandatory, always keep it optional. It can make some cool scenery as thugs smash computers and stuff, but defending a low HP computer against Malta is not very fun. These can be spawned as allies too, and they’ll behave like ally captives. The object in the middle will con enemy instead and be unattackable, while the surrounding group will be allies. Giant Monster Pretty self-explanatory. It’s a GM in your mission. Only spawned on certain outdoor maps. If you plan on making your arc really tough, putting a GM in wouldn’t hurt. That was A LOT, so let’s put it all into perspective. How would all of these details congeal to make a mission that is fresh and exciting? I’ll tell you how with an example: Now, doesn’t that sound much more exciting than just fighting a bunch of skulls and then facing off with the boss? I think so, and that’s just one example. Doing away with the generic enemy group spawns and taking them all into your own hands means more customization, which in turn means a more fun/unique mission to play. PART 4: MAPS! Choosing the perfect map for your mission is very easy, just always be sure to check what the max details allowed are and take a good look at the layout of the map (provided its not bugged) for a general idea of where the spawns will be. Always remember you can test in AE too (and turn on invisibility and invincibility via Architect Options in your nav) -- that will make taking a look at maps and how/where your spawns are so much easier. There are a couple more things to keep in mind, though. 1. Outdoor Maps have no front/middle/back, which means their mission details can spawn anywhere. This makes them work better as war zones or battle zones, meaning if you add any allies to them, it’s alright if they are attacked and die. 2. Outdoor Maps that include an interior somewhere (SERAPH Lab, Warburg Malta Base) DO follow the front/middle/back placement rules, so you can pick and choose what spawns where. 3. The map “President Marchand’s Office” is the bane of my existence, and here’s why. The map, despite being HUGE, has an extremely low number of detail spawns. The only way to get enemies all over it is to set an enemy group for the mission. Also, the few details there are can only be spawned in the middle, and before the cool office/rooftop parts that makes the map unique! I highly recommend you steer clear of this map.

