Ankylosaur

No idea - that's one of the "issues" I meant. Maybe they are an AV, set to fight defensively, but have no attacks?

So @LordRassilon just completed this series over on Twitch and it was interesting to see all of the changes in play with the updated Council and Cimeroran Traitors and Nictus powers. One of the things that was interesting to see was how things have evolved. Because of the updates to the base mobs, the Council and the Cimeroran Traitors were different than they had been when I created this and more of a challenge. Part 3 was written for a contest and used the new Cimeroran maps when they came out. One of the more surprising things to see though was the Vespillos Pass base map has been updated since I created this! You go there to chase down Arakhn and discover Burkholder is there with giant robots - and the reason I made Council your quarry is that the map used to be a Council map. Looks like the Devs have updated it with 5th column flags/insignia and I think the giant robots were reskinned a bit too. Maybe an insight into an update coming soon? All I know is that it was definitely Council when I made this. My story is a little thematically broken as a result, but its a Dev's choice so will leave it be - maybe they captured the base from Requiem or something and just haven't gotten around to swapping out the insignia yet...

So this is impressive, but a fair amount of additional work for the author and the player. Said another way - it's hard to get people to play these things anyway - getting them to log into another thing may be a bridge too far for many players. The experience might be unique enough some may try it, but in my experience people tend to burn through the stories, not really look for more words (despite my penchant for putting in more. 🙂 ) Since the "revealed" arc ids need to be active anyway within AE, meaning it's not like the code actually unlocks an arc you otherwise could not just play, the main advantage here is the dialog - which is a cool addition. (In AE you could just include a branching arc name or ID within the Clue/Souvenir in AE.) One pretty unique thing you could add, that has been requested often, are cutscenes. Each dialog block could have the person you freed/defeated animated and speaking, or it could be a whole scene someone made with multiple characters conversing. Maybe include a way to embed a Youtube video for cut scenes made with demo record in the dialog? (Not something I would personally take the time to do yet, but I am sure some would). Presuming that is not in violation of the terms of course.

The most obvious to swap out for me are the "control" offense powers of Pulsar and Gravatic Emanation or the Aim powers - but in the warshades case, kind of a common/dramatic one. With Dominator assault sets, there are no nukes but this is really a blast set with the blaster secondary punches merged in.

The thing is you'll want to place your ally at the back - and in the Atta map, the back is not quite as far back you would probably want - I think it's like the second right - the mini map in AE will show you. So you could probably do a different map. Something big like the few big outdoor maps like the Cimeroran valley map or castle map that have a back might work. Most standard maps other than caves span multiple floors so are probably not the best.

As in the Shadow Cyst Crystal mob? Agreed! Would love all the Unbound Nictus added to the AE Nictus mob. They recently cleaned up the Nictus mob in AE by making the Void Hunters their own mob, but would love to have the full actual Nictus mob available. I wonder if it is that "disjoined" power they have that makes that not possible - the write up of it being "gained" when summoned by the crystal makes it sound like it may not be an issue. I fudged unbound Nictus and Shadow Cyst Crystals for my All That Glows post-New-Praetorians-arc-Arakhn-vs-Requiem series by repurposing Storm Elementals in a custom Unbound Nictus mob surrounding the destructible object - but the real thing would be better. (Plug: @LordRassilon is playing the finale of that on twitch as MollyMauk76 this Monday.)

Cross-posting...

Me either - it's really phoning it in. 🙂 But now that I know it does, I'm surprised the follow works without issues. I picture an afk farm like this... Take a fire/spine brute in with auras ablazin' Rescue an ally who buffs, probably a ridiculous custom one with ALL available buffs. The rescue spawns heavy patrols. Auto-fire your burn patch. Have lunch. Never made a farm nor do I have a farming toon, but there - a guide. 🙂

@WhiteNightingale, I don't recall that faction but in case this helps, Praetorian Nightstar and Siege are in the Generic Villain "faction" I don't recall every seeing Shadowhunter in there.

