Mission Architect Designated Helper

Overview

The Mission Architect allows story writers to have players encounter NPC helpers whom they meet or save in missions. These helpers then follow the players using their powers to fight foes or to buff the players. Rules for NPC helpers that buff the players were introduced in Issue 18 to prevent exploiting the buffers. These rules are called The Designated Helper.

Use of Buffing Allies

To prevent the abuse of NPC helpers where they do all the work in fighting the foes the Developers had them 'steal' the experience depending on how much damage they did. To prevent the abuse of many NPC helpers buffing the players and making them overpowered, the Developers originally put restrictions on them making only one of the helpers use their buffing powers.

An exploit was found that by flooding a mission with dozens of these buffbots meant that each one, when encountered, became the new sole buffer. But since there were so many of them, their buffs stacked greatly, making the players overpowered. To counter this, experience gained from missions with buffing NPCs was initially cut drastically. In Issue 18, the experience cut was removed and a new mechanic was put in place to make sure only one NPC ally was buffing the players, that is, the Designated Helper.

Rules for the Designated Helper

• There can only be one Designated Helper in a map.
• If there are multiple candidates for Helper, the FIRST eligible ally the team encounters that uses its powers will become the Designated Helper.
• In order for an entity to be a candidate for Designated Helper, the following rules need to be true:
  • The candidate must Follow the player:
    • Added via choosing an Advanced Mission Goal of:
      • Add an Ally
      • Add An Escort
      • NOTE: If the Author chooses “Release a Captive,” the Captive will not follow players and is not a candidate for Designated Helper.
    • The candidate must have the “Follow” behavior set in the goal Settings
      • Ally: “Ally Behavior” is “Follow”
      • Escort: “Arrival Behavior” is “Follow”
  • The candidate must have its combat abilities set to:
    • Aggressive
    • Fight Defensive
  • The ally becomes the Designated Helper once it USES its powers, and Defensive allies only use powers defensively, so if the team meets an Aggressive ally before the Defensive ally uses its powers, the Defensive entity will NOT become the Designated Helper.
  • It is possible for the team to end up with a Designated Helper with no buff/debuff powers if the first candidate the player meets does not have Buff/Debuff powers but is set to Aggressive or Fight Defensive.
  • NOTE: Allies with combat abilities set to “Non Combat” or “Pacifist” will not be the Designated Helper.
• No other allies in the map will use their buff/debuff abilities. They also won’t use any Autopowers (except ones that only affect self, like Armor Auras), summon any pets or use location-based attacks (like Rain of Fire) or chaining attacks (like Chain Induction).
  • Including any friendly bosses, patrols, ambushes, etc.
  • Including any Designated Helper candidates after the first
• If the author adds more than one buffing ally to the map, and sets those allies to follow the team, after the first ally they will not use their buffing powers. They will still follow the team so goals can be completed and will use offensive powers to attack enemies, but only one ally will use their non-offensive abilities. If the non-DH allies do not have offensive capabilities, they will not do anything other than follow, much like a non-combat escort/ally.