Hero Con Mission Architect News

Quilcene, reporting from Hero Con has this report on Mission Architect from the MA panel that was held:

Mission Architect (MA) will be accessible as a building in several zones. When you go in it will look arcade like. You will set up your mission at a terminal and enter the missions through a door inside the MA building. Think of the missions as occurring on a holodeck.

Not liking this. I was imagining the system would be accessed through contacts in the game world, but they're going with a "Holodeck". Well, I can live with it I guess, but thumbs down.

All published missions will be accessible cross faction and cross shard. This means heroes can rob a bank and Villains can save little old ladies.

This sounds like "forced" co-op. I hope it is revealed that you can tag missions for either faction or for co-op instead. Until then, thumbs down.

Customize enemies, rescuees, allies and contacts in what they are calling the Critter Creator. The primary for created enemies must be an attack set (no helpless enemies).

Outstanding! A feature worth waiting for if ever there was one. Thumbs up!

The MA is fully searchable for content you want to find.

I guess it would have to be to be any good lol. Thumbs up.

Enough positive feedback gets you story promoted to Hall of Fame which frees up that slot for you to add another story. Select stories will be flagged as Dev Choice, but nothing will become cannon at this time.

The canon thing is understandable. But if you look at the most Digged stories for the last year on digg.com, what does that say about the editorial abilities of a mob? Nothing good, that's for certain. Still, such a feature is a necessity. Let's hope it works out. Thumbs sideways.

MA story arcs will be treated similar to Oroborous TFs in that normal contacts cannot be reached, but you will be able to invite new team members mid story.

Locking out Contacts. Weird. And kinda pointless. Probably a limitation of the tech. Thumbs down.

Innappropriate content can be flagged by the community for review. If inappropriate, story will be removed. If same account keeps creating banned content, account could be banned from MA. If somebody continual griefs an MA writer with false inappropriate flags, that account could be banned from MA as well. So it works both ways.

This sounds good. People can't grief you with flags. They can grief you with poor ratings, though. "Oh, you thumbs-downed my mission? I'll do the same to yours! On all my accounts!" But such a system is necessary, worts and all. Thumbs up.

MA stories will get normal XP for defeats, but no mission complete XP. Nothing in MA will count towards badges. Inspirations will drop as normal, but instead of enhancements, recipes, or salvage, you will receive “skeeball tickets” (pohsyb’s term) that can be redeemed in a similar manner to the new Merit system.

If anyting kills Mission Architect, it'll be lack of rewards relative to the "real" game. You can pretty much count PuGs out right from the start. The real challenge is making it rewarding enough to make people want to participate, yet not so much that it obsoletes the rest of the game, or is expoitable. That's a very fine line, and right now I fear they are being too conservative with it. It all hinges on what "skeeball tickets" can get you. Since so much is unknown, thumbs sideways.

The rating system is a simple thumbs up or thumbs down.

Gee, I wonder how I got the idea for doing that in this article? ;) Thumbs up, I like a binary system far more than the typical 5 star system (wich rarely works well--look at YouTube).

MA stories are co-op style (implying that MA will be accessible in a co-op zone or two).

Forced co-op. City of Metas/City of Neutrals is encroaching more and more into this game. It's a negative trend, and extremely bad for the game. Co-op allowed? Fine. Co-op "forced"? Thumbs down!

The level system (sk, exemp, etc.) is more complex, and I didn’t fully follow it, so someone else can fill in this info.

Uh, oh. Let's hope it isn't unnecessarily complicated. Thumbs sideways because we just don't know enough about this element yet.

No manual spawn placement (No AV at the door), but it is something they may add someday.

You know, I really don't mind this at all. You just know that some yahoo would put spawns in very hard-to-locate places. X-Com Syndrome is bad, OK? Thumbs up.

1000s of predefined maps to choose from. Not customizable, but if it’s in the game, you can use it.

Customizable would be better, but with thousands available, who needs to customize? And like the spawn placement thing it keeps it to the KISS principle. Thumbs up.

You can save your story to your local computer before publishing it (can save as many as you like). You can play these is a testing environment and even invite people to test it with you; but it is not accessible to others until you publish it. The character that publishes it is the one that gets credit for it (towards badges for example).

So you can make unlimited stories just for yourself. That's hot. Thumbs up!

All in game characters are useable, or you can design your own for placement in the mission. You can even place multiples of the same character. For example, Hero 1 had the Clockwork King as an ally to help him defeat the Clockwork King.

Awesome. It's a critical feature if you ask me. Definitely worth waiting for. Thumbs up!

Character allies act as non-teammates for the purposes of XP… i.e. the damage they do is deducted from your XP. They can kill steal.

I can see the design reson behind this, but aren't we being punished enough already with the reduced rewards? For making one of the coolest features in MA a liability: Thumbs down!

You can set the temperament of the characters you rescue… for instance you can have to rescue someone who hates you who will fight you all the way to the exit.

You know what's more frustrating than a regular kidnap mission? A kidnap mission where you have to fight the kidnap all the way back to the mission door. An interesting feature, but boy will it easily frustrate players! Be very careful with it, my fellow Mission Architects! Until I have proof this feature is fun: thumbs down.

Totals:
Thumbs Down: 6
Thumbs Up: 8
Thumbs Sideways: 3

Looks like a winner, but with some signigicant concerns. Final judgement for after it releases and I get some time with it, of course. I can tell you right now they are probably going to have to make playing these missions more rewarding, though. #1 mistake they are making with it, easily. Depending upon just what skeeball tickets get you (those had better be good!)

Read the original post at the official forums.

[Once again the quote feature goes screwy on me. *sigh* Maybe I'll use HTML or something to quote in the future, cause Blogger's quote feature ain't cutting it.- ed.]