Architect Entertainment - Content Ideas

[Take One]

I'd like a way to mark an objective so that it becomes visible on the minimap from the start, like a checkbox or something: "Show this objective on the map."

It could also be another option in the drop-down menu where you pick if the objective will fade in or out or not.

If this option is chosen, the objective would show up on the minimap as the objective spawns, to make it easier for the player to find.

Sometimes this makes sense for the story, and we have seen similar technology in the "main" game so it's not like it's unheard of.

[Tailcoat]

I'd like to be able to select colors/skins for character powers. A while ago, I was trying to use a character with a needle theme, which required having spines powers with the metal spikes appearance, but my character was stuck using the lumpy default bone spikes, which didn't work at all. 

 

Another thing I wanted to do was have a boss transform into a stronger Final Form, but couldn't figure out a way to do that. Trying to create his final form as a new character didn't work right since the new NPC would spawn in a random place (I was using an outdoor map), which made no sense. Making the original run away didn't work out either. If AE NPCs could be made to teleport like some regular NPCs do in missions, that would be slightly less awkward, but I think it'd be neat to have a shapeshift/Final Form option available:

• You could associate a CC emote with it and swap out the character for another. Maybe there's an option for the character to throw out an energy pulse that knocks over players briefly while doing the transformation animation so it doesn't look weird like it might if players were, say, punching a scientist who doesn't react because he's too busy downing the Mr. Hyde transformation formula.
• Maybe there could be an option to have this new form (in reality a new NPC) inherit the same health/end as its previous incarnation, or be healed or partially healed. 
  • Ex. uses:
    • The designer wants the boss to get more dangerous the more desperate and closer to death (or, uh, "arrest") they are, so at half or quarter health, the boss NPC is swapped out for a version with more-powerful or different (if you want the boss to change weapons or strategy) powers.
    • Maybe this boss was initially holding back, conserving energy.
    • Maybe this is a sub-boss with conflicting loyalties who was hoping the players would back down but clearly that's not going to happen and now the boss has to go full-force.
    • Since a transformation animation would be optional, the designer might use the same appearance for each transformation and since the second form could be set to inherit the health of the first one, it could be a seamless transition with the only clue being an option to have the boss say something, like warning the players about a change in strategy or that they're no longer "holding back". 
    • The boss is a shapeshifter or mage who starts assuming different appearances to taunt the players. These are just for show, so the boss' health is set to retain continuity regardless of transformation.
    • The boss is close to death and emits a pulse that knocks back the players while they do a CC emote during which the original NPC is swapped for a new one that is more monstrous in appearance and has stronger powers. They shout something something dramatic about power and the designer has set the boss to have been healed or partially healed as part of this "evolution". This would be useful for creating a challenging and exciting final boss for an arc.
• A similar transform option could optionally be tied to the betrayal mechanic too, so maybe a supposed ally drops their disguise when they betray you or their glamor spell/shapeshift is exposed by another character for all to see, forcing a fight.

[MHertz]

1. Choose an emote for the contact. Checking clipboard, eating hot dog, etc. It would be lovely if this could change on a per-mission basis, or even pre-mission and post-mission.

 

2. Choose a different contact for a various missions in the arc. This would enable “go talk to Azuria” or similar.

 

3. Let other players read the contact text! There’s only so much storytelling you can accomplish through boss dialogue and pop-up windows.

 

4. Events that trigger after a delay. Someone runs off and says they’ll call for help, but help is already here.

 

5. Ally Reacts To X Plot Point. Upon completion of (or start of) an objective, the Ally says something.

 

6. Set flag to X. If the player failed mission 1, or if the ally was defeated, the dialogue for subsequent missions could reflect that. Then allow IF/THEN detection in the dialogue.

 

7. Villain group checkboxes for the “random” pick. Council, but no robots. Circle of Thorns, ghosts only. Tsoo, no Ancestor Spirits. Yes, you could technically build this out painstakingly by hand, but I suspect it throws off the randomization weighting.