We were given loads of new power sets with the latest update, so probably selfish to want more, but I would still really love to have the Kheldian power sets represented. Rather than just ask, I thought I would take a stab at putting something together. Maybe, if anyone else is interested in this and we are clear on what we are looking for it can give the devs a springboard from which to explore the idea. Some guiding principles for my initial list. Need a primary and secondary set for Peacebringers and Warshades Should fit within Architect constraints to make it easy to add (e.g. no new category like Kheldian and kept to 9 powers) Should look to existing mobs to identify powers devs already deem appropriate for an NPC (i.e. the toon AI knows what to do with it and its not overpowered for an NPC or has NPC balanced numbers already) Attacks should mix melee and range Should include the Nova and Dwarf forms Where/naming The Primaries are Luminous Blast and Umbral Blast, but because they include ranged and melee powers, they seem best to put under the Dominators "Assault" powers which do the same and model them on those. The secondaries are armors, which could fit under any armor secondary really. Peacebringers Luminous Assault Using the PPD Transcended and Sunstorm for inspiration, along with the basic flow of a Dominator assault set, and no nuke it could look like this Gleaming Bolt Gleaming Blast Radiant Strike Proton Scatter Luminous Detonation Inner Light Pulsar Incandescent Strike Bright Nova Luminous Aura With this I just picked common armors. I included Light Form as Sunstorm has it, but I think Conserve Energy may be better really. Incandescence Shining Shield Essence Boost Thermal Shield Quantum Shield Reform Essence Conserve Energy Restore Essence Light Form White Dwarf Warshades Umbral Assault Using Galaxy Troops and Arakhan, Romulus, and the flow of the Dark Assault set I came up with this - no nuke Shadow Bolt Shadow Blast Star Punch Gravimetric Snare Sunless Mire Essence Drain Gravity Well Gravatic Emanation Dark Nova Umbral Aura Again focused on core armors and powers used by Galaxy troops primarily. Absorption Gravity Shield Orbiting Death Penumbral Shield Twilight Shield Stygian Circle Stygian Return Eclipse Dark Dwarf Thoughts? Are there key powers you think are worth trading out for? Are there some things in here you think should not be? Some decisions I made Neither assault has the Eye beams or the Nukes Neither set has their "pets" (photon seekers are probably easy, but the unbound essence power requires targeting fallen enemies which seems unlikely to be useful, and, maybe even something the AI does not know how to do) Both armors have their tier 9 Light Form/Eclipse

The Atta map refers to a very large custom map that is where Atta of the Trolls lives in the Hollows. Probably popular for farming because it has so many spawn points and corners where you can gather mobs. As said above, you'll have to explore other maps to find the one that meets your farming needs. So many people have made farms though, I bet you can find one that you like.

Been tweaking the first one, Pandemonium in Night Ward. I removed the Talon "Diviners" from the story. Their description makes it clear that they were followers of Serene, so I had them hang back when all the Talons and Diabolique fled Night Ward for Astoria, but in the end, I think they just complicated things. There is enough going on in here with all the shadow and demon stuff to not include them in the mix, and instead focus on the main antagonists as a more unified group. Also made a map change, and several other language refinements in both story and typos.

Great to see! I am in the middle of doing something similar with my Neo Praetoria series that is still a WIP. Mine picks up right after The Magician's arc, but is tied to my Neo Tokyo stuff so I suspect we are not treading the same ground. Will be fun to see your take!

I was on Pinnacle: Character names I recall: Plymouth Rock, Immortalious, Fire Kracker, Sun Volt, Dr. Gravitron, Hemogoblin, Mesmerizo, Ankylosaur

If looking at offices, why not stuff (like windows) from the Khalisti Wharf office maps in AE?

EBs do not spawn as part of a group normally. You can name one as the boss and have the group around them, but that is the best you can do to include them with the rest of the gang.

My most aggregious example of this and where I uncovered the issue was when I made the playing cards for the Adventures in Wonderland. Because I wanted to use the number chest decoration on them, I actually had a mob with 52 characters in it, on top of the MANY other custom mobs in that arc. I realized if I moved a bunch of "cards" out of the mob to another placeholder mob that was not in use, it could load without issue.

This is similar to my file size issue, where it times out with the map server when loading because, while loading, its sort of hung and not communicating with the map server. In the past this was only on really large missions for me with a file size over 42% once published, but I have encountered it on smaller one recently. If you resize the editing window so you can see behind it you'll probably see a "Lost Connection with the Mapsserver" text banner thingy. In general, if it were a large file size - reducing the number of custom mobs helped me, and that is throughout the arc as it reduces file size. But one other thing that seemed to help, sometimes, was loading the mission from within the Architect Editing room. No idea why - and YMMV - but worth a shot. Have also been getting good success in hours when the server is quieter.

