I agree, but for some reason the devs have all but abandoned the AE world outside of nerfing things. The search function is garbage still etc...
They give birth to a great starter tool then abandon it on the doorstep of an empty house.
Brilliant devs...just brilliant.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
THe devs should not abandon the AE system I use it not to make farms but to make AE TFs for fun not for farming which people use which it ends up getting abused alot. I really hope they upgrade the AE system.
At the risk of necroing this thread, I have a few more suggestions that could do with consideration.
6. Captions and NPC conversations
There's something to be said about the atmosphere of an area when you can hear someone, but not see them. Captions in the newer missions of City of have really helped to set the tone of an instance. Perhaps if we could find some way to do such a thing, we'd be able to make our missions a little more climactic.
An actual conversation between two bosses would be awesome, too. There are a variety of devilish duos out there, a fair few of which are actually tied at the hip. Bosses of this nature would help provide an interesting feel to the mission
7. Anything other than a DPS Race
When all of your boss fights revolve around the beating them the good old Golden Age way, it can be a bit... samey, after a while. With boss fight mechanics such as Lord Recluse and the Web, or Ajax that the Psionic Inhibitors, we could come up with many interesting things to accomplish!
Boss fights that don't end with either the boss keeling over, or running away, would be good! Perhaps add another betrayal option, allowing us to talk with them before we either finish them off or let them go.
8. Power Customisation
I don't know about you guys, but I'd like my NPCs powers reflect their origin, and considering most things, it seems as long overdue as the missing powers mentioned in the original post.
The question that really has to be asked is are there any changes that can be made to AE that will result in more people using it as intended? If so, then it might be beneficial to do so. If not, then spending more time trying to improve it is a waste of time and money on the devs' part.
And unfortunately it's looking like the answer is no. None of the changes the devs have made to AE since it came out have resulted in more people using it. It's a shame, because it has amazing potential, but for whatever reason, people don't seem to take to it very well.
There are a few things that bug me about Architect, though, I still think it's one of the greatest things to hit an MMO since, well, an idea about making an MMO came about.
I'm sure, like a lot of people in this game's community do, I've spent more time in Architect, making or playing missions, than any other part of the game. It's a fantastic system, to be sure. However, I can't help but think that there could be some improvements here and there.
Instead of giving each suggestion as a singular thing, I've put them all in a list, and before you guys say anything, the suggestion for Cutscenes in missions is a given, so I won't be touching on it. I'm sure the devs know we'd like to have them by now.
1. Update the Powers list for NPCs
I can't stress how important this is. It's been so long, and I'm sure the player base has a considerable amount of ideas for NPCs in their games, the only issue being that there are still too many powers that aren't a part of it yet. While the newest slew of powers, such as Time Control and the like may be a given, the absence of the Epic Archetypes is kind of disheartening. It would be nice if we could see the EATs on the list, allowing us to have a much wider variety of characters to make.
I'm sure that if picked as an Archetype for character creation, you can restrict the secondaries and primaries, like it has been done for powers that wouldn't aesthetically work with Shield Defence.
As for the newer powers, that can be understandable. If you want to continue restricting its access to those who buy it, what can be done is just have the system check if such a powerset is availible to the player. if it is, that player can use it in Architect.
2. Free Form Spawn Points
I can't tell you how much it breaks the flow of a mission when a boss doesn't spawn in the place you want him to spawn, or, where a collection would be in a place that's far too easy or hard for the players to get to. Having everything on a preset recipe adds another issue to creating the right atmosphere for a mission, and makes it a chore to find a map that would suit the task at hand.
My suggestion is to give the players an option to set a custom spawn point for the objective they want to use. Perhaps to get around exploitation, you can restrict the locations, so the spawn points aren't simply on top of one another, and maybe you can say that a custom spawn point would add to the value of a boss (you know how maps restrict the number of bosses or objective you can have? Well, say adding a custom spawn point for one boss would be the same as adding 3 bosses to a map, and there you go)
An example would be having one custom spawn point for a collection object that's placed in the centre of the room. When the player collects said object, four bosses, all at their own custom spawn points, would appear in the room, not too close to the player to cause an issue, but close enough to aggro onto them.
This actually leads me onto my next suggestion
3. Subobjectives and Triggered Objectives
My example above, with the current Architect System, wouldn't work, at least, not in the flow that some would hope for. The only way it would work is if each boss spawns one at a time.
My suggestion is to allow specific bosses to be a part of the same sub objective. In the same way that the Patrons in the 'Not Statesman's Anymore' Task Force were a part of the same objective, the defeat of a specific boss would contribute to the defeat of the group as a whole. It would also help to reduce clutter in the navigation bar, and allow for multiple enemies to spawn on the same completed objective, as it would count as singular objective.
4. Dialog Options
We've seen a lot of this lately in missions, and come to think of it, it would seem complicated to add. It would technically be an objective that is added onto an already existing one. Clicking on a defendable object, or an NPC that has a chance to turn around and punch you in the face would be difficult to add in, but no impossible.
The reason why I suggest this is because it's difficult to make believable characters in the middle of a mission. We may have good writers in our community, but it's a constantly irritating and difficult work around to explain why the guy's there, what he knows, and why he's either going to help or tear your arms off, sometimes all in the space of 700 characters, which in turn is split into three seperate bits of dialog.
We could be able to create a dialog tree (of a restricted length, of course. can't have conversations going on forever) which is then added onto a mission's objective. With the dialog tree being an objective in itself, the way an NPC reacts can be due to resolution of the conversation (the betray option is already implimented in NPCs)
5. Synced Objectives
Remember these? Yeah you do. Ah, the good old days where two bombs had to be turned off at the same time. That was fun... ish. Ok, it was kind of a pain when a mission turned up, and you had to get a teammate to complete it. Enforced co-op, while it made sense in a superhero game, was one of those things no one liked because it was difficult to get a hold of a willing participant (at least it was for me).
With Architect used mainly by RPers and Farmers, it could help the superhero dynamic for the former by having some teamwork be beyond combat. What better way to do it by reinforcing the classic message most hero media throws at us, which is 'you can't be in two places at once'.
Those are my suggestions, hope you guys like them, and I do hope these get considered for implimentation.