[Emperor Cole]

1. Pandora's Box Sky Raiders and Warriors so they can spawn at level 50.

2. New Gold Brickers and Freaklok.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Emperor Cole
added 2.

[Nebulhym]

I don't know if this was mentioned but I would love to have the ability to choose "random" for a Boss detail after I picked a custom group. The option exists for regular villain groups but not for our custom made ones. Why? Would such a thing be too complicated to code?

 

Also, the Dark Astoria arcs have great unique maps. Coud we have them too?

[Milk Sheik]

+1 to spawn control, particularly on the outdoor maps where there isn't any. I don't know the reasons why, but the outdoor maps can't even be weighted with front/back. Messes up the pacing in my arc half the time because the bosses can appear near the entrance.

[Gobbledigook]

wrong post

Edited January 28, 2022 by Gobbledegook

[Milk Sheik]

Bodies.

 

Right now if I want you to find a dead or unconscious body, I have to use a body bag glowie, which doesn't fit in Cimerora missions or other non-modern settings. (I think there's a coffin glowie, too, but how often do we really interrupt a funeral?) What I want is a costume-adjustable prone person like in the later-issue missions. For example, the LRSF has Ms. Liberty on the ground in Atlas Park, the "No One Left Behind" badge mission where all the cops are on the floor overcome by the smoke has, well, cop models, and I know there's a mission out there where you find your clones on the floor, too. This would be extremely useful for the "you're too late" plot twists or "you find them on the brink of death and save or kill them" missions.

 

Edited February 2, 2022 by Milk Sheik

[Jiro Ito]

On 2/2/2022 at 11:43 AM, Milk Sheik said:

Bodies.

 

Right now if I want you to find a dead or unconscious body, I have to use a body bag glowie, which doesn't fit in Cimerora missions or other non-modern settings. (I think there's a coffin glowie, too, but how often do we really interrupt a funeral?) What I want is a costume-adjustable prone person like in the later-issue missions. For example, the LRSF has Ms. Liberty on the ground in Atlas Park, the "No One Left Behind" badge mission where all the cops are on the floor overcome by the smoke has, well, cop models, and I know there's a mission out there where you find your clones on the floor, too. This would be extremely useful for the "you're too late" plot twists or "you find them on the brink of death and save or kill them" missions.

 

 

You can make a boss ally with no group and give it the unconscious animation and it will just lie there.

[Jiro Ito]

Currently, when going to the Custom Group Creator, the "Standard" available enemies list has Arachnos on it so you can, say, put Lord Recluse into your group of custom Baywatch lifeguards (lol) but the enemy list does not have the Freedom Phalanx, Vindicators, WISDOM, Rogue Isle Villains or Paragon Heroes factions available to pull from.  Hoping this can be updated to include these groups?  

[starro]

19 minutes ago, Jiro Ito said:

 

You can make a boss ally with no group and give it the unconscious animation and it will just lie there.

.....i have wanted this since 2009.... you fixed it in 30 seconds...  I am just not creative enough.

[Jiro Ito]

48 minutes ago, starro said:

.....i have wanted this since 2009.... you fixed it in 30 seconds...  I am just not creative enough.

 

I should have given proper credit, this is noted in charlie's AE guide that is pinned to the top of the AE forum.  There are lots of fantastic out-of-the-box tricks in here to help flesh out stories.  For example, if you give your boss the "oily" aura and color it red, your corpse is now in a pool of blood.

 

 

[Darmian]

Actually, I use "Dead Slab" for unconscious, rather than the actual "Unconscious" animation itself.  I'll explain.  You may be unlucky that 1 out of every 20 tests has that NPC lying in a twisted tangle, but usually they aren't; however when you use "Dead Slab" they get up slowly and carefully, as opposed to "Unconscious", where they just flip up weirdly, so overall you get what appears to be someone behaving rather more naturally.

