General Discussion

While at GDC, Larua Genender had the opportunity to sit down with Kate Paiz, the Senior Producer on Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach.

On February 28th, this upcoming Thursday, Turbine and thousands of DDO players celebrate the two year anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons Online. This past Thursday at the Game Developer’s Conference I had a chance to talk with Kate Paiz, Senior Producer of DDO. Not only did I get the dirt on the upcoming update 7, but we discussed the events planned to celebrate the game’s birthday.

First up in the line of birthday presents is a “price and lock” – users can purchase a 6 month subscription at the price of $9.99 per month, a total price of $59.94. This is almost $18 less than the normal monthly fee! This offer is available to past, present, and future subscribers, as long as they purchase during the anniversary celebration.

Read the whole article here.

Hmmm.. surprising feature coming up? Why do I bet  they are going to allow players to make their own content...

They really should though. Once they allow that then they will get more people I bet.

They could lower the price to FREE, and i doubt id go back.

I don't see how it would be possible for them to easily quality control user-made content.  While I would love to see it, and based on NWN, some of it would be fantastic [literally as well as figuratively!], much of it would either suck or be an "I win" button.

On the other hand, crafting at lower levels would be extremely welcomed!  I wonder if they'll add yet more %$^&* collectables or just find a way to incorporate the ones currently in game.  Obviously, I'd prefer the second.  Maybe instead of giving a necromatic gem to Doomdrum for a chance at a lesser undead bane melee weapon [with an at least 80% chance of getting a consumable -arrows, bolts, darts, etc], you could now save 10 and definitely get a melee weapon - and get the one of your choice!  The drop rate for shards would need to increase in lower level dungeons [which I believe is supposed to be addressed soon] and other ingredients would need to be added [or just use a Masterwork X to produce a +1 X; +1 to produce a +2, etc.].

Originally posted by uncus

I don't see how it would be possible for them to easily quality control user-made content.  While I would love to see it, and based on NWN, some of it would be fantastic [literally as well as figuratively!], much of it would either suck or be an "I win" button.

On the other hand, crafting at lower levels would be extremely welcomed!  I wonder if they'll add yet more %$^&* collectables or just find a way to incorporate the ones currently in game.  Obviously, I'd prefer the second.  Maybe instead of giving a necromatic gem to Doomdrum for a chance at a lesser undead bane melee weapon [with an at least 80% chance of getting a consumable -arrows, bolts, darts, etc], you could now save 10 and definitely get a melee weapon - and get the one of your choice!  The drop rate for shards would need to increase in lower level dungeons [which I believe is supposed to be addressed soon] and other ingredients would need to be added [or just use a Masterwork X to produce a +1 X; +1 to produce a +2, etc.].

 They don't have to control it. This is a no brainer.

All they have to do is allow players to create modules. Or adventures, or whatever. Any items that one gets in those adventures, stays within those adventures. So you can carry in whatever you've gained from DDO "proper" but can't just have user created adventures with crates and crates of items to be looted. Problem solved. I think this is what they did with Ryzom Ring as well.

Turbine could develop a toolkit to allow users to create adventures set in any of the DDO "wards" (the quest hub instances) and a special UGC portal could be in each ward to enter a UGC adventure. Easy.

Where to host the adventures? That becomes trickier. Do the authors have to upload to Turbine for hosting? If so, do all the UGC become part of "patches?" Why not let users host their adventures anywhere, like FPS do their custom maps, and if you have the adventure, it will play. If not, it will link to the download site first.

The best-done, most popular UGC could even be purchased (or whatever) by Turbine, tweaked up a bit, and made official.

SWG and Ryzom both did well with UGC. Most UGC is crap, no doubt about that, but on the other hand look at FPS maps and especially mods -- there are plenty of talented players out there willing to put in the time and effort to produce quality content, and there are likely more of them than there are official DDO devs... the amount of content that could suddenly appear would be staggering.

Originally posted by Sovrath

 

Originally posted by uncus

I don't see how it would be possible for them to easily quality control user-made content.  While I would love to see it, and based on NWN, some of it would be fantastic [literally as well as figuratively!], much of it would either suck or be an "I win" button.

On the other hand, crafting at lower levels would be extremely welcomed!  I wonder if they'll add yet more %$^&* collectables or just find a way to incorporate the ones currently in game.  Obviously, I'd prefer the second.  Maybe instead of giving a necromatic gem to Doomdrum for a chance at a lesser undead bane melee weapon [with an at least 80% chance of getting a consumable -arrows, bolts, darts, etc], you could now save 10 and definitely get a melee weapon - and get the one of your choice!  The drop rate for shards would need to increase in lower level dungeons [which I believe is supposed to be addressed soon] and other ingredients would need to be added [or just use a Masterwork X to produce a +1 X; +1 to produce a +2, etc.].

 They don't have to control it. This is a no brainer.

 

All they have to do is allow players to create modules. Or adventures, or whatever. Any items that one gets in those adventures, stays within those adventures. So you can carry in whatever you've gained from DDO "proper" but can't just have user created adventures with crates and crates of items to be looted. Problem solved. I think this is what they did with Ryzom Ring as well.

They HAVE to control it - let's say I make a dungeon and fill it with obscenities or ethnic slurs; let's say I make it subtle, so that only a few people who really try can find them - either way Turbine gets sued.

Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to see UGC in DDO, I just don't think that it is as easily done as some think.

That is something I'd considered, but on the other hand, is the DDO audience (typically more mature that I've seen) paying a monthly fee the same type of audience we see in Second Life (free) creating squadrons of flying genitalia?

There could be a committee, either Turbine, or user-elected (probably Turbine, I don't know that they're "progressive" enough to allow a player committee) to preview and approve UGC.

Loot? Shouldn't be a big deal, the chest/difficulty loot tables already exist, and raid/boss/unique/etc. items shouldn't be available in a UGC toolkit anyway. Or just drop some gold, etc. at the end instead of items, the amount based largely on the difficulty rating?

Mmmm Kate Paiz is hot !

User created modules won't work - missions difficulty/reward balance is a subtle thing, and you can trust most players to tend torwards making an empty room with a kobold, 50 raid quality chests, and 20k xp reward for killing the kobold.