After watching @LordRassilon complete both Glimmers and Glitters it gave me an idea to completely redo the final mission, in the final arc, of Glimmers. Here's the sorta syllogistic reasoning In Glimmers 3.3 M4, there is a big ultimate fight which is pretty epic, but, in M5 I just had you do it all again in a "oh they are still trying it" kind of way in the Flying Ziggurat map - but in practice it was not nearly as exciting/harrowing as M4 and I think leaves it all just a little flat. In Glitters 3.3 M5, I have an epilogue mission - which is kind of satisfying. In it you get clues that talk about the results of all you accomplished - kind of a "where are they now" device, which brings good closure to such a long series and such a significant coup. Therefore, to improve Glimmers 3.3 M5 I realized I should replace the "do it again" mission of Glimmers with an epilogue mission. So I did - I made an epilogue mission in M5 of Glimmers 3.3, letting you better explore the results of all your hard work, and glimpse the effects of the coup, and general fallout of the entire series - etc. Plus I used the Flying Ziggurat map in my new Neo Praetoria series (still WIP) and you know I don't like to reuse maps unless you are returning to the exact same place. Plus it gives @TerroirNoir something unique to look forward to in Glimmers 😉

You're right of course. 🙂 But at least I pared Glitters down from 12... Originally Glitters 1.1 - 1.3 was an intro to all of the different series - they all branched off it. But that was confusing to most - so now Glitters is simpler and linear, but the only one which has missions below level 20. (But yeah - people are more apt to commit to 3 and even that is a stretch. One shots still seem to grab most attention, with Adventures in Wonderland being my most successful with 800 ratings between what it has now and what it had before I accidentally unpublished it. That is more than all my other 30+ arcs and their ratings added up. Oh and I noticed that Adventures in Wonderland is back on page one! Wish I had not lost my 780ish ratings, but no one to blame but me.)

So they say to write the ending first… I wrote Ninjas in the wind as a standalone to explore Neo Tokyo and the Order of the Wind. It’s also why it has more plays than the others. Was really pleased with the arc, and it accomplished something I needed for another idea I had, which was to follow up on the Mu’Vorkan thing from the Dark Astoria series though my take on what was supposed to happen per the AMA is the opposite. But the struggle for power among the Mu/Scirocco is definitely the through line. After writing Glitters, where I had to completely change my original ending because my first one was not that good, for Glimmers I used Ninjas in the Wind as a clear destination for the stories preceding it. Overall Glimmers was a much more coherent story in my head from the beginning of writing it than Glitters. Glitters is there now, but took a lot of rework to get there. Itwas my first multi arc attempt, sprawled a bit, and went on few tangents - not to mention needing to rework it to incorporate all the new Gold Brickers and their updated lore with the Aeon SF. Anyway - each is pretty tight now - but 9 arcs is too long. It’s why Glints and Glows are 3. The All the Glows dates might be even weirder. But that is quite literally a different story. 🙂

Standard Map Ideas This is probably far too big to ask the devs to do, but reflecting on it, I am surprised there is not an "outdoor forest" series of small, medium, large maps as standard maps that used the kind of "forest tunnel" system that you see in Perez and Eden. Like caves you could have various combos of tunnels and reconfiged of the same basic parts to create unique variants. Similar to the ShadowHunter mission in the Number Six arc, seems like this could have been a thing. Seems like a random streetscape series could have been available too that represented the places between the war walls and just pieced square blocks together of maybe some of the different architecture styles. Convert More Old but Unique Maps Would love the last few maps on this list that are missing from AE to be added. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Demo_Editing/Scenic_Maps I know ones that need scripts (like Marchand's office as an example we know) are problematic, but am ever optimistic these are old enough that they can be easily converted to the AE format. I think these are the only ones missing Freakshow Office Misdirected Portal Misdirected Portal Window Mole Point Portal Portal Corp Outdoor (Lot of portal locations 🙂 )

Not that many. Here are the outdoor ones - off the top of my head The Cimmerora island, but now with front, middle, and back. The Cimmerora castle, but the full thing, with a fifth column back. The Cimmerora pass The Croatoa frozen winterland The CoH floating ziggurat island Cap Au Diablo with the crazy sky Anyone think of any others? Note that this seems updated from a quick spot check as all those and more (like the smelter cauldron) are here: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mission_Architect_Unique_Maps Any I missed?

This is not my area of expertise even slightly, but as a series based purely on scaling difficulty for teams, there is a lot of research/suggestions in here for balancing difficulty purely for the challenge of difficult fights. I believe this may be a bit of the gold standard for this kind of thing.

One of the things I sometimes do on really big maps with hard to find items, or on maps that are just hard to see (like the Council Atlas map), are what I now call "spirit guides" (because of how I first used them). Basically a friendly non combatant Escort in the area, a few multiples of it, without enemies around it, that they might bump into to mark the objective. So, for example, I think I used that very map in my Neverland one and there were some friendly fairies that could mark the map for you. Not sure if it could work for you in this instance - just sharing the idea.