Originally posted by Sythion

Originally posted by Eronakis

Originally posted by //\\//\\oo

User generated content has influenced online gaming to the extreme. LoL, anyone? MOBA games, tower defense games, player creations permeate the gaming scene now more than ever.

 

Why can't the community generate its own content while having the devs implement their custom made maps/dungeons?

Imagine a game with limitless content due to the fact that it can be cheaply implemented by the devs and created by its own playerbase. There would never be a shortage of things to do, or places to explore.

 

In case it's not clear what I mean:

Users make maps with tool provided by devs

Devs implement maps, or sort through set and slightly modify for balance

 

Yay/nay?

 

So player made content would be the layout of a dungeon using the tools that the dev's provide? Do players get to decide what kind of mobs could be in the dungeon? What about placement of mobs? What about the pathing of mobs? Do players also design quests or attached pre-made quests with the dungeon? Will there be dynamic content with this player made content? Does the player have an option to decide what loot is dropped off what mobs and how many Boss mobs there will be?

 

I voted No, because as you can see that there is a lot to be taking into account. A lot of players need to understand game design mehanics and elements to make a fun dungeon. Anyone can make a dungeon, but will it be fun? What type of gameplay will the dungeon provide by each player? Will the player know how to balance a dungeon or if there are pathing issues, can they fix the glitch?

 

Another issue is that who would stop a player by making the easiest dungeon or map in the world and make it drop the best loot? There are alot of major issues that are not thought of when this topic comes up. I am sure it could work within reason and various conditions the players must meet first. I don't see this as a viable option for content. Would get very sloppy.

 

These concerns are largely address if we look at the problem in a different way.

Instead of turning players into game designers, make a game that creates playable levels.

A tied-in game, like a dungeon keeper mmorts, would be a perfect way to generate content as part of the game. It would have its own rules to keep things (relatively) balanced, and could even have an Elo ranking system to ensure that players find dungeons that are a proper challenge for them.

For bonus points, players of the mmorts may optionally to do evil deeds to gain resources (such as raid towns, kidnap princesses, etc.) These evil deeds become the quests that players in the mmo partake in.

Hmm interesting..

No developer could ever create content faster than players can burn through it.

This is where player generated content comes and and I personally see it as a key ingredient in the future of MMORPG's.

The best way to do this?

There needs to be a TEST server.  This is generally where new features coming to the MMO are tested by members of the community who joined this specific server type on purpose - to help the developers/preview what's coming down the pipeline.

This same server can be used as a place where players can build their adventure given the appropriate tools, then allow the testing community to try them, rate them, give feedback etc.  When it reaches a certain level of approval, it goes to a final stage of testing by the developers who actually work on the game.  They either give it that final approval or send it back.

If it gets the final approval, the user generated adventure is pushed to the actual game.  If not, the player creating the adventure can work on it until it is.

What this does is it assures a level of quality while also ensuring a steady stream of new 'cream of the crop' adventures being pumped into the game.

It would be FAR easier for some of the paid developers working at the company to play through some player adventures than to create from scratch (of course, there would be more developer created content as well bringing in new features etc.)

Just how I would set it up :)

Everquest 2 has this.  There are now loads of player made dungeons....endless content, I guess you could say.  EQ2 has actually always been good about coming up with plenty of different and unusual things to do in their game.  A lot of people that even PLAY it don't realize what all there is to do.

Originally posted by FrostWyrm

City of Heroes actually began doing this a few years ago with their "architecht" system.

The only problem with the idea is that for every truly good piece of content, and every truly inspired player there is out there, there are 100 pieces of complete trash, and 100 immature "kids" (both adult and young) that will build structures to resemble penises.

The "real" issue City ran into, if memory serves, was farming. The Architect mishs were PL'ers dream come true.

To the OP: City is but one example of what you are looking for, and frankly it was/is not a huge success. I agree you could, and do end up with a "few" amazing player created maps, and sometimes even better stories. But more often than not you get mass ammounts of trash, so much that you would need AI to sort through it all.

Player generated content is another niche item, it has a place, but it will never work as the center of a game.

Nobody has played Neverwinter Nights...?

Star wars Galaxies would have been great for allowing player created Planets (Moons)

There are supposed to be billions of star systems. You allow the players to be able to create their own planets 16/16 or moons 5/5; and if they are good enough the devs would add them too the game, maybe even hand out prizes for best world design.. now suddenly instead of waiting for the Dev's to deliver content to the players, all the developers have to do is just give players new tools and let them go.

Oh well, Galaxies is gone, but I think that would be a good solution for games that are not receiving new content from the Dev's.

Originally posted by LEmmopeasant

Nobody has played Neverwinter Nights...?

Is the Neverwinter nights MMO going to allow player generated content? that would be great.

Well, judging by the existing examples (CoX, for instance), it's basically much ado about nothing. 

Same answer as Housing Systems:  Kind of a waste of dev resources, but when everything on the high priority list is done, why not?  It'll catch ya some of the sandbox fans.

Originally posted by Johnie-Marz

Originally posted by LEmmopeasant

Nobody has played Neverwinter Nights...?

Is the Neverwinter nights MMO going to allow player generated content? that would be great.

""Build Your Fantasy | With The Foundry, Neverwinter’s robust editing tools, players will be able to create their own quests, zones, and stories within Neverwinter.""

And this company has been dealing with users creating content w/Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 since 2002. Of course that was tons of seperate private instances and persistent worlds run by players. This is going to be open world. Other than that, I don't know much about the MMO Neverwinter, yet.

