AE Wishlist

[EmperorSteele]

So, every time I toy around with AE, I end up running into a wall of some sort. I'm sure we all do. Some of these things that we'd like to do are, well, pipe dreams (like cutscenes; I doubt we'll ever get those =P). But a few are simply because something is broken.

First: Dialogue is broken. Not just the "Unaware" dialogue that goes off as soon as you enter the mission, but also the spawn-in dialogue which never goes off at all, or sometimes 75%/50%/25% text won't always go off if you beat a baddie down too quick. If the HC Devs ever take a look at AE, this is the thing that needs to be fixed first!

 

Second: Clunkiness. The editor can be clunky. Sometimes text doesn't appear correctly, or you get weird symbols. Sometimes AE mucks up a critter's appearance or powers. Though it does seem better than how I remember on Live, so maybe some work was done there already? Still, room for improvement.

Third: Enemy spawn configurations. If I have a group with 5 distinct minions, and the game only chooses one of them and repeats them five times for a spawn, that's a little wonky. Or if I have a bunch of rescues, and the game chooses the same random guy instead of the other dozen available choices, well, that's not cool. Make sure the game chooses separate mobs when available. Or, there might be times when a creator DOES want all the mobs to look the same for a specific instance, in which case, they should be allowed to just check a box instead of having to make a whole new enemy group of just the one character. This starts to get into pipe-dream territory, because I'm sure there are those who want to make a spawn of all AVs (like at the end of MLTF/ and multiple times in the LRSF), and if we're gonna work on spawning rules, that would be a logical next step. Or being able to control what level custom critters are (they're all 1-54 by default, though I imagine there are cases where a creator would want a custom critter to be overleveled or underleveled in certain scenarios).

 

Fourth: Clue clean-up. In the rest of the game, clues are discarded once you accept a new mission, and the story synopsis is replaced with one that includes the latest details. This would be nice to have for AE missions, instead of what ends up being a huge, messy list of clues after 4 or 5 missions. (3 clues per mission isn't a lot, but that's 15 clues by the end of a 5-missiona arc!)

So that's the low-hanging fruit, stuff that's bugged and should be fixed, or is close enough. Beyond that? I imagine we'd all like more maps, an option for contact dialogue trees, having in-mission dialogue trees (which can lead to someone attacking you or leaving you alone, depending; see DA arcs for a lot of this!), that sort of thing. Maybe even branching missions, or missions that change based on choices you made before. But those are a bit more pipe-dream than things that can probably be fixed.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. What's everyone else's low-hanging fruit fix list?

[Greycat]

Picking player spawn locations. Even if it was just in a few designated maps. I had an idea or two back on live that just couldn't be done because of things like "can't spawn the player in a holding cell."

[cranebump]

Ditto on discarding old clues and, esp, choosIng lvls of custom critters. Toying with an idea of a character who is poisoned, diseased or cursed. Wanted the character’s  lvl to drop for a couple missions, while the baddies increased (to the point where you’d have to run through a mish for a snatch and run. Can’t do it, unless I create lvl-balanced groups using stock baddies. Even then, not sure how well that would work. Actual placement of certain objects, NPCs would be nice. Also, Escort mishes to objects should allow a clue drop from the escorted (say, when they “access a database”) rather than having to have the character manually click on the glowie to get the clue I want to pass along.

 

I’d also like to allow use of the same trigger, even if an ambush is attached to it. I wanted a glowie to spawn an ambush, plus the boss and his mobs nearby. Couldn’t get both from a glowie. HAd to include an “emergency radio message” as the in-between element.

[Clave Dark 5]

AE is still primarily set up for soloing.  The contact only speaks to the one player leading the team so no one else gets to see (read) the flavor text, so if you're on a team it's just another "let's go beat up those guys in that warehouse because... of stuff!" like a radio mission.

 

If it's the stories in AE that are supposed to draw people, they need to be shared easily.

[cranebump]

Branching dialogue would be a nice addition, if only to allow splitting longer expository tracts into smaller chunks. 

[Magairlín]

Also, a way to make custom characters transparent.

Edited September 14, 2020 by Black Orchid II

[Ankylosaur]

Quote

Also, a way to make custom characters transparent.

Applying Reflections Effects on the first screen might get you close enough.

[Heraclea]

On 9/13/2020 at 5:29 AM, Clave Dark 5 said:

AE is still primarily set up for soloing.  The contact only speaks to the one player leading the team so no one else gets to see (read) the flavor text, so if you're on a team it's just another "let's go beat up those guys in that warehouse because... of stuff!" like a radio mission.

 

If it's the stories in AE that are supposed to draw people, they need to be shared easily.

This is why I think that the one important bit of text in AE is 'boss' fights,  Ordinary players don't read mob descriptions; only the small minority of AE focused players pay attention to them.  Elaborate backstories for your contact are likewise lost for most players.  So is stuff like the contact's sendoff dialogs.   Patrol and captive texts have more potential, but most of them fire on entry, meaning that they may not be noticed.  Only boss dialogs fire when the players actually approach and aggro the boss.  They appear in NPC dialog and sometimes in word balloons, letting players other than the team leader read them.  This is really where the work needs to be done,  

[Ankylosaur]

I too tend to author with the soloist in mind. Even for that just fixing that unaware text bug would go a long way to making the in-arc story telling so much better.

 

In my own AE hierarchy of needs, I can’t even want to want anything higher up the pyramid without that.