I'm curious to know why no developer has given players the ability to create their own dungeons yet. I imagine if it were designed carefully, it could be done with minimal to no exploits. Seems like it would be a no brainer to me to make it so players could create game content, which would greatly cut back new content creation costs.

CoX has something like that, the mission architect

players can make their own missions and share it with others

Originally posted by Leucrotta

CoX has something like that, the mission architect

players can make their own missions and share it with others

I heard about that, but I don't know how it really works. Do players get to design the actual maps? Or just choose a few settings?

here is a link that tells you how it all works

http://eu.cityofheroes.com/en/game_guide/mission_architect/

I've thought about something similar before.  In theory it would be great, people would be able to allow their creativity to really shine, not to mention the community that would grow from the feature.  I think of Little Big Planet in that respect.  But when it comes to dungeon creation in an RPG, I immidiately think of Neverwinter Nights.  That feature was harshly explopited, allowing people to auto-level up their characters as well as supply them with the best weapons.

The real excitement I get out of doing different dungeons comes to different dungeon themes, pull strategies, and intricate boss encounters.  In player generated dungeons, I feel that it would be just too complicated for the average player to design.  Think about raid encounters in games, they have a bunch of bosses that are all individually designed and tested and placed into certain themed dungeons to where everything is strategic and fits in perfectly.  I don't think the average player could create something to that level of completion, and if someone did, they should probably be pursuing a job as a game developer.

I was going to make a long-winded reply, but UnknownAspect covered everything I was going to say straight down to the NWN2 constructor set. Perfect post, and explains just about everything i have to say with far less words.

The problem with this concept has always been the notion that "if a player can exploit the games mechanics they will to the fullest degree". If dungeons with rewards were introduced players would find ways to create instances that allowed for easy AOE grinding or quick leveling. The only three games I've ever seen allow for player creation of content have been SWG (event editor) COH (Mission Arcitect) and Ryzom (quest creator); and of those only the latter allowed for players to gain expirence from completing player missions. 

Originally posted by jusomdude

I'm curious to know why no developer has given players the ability to create their own dungeons yet. I imagine if it were designed carefully, it could be done with minimal to no exploits. Seems like it would be a no brainer to me to make it so players could create game content, which would greatly cut back new content creation costs.

cause most of them suck and are a waste of time

Originally posted by UknownAspect

I've thought about something similar before.  In theory it would be great, people would be able to allow their creativity to really shine, not to mention the community that would grow from the feature.  I think of Little Big Planet in that respect.  But when it comes to dungeon creation in an RPG, I immidiately think of Neverwinter Nights.  That feature was harshly explopited, allowing people to auto-level up their characters as well as supply them with the best weapons.

The real excitement I get out of doing different dungeons comes to different dungeon themes, pull strategies, and intricate boss encounters.  In player generated dungeons, I feel that it would be just too complicated for the average player to design.  Think about raid encounters in games, they have a bunch of bosses that are all individually designed and tested and placed into certain themed dungeons to where everything is strategic and fits in perfectly.  I don't think the average player could create something to that level of completion, and if someone did, they should probably be pursuing a job as a game developer.

I don't think just because one team failed means it isn't possible to do without abuse, it just has to be coded/created better. It's true, the majority of the playerbase would probably make crap dungeons but I still think it would be awesome.

www.ryzom.com

To be honest, I've never been a fan of this idea. I just don't think that creating missions is something that players should be able to do. It makes no sense in terms of the story in any game...

When you put that kind of power in the hands of players, you eventually end up with really crappy missions with stories that make no sense littered throughout the game. I'm sure some of them might be entertaining and original, but there will also be many that have absolutely no place in a game.

As stated, it's been done, it's always been exploited.

You can design a dozen algorithms to curb cheating and farming player-created missions/dungeons, but at the end of the day, its still highly exploitable if there are rewards involved.

The only way you can prevent this is to have rewards based on things that players cannot control.  That can either be a static mission length, preventing early completers from taking the next mission, or per-baddie only, with set AI that works against pulling, and other AI exploits. The alternate is to either NOT give rewards, or have rewards for a mission design approved by a professional.  Or come up with some exceptionally incredible algorithms to decide how much XP a mission should really generate, that takes into account average completion times, contact between designers and players and mob placement and map design.  Possible, but not  likely.

The fact that 90% of the missions would be trash is irrelevant. Good ratings systems already exist to bring the good stuff to the top. They will only improve as time goes on.  That's like saying we shouldn't watch TV because 90% of it is trash... and that's on a good day.

As has been stated many times but I will add it too to help show how big of a deal it is, it will be exploited always.

Yes there are good minded players who would like to created a fair balanced challenging dungeon to give people fun, but there are far more people who want to create a macro high xp dungeon or a super short easy quest for the best rewards. It's impossible to stop all of these and it probably ends up costing the company more to hire people who check out every new dungeon/mission/quest created to make sure it's ok.

Also if the devs are doing a good job the rewards pre time/difficulty is balanced across all the quests (ok it's never full balanced but you get the idea, in a well built game you get a fair reward no matter what you're doing). Also the dungeons will all fit their themes correctly, so a burrowing creature dungeon will have a windy mazy tunnel type of dungeon, a bad human group might have a fort. The most important thing the devs will know the fine line of challenging/easy to walk to keep the game balanced and fair, the majortiy of players (even more so on forums it seems) have no concept of this line. Players say things like "why can't I have an instant max level guy" and "I don't want to have to spend time leveling or getting items just give me everything I want" and of course "I don't want to have to travel to different areas in the game owrld, I want to sit in one spot and get everything I want." So stop and really think what player created content will be like with those kind of people behind it.

