Enhanced AE Customization Options

[PoptartsNinja]

I love AE. I like building missions for my SG team to take on, and while I do personally have a predilection towards making difficult enemies and combinations, I’ve always loved making new enemies and enemy combinations.

My only disappointment with AE involve some of the few things that it won’t let us customize: enemy types and power colors. I know a lot of AE is limited by its UI, so I have a few suggestions I think might be doable without breaking that UI.

 

 

Power Color Customization

CoH’s power customization is fantastic… except in AE, where everything uses the original colors. I can’t make a custom CoT boss that uses demonic green flames; a vampire using blood-colored water in the upcoming water blast; a dark control/dark blast that has matching powersets as one will be soul noir and the other will be black fuzzy original flavor, or an electric armor electric blast combo that isn’t stuck using both red and purple lightning.

 

While I know adding the power customization options for all custom mobs probably wouldn’t work, what I think would work would be power-color presets with a few options for players to choose from. I think these could be added as an expansion to an existing menu using a function that menu already has. This could also give us access to the dark version of powersets that have a dark version, even if it was limited to a default black/black.

 

Rather than being a simple selection, my suggestion is to make each powerset a collapsable fold-out that then presents customization options. For example:

 

 

I feel that this would add a lot of value to AE, as people could further customize their mobs even if they couldn’t choose the exact specifics of every power.

 

 

Enemy Type Customization

Minion, Lieutenant, Boss, Elite Boss, Archvillain. That’s the primary choice we get to make for all enemies in AE, and while the choice is significant it’s also… limited. We’re stuck at the baseline power scaling, and it’s difficult to tweak the difficulty of enemies.

 

My suggestion is to change the current Fighting Preferences tab to a scrolling list that enables certain AT-specific bonuses, so that we can give our AE mobs a pseudo-AT of their own. To avoid forcing difficulty, we’d keep the current melee and ranged options we already have (maybe changing them to ‘base melee’ and ‘base ranged’ for clarity), and then add something akin to the following:

 

Tanker

+30% base mob HP, making the mob tougher by default (which also inherently boosts the power of any armor sets it might take)

 

DPSer

Mob gains the equivalent of 1 SO in accuracy and damage for all damaging, non-control powers. So the mob gains a 33% accuracy and damage boost.

 

Critseeker

Mob gains a reduced accuracy boost (20%?) to attack powersets and powers can crit like a scrapper.

 

Supporter

Mob gains an SO equivalent +Buff All/+Debuff All/+Heal All and prioritizes using support powers over attacks until it’s the last mob standing.

 

Controller

Mob gains an SO equivalent of accuracy for all control powers, adds +1 mag to controls (maybe?), and prioritizes using control powers.

 

Pet Controller

Pets summoned by a pet controller have +30% hp

 

Enrager

+15% base HP, mob gains a scaling damage bonus as its HP is depleted, achieving maximum damage (maybe 2 or 3 SOs worth?) bonus at 20% or so. So it hits hard towards the end of its existence and is a little harder to put down, but doesn’t get any bonus accuracy.

 

So it’d look something like this:

 

 

I think this has a lot of potential for letting us tweak mobs, and potentially opens the door for some more advanced AI if the devs are willing to go that route. It could also be expanded if other ideas come up, or if one mob type turns out to be too strong. For example, supporter could be split into Buffer, Debuffer, and Healer if getting +Buff All/Debuff All/Heal turns out to be too good. Or if the Kheldian powersets get added, a Transformer enemy type could be programmed to try to use a transformation power whenever its health drops below 80%

 

And while we’re on this screen, how about expanding the ‘flight options’ into travel options and adding the Tsoo/Rikti/Smoke Bomb Random Teleports, and super speed?

 

 

 

EAT (and VEAT) Powersets

The Kheldians and Soldier/Widows of Arachnos have been left out of AE. I know Soldiers may have problems due to their costume being different, as some people might enjoy making custom Arbiters while others might want to use the mace blasts on other custom characters; but Kheldians really shouldn’t have that restriction. The problem with Kheldians is they just have too many powers to represent with one attack set and one defense set. So I believe the Kheldians should be presented as a trio of powersets each:

 

Luminous Blast

1: Gleaming Bolt

2: Glinting Eye

3: Gleaming Blast

4: Proton Scatter

5: Inner Light

6: Pulsar

7: Proton Seekers

8: Bright Nova

 

Luminous Melee

1: Radiant Strike

2: Luminous Detonation

3: Reform Essence

4: Inner Light

5: Incandescent Strike

6: Solar Flare

7: Dawn Strike

8: White Dwarf

 

Luminous Aura

1: Incandescence

2: Shining Shield

3: Essence Boost

4: Thermal Shield

5: Quantum Shield

6: Restore Essence

7: Conserve Energy

8: Light Form

 

 

Umbral Blast

1: Shadow Bolt

2: Ebon Eye

3: Gravimetric Snare

4: Shadow Blast

5: Inner Darkness (A warshade version of Inner Light:

6: Gravitic Emanation

7: Dark Detonation

8: Unchain Essence

9: Dark Nova

 

Umbral Melee

1: Umbral Maw (a warshade version of Shadow Maul: / Umbral Strike (Radiant Strike with Warshade particles:

2: Essence Drain

3: Gravity Well

4: Sunless Mire

5: Orbiting Death

6: Stygian Circle

7: Inky Aspect

8: Dark Extraction

9: Black Dwarf

 

Umbral Aura

1: Absorption

2: Gravity Shield

3: Penumbral Shield

4: Shadow Cloak

5: Twilight Shield

6: Shadow Slip

7: Stygian Return

8: Eclipse

 

I feel this would be a good way to represent the Kheldians in AE, giving access to all of their forms and powers in usable combinations that can be added to ranged blast, melee attack, and defense categories respectively. This would open up a lot of fun options for flashy NPCs, let us make our own custom Council Galaxies, and etc.

 

If a way to choose between Arachnos/Normal costumes could be implemented, the same could be done with VEATs using Huntsman, Bane Spider, and Crab Spider for Soldiers and Blood Widow, Night Widow, and Fortunata for Widows.

 

Edited January 28 by PoptartsNinja
Fixing the 8)