Architect Entertainment - Content Ideas

[Greycat]

NPC : With one arc (well, set) I had in mind, I'd love to have the Nictus/Warshades available in their energy form - basically the extracted essence "puff."

[Sakura Tenshi]

4 minutes ago, Greycat said:

NPC : With one arc (well, set) I had in mind, I'd love to have the Nictus/Warshades available in their energy form - basically the extracted essence "puff."

relatedly, I'd love it if we could get the kheldian powersets available for enemy NPCs. I'd bring up Arachnos powersets as well.

[darkscream]

+1 for selecting mission doors outside of AE - This is a small change which would highly increase the immersion. You could limit it to well reviewed or dev choice arcs (or not)

 

More freedom in baddie power selection and costume editing would be cool

 

Incarnate-specific content (Not sure how we'd set this beyond the current level range options)

 

Also, not specific to AE, but I think we all dream of some truly new story content being rolled out, such as that leaked unfinished cutscene content for kallisti wharf

Edited April 15, 2020 by darkscream

[Arcanum]

On 4/11/2020 at 12:41 AM, Bilious Slick said:

A bit over a month ago, I made a thread regarding stuff I'd like to see in the AE system. It's pretty long, so I felt it would be better to simply share a link to the thread rather than copying and pasting its contents.

Thanks @Bilious Slick  - I'll go through that too!

These ideas are pretty great, everyone! I'm glad to see so many of you invested in AE content & creation.

 

Be sure to send me any suggested arcs for Dev's choice if you haven't already! I've really enjoyed some of the arcs I've gotten so far!

 

[Aberrant]

My dream wish list. I'm sure most of these aren't feasible but they would be amazing tools to have to be able to craft more convincing stories.

 

1. Ability to give custom enemies generic NPC powers, things like the knife and baseball bat attacks of low level thugs, hand crossbows of Artemis/Vahzilok, single pistol attacks, SMG bursts, Grenade & Missile launchers and Miniguns. Especially things like pistol whips and pummels with assault rifles. Quite difficult to make a less superpowered group without having to give all of them Assault Rifle or the Mastermind Thugs pistol attacks, and melee attacks that make them undraw their weapon.

2. More thematic ranged attacks in melee sets. Sick of having to give melee weapon wielding minions throwing knives to fulfil their ranged attack quota. Maybe weapon based ranged attacks similar to Claws power Focus?

3. Ability to give custom characters travel powers other than Flight. Super Speed, Super Jump and Teleport would be great to have.

4. More character effects like the Reflections 'travel power'. Things like the green ghost effect (can't think of any others!).

5. Increase in the character limits of contact dialog, or making bold, italics and colour tags not take up the limit.

6. Some contact dialog options would be nice. Would be amazing if these could result in changes in the missions but I doubt this is likely!

7. More maps would be greatly appreciated particularly from newer content, stuff like the small city apocalypse map from Night Ward's Fireball arc "Whoa!". And more city section maps of Paragon and the Rogue Isles could be cut out directly from world zones.

8. More control over the placement of objectives. Would be great to be able to directly assign the slots within the category of Front, Middle, Rear. Similarly, many maps have no distinction between Front, Middle and Rear (usually outdoor ones but notably the Freaklympics map) making it quite difficult to structure a mission.

9. Staged conflicts, something you see a lot in normal content that we can't replicate in Architect. Would like to be able to have the ability to choose two enemy groups that then stand across from each other emoting, punching each other, groundpunching etc. Also with two Bosses emote fighting, or just having a conversation.

10. Fixes for dialog incorrectly triggering when your character is nowhere near the enemy, particularly with patrols and rescues if I remember correctly. Similarly preventing "Fight" encounters (where two enemy groups spawn and attack each other) from starting before you're anywhere near them. Usually by the time you reach these locations one side has already been wiped out without a trace.

11. Ability to have multiple enemy groups populating a level outside of Patrols and Fights. Perhaps splitting enemy group selection to Front, Middle and Rear, so you can have say groups of Family in the Front of a mission, then Council in the Middle, and Malta at the Rear for instance. 

12. Enhanced goal logic, the current only way to do this is with 'Mission Goal is created when' but it's often too limiting or doesn't allow certain combinations like with Allies because they have the potential to die before the condition is met. 

13. In mission captions/contact dialog. Perhaps could be queued with goal completions. 

14. Ability to have mission doors in the world. After map selection, you could be given a drop down box of available zones, and then a list of viable doors in that zone. 

15. A way to directly link one Story Arc into another with a contact introduction. Could come up with a pop up Architect box asking if you want to start the next Arc. 

16. Improved discoverability of arcs. Maybe a review queue that suggests arcs that haven't been reviewed much or when you complete an arc it suggests similar arcs, or other arcs by this creator. Also a way to favourite arcs.

