New Missions?

[Suffercharge]

  I have started a few new characters recently as my main is nearing the endgame.  Playing the same early missions over and over has gotten a little grindy in places.  So I was wondering, is it possible to take player-made missions out of the simulated environment and plug them into the world map?

 

  I know I can just go to AE and play them there, but it got me thinking about it more in a community kind of way.  Maybe there could be a competition, where people submit specific missions for public approval (and assuming they pass moderation for content), and the winner(s) get added to the overworld?  There are plenty of places to put down a new NPC, and most of the content is instanced anyway.  I understand this might be an embuggerance to plug into the Oroboros flashbacks, so it might need to be left out of that, but if it is possible, could this be a thing?

[boggo2300]

10 minutes ago, Suffercharge said:

  I have started a few new characters recently as my main is nearing the endgame.  Playing the same early missions over and over has gotten a little grindy in places.  So I was wondering, is it possible to take player-made missions out of the simulated environment and plug them into the world map?

 

  I know I can just go to AE and play them there, but it got me thinking about it more in a community kind of way.  Maybe there could be a competition, where people submit specific missions for public approval (and assuming they pass moderation for content), and the winner(s) get added to the overworld?  There are plenty of places to put down a new NPC, and most of the content is instanced anyway.  I understand this might be an embuggerance to plug into the Oroboros flashbacks, so it might need to be left out of that, but if it is possible, could this be a thing?

no they work completely differently according to the original devs and as the new arcs added to homecoming have highlighted exactly how hard it is to get normal world missions working, it's been something desired right from the beginning, and who wouldnt, it would be awesome, and I'd be all over it like ants on a picnic, but I don't believe it's doable in any easy way

[Suffercharge]

Darn!  Oh well.  Thanks for clearing that up. 🙂

[boggo2300]

8 hours ago, Suffercharge said:

Darn!  Oh well.  Thanks for clearing that up. 🙂

there are new mission arcs coming, 2 already, but they sound like a LOT of work, hopefully some of the more talented AE writers will dip their feet in the water and volunteer to do new mission arcs!

[Number Six]

Specifically on the topic of porting AE missions: Honestly even if it were easy I'm not sure I would want to.

 

With lots of respect for some of the talented AE writers out there, the AE toolbox is just so... limited... compared with what you can do with the full range of what's possible in standard missions.

 

Consider the high bar that was set by the arcs added later in the game. Almost every single arc added in the last 2 or 3 years of the game includes things like customized mission maps, scripted NPC interactions, caption text, challenge badges, customized enemy powers, cutscenes, etc. While not every mission needs all of those at once or they start to feel gimmicky, by comparison AE missions feel like glorified radio missions.

 

AE is a decent enough place to cut your teeth writing, but a good mission is produced by a team involving not only the writer but also mission designers, map editors, powers developers, artists, etc. We prototyped that process with the new vigilante & rogue arcs, putting a team recruited from within the community together to produce it, and everyone learned a lot from the experience. Those lessons will be applied to the arcs currently in development, and as we continue to get more people familiar with the processes involved we hope to get the pipeline more streamlined, and also to be on the lookout for additional talent within the community to add to it.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Number Six said:

With lots of respect for some of the talented AE writers out there, the AE toolbox is just so... limited... compared with what you can do with the full range of what's possible in standard missions.

In the context of what I see Homecoming as doing, I think what could be done is for the Homecoming team to periodically look at the better AE arcs and their creators, and see who is consistently creating high-quality stories... and see if they can be recruited as content developers. Not taking AE arcs and moving them to the main game, but look at it as a portfolio to find the people who might do equally good work with an improved toolset. If they're not doing it already.