[Ender Shadowborne]

Not quite sure if anyone's mentioned these already, but there's a bunch of things I'd certainly love to see, and one of them my dad thought of which I thought was brilliant, so I'll start off with it:

 

Map maker: Hear me out, so things like the offices and cave sets are pretty random on their own, right? Good, but it'd be even better if we could make our own maps based on these sets (Abiding with plot size limits), for our missions, rather than sticking with the ones that are already laid out for us. It feels like there's a lot of creative potential here that's being left untapped or inaccessible, or perhaps even being neglected. Lots of potential to make AE missions so much more interesting, and can even bring more spawnpoints for NPCs and add to the story and things like that

 

More dialogue slots, especially when certain things happen: Right now, they're pretty basic, very similar to a radio mission or a generic mission (Not a story arc mission), again, more potential that could be put to good use, but instead is being wasted, the mission creation could be a whole lot more elaborate here, and I guess as to not overwhelm people, these extras should be sorted into a whole "Advanced mode" type thing

 

Cutscene creation/NPC banter: There should be a way to make cutscenes like most story arc missions have got, and a way to have banter between NPCs, like in the Finale for the Shining Stars story arc (I believe this is also present in the Hearts of Darkness arc as well, again, a lot of creativity that can be leveraged here, but isn't

 

In-mission dialog boxes: I think it's pretty self-explanatory here, but in case an explanation is needed, we've all seen them, you go up to an object/person in the mission map, and the same dialog you needed to get the mission in the first place pops up, and you can have multiple choices of dialogue or just a single one, depending on the construction, and certain things can happen based on logic the user defines

 

Full unlock of character creation: The same pieces we have in the character creator, with customization palettes and all that, so like the parts for Arachnos Soldiers and Fortunatas and all that should become accessible dependent on chosen powerset

 

Unlock all powersets/archetypes: Things like Arachnos Soldier, Warshade, so forth, these aren't present currently and they really should be, as I have a character (Arbiter Jason) whose an Arachnos soldier, and my main is a Warshade, and these powersets don't exist at least unless you use the "Doppelganger" option, which doesn't exactly help here, as we may want to create custom characters with these powersets and have them with different colors of our choosing and so on

 

Methinks that about wraps it up, most likely I've forgotten a thing or more and just am not thinking about it...

[Solvernia]

I would love for the ability to have NPCs in a mission that have dialogue options.

[Ender Shadowborne]

1 hour ago, Solvernia said:

I would love for the ability to have NPCs in a mission that have dialogue options.

You mean extra dialogue options?

[Solvernia]

6 hours ago, Ender Shadowborne said:

You mean extra dialogue options?

I mean like the dialogue trees that newer in-mission NPCs have.

[Ender Shadowborne]

10 hours ago, Solvernia said:

I mean like the dialogue trees that newer in-mission NPCs have.

Ahhh I had mentioned that

 

On 4/24/2022 at 12:47 PM, Ender Shadowborne said:

In-mission dialog boxes:...

Like so

[Milk Sheik]

On 4/8/2022 at 2:48 PM, Jiro Ito said:

 

You can make a boss ally with no group and give it the unconscious animation and it will just lie there.

 

Nice! Awesome stuff, thanks.

So if I wanted to have it as a mission goal, though, so the players have to see it... but I don't want it to get up when the group surrounding it is defeated, like with a normal ally rescue... what would I do? I want the body to stay dead or just disappear on mission complete.

[Golden Azrael]

AE will advance (at some point) at HC's dev' behest.

 

One such idea, I recall, on the road map for Paragon Chat, was for the user to have their own RP zone map.  You'd be the GM and you could invite players to your zone and presumably(?) do missions on your zone where you see fit.  Interesting idea.  So instead of AE just being a mission, it would allow zone maps for missions to take place on.  A kind of alternate reality or pocket universe to the 'real' City.