17. Kheldian and Nictus powers for custom characters.

18. Power Customisation for custom characters.

19. Optional Waypoint flag for mission goals, so you can make hard to find objectives easier to find, like clickies in a large map.

 

Thanks very much!

Edited April 20, 2020 by Aberrant
Added some more!

[Emperor Cole]

I swear... just when I was working on my "A.E. Ultimate Edition" post explaining everything I wanted, y'all come out with this... so much work rendered null. I'll put the shreds of my post here shortly.

[Emperor Cole]

1. A.E. only temporary powers! The basic idea is that you would choose if the Temp Power would be power, or summon.  If power is selected you would get access to the power database allowing you to choose if you want it to be a damaging power or a defensive one. If summon is selected, it would give you access to the NPC and your Custom Critter database (just like when you're choosing an ally or a boss). You have to tie the temporary power to an objective in order to make it work. If you want the temporary power to be given at when the mission is selected tie the temp to 'when mission is selected'. If you want the temp to be given when a boss is defeated tie it to 'when (boss name) is defeated'. If you want it to be given when the boss is at half health tie it to 'when boss is at 50% health, so on so forth. This can be very useful for making your mission come to life and it would just be really fun.
    <-- NPC catalog.
2. The option to get rid of the A.E. test options for teammates. This one is because if you're testing something and you have someone there with you, you don't want them to ruin the settings or kill you! The default setting would for teammates to still have testing options but it would be very useful to have it so you can turn it of for them. (It's worth noting that this was how it was designed in the original game)
3. Custom archvillains running away! When you have a custom critter AV punching bag, it's the dumbest thing to have them run away from you when you do to much damage. If you don't have the run setting on, don't have the AVs run away! 
4. Give all the new powersets to custom critters! Oh my god, please!
5. Give custom critters the ability to have pool powers. This one is for personal reasons. I wanted to make a Darrin Wade NPC but there was nothing good to give him that would be fitting. I thought, wouldn't it be cool if he had sorcery? but alas, this was impossible. If pool powers are given to custom critters we'd have the ability to make our stories more immersive. The easiest way this can be done is by have a third power bar for the Custom Critters that would be dedicated to pool powers.
6. It would be awesome if Custom Critters had incarnate abilities. No real reason for this one I just think it would be cool.
7. Customization for powers of Custom Critters! Dear lord, this has been something that has been bugging me for a while. Can we please have this! Just the ability to change the color of powers or make stone powers lava powers! 
8. Arena colosseum map! 
9. First ward and Night ward maps? I'd like the one where you fight Pendragon and Lord Lorn.
10. Maelstrom, Desdemona, Belladonna Vetrano arc Tyrant, H̶e̶r̶o̶ ̶P̶e̶n̶e̶l̶o̶p̶e̶ ̶Y̶i̶n̶ + Penelope Mayhem! and the Reichsman added to the AE catalog.
11. A.E. bosses custom death animation?
12. A.E. Custom Critters custom rank. For example archvillain, hero, lieutenant.
     
13. The ability to make your captives have a boss, that you can choose, guarding them. The default setting would be "same as mission" but you'd  be able to access the NPC catalog to choose who the boss would be. It would be another option next to 'single, easy, medium, hard.'
14. Ambiance and Music for our missions!
15. A.E. Only Badges. Next to Architect Souvenir would be Architect Badges. The creator would choose a premade image for the badge, choose the name, and the text.
16. Custom Mastermind? The idea is that the powerset would any masterminds but instead of their normal pets, you'd once again have access to the NPC and Custom Critter catalog being able to choose what gets summoned. Tier one would be minions, tier two would be lieutenants and tier three would be a boss. Frankly, I don't have any clue how it would be done, but it would be awesome!
17. That's all for now, if I think of more I'll add it later. 

Edited February 26 by Emperor Cole

[Darkredwing]

I see a lot of people have suggested things that, I know I haven't posted a lot but I had one suggestion I hope would be taken into consideration,

 

A separate category for farming, in the mission list. I'm not against farming, people are going to do it no matter what. But my biggest grip is if I want to play through someone's hard work for a story its a struggle to find them in the lists outside of highly rated, and Dev choices. The list is pretty much flooded with farms, one work around would to have a separate tab just for farms(or story arcs, either way). Maybe when someone publishes a new AE arc a simple pop up question asking "is this arc is intended for farming?" Another tab could exist for currently published arcs as "uncategorised" where they'll sit until the author updates them or they get removed for some other reason.

 

I hope this would encourage people to play these arcs more often, and people would feel better about publishing them without worry of their arc being lost in the pile of farming arcs out there. 