Along with a voting rating system, how about a approval process? Also if they are going to allow for dungeons to be made it should be a seperate component bought so if immature people really want to make poorly designed dungeons they will have to pay for the kit first. Make it where you have to jump thru hoops to obtain the tools, trolls don't like obstacles especially if their under 18 and have to pay for it...

The way I see it: Content <> terrains/maps/world

Content = scripts, mechanics, items etc

Terrains/maps/world = hills, world, npc's, bridges, castles, rooms etc...and all will probably be predefined. It will all look the same, but just placed differently.

Just like you could build maps in Counter Strike with the toolset from Valve.

Originally posted by nariusseldon
Like discussed before, 99.99% of user created content is crap. There is enough professional created fun content that i would not bother sifting through all the crap to get to the 0.01%.

so i guess you never use youtube then.  its just useless, filled with pointless videos.  too much work to find anything good.  

mmm hmmm

Originally posted by Johnie-Marz

Originally posted by LEmmopeasant

Nobody has played Neverwinter Nights...?

Is the Neverwinter nights MMO going to allow player generated content? that would be great.

Not sure if it was already mentioned, but Pirates of the Burning Sea did this for both Flags and Ships.

Flags were voted on the community at large, though the des reserved the right to reject anything that did not conform to the ToS and code of conduct.

As you might expect, ships were a far more complex process, involving approval by the art staff for artistic appeal, historic accuracy and professionalism (ie, clean geometry, proper UV's for texture placement, etc). Aother words, if it looked or ran like ship, it was disallowed until it was corrected. I made them a few ships and eventually became a professional 3D artist.

As mentioned by someone else, this is a pretty big undertaking and does require a here's of talent to achieve. I definitely believe that user context can be a very good thing, so long as the crap is weeded out. This process can be taxing on a developer, who must dedicate personnel to the review process. So, the real question, would enough people generate acceptable context to warrant the expense to the developer?

Originally posted by spankybus

Not sure if it was already mentioned, but Pirates of the Burning Sea did this for both Flags and Ships.

Flags were voted on the community at large, though the des reserved the right to reject anything that did not conform to the ToS and code of conduct.

As you might expect, ships were a far more complex process, involving approval by the art staff for artistic appeal, historic accuracy and professionalism (ie, clean geometry, proper UV's for texture placement, etc). Aother words, if it looked or ran like ship, it was disallowed until it was corrected. I made them a few ships and eventually became a professional 3D artist.

As mentioned by someone else, this is a pretty big undertaking and does require a here's of talent to achieve. I definitely believe that user context can be a very good thing, so long as the crap is weeded out. This process can be taxing on a developer, who must dedicate personnel to the review process. So, the real question, would enough people generate acceptable context to warrant the expense to the developer?

Ryzom does this already, except there is no dev interaction. The player takes a map, from a choice of many, and populate it with NPC's, structures, quests, and items. Then the player "publishes" it on the Ryzom Ring, and other players play it online. The creator can either stay invisible as the DM, or participate.

This is about the most fun I've ever had in an MMO: to see how other people solve the puzzles and problems you created.

They got around the abuse mechanisms by not allowing players to get XP, items, or money from any scenario. Only the creator is able to give out rewards. I typically gave out "cats", which are XP potions basically.

My scenarios had several ways to win, and I would give out varying amounts of rewards, based on how they finished it.

despite the votes this is a very bad idea. example: STO: it's been a VERY VERY long time and they only recently advanced the content. They relyed too much on the foundry to create new content which was subpar imo despite what people ranked them because they didn't allow for anyone to advance the gear or the currency to what they would consider end game gear for harder foundry missions and at the same time didn't put out a single new STF mission for the borg, and did the terrible job with the loot handling for these dungeons. There were who sets of people who would drop the entire group (obviously through an outside app) and rejoin the group in order to ensure they would be the only ones to get the loot at the end with the bosses. They should have taken Anet's stance on loot. currency to purchase new items should have been distributed for tier 1 for everyone involved in every dungeon.

So it is a terrible idea, they make it sound all fun and things but it just really makes the devs even more lazy because they can claim hey look people are rping in these things we don't have to do anything new for a whole 1 yr 6 mo and then at the end we can just break it so no one except the cheaters can get gear they need. 

I hate gear treadmills because of hacks like this one. It's another reason why i went casual a long time ago, because people cheat to get what they want and they never catch them in time or don't do anything about it to fix it because they don't care as long as the money flows in.

Some of you posters logic baffles me

So because some games botched it or that it's a difficult thing to balance, it's a terrible idea? That makes no sense.

If that was a valid reason for anything, then mankind wouldn't advance in technology or anything really

Originally posted by Starpower

Some of you posters logic baffles me

 

So because some games botched it or that it's a difficult thing to balance, it's a terrible idea? That makes no sense.

 

If that was a valid reason for anything, then mankind wouldn't advance in technology or anything really

 

it doesn't matter what you or anyone else thinks. when an idea fails in the market, the people who back up these companies that want to try to input those ideas into their new game won't go for it. thus no money for new game.

yep because it makes the devs who are usually lazy to begin with, even lazier in the current developer climate. The devs would rather let the players make crappy content then actually push something useful and fun out. The only acception i see is Trion. Now if companies were more trustworthy in their use of the monthly sub model then yes i'd be all about it but so far the only provider of a game under a subscription model that's done anything organized, quick, listening to the concerns of the players, and doesn't abuse the player base by using their subs for their yacht parties and nothing more, is Trion. Until the rest of these companies can get on board the ethics train, they don't deserve such a break.