AE Questions

Hi. Yesterday I found some time to play the architect for the first time. I had loads of fun, I got so excited about it to even create my first scenario. Needless to say it didn't quite turn out as I'd hope, but it was challenging and entertaining so I was not totally disapointed.

Now I'm aiming to use the architect as a way to introduce new members to my supergroup, and inform them on the rules and ranks, and even send them on missions that hopefully will explain our uniformity and history.

I have some questions about what types of missions I can do, and forgive me if they've been asked before, but take in consideration I'm a newly made Hero of nearly over 3 weeks in game. I have no experience with the architect and I'm learning about the game at a casual pace.

1) Can I create a mission that does not involve combating foes, but instead find information, meet with contacts, and maybe solved a puzzle type of mission?

2) Which maps can I use that will start in a temple, or inside a temple building?

3) Which foes are best related and will fit more with a Kheldian theme?

4) On last nights quest I created a boss and minions, the boss was supposed to pop toward the end but he was the first foe we encounter, then after we killed him and continued on he was everywhere alongside his minions - once we killed everyone and found the artifact I expected a surprise attack but it never happened and instead the mission was finished. I'm not sure what I did wrong here?

5) The mission contact was supposed to be a good guy but instead the evil boss I made showed up as first contact?

These are all probably rooky mistakes and laughable but any tips or suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

Edit: Lazarus posted while I was writing my post... I defer to him for most of the answers, except for maybe #1. :P

Eya,

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Originally Posted by Imadinu 1) Can I create a mission that does not involve combating foes, but instead find information, meet with contacts, and maybe solved a puzzle type of mission?

You can select the mission to spawn no enemies at all (choose 'Empty' as enemy group). You can place contacts as captive / escort objectives with no guards. Information gathering can work with interactable / destructible objects and clues. As for puzzles, I can see 3 easy options (not sure how well they'd play ingame though), all of them involving multiple collective objects being present in the map at the same time, and the player would have to choose the 'right' one based on clues:
- Set a time limit, say 15 minutes. Make each objective have a LONG interact time (~2 minutes?). Link good events (ie. spawning further collection objectives) to the player interacting with the 'right' objective, and only a 'bad choice' message to the player interacting with the 'wrong' objective. This way if the player makes too many bad choices they'll run out of time.
- Slight modification to the previous scenario, but instead of long interact times, have the wrong collection trigger a lot of enemy spawns all over the map so the player has to fight their way through to the other collection. This eliminates tedium, but also introduces enemies into your map (which might not fit depending on what you had in mind).
- No time limit, simply tie ambushes or enemy spawns to wrong choices so the player has to fight the enemies off when he 'fails'. I think this is the better option of the two, but it also means the player cannot fail.

Keep in mind that you cannot explicitly specify where the collectible items can spawn; spawnpoints depend on the map and whether you choose front / middle / back / any for the 'spawn point'.

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2) Which maps can I use that will start in a temple, or inside a temple building?

Hmm, what kind of temple are you thinking of? There are Circle of Thorns / Oranbega caves that have mystic altars and whatnot, but I can't think of any traditional temples otherwise. Maybe Cimeroran caves could work for abandoned / ruined Greek temples, but that's a stretch.

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3) Which foes are best related and will fit more with a Kheldian theme?

Nictus are the obvious answer, but they are pretty tough enemies at lower levels. 'Galaxy' enemies from the Council are Nictus-infused humans. Void hunters etc. are Kheldian hunters, but they WILL be a massive pain for any Kheldians playing the arc! Council in general are an omnipresent enemy of Kheldians (because of their Nictus connections).

Edit for shameless self promotion: Give my second arc ("To Dream of Nothing") a try to see some Council / Nictus in action (not to mention a Kheldian sidekick! Well, she's stuck in human form but still...).

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4) On last nights quest I created a boss and minions, the boss was supposed to pop toward the end but he was the first foe we encounter, then after we killed him and continued on he was everywhere alongside his minions - once we killed everyone and found the artifact I expected a surprise attack but it never happened and instead the mission was finished. I'm not sure what I did wrong here?

The boss will show up as part of regular spawns as well. If you are making a unique boss, set the 'do not auto spawn' flag in the enemy group editor screen. WARNING: be sure to have a 'normal' boss in your group too, otherwise you will incur XP penalties!

Example:
EnemyGroup1 contains Minion1, Minion2, Lt1, Lt2, Lt3, Boss1, NamedBoss. If you set 'NamedBoss' to 'do not auto spawn', you will only get 'Boss1' to spawn in normal groups. 'Boss1' might also spawn together with 'NamedBoss'.

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5) The mission contact was supposed to be a good guy but instead the evil boss I made showed up as first contact?

By 'first contact' you mean the contact screen you get when selecting the mission? There is an AE bug related to the contact portrait I encountered a few times while testing my arcs... but that's probably not what's going on here.


Hope this helps,

-- Z.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mission_Architect_Tutorial

Should be helpful though you may be past this stage. Also, check out the tutorial mission in the Hall of Fame.

There are some good suggestions for temples but there may be a few alternatives. Notably, Nerva -> Thorn Isle can work as a temple exterior.

Thank you for the tips and answers. I'll make good use of them when I have time to kill in the archytect.

@Zephyr

I did give your arc "To Dream of Nothing" a try and I had a good team with me too. We were disapointed that it was a lvl 10 cap but we didn't find it easy at all, we got whiped several times. I think the fact that we couldn't handle our characters level degrade really thought us a lesson about how much we know about our builds. It was really fun to see a lvl 47 complain because she couldn't use her big powers. LOL

Sadly we couldn't finish it because after we finished the second part the mission giver wouldn't talk to me...he kept telling me I need to talk to your taskforce leader, which was me. We gave up after that.

Hey, thanks for trying the arc! Sadly the Nictus and friends show up in missions 3/4, so you just missed them. About the low-level thing, it was a requirement for the 2nd AE challenge, so it was level 5-10 (I'm not crazy about AEing at low levels either ) I mostly thought it could be useful for a look at some Kheldian Karnage™.

That 'talk to the taskforce leader' thing sounds like a bug, and a new one too (I just did a test run on the arc a week ago to make sure it was GR-compatible) -- sorry to hear that. :/ You completed all of the tasks in mission 2 (find the 2 teammates, examine the machines, read the console, defeat the Family boss), right?

[insert grumbling about random AE bugs here]


-- Z.

Yes we completed the mission but once out we couldn't advance to the 3rd due to the contact not recognizing me as team leader. I even asked everyone to talk to him, but we all got the same message. I'll give it another try alone and see how that plays out.

It's not a new bug. Annoyingly it pops up every once and a while.