[Sakura Tenshi]

Honestly, a bit related to farming, but I'd like the EXP curve based on power selection for custom critters to be adjusted. I hate the idea of going through all the effort to make a cool story and cool enemies to fight only to find out if I want players to not be screwed out of EXP, my street-level thug is suddenly gonna have to carry what's supposed to be an SMG that can basically fire twenty different kinds of munitions like some high-tech super military grade gear instead of the Hellion expy they're supposed to be.

[Golden Azrael]

Dear Homecoming,

 

Find a way to put the best Developer AE Approved content into each zone of the game.  Put a few more contacts in each zone.  And a few more arcs.  Using the fulcrum shift of the HC community, you can add more content sooner this way.

 

Azrael.

[Alchemystic]

just one I figured might be fun for thematic reasons. There are several missions where when a character is defeated they instead activate a teleporter instead of collapsing to the ground, implying that they manage to make a quick escape in the nick of time.

 

I would love to use this as a narrative tool in AE, as it would allow certain characters to remain in play even after being defeated. I think this sort of mechanic could also be expanded on, allowing us to create 'defeat prompts' with a variety of effects, such as a teleport, or activating a self destruct power, or potentially creating underlings on death.

[dbri]

More incentive to play story missions, not farms, would be nice.

 

For example, completing missions through the One Random button could give Reward Merits.

1 Merit for completing missions with a Tiny map

2 for Small

3 for Medium

4 for Large

So a story arc with one mission of each map length would give 10 Reward Merits.

Edited April 30, 2020 by dbri

[summers]

On other servers the enemy groups have a level range of 1-54. Is it possible to do that for AE creations? 

[BurtHutt]

On 4/10/2020 at 7:53 AM, Joshex said:

Yeah a drag and drop map designer has been an idea floating around and voiced by many for years. why stop at mission maps? I'd kinda like to see each player be able to have a private zone they can develop content for and invite other people to it (or make it public) could be achieved through the AE system. sorta like, the AE mission is a zone that multiple teams can enter together (so there can be league content in AE), meanwhile the enemies in zone could be custom. And there can be contacts which send you to missions in that AE zone.

If it is possible to create your own maps...then wow...that would be awesome. CoH has way too much repetition in mission maps. If we can make some slight changes to these, it'd be awesome. 

 

A different section for farms. I have no idea how a farm becomes a Dev's choice....

 

If you make a non-farm category then maybe show how many times a mission has been played. It may help others pick one?

 

A cut scene maker would be awesome but it might be a bit too difficult for many players...? 

 

Finally, if there are some awesome missions then put up a poll where players vote on them. If a large number of votes are cast and certain missions are clearly superior then maybe add them to the game - as possibly radio missions or paper missions. Maybe a TF or arc? It'd be a nice way to fill that void of content addition. There could be prizes for winning missions that graduate to regular in-game/ canon. 

 

Tons of great ideas here. Bottom line, have stuff in AE that is different from the rest of the game....or a little different.  I say this because the last mission content add (I think it was the last) was in early Fall 2019 - the rogue and vigilante missions. The writing was decent but it really did seem like a lot of meh and same old. It's a supers MMO and we're fighting MORE thugs?! Not compelling and not interesting.

[Tenkay Volts]

May have already been mentioned but I'd love to have the ability to customise maps, maybe simply having the ability to port what is effectively the base editor over into a mission-map design tool.

I fear it'd be a huge workload since it requires figuring out how to put a decent enough UI around processes like creating navmeshes, spawn location etc. and enforcing enough boundaries for all of these, but given the creativity on display in bases everywhere, I think it wouldn't be hard for people to make something  very workable.

 

but yeah, the suggestions of updating custom critters with the latest powersets etc. would definitely be great. Also so would the ability to determine a spawn location for a glowie or object so you may be able to better chain mission objectives together without them being kind of arbitrarily spread out all round the map.

[Razor Cure]

On 4/10/2020 at 8:03 AM, PresidentDSG said:

Better options for allies- Invincible allies that still fight (as much as I acknowledge this will be a boon to farmers, probably) for those times when you want a critical story NPC to actually fight but would rather they not die without also making them very overpowered would be a huge boon.

I think that's how Lady Jayne functions in the mission from Monty (in steel). She's an npc, a pet class, and basically sucks..but she also is basically (might be killable) unkillable. I had to afk and 3 ambushes got to her, and her hp didnt move.

[MTeague]

Branching Victory Conditions.... maybe including a Preatorian Style "Moral Choice"?

 

But at least something like where you can choose to let Ricochet go in order to save Zane, Aria, Riptide, and Warrant, and be able to remember what choice the player made, and construct dialogue around the selected choice for the rest of the story arc.  Or like how in new Dark Astoria, you can attempt to save both Sigil AND Kadabra Kill, but at some degree of risk, and you get a dialogue box with that choice before the fight (if any) commences.

