Mission Architect
The Mission Architect, fictionally presented as a training exercise for Heroes and Villains, allows players to build their own Missions and Story Arcs and share them with others in the game. Using an intuitive interface similar to the game's detailed Character Creator, players can create missions by selecting options like size and type of map/environment, mission objectives and encounter types, and difficulty level of each encounter. Additionally, players can write all mission story fiction and character dialogue.
This feature was announced by Positron in April 28th 2008[1], and while no release date has been set, an screenshot of its interface was leaked in August 8th 2008[2].
Players can create their own missions and they can play missions that have been created by other players. Once you have finalized and "published" your missions, they are accessible by all players across all servers. All players can rate player created missions and a Mission Browser lets players find available missions and story arcs through a variety of tabs, sorts and filters in an auction house type environment.
As missions are played and more people positively rate them, the creator gains rewards and access to unlockable content for his/her missions. Rewards will also be given to players of the missions. Players will gain rewards such as badges and even XP for playing user created missions and StoryArcs.
The Mission Architect will allow you to create your own named bosses, such as their costumes, powers, and spawn places. You can only have maps for missions that you have visited. By getting high ratings and having many people play your story arcs, you gain rewards such as Signature Villains/heroes as well as some unique maps to make into missions.
More Info
Overview
Or what IS the Mission Architect anyway?
The Mission Architect will let us, the players, design missions for other players as well as undertake missions made by other players. Missions from the Architect will be available to heroes AND villains alike on ALL servers. You will finally be able to tell that story about why the Freakshow hate whipped cream, Statesman shall declare "The potato chip aisle is no longer a crime scene." (Yeah that was me), and legions of Blood Widows will sing the praises of Lee Press On Claws! And honestly, who can resist that? I for one, shall welcome our new architect overlords.
What it's NOT.
The Mission Architect is not a powerleveling, farming, or badging tool. (Exception for badges directly related to the Mission Architect.) The devs have taken various steps to prevent this feature from being used for those purposes, but I'll discuss those later.
Architect Entertainment Stations
It will all start at Architect Entertainment Stations (AES) placed in multiple zones throughout the game. (1 in a co-op zone was implied, but not guaranteed.) Here you will be able to search for other player made missions to go on with or without a team, or create, save, load, test, publish, or unpublish your own missions. (More on those new terms later.) A quick note about the mission search engine. It will have to sort through content made by ALL players that have published a mission. So it's expected to load slower than the markets load. (Honestly just the search engine alone on the Architect was a big undertaking and we appreciate all of the dev's work that went into it!)
What to Expect
Well to start with, there can actually be up to FIVE missions in a published arc. All Architect missions will be instanced and NOT in an open zone. While you are on an Architect mission it will be similar to being on a Task/Strike Force in regards to other contacts being greyed out. You may well notice that your toon's level has changed while in the mission. Do not be alarmed yet. Your level can shift in either direction and can even vary with each mission in the arc. Why? Because our benevolent Architect overlords whim it so. Ok.. you can be alarmed now.
After the published misson is complete, you can rate it as thumbs up, thumbs down, or inappropriate and why.
Not for Farming or PLing
Opinions on farming and powerleveling are seldom neutral, and this isn't a forum for that discussion. It IS, however, where you get informed of how the devs are going to discourage the Architect from being overrun with intentionally mindless stuff from folks that do not care about the stories the Architect is intended to encourage. Please keep in mind things can change between now and implementation.
While in an Architect mission players WILL get normal kill xp, inf, prestige, and inspirations. After the arc is complete there may also be a different type of merit (not i13 merit, not Rikti merit) called a skeeball ticket (placeholder name maybe?). Skeeball ticket is all the information we really have. No present idea how they will be used/redeemed.
While in an Architect mission, players will NOT get: end mission bonus, salvage, recipies, or enhancements.
Badges? Only those tied to the Architect folks. Get a change of underwear ready as I give some examples.
Kill x amount of y badges? No. Healing? Damage taken? Debt? No. "But what about..." NO. Ain't happening inside the Architect folks.
Creating a Mish for you and/or others
The exact order of mission creation isn't known, but at various points you will pick a mission type and goals, enemies and level, possibly a NPC combat ally(s) and/or custom boss, and oh yeah, a premade map and write the thing and save.
Yes I DID say premade map. The devs have promised us over 1,000 maps to choose from at launch, including all unique maps. (They also said no one wants to see Hamidon in the 5-layer room.) They would like to get us a mapmaker at some point, but that point will not be at launch. (It's alot of work for that folks.) Likewise mobs will spawn on the maps at preset points.