Hi! A long time ago I wrote a guide exploring some hidden parts of everyone's favorite farm (and I guess story content) creator, Mission Architect. I'm reposting it here in case folks find it useful, and I've also added a few new nuggets of information I've found out. At first glance, Mission Architect can seem rather limiting. Enemies can only spawn in certain places, there’s only so many maps, etc. But with some tips and tricks, an arc built with Mission Architect can be incredibly cool and innovative, and become a really awesome piece of content, on par with everything else in the game! PART 1: THE STORY These are the only tidbits I'll go into about story, and the discussion is simply to help people understand where to best focus efforts when working on an AE story: 1. Keep things simple when you can. - The more convoluted your plot gets, the more difficult it will be for anyone to stay invested in the story. Plus the more brief you can be with your introductions and text, the easier it’ll be for players to follow what is going on. 2. Keep raising the stakes! - You don’t want to frontload an arc. There should be a sense of urgency in your story, otherwise it can be easy to become disinterested. At their longest, Mission Architect arcs can only be 5 missions. It may seem a bit short if you compare it to some of the Task Forces’ lengths, but those were designed with leveling in mind. (i.e. giving players mass amounts of defeat alls so that they’ll gain plenty of experience and reach the minimum level for the next TF). Really though, 5 missions is plenty of time to tell a good story. If for whatever reason you cannot fit your story into 5 missions, there’s always the option to make a part two... too! Your first mission sets the stage for everything. From then on, your missions should build on top of that, upping the ante until you finally get to the climactic final mission which usually involves a big boss fight. It’s basic story structure! An inciting incident occurs which starts the story. The action gets greater and greater as the stakes rise until finally we’re at the climax! After that, the action slowly falls until we’re left with a resolution! Though you don’t really have to make a falling action/resolution mission... (But you can! We’ll get to that later!) If you don’t keep your arc ramping up, it’s going to become repetitive and unexciting. You’ll wind up with the old Positron Task Force: a bunch of missions strung together that don’t really lead to anything satisfying. PART 2: WHAT DOES ALL THIS WEIRD STUFF IN THE UI MEAN? We’re gonna take this step by step. The first thing you see when you create a new AE file is a section at the front of the 'timeline' at the top of the UI, denoted by a pen icon... Story Settings - Story Title: I mean, pretty obvious, right? It’s the story title. - Story Description: Basically the log-line of your story. What is it about? What characters appear in it? It’s a good place to add Elite Boss/Arch-Villain warnings too, if you want. Story Contact - Contact Name: Once again, pretty self-explanatory. - Contact Type: You can select a ton of different stuff to act as your story’s contact. Objects, custom characters, even freakin’ Bat’Zul. Be aware certain mobs will have weird hit-boxes though and may be a bit more annoying to click. - Contact Group: This is an interesting one. It’ll show up if the person clicks “ask about this contact” and serves as a way to show their allegiances. I like to use it as an occupation. For example, if the contact is a detective, it would read “Veteran Police Detective” or something to that effect. - About Contact: A short biography for your contact. Some of the normal contacts/enemies will have bios pre-loaded, but you can always alter them. This also appears when someone clicks “Ask about this contact.” It should be noted that I find it incredibly hard to believe anyone would ever click the 'Ask About this Contact' button (I mean, has anyone ever done that even in normal content?) Still though, fill it out for fun if you want. Story Parameters - Story Arc Status: I’d be sure to set this to Final immediately. You most likely won’t be publishing a “Work in Progress” arc and it’s easy to forget to change this setting when you’re done with everything and ready to publish. - Suggested Alignment: This is a cool setting. It determines the prime playerbase of your arc. Did you make one for redside or blueside? Or Praetoria, even. - Keywords: Pretty self-explanatory. How would you describe what you’re making? Souvenir Clue - Souvenir Name: What souvenir do people take away from this arc? Maybe it’s the skull of their fallen enemy, maybe it’s a toaster. - Souvenir Description: A souvenir in-game typically has you reminded of all the events of the arc. Essentially, it sums up the entire story through a fond, nostalgic lens. The Mission (1) This is what appears when you hit the 1 button on your first mission. The 1 and 2 are separated like pages of a book, here's what you see for 1: Choose Mission Settings - Enemy Group: My advice is to MORE OFTEN THAN NOT set this to EMPTY. This is where Mission Architect really loses its mojo for some people. What this essentially does is set every spawnpoint on the map to spawn a certain enemy group mob. Guess what though. You can make every spawn on the map into a mission detail, meaning instead of a bland mob, you can make it into something MUCH, much cooler, and open up tons of possibilities. More on that once we get to Mission Details and Goals. - Map Type: Choose your map. On the right side you will begin to see Mission Map Details (bear in mind the map pictures are often wonky, but the details in text will be there)... Mission Parameters - Minimum/Maximum Level: This defines the level range of your characters, and can be used to do some very cool things. Usually, you will want to set this to be the level of your primary enemy group (i.e. if you’re doing a Crey arc, you’d make it 35-54). Just because you have an arc set to a certain level range, doesn’t mean enemies from other level ranges can’t appear, they’ll just con as grey or purple! We’ll get into some cool uses for this setting later. NOTE: Custom Characters ALWAYS go from 1-54. - Mission Pacing: If you set Enemy Group to empty, (which you often should, like I said), this setting won’t matter. If you ignored me and set a mission enemy group, this setting has options for different level ranges (i.e. people in front are lower level than people in back). - Time to Complete: Is there a time limit to your mission? Adding this will require a Return Fail Dialogue from the contact, even if you give players 3 hours to click a glowie. - Mission Exit: This makes it so that once the mission is complete, people have to leave using the door they entered with. It’s great for trap missions, which we’ll get to later. Mission Begin Clue/Mission Complete Clue: These clues are good for summing up the events of the mission, but the problem is that there’s no guarantee they’ll be read, especially when your arc is played by teams. Sometimes the New Clue pop-up doesn’t show for whatever reason, or the sound effect might not play. For all these reasons, clues shouldn’t be the most reliable way of telling your story. You should stick to some of the text options below. Write Text - Mission Introduction Dialogue: Your contact’s introduction to the mission. These are best kept brief, just explain the situation and ask for help. A good tip (which is often implemented in CoH arcs) is to have the contact sum up the mission in one sentence and color that sentence orange. That way the player knows EXACTLY what he’s doing. (In order to color something, highlight the text and right click. You can also set things to italic, bold, or even add in the $name shortcut to make the contact address players by name). I like to also bold or color the names of the antagonists. Like say if we were fighting someone known as Baron Evil McJones, every time his name showed up, I’d color it red, meaning he’s going to be important to this arc. - Mission Send Off Dialogue: This is what your contact says after the mission is accepted. It can be a good place to drop more information, but the player will most likely be rearing to start the mission, so it’s best just to constrain it to a single paragraph. - Compass Active Task Text: This is VITAL. Teams may play your arc, and you want every team member to know what is going on so they can enjoy the story as well. It is unrealistic to expect everyone on a team to go into their Missions tab and read the contact dialogue. Heck, it's unrealistic to even expect a single player to do that. When people run content, a lot will almost always zoom through the dialogue. But everybody and I mean EVERYBODY reads the Nav Text. You don’t want to this text to be vague (I.e. Defeat all enemies) you want it to almost echo the orange sentence you wrote in Mission Introduction Dialogue (I.e. Stop Baron Evil McJones from Getting the Magic Crystal). That way everyone will know exactly what is going on in your mission. - Still Busy Dialogue: This text will most likely never be read. I mean who is seriously going to talk to the contact again after they get the mission? But it's required. A good place to be funny if you want. - Return Success Dialogue: The mission was a success, but the contact is going to hint at whatever is coming next... - Additional Text (Unrequired Text) - - Mission Title/Mission Subtitle: This is a cosmetic thing. A good place to see this in action is the Rikti War Zone or the new Incarnate Arcs (i.e. the places where you see individual missions labeled Part One: Dream Doctor's Big Day). It’s just a fun way to spice up the mission screen. Don’t be afraid to change text color here, or bold stuff, it can be very cool. - - Mission Accept Text: How the player responds to the contact/how they take the mission. Typically, you shouldn’t put words in the player’s mouth. It’s best to stick with something like, “Let’s do it” and not write something specific that may alienate players who think ‘my character would NEVER say that!’ - - Mission Entry Popup: This is a great way to convey information to the entire team. Keep this pop-up VERY short, as if it is too long, people may just click OK and zoom past them. If used effectively, this pop-up can remind all players of the mission’s objective by saying something like “Baron Evil McJones must be around here somewhere, searching for the crystal that can cure his impotence.” Or it can also just set the scene for the mission by saying something like... “Pure magical energy courses throughout the cavern.” or “The smell of burning oil permeates the air.” - - Mission Success/Fail Popup: The same as the pop-up above, only after the mission is completed. A great way to hint at what comes next. - - Return Fail Dialogue: This is only seen (and required) if you have an objective that can be failed (like an escort or defend or time limit). You’ll have to advance the story even if they couldn’t complete your objectives.