 

I imagine this is not a small lift.  But giving the player some degree of agency during the mission rather than a scripted railroad plot would be nice.

[MTeague]

22 minutes ago, Razor Cure said:

I think that's how Lady Jayne functions in the mission from Monty (in steel). She's an npc, a pet class, and basically sucks..but she also is basically (might be killable) unkillable. I had to afk and 3 ambushes got to her, and her hp didnt move.

I've had her die on me several times.  She's better at dying than Fusionette.  Maybe they changed her in the last few months though. Most of my characters are past that arc.

[MTeague]

On 4/22/2020 at 12:49 AM, Darkredwing said:

A separate category for farming, in the mission list. I'm not against farming, people are going to do it no matter what. But my biggest grip is if I want to play through someone's hard work for a story its a struggle to find them in the lists outside of highly rated, and Dev choices. The list is pretty much flooded with farms, one work around would to have a separate tab just for farms(or story arcs, either way). Maybe when someone publishes a new AE arc a simple pop up question asking "is this arc is intended for farming?" Another tab could exist for currently published arcs as "uncategorised" where they'll sit until the author updates them or they get removed for some other reason.

This x1000.  I've gotten in the habit of keeping pen and paper nearby so when someone chats about a new story centered arc they created asking for feedback, I can WRITE DOWN the number, because I may not be able to FIND their mission arc later amidst all the farms and "I just wanted a badge so I created a mission" missions.

 

I acknowledge that what is a farm vs what is a story may be somewhat subjective, and it is probably possible to create a farm that also has significant story elements. 

So it's probably best to leave the choice to the mission creator with a YN prompt as suggested.

[BurtHutt]

So, I've been thinking about some of the stuff here and I really think an AE contest to add actual content to game would be great. I think players would submit their short arc/missions (they would have to meet a set criteria) and then the Devs would pick the top 10 or 20. These would get posted and then players would get to vote for the best 10. The winning 10 would have their arcs added to CoH as radio/paper type missions...and become actual canon. I think this would add significant interest to AE.

 

This contest could be held twice a year. I would really like to see different and new materials/ideas/enemy groups/main characters added this way. It's 2020 and I have seen the same old groups for way too long (nothing wrong with them but there needs to be a something fresh and new added).

 

Anyway, the game is in dire need of some new content and until the Homecoming team acquires the IP license, this might be a nice, easy way to add content. I would liken it to the level 25 rogue/vig arc that was added last Fall or so (hopefully with more interesting enemy groups and bosses).

[krj12]

The biggest thing for me is the ability to place objectives/bosses in specific spots on the map.

 

Other ideas:

1.  Place contacts out in the real world.  Never like the idea of this being a simulation.

2.  More space for verbiage and custom mobs.  Longer arcs.

 

 

Edited May 11, 2020 by krj12

[Aberrant]

Thought of some more ideas.

1. Mid arc contact changes

2. Ability to duplicate the powerset of an existing enemy and apply it to a custom character, so your custom characters can take all the powers of say a Circle of Thorns AV or similar (most likely would need to be restricted to enemies that share the same rig as players due to animation differences)

3. The same but reversed? Able to equip existing enemies models with custom power selections, for instance you could take the Honoree and replace his powers wholesale with Broadsword primary, Invuln secondary. (again, would likely only work for player rig characters)

4. Ability to take existing enemies and characters and make them different threat classes (minion, lieutenant, boss, EB, AV, etc.). For instance, Sunstorm the Peacebringer is currently a Hero Class (counts as AV I think), which makes him very overpowered if used in a mission as an ally, and would be great to be able to lower him to an EB, even if that only modifies his con level, def/res (by removing their Archvillain Resistance power) and max hp. Or take Baron Zoria (currently only available as an EB) and bump him to an AV.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Aberrant
Added point 4

[Darkneblade]

Ability to place your contact in real world with real buildings.

Ability to make mission in real zones instead of simulation (ex. Defeat 15 custom enemy on Peregrine)

Ability to choose respawn location instead of hospital (ex. Holding Cells in missions)

[Deep Freeze]

I'd like to formally request the restoration of double influence to the "money farm maps" in Architect Entertainment. I understand that they have been recently nerfed, and if possible I aas well as the whole game community that farme would like them restored to what they were before. Thank you foryour time and consideration in this matter. Good Day.

[Narfu12]

I'd honestly would love to see being able to use sniper rifle and other sniper like attacks from the blasters power sets. For an example I can make my own version of a rifle mob without having to use slug as a place holder. Plus being able to assign shotgun, smg, single pistol, and other attacks would really open the door for more creativity without having to use the stuff heroes/villains have.