The ability to add a custom boss is the feature WE demanded and the reason we are getting the Architect an issue later. It's known that in i13 we get the ability to save and load costumes from our toons to our local computer. We will also be able to download it to a custom boss. Each one will get a primary (attack) and a secondary powerset. It was asked by an audience member if we would be able to scale our custom bosses to Elite Bosses or Archvillain/Hero, but I wasn't clear on the answer given.
No ambushes will be possible with the Architect. Also no cutscenes. (THANK YOU DEVS!!!)
Mission type and goals like glowie clicks or kill-alls are easy enough to understand. Turns out there is a link between enemies and level though, as enemies exist in various ranges and don't always scale out of those ranges well. Call it quality control for a better play experience.
Enemies and allies can be pretty much anything you can already fight somewhere in the game. At the time of Herocon, even Giant Monsters were available for use in Architect missions. I inferred that Giant Monsters may change before launch however. One member of the panel commented that the day before they had fought against 6 AV Clockwork Kings with another one helping them in an Architect mission!
Writing well is always a challenge, and this won't be any different. You will be able to write breifings, NPC dialog, clues, debriefings, and souveniers. Just the same as the Devs! Please keep in mind that the devs have spellchecking software in their process that isn't in the Architect. So take some time to doublecheck for typos is my advice.
Saving is done to your local computer. Now get THIS, you can save an UNLIMITED (by the game) number of missions! And it gets better! You can edit your saved missions offline as they are in a text file! SWEET!!!
What then? Well you might..
Test
You can load up a saved mission and run it for yourself or your team. This can be useful for laughs or less widespread applications like SG initiations and the like. You can test a mission as often as you like. This is also known as running an unpublished mission.
Publish
This is where you submit your blood, sweat, and tears for the enjoyment of the masses. Or so we all hope. Here's the kicker though, you can only have three (3) published missions per ACCOUNT. Now you can publish and UNpublish at will, so please lower the DOOM meter and restart your heart. Go on, we'll wait.
Also worth noting is the toon that is logged on when you publish the mission is the toon that is getting any Architect badge credit for that mission. I don't know if unpublishing a mission and republishing it on the same toon restarts any badge credit for the mission, but I see it as likely.
Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame
There ARE 2 ways around the 3 published per account limit. Dev's choice and Hall of Fame. These actually copy your mission onto the game servers and delete it from your published slot, freeing it.
Dev's choice simply means a Dev liked it enough to save it. It's not "official" story, but they liked it!
You get a mission into the Hall of Fame when an unknown number of players rate it thumbs up.
Both of these will be search options in the Architect menu.
Flagging for Inappropriate
Show me on the doll where the Architect touched you.
The devs are trusting us not to publish missions that violate the TOS and EULA, but when it happens you can let them know via the normal /petition or when you rate the mission at the end. There will be an assortment of options to check so we can help the GMs speed up their review. Players found to be in violation might be banned from the Architect system, or you know, the entire game at the GMs discretion.
Now in reverse, if your ex-smizmar or whatever decides to flag all your missions as inappropriate, the GMs will be alert for that too and the ex can be reprimanded for harrassment at the GM's option.
The lesson here is to play nice and civil and spellcheck often. Oh and souveniers are deletable by the player in case of inappropriateness too.
Architect Badges
All that's really known is there will be some. I would suspect that Hall of Fame would grant one, but that's my opinion.
Author's Notes
Ok, well I hope you enjoyed reading this guide and find it useful. This is my 1st crack at writing a guide and it turns out I'm posting it on the 3rd anniversary of my VG's (The Schulls on Victory) founding. If you are interested in writing missions I might recomend checking out back issues of the City Scoop for Content Watch by Plater. Knowing what has been well recieved can only help your chances of being well recieved as well.:)
Mission Suggestion Example
The impatient player tutorial.
A better place for mission ideas would be the City Life or Forum Games section, but a fellow herocon/workshop attendee inspired this.
Have you ever been on a Pick Up Group (PUG) where 1 person just won't wait for the rest of the team? Of course you have. Well when it happens you can "suggest" this mission. The only real restriction is the map should have a door inside for best effect. Closer to the mission entrance is better. Here's how it should play out..
Team enters the mission and the impatient one dashes ahead to find a glowie and a door. They click the glowie and get the "CLUE FOUND" prompt. Then they heedlessly open the door and find as many AVs/Heroes/GMs as you want to put in. Maybe they say something about reading the clue like "Clue tax of $2.37! PAY UP!!" before/during an epically short beatdown. Oddly enough the rest of the team goes nowhere near the door.
The clue reads "Wait for the team please."