Why don't the devs use their own tools?

Specifically, I'm talking about the ability to make custom groups out of existing mobs. For example, there's several tip missions where you fight against a private militia run by Hollow Point. It's a private militia with werewolves and space aliens, because it's just the Council. Why didn't they take the human members of the Council and 5th columns, give them a common, unique color scheme, and call them a new group? It would've made for much better missions.

Another example: the Whispered Hand. Another group you hear about in Tip missions, this guild of assassins that Silent Blade can't decide on her affiliation with is just the Knives of Artemis when you encounter them in-game. Again, with some new colors and descriptions you'd have a different enough group to satisfy the OCD of us. So why don't they do that?

The problem is your actual question should be "Why don't the devs use the tools they gave us?"

The answer may simply be that's not the procedure in house to do that. It's likely if a mission developer wants a new group, it will have to be scheduled with the departments that create the artwork and animations, even if it's simply a color change. Then the inclusion of the arcs with that group becomes dependent on development departments other than mission development and becomes a scheduling pain.

Software development, especially if anything other than code is required, if a fairly formal process if you want to get anything out reasonably on time. It's not like the mission developer shouts over the cubical wall to art asking someone to knock off a clone of the Council in grays instead on blacks the next time they have a free moment. The mission dev has to ask his/her boss who then brings it up in the next department meeting and the boss of the art group will say they are already buried working on new groups for the next issue and schedules are consulted and finally War Witch has to decide is it worth delaying the time it takes to make a gray Council clone which I would guess 99/100 times is going to be no.

I'm guessing that AE missions are stored differently than official game missions and the same goes with groups. I'm guessing official game groups aren't tweaked to allow AE style color mapping, settable by the mission developer so the Art Department needn't be bothered.

Taking the PPD powerset and applying it to new models in the Roy Colling arc was a step in the right direction.


The Whispering Hand is a great example of a group that could benefit from NPC diversification. Silent Blade and the Hand show up in the level 20-30 rogue alingment mission and they spawn as Tsoo. This means level 25+ the Whispering Hand minions only spawns as inkmen. Just the simple act of attaching red ink men powers to an enforcer's costume model would help the Whispering Hand stop being so monotonous.

I suppose bureaucracy is a pretty good excuse, but I don't like it.

I had hoped that that the new system would mean we would see a plethora of new Costumed Heroes and Villain NPCs, but that has yet to materialize.

NO KIDDING! I swear: every time it snows, or there are flowers to be planted or they want to fix a leak, the devs come over to borrow my tools. Then I have to wonder who has what and chase them down to get everything back. It's really aggravating.

Well, we're starting to see Dopplegangers in the game, and that's based on the custom "critter" technology. So I'm guessing the possibility exists to have custom groups in the future.

The MA technology isn't just old technology the devs have had around for years and they're giving it to us, though. Some of it is, yes, but more like the foundation of it. A lot was developed specifically for the MA.

The game is already harder. Had Praetoria been the first thing I saw as a new player, I would not be here right now I promise you. I cannot get behind the idea of the developers making existing NPCs "custom;" one reason I avoid AE is because of NPCs being made stupidly hard, and then you get a reduced reward on top of increased difficulty. That is not how you motivate me, can't speak for everybody but then look at your average AE building and how many people are in it.

Anyone wanting custom NPCs please repair to the nearest AE building ASAP. I don't want "custom" NPCs infiltrating regualr gameplay any more than they already do.

We have tools in place so that players can make things stupidly difficult for themselves, if they have the desire to. Please do that and leave the overall game-world alone for the rest of us.

I think it is because the existing groups are designed to work as a whole already and are the easiest thing to insert into tip mission #25 of 150... if you know what I mean.

Splitting them into individuals and mixing and matching is almost always a bad idea (and usually the source of the latest AE exploit). You really have to know what you are doing and test out the wazoo to make sure a random collection of individuals can do the job properly. All things considered I think they made the right decision.