ZamuelNow

It's a New Year...which means it's time to set resolutions that you may or may not succeed in! Does anyone have big plans with Mission Architect in 2025? I've got three big schemes but the only one I'll be open about is the Mission Architect Sunday Special, which will have it's start on Sunday. Trying to get it to lead to a successful recurring event.

Make the "AE" logo available as a chest symbol. Was a little surprised not to see it with all the other faction logos unless I'm overlooking it.

I might be able to join with Technician Hugo - Arsenal/FF Controller. I hate that I missed so many in the later part of the year.

Ah, thank you. Was looking for the hero one but I have a villain who can flashback the other. For the villain one, are all the patron arcs in Ouro? I don't remember if I ran his for the unlock (even though I did choose Black Scorpion patron pool).

Since I'm in the level range, I've been fighting Nemesis. Who gives the mission in the Shadow Shard with the Nemesis base? Does the base exist in the zone? Tried searching the wiki but I must be overlooking it.

Did you republish? The arc ID isn't 65481. You don't need to delete your arc to make edits. Doing so wipes out prior ratings. However, I must commend you since--as other's have noticed--you learned you can use the navigation bar to lie to the player about the actual objectives. You need to be careful with this since it can throw the player off if done wrong. There's also the issue that though the mission assumes the player is smart, it treats the character as dumb which is a sore point with redside missions. But as long as the player gets it and acknowledges the meta angle, it's fine. On a more line by line breakdown: Forager lacks a bio. While a bio might give him away, not having one at all seems unfinished. Most won't check, admittedly. Mission 1's Patrol dialogue actually worked? Don't know if it's just for this map, the devs finally fixed a bug that been here a while, or something else is going on. Nav bar is somewhat confusing, at first. Considering what's going on, I'd use a clue to imply radio text. Perhaps duplicating Officer Daniels' radio chatter using the same font size and colors. It might defuse some of the player frustration with dealing with an outdoor map. Mission 2 contact text "Park in Back." 'Back' should be lowercase. Mission 2 uses a Mercy Island map, though the visuals are fine in the grand scheme of things. So...Mission 3's ambushes. While "it makes sense" for the narrative, you should never do ambushes on 75%, 50%, AND 25% health on a level 10 and below mission. Unless it's in Praetoria and even then that's a situation where you should err on the side of doing better than Paragon Studios. Most low level characters can't handle that. I played a Stalker within the level range and was able to partially circumvent this with burst damage. Still died, though. If you don't kill the boss group before the ambush arrives, there a real chance that the mission can't be completed.

Meant to but forgot to comment on this thread earlier. While I have some similar concerns as some others with uncontrolled splitting, this does seem like a well though out idea. Splitting seems like it would be more feasible if it was limited to the T3 (mirroring the splitting when a slime or single cell organism gets too large) or was attached to a power like a replacement for Elemental Infusion. And Elemental Infusion is its own cool thing that would be a shame to lose. Noting the customization concerns @TygerDarkstorm brought up with Elemental Infusion, there's one minor issue not mentioned and one easy overall fix. The minor issue is that the suggested electricity colors don't match the game defaults (blue for heroes and red for villains). But the actual fix would be a slight shift in thought. Rather than base the element on the color and prevent customization, have it place an aura on the pet based on individual powers in armor sets.

What I find interesting is that style of play can really skew this list. For instance, I always rated Air Superiority pretty highly on melee characters for the control it offers. Especially if the actual travel power taken isn't Fly itself.

What level are you trying to build them for? What are you using to test? How many enemies are you trying to build?

Everyone on the team can see the clue but just the person who clicks it gets the notification. Actually, most of the team can read the mission text, it's just the text when you return to the contact or the contact's waiting text that can't be seen. It's just that teams often don't slow down to read those, while pop ups are more in your face. I might expect solo play but I try to plan for teams when I write an arc. Jumping to next objective is the most useful when you think a glowie might be stuck in geometry. If you jump to it, you can be stuck in a shipping container, too! :)

When creating an arc, players have the option to select three keywords from a few columns. I'd like to suggest "Tutorial" for the center column. Some missions are more designed as interactive teaching than a traditional adventure.

I figured regulars would know most of it and would be more useful in suggesting additions, considering I deliberately left some spawns Empty. But since some things were newish to you, I'm wondering what they were.

Oh, a lot of the AE maps are frustrating to work with. That's why I'm thinking of only trying to focus on two or three at a time. We players can only make stabs in the dark when it comes to trying to suggest fixes. I'm just saying, why not sharpen our knives? As far as outdoor AE maps and allies, I think the Paragon Studios devs simply didn't think to add the spawn points in some maps. To curb farming, that feels like a scalpel fix and most anti farming tended to be a chainsaw (that missed...).

While I have the Early Bird badge, I'm also wondering if it's based number of plays or amount of time since it was first published.