I'd rather see occasional contests by companies to take player submitted quests, or whole story lines, and then have the company put the winner's idea in the game in a fair balanced way.

Why not just have Player-created dungeons that cost the player creating?  If that player has to create something that pulls out of his/her own resources, I doubt it could be used to exploit, as no new resources are created in the world.

I think there is another issue with player made dungeons, different from the fact that most will have junk stories.

Because while playing CoX and using the mission architect I noticed that it is really easy to find the good missions, the developers put the tag "devs choice" on them and they are the first ones you see when you open the menu, but still people don't want to do the good missions because they would rather farm.  So people pass up a mission with a good story and interesting mechanics because when all you want to do is get XP you don't want to bother with story or mechanics but would rather just kill tons of mobs on a map for no particular reason, not that I can complain since I benefit from farm teams too, but I have noticed the attitude in CoX has changed, it is less casual, people care more about having optimal groups, usually including a fire/kinetics controller, and the good missions are largely ignored.

Personally, I like the idea of it.  Now I do have an extensive list of restrictions and conditions for making it work well, and at the top of it is that it should be a guild activity.

Why guilds?  These structures (factories and/or mines) would be a huge expense to build.  The benefits from these structures to the guild could be huge, but that would need to be defended.  Other players and guilds could rob these places or even sabotage them causing a noticible reduction in their output.  There is a lot of balancing I'm skipping, with many automatic defenses and their costs and needs (too long: you wouldn't want to read it, plus it's not really done).

Doing this you encourage really challenging designs, but because of those unwritten balances there will be several fairly easy ones as well (and not just because it's a newer one or built with limited resources).  It's very much a part of the game to build this content, and can be very rewarding in game.  While drops would be limited, storage rooms could provide plenty of incentive even beyond the chance to weaken a competing guild.

Originally posted by jusomdude

I'm curious to know why no developer has given players the ability to create their own dungeons yet. I imagine if it were designed carefully, it could be done with minimal to no exploits. Seems like it would be a no brainer to me to make it so players could create game content, which would greatly cut back new content creation costs.

Just thinking out loud here. You would need some scheme where players had a sandbox toolset, could select parameters for boss encounters (it would have to be an idiot-proof high level visual scripting language, with a lot of failsafes). And then maybe a way for players to vote on dungeons they like. Loot would be a problem, so probably players would need to spend some in-game currency or token to even attempt the dungeon, in order to prevent farming scenarios. Player-death-in-dungeon / boss-kills would need to be tracked on a per-character basis (again, with failsafes to prevent manipulating the statistic), so you could have some sense of who is a good player at PvE. Then you could track whether a dungeon was "hard" based on good players completing or failing in it, and continually auto-assign loot at regular intervals depending on the hardness factor.

This would be very difficult and expensive to do (be a game in itself), and I wonder what the payoff is to players. And again, somebody would always find a way to manipulate their dungeon for this reason or that, so there would be a constant arms race between players trying to exploit the system and developers trying to mitigate the impact of those exploits.

Originally posted by jusomdude

I'm curious to know why no developer has given players the ability to create their own dungeons yet. I imagine if it were designed carefully, it could be done with minimal to no exploits. Seems like it would be a no brainer to me to make it so players could create game content, which would greatly cut back new content creation costs.

not sure about mmo,but psp had a game called dungeon maker ,and on computer theres the game called neverwinternights2 

if i recall atari/obsidian had a kit avail to player to make new content its a freaking involved process but once done your map is on the atari/obsidian website ,and you know what it was popular ton of people made new content avail 

that being said in an mmo it might be hard but it might be a good system on older game .so0me game like eq1 wich still have lot of player would benefit from such venture as long as they polish the system and not leave it alone 

often the problem is company got game but servers hard drive cant keep up

HEY GAMING COMPANY!solid state hard drive in raid mode need to be added to your existing server.most server cant keep up with computer from gamer putting graphic at max setting .

Linkrealms has a sweet editor (aparently)

also CoX has that mission architect thingy.  As for why it has not been done so much...think of how lame your average MMO player is...now think of how lame the dungeon they would design would be.  Toss in the odd awesome one alongside the millions of crap ones and you would have a (mostly) crap system.

Originally posted by drbaltazar

Originally posted by jusomdude

I'm curious to know why no developer has given players the ability to create their own dungeons yet. I imagine if it were designed carefully, it could be done with minimal to no exploits. Seems like it would be a no brainer to me to make it so players could create game content, which would greatly cut back new content creation costs.

not sure about mmo,but psp had a game called dungeon maker ,and on computer theres the game called neverwinternights2 

if i recall atari/obsidian had a kit avail to player to make new content its a freaking involved process but once done your map is on the atari/obsidian website ,and you know what it was popular ton of people made new content avail 

that being said in an mmo it might be hard but it might be a good system on older game .so0me game like eq1 wich still have lot of player would benefit from such venture as long as they polish the system and not leave it alone 

often the problem is company got game but servers hard drive cant keep up

HEY GAMING COMPANY!solid state hard drive in raid mode need to be added to your existing server.most server cant keep up with computer from gamer putting graphic at max setting .

Servers don't give a damn what the client computers graphics look like. Plain text to full eye candy it's all the same to a server. They don't process graphics. What brings servers to their knees is processing massive amounts of data while simultaneously sending updates to thousands of clients across the web. More content means more storage and data to be processed. Allowing a massive amounts of clients to try and access almost unlimited data that's not optimized properly means wider pipes, more clusters, and servers crashing. That's prohibitively expensive. That's why you'll never see this. Oh they may add a small amount of user generated content but it's always going to be severely limited. Hell even user generated quest systems for existing content can bog a server down if it's designed without very strict limitations.