So amidst all the new updates, the scenario editor is broken (again). As of the latest update, modifying pierce damage with change unit attack/modify attribute no longer works. Triggers of this sort are probably used in a majority of scenarios/campaigns, as it’s one of the most basic, foundational aspects that players want to modify, and old workarounds (from when this system was previously bugged for an extremely long time) no longer work.
Unfortunately, I’ve never had the sense that the scenario editor was a priority; it seems like devs get around to fixing it “when they feel like,” if at all, rather than giving it anywhere near the level of prioritization that other aspects of the game get, and editor functionality lags far behind all other parts of the game. Dumb stuff that nobody asked for (e.g. villagers with boxing gloves) is constantly churned out, while well known editor bugs are left unaddressed, sometimes for years. Until this latest major bug, I had been fairly pleased with the editor due to the addition of some new triggers and the fact that a majority of the major bugs had finally been addressed (although it was a disaster a year or two ago).
Whenever the new patch is out, at minimum we need a fix for this, but I’d like to see more focus on the editor in general. New DLCs seem to be made with the perspective of minimizing editor content while still appearing to have enough new stuff to make people want to buy. I’d like to see an update or DLC that focuses anywhere near as much on the editor as on the new civs. The editor also needs some level of bulletproofing, such that its most basic functionalities aren’t constantly being destroyed by new “updates”. Heck, I’d gladly pay for a new DLC that only focused on adding new objects/functions to the editor and finally worked out all the bugs in it.
Anyway, rant over, but after multiple DLCs of the devs seeing how little they can get away with in adding to the SE, and multiple persistent and recurring bugs, I would prioritize a more robust and capable scenario editor over new civs, gimmicky event mods, and even multiplayer fixes.
There’s a large number of features I’ve requested, or would request if I could be bothered. For example:
When you copy paste a large area (Or any area), the paste doesn’t focus on the middle, it focuses on the corner you started drawing from. Otherwise you can end up with an area that well exceeds the actual area you can see on screen, and you have no accurate way to place it.
Being able to change the defeat message from “XYZ was defeated” to “XYZ were defeated.” This is needed for when you have a plural groups, such as “The Egyptians”, when it grammatically is very wrong to say “was defeated.”
Being able to make objectives cross out and turn red if you complete it. This is for objectives such as “Keep all your heroes alive.” If any of them die, you didn’t complete it, so it shouldn’t turn green with a tick in the objective box, it should turn red with a cross.
Not disabling units when you have a civ start in a higher age. For example, if I have a civ starting in Imperial, I then won’t be able to place militia for them in the editor (I think, this one’s a bit arbitrary, some units get removed, some don’t, but either militia or M@A will be removed), which is stupid. Just because the people might have started with better tech doesn’t mean their starting units have to be improved in the actual editor.
Fix all the trigger bugs, they are super annoying.
When placing buildings, allow for a custom architecture set and age to be set for each building, this means people don’t have to do fancy trigger work if you want the Feudal Age version of one building to appear for someone with different architecture who’s in Imp.
Those are the most frustrating/useful things to add/fix that I can think of off the top of my head.
Update on this: I was very pleased when they announced that they’d fixed the issue…turns out they did not…
Not only did they not fix the pierce attack modification issue as claimed, they actually made it even worse. Now the Modify Attribute trigger is completely broken and useless when it comes to changing melee or pierce attack or armor. These updates are so haphazard and bad - it’s like patching a hole in a pair of pants by cutting away fabric from another part of the pants, making a huge hole in a different area, then claiming that you made an improvement. Will it be another 2 months before we get a dubious “fix” for this issue? (which will more than likely break something else if it even fixes this) Meanwhile every scenario/campaign that involves modifying any unit’s attack or armor is broken worse than before. I was about to release a couple scenarios I had been working on for months, but there’s no point since they won’t work as intended…
I want to trust that the dev team has its act together, but stuff like this is fantastically unprofessional. This was literally the only change they announced in the domain of Modding/Scenario editing that they’ve had 2 months to work on, it not only didn’t solve the problem it claimed to, but it made things worse.
FFS
Edit: On second look, they technically did fix one bug, but only with “Change object attack”, which is a far less useful trigger than Modify Attribute, as it doesn’t apply to uncreated units and prevents them from benefitting from any upgrades. So basically they fixed the most limited, least useful way of changing (pierce) attack, but broke the most useful and expansive way of changing pierce and melee attack and armor…so, one step forward, 3 steps backwards.
I just remembered this list again, @IkoKnight8151, I think you know what I want to request with this , this is quite a useful list of awesome stuff for the editor, so it would be great if the team could work on some of it.
Lol, I’m all for the stuff you suggested, but let’s get the basic functionalities working first, no? Prioritizing fancy things like these before fixing gamebreaking Mega editor bugs is like painting a house as it burns down. Let’s get the fire put out, and then be free to work on all the nice additions.
For me, I do consider these two to be really high priorities, because they sort of are bugs, and very annoying ones at that for any scenario that doesn’t use a lot of triggers (or even those that do):
Other than that, I’m not sure the devs are able to easily fix bugs it seems, so I’d settle for just new stuff for now, and have them slowly fix bugs.
Fair enough, although for both of these there’s at least a workaround that isn’t that troublesome (for the second one especially, I just start them in Dark and age up with triggers). Far from ideal, but at least there are ways to achieve the functionality you want. Whereas with Modify Attribute not working, there’s just a major loss in functionality that no amount of cleverness or extra triggers can fix. For me, 95% percent of anything I will ever make in the Editor will use this, so there’s no point in using the Editor at all until it’s fixed. I’m sure there are difficulties with the code that I’m not aware of, but this isn’t Rocket Science. Whatever technical issues are present, it’s clear, as I’ve stated before, that this is mainly an issue of the Editor having extremely low prioritization for fixes.
Also, bug fixes of features that previously worked needs to be prioritized because it otherwise holds peoples’ previous works hostage indefinitely. I have several scenarios I was going to release this month that represent many months worth of work, but are completely useless until the devs decide to get their shit together, and I’m sure others are in the same situation. Creating new features that add further complexity before fixing the basics (and things that previously worked) is the definition of bad prioritization.
, this is quite a useful list of awesome stuff for the editor, so it would be great if the team could work on some of it.