 

But, I'd like to see the best of Developer's Choice AE come into the game!  eg.  Let the AE 'Dev' Choice' fit into my below suggestion.

 

My 1st idea would be to pad out the tips missions, particularly the end game tips around P.Isle.  The tips missions could do with far more variety of 'pick up and play' content.

 

AE users can even 'paint out' mission/story ideas for the dev's to expand on/nail down with their more advanced mission tools.

 

I generally find the TFs too long.  The Strikeforces are a step in the right direction.  I'd create 'Tip' arcs with a beginning, middle and end.  

 

I'm sure many CoH players are time constrained so whilst the weighty Raids and TFs and Incarnate Arcs are suitably long.  It might be nice to expand the single mission tips and create mini-arcs of beginning, middle and end (3 missions and no more...) to those that haven't got hours and hours of play at night or the weekend.

 

Azrael.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Golden Azrael

[Ender Shadowborne]

Yeah, something like that

[Golden Azrael]

I think the Radio Missions and the Tips missions were some of the more impressive innovations from Live.

 

Maybe a new innovation would be 'street sweeping' missions.

 

'Take down a Lead Fire Outcast in Steel.'  As simple as that.  Or take down '5' Lead Outcast Bosses in Steel etc.  'Take down a gang of Clock Works' on the roof tops.  etc.  It would be quite easy for the fan base to suggest ideas as the narrative and task are quite simplistic.  The AE can be used to submit broad ideas. 

 

It would add another layer of pick up and play which is one of CoH's primary strengths.

 

You could even have Street Sweeping badges (are there any?)  Street Sweeper King!  Street Sweeper 'Word on the Street.'  Street Sweeper Beat Down (100 mobs street sweeped.)  etc.

 

In addition.

 

I think finding a way to integrate the AE content of the community into the actual game would be the easiest way to add content to the (largely empty zones) game.  Even if the ideas (for mobs, villains, heros, arcs, mission ideas, street sweeping ideas...etc.) there serve as a basis for the devs to tool with their more specialised equipment.

 

Azrael.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Golden Azrael

[TheZag]

Im after the ability to have an objective created only after 2 other objectives are complete.  So i can have a final boss spawn only after 2 other objectives are complete,  such as click the blinkies and beat the lesser boss.  I have a mission with 2 'chains' of objectives but i cant spawn a final boss that requires both chains to be complete.

 

Costume changes for bosses based on their 75 50 25 and 0% health states.  So they can get battle damage or transform like the warwolves or use their im angry costume as health declines.

 

Rikti communication officers that teleport in rikti that are in recolored costumes.  I recolored the rikti to be mothership guards but the comm officers portal in normal color rikti.

 

Also with rikti,  the magus elite boss isnt available and im after more of the rikti to go all the way to lvl 54.  A feedback on my mission (that i said is hard in the description) said it was too hard so i need to make it harder.

 

An option to select how far away an ambush spawns from whatever triggered it.  I have a mission with battling NPCs and the giant monster boss is set to have a player allied ambush spawn and it rarely arrives because it spawns very far away and engages with surviving enemies.

[Golden Azrael]

On 5/21/2020 at 12:39 PM, America's Angel said:

Put AE in bases.

 

We already have contacts (mission computer) and mission-entry points (raid teleporter) in the base. All you'd need to add is a room type that flags "/architect" as "active" when in the room. (Similar function to entering an AE building.)

 

Would really open up the game to player-made stories. Could make custom zones, travel the cosmos in a spaceship going on adventures, etc.

 

Love it.

 

Azrael.

[voltaicsylph]

Please give us a setting in AE that sends the contact dialogue, clues, and NPC dialogue to LOCAL channel. Its hard to tell a story to a team when only the team leader can see it!  I would like to see that option in regular missions, too.  Only the team leader knows what we are doing and why!
Also a 'cut-scene'-type thing.  Perhaps show the ID picture of the person talking that we can put text with.  Sometimes we need a way to put exposition in the AE stories!