While getting new powersets in AE is nice (and was admittedly requested), what a lot of us want is map fixes. One of the problems with that is that the fixes we want (primarily Front/Middle/Back adjustments) stand the risk of breaking other people's arcs if done wrong. I believe we have at least one Dev's Choice author who has passed away so if their arc was broken it would never be fixed. But...presumably additive changes to Front/Middle/Back can still be made. So, I figure we can get changes if we're organized, specific, and limited. Not "this map is broken" but directly pointing at spawns and detailing the issue. Limiting this to only two or three maps per Page allows us to collaborate on troubleshooting. For this, I will focus on Atlas Park 01 and President Marchand's Office. Atlas Park 01 Bear with me on the images since I only have so much experience with this forum's attachments. I tried to name the images in a way that they're understandable. For Atlas, it says there's both Front and Back spots in the editor but it's only showing the Front locations on the map. In game in Test mode, it isn't showing either. These look like genuine bugs that need fixing. On Quality of Life adjustments, there's no glowie locations so adding some would be useful. Might even be a blessing in disguise since the new ones can be better placed than most. For floor glowies, I'd suggest one at Front /loc [162.9 0.0 189.0], one at Middle /loc [233.4 17.9 -497.8], and one at Back /loc [-318.3 0.0 -1208.9] or [549.6 -0.0 -1228.5]. This would mean one 1n the park near the mission entrance, one near city hall, and one farther out. Limited spawns means you could plan your story around them. While outdoor areas often aren't the best for Wall locations, the area around City Hall presents some options such as /loc [65.0 -0.0 -1063.4]. A Wall glowie could be along the concrete wall near the trolley at /loc [636.0 -0.0 -1186.4]. It would be useful to have a Middle boss at /loc [127.9 15.9 -178.7] but that's highly dependent on whatever's going on with the Back spawns. President Marchand's Office The most infamously broken map for AE and mainly for the desire to use it but it not working how people expect. Looking at the screenshots, the text claims that there's only 3 floors but the mini map shows 4 floors, which is correct. The second floor is showing the icons but not the floorplan in the editor, though the floorplan does show in Test mode. The fourth floor is showing as blank in the editor and it's missing in game, which feels odd since I thought that only Trial mini maps were blank in the game. You discover more problems when you check the maps in Test mode. On the first floor at /loc [-4554.0 -1128.0 -3044.8] is a Back spawn point but that's right in the middle of the player spawn location. This is despite the editor not offering Back spawn locations. Presumably, this should be on the top floor but we can't see the map for the top floor. On the second floor at /loc [-3058.0 -1110.0 -2832.3] is another Back spawn but it's showing as being inside the wall. If these two misplaced spawns were moved to the fourth/top floor and they were made directly accessible in the editor (I've heard of people getting them on accident), would be helpful. Presumably, inside the fourth floor's office at /loc [-2614.6 112.2 -770.0] or [-2576.0 112.2 -777.7] and/or the fourth floor exterior at /loc [-2729.0 127.5 -626.9] [-2744.6 160.0 -759.5] would seem best. While of vastly less importance, it seems like /loc [-2614.8 112.0 -652.6] would be a good spawn point for a GM on the fourth floor.

Super late to the party but I never forgot this. Have you had a Consideration of Knowledge recently? It's 1-9 instead of 1-10 due to a lot of default enemies changing when they become level 10.

Kinda surprised to see my name in this thread. Well, I hope my schemes for 2025 live up to the nomination.

Consideration of Knowledge - Arc ID: 65341 Wandering into your local Architect Entertainment building, you discover that the game may be talking to you. Is Mission Architect using an arc to teach you tips on writing in Mission Architect? Low XP but high knowledge! [SFMA] This has been in the planning stages for a while but December put me in a sprint to completion. With this arc, there's two specific reasons why it exists... For the first bit of inspiration: Back in the retail days there was an arc called Knowledge Is Power (by @Paula) that used a witty style to teach tips about Mission Architect. It managed to earn a Dev's Choice and had mild popularity. I was disappointed to not see it on Homecoming. Don't know if the author isn't on HC or chose not to republish. I felt there needed to be something like it. Not an exact copy but I don't remember it clearly enough to copy even I wanted to. From that, eventually came the second inspiration... https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Architect_Edition While the AE hologram stream is acid green in game, a quiet portion of my brain thinks of AE with a blueprint blue. I joined CoH in I14 with the retail copy and with that I stumbled upon the idea of: Why not give back by making the teaching arc heavily reference the mission from the inside cover? With my own twists of course but it felt like the right way to handle things. I decided to recreate Tough Love and Cosmic Bleed from scratch as the main stars of the arc and make the whole thing self aware. I'm also gifting their costumes to the rest of the community. ToughLoveAndCosmic Bleed.zip

Was about to report this but I see it was already reported.

With this stopping just shy of level 21, I'm wondering if this is finished. If so, what all observations did you make with this playthrough overall?

I added a renamed Animus Arcana to the fourth mission of Indelible Curse of Hate. It feels small but the enemy group was lacking variety and it lacked it in a way that clashed with my own suggested spawn sizes in. It badly needed more minions.

Surprised no one linked to the custom powers post:

I'm starting small so I can better assess any problems that might pop up in the first few runs. There's also the issue of the differences in shard culture that may make this not as feasible on some shards.

Roy Cooling was on Live (I distinctly remember blueside only players being shocked at how nasty PPD are to fight) but it's a "newer" arc and really feels like it would be in line for a hero only accolade.

Hey! I don't know how many of you visit the Mission Architect section of the forums but I'm putting a version of the Mission Architect Sunday Special thread here for any questions people might have. I know some people on Discord plan to attend at least the first one for this shard.