Evangel_NA

I understand names got borked a bit back during the Marvel suit (oh Bastion how I miss thee) but names do not fall under copyright, only likeness. Having a character named Phantom, for example, is not an infringement on the Phantom of the Opera, or the Phantom comic character. Outside of the agreement with marvel (which took play over 5 years ago) I see no need to suddenly "filter" character names.


But the bug (last time and this time) seems to be just that - a bug. I re-rolled half my toons after the last bug and all of them are now valid in AE again - with the same friggin' name. And it's not just a name issue - it bugs the entire file. You can't change the name to ANYTHING to fix the "invalid name". You have to delete and re-roll. It's a corruption issue of some kind.



I'm just growing tired of the slow response to AE bugs and the fact that AE bugs keep coming up for no apparent reason...

Sadly that is the message they are sending.


Bugs like this are usually placed on the bottom of the fix pile, especially now that freedumb has launched and the only thing they really care about is the bugs that effect them getting money.

The annoying thing about this bug is it corrupts the file completely and the only fix is to completely remake the character. Annoying and tedious. And half the names becoming "invalid" are names I have or have seen used on characters. Why the filter? Is the name "Phantom" reallllly copyright protected?



Lately when I edit arcs I find myself sounding like Chris Berman on Monday Night Countdown... "Come on, man!"


Bugs are getting ridiculous.

Tested an arc last night and it ran great. Log on today after the patch and three of my characters now are "invalid" because they have "invalid names".


I love when a patch re-creates bugs that have supposedly been fixed.

You could create custom enemy groups that are flight based and have the bosses flee on attack. Could be used to create an "air combat" style scheme. But I bet you'd get more "omg, it's so annoying chasing these bosses!" feedback tells than you would get "omg this is awesome!" feedback...


Also, even on outdoor maps, the arachnos flyer spawns at ground level and only hovers *slightly* above the ground.

There's a thread buried somewhere in the known issues forum for i21:


It seems that pieces you have unlocked (either by purchasing them, by having them inherently unlocked as a VIP, or otherwise) are still causing MA to think you don't have them unlocked. It happens with the IDF defense costume pieces as well as pieces you purchase from the market. Purchased pieces seem to be hit and miss - have had some of them cause failure have had others not.

As I said in that thread it comes off as poor programming, but that seems to be the issue. Haven't checked that thread lately to see if the devs have responded by I doubt they have. Knowing their response time to MA problems, don't look for this to be fixed earlier than i21.5...



I recommend what has already been recommended - either build them on a new character and save the costume, or what I usually do is just take a character to icon and build a bunch of costumes in there and save them all. That way if it does fail in MA you still have the costume saved so that when the bug is finally fixed you can just load the costumes and go.

You can always just build the characters now and give them random costumes so that you can at least build your mission awhile and test it. Then once the bug is fixed, load the costumes and publish.

If Marchand's Office wasn't so borked it would work pretty well for an "apartment building" style house.

And in testing today just had two MORE AIs get completely stuck in geometry.


Would be nice to at least hear a "fix is coming" from the devs...

Has anyone noticed the AI has gotten even dumber lately?


The Ally/Escort/Run Away AI in mission architect (and the game in general really) has always been... well, less than impressive. But lately (not sure if specifically since i21) the AI that previously worked decently in my missions now just completely breaks down.

My Allies are getting stuck on basic geometry - walls, ramps, etc. My villains that are supposed to flee are getting stuck on walls, ramps, railing. All of the AI seems to have forgotten how to jump. And usually the AI just runs back and forth in a looped circle instead of running away toward a door or following my character.


Again, in previous testing the AI worked up to expectation of the limited AI they have always had. But lately that very same AI has now become almost entirely broken. Is this a known issue? I'm just wondering what would have made the AI get dumber instead of smarter...

Yeah this map is one of the bigger fails of AE. It's worse than an outdoor map...

Yeah, but that's exactly my question...


Why is an escort being treated like a trigger? It's not a trigger. The escort doesn't trigger anything, nothing needs to rely on the escort, the escort relies on the waypoint, not the other way around.


There is absolutely no reason why an escort should be treated like a trigger.

It never existed but there used to be a way to get it to happen.


Once upon a time I had a battle between two enemies and then spawned an "empty" ally off of that battle's completion. (I call an empty ally an ally that is not required and that has no surrounding enemy group - so when it spawns it instantly completes)

When the battle ended and the empty ally spawned I would attach an ambush to that. It allowed for a moderate level of timed ambushery.


But as of i21, if I don't particularly engage in the battle, when the ally spawns it won't auto complete and therefore the ambush wont spawn. It's a bit annoying but as others have mentioned you can get around it. Particularly I just put a random ally boss somewhere on the map and have a partol of baddies form nearby him. They kill him and that spawns a "timed" ambush.

The thing is I don't consider my problem to be that "out of the box" thinking to be such an issue. The particular instance I'm trying this time is simply this:


The "bad guy" of my arc is an escort and once you defeat his "guards" he says that he will surrender peacefully and lead you to his stash of weapons.

The weapons are a clicky that is the escorts waypoint.

When you arrive the escort says "a-ha! It's a TRAP!" and runs away.


All I want is to then have an ambush spawn off of the clicky when you click it. That way as you click it he will yell it's a trap and run away while an ambush spawns to fight you...




It's not overly complex, and in fact I have seen this exact plot used in missions in the game. But in MA since the escort is considered an "ambush" of the clicky, you can't spawn an ambush off of the clicky.


Like I said, there are a number of ways around it and I can still get it to work, it's just a question of why the devs designed an escort this way in MA. Why treat an escort as an ambush at the code level?

This may have been asked already but clearly nothing has come from it if it has so I will ask again...


Why are Escorts treated like Ambushes in Mission Architect??? Anyone who has ever attempted to use an Escort in a creative way will find that the internal MA system treats the Escort trigger system as an ambush.

This prevents you from leading an escort to an objective, and then having that object trigger an ambush - because the system attaches the escort to the objective as if it were an ambush. It also creates a series of trigger loops that prevent you from using an escort in any creative way. You also can't use an object that is not required for completion as the waypoint for an escort because the system acts as though the object is the trigger that creates the escort.


It's not game-breaking and there are ways around it but I just want to know why this seemingly lazy design scheme was used. Copy and paste the ambush code and call it an Escort? Come on, it couldn't be that hard to write a series of code specifically for Escort...

You'd almost think the devs were hoping you'd accidentally purchase items twice... Hmm...


Nah, they wouldn't treat their loyal dollar signs - err, I mean customers - that way...

This seems to be yet another failure of the implementation of the in-game market. Why did the devs go with such a micro-managed account setup?


I'm oversimplifying for sake of example, but the devs seem to have gone with a model where every single individual venue of the game has a half million if/then statements now attached to it. If you have this purchasable item, then you can use this. Etc etc.

It's the same thing that causes annoyance with the store itself. Every single thing I've already purchased, already have, or have even JUST purchased STILL shows up in the store!



Poor implementation imo, which leads to countless bugs and errors just like this one.

Little edit to my post above, turns out it was because I was using the Imperial Defense belt option. Which is a new costume set auto-unlocked for VIPs, or at least it's a new set of some kind. I've made a brand new character with it in the game and didn't have to pay. So perhaps it is a store issue-related bug but the this costume set was available to VIPs at launch of i21...