Certain mission objectives such as captives, destructible objects, and I believe ambushes have the option to set the surrounding enemy group to Easy/Medium/Hard. Choosing the 'Hard' setting actually makes the mob spawn bigger, but usually with more bosses, which is why several farmers don't do it because the mob will take longer to kill (and will possibly become unwieldy with some enemies no longer in range of auras). Supposedly with timing, having the run go faster with less inf ultimately balances out, especially when doing consecutive runs on a speed-focused map like Shiva space. It should also be said that while ambushes are incredibly useful for farmers because the mobs come to you and have that Easy/Medium/Hard setting, Ambush Farms were among the first types of AE farms cracked down on because they ate resources like no other. This led to the entire Mission Architect system being changed to no longer allow you to spawn multiple ambushes off one trigger. That's why this mission you're talking about has to have so many destructible objects around to spawn singular ambushes. Back in the day, you could spawn the max number of mission details off a glowie click (and murder the server in the process). So, yes, ambushes are useful in farming, but there's a sordid history with them. Anyway, those are the only reasons I can think of that explain why the map you described was set up in that way (and why there was an inf imbalance). I don't know if you timed yourself clearing the farm, but I have to imagine it would've taken longer than a standard Shiva all-patrols map like Dan Petro's 'Real Story of a Real Big Dawg' arc. Hope this helped!

Check your Forum PMs, happy to share, but can't just put my secrets out in the open. Heard there's folks out here swiping /Nin blaster tricks.

Glad to see the turret strat wasn't patched, Silver Mantis is still very speedable. Fun jaunt with the gang:

2 / 4 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 12 / 13 / 17

@Charlie Naturalizer Beam/Plant Blaster