Open up your Source and finish old Tasks

[Amiculum_Nocturnus]

Back in the day I was part of the beta team that was privileged to test the Titan and I was also allowed to remain on and be part of the small live beta test team that had access to the forums. Here we talked to devs on a daily basis, and it was very productive. After taking a three year break and coming back to play, I'm disappointed. I see things that were earmarked to be worked on three years ago still not in the game, an AH search for one. This brings me to my main point. Open up your source.

D&D is the original source of theory crafting your characters. There is a community within DDO that loves this aspect of theory crafting more then any other game and can probably rival Blizzard's games. Allow this community to build things for turbine, and I'd think you'd see a community come together and game play increase.

To be more specific work on allowing users access to raw data coming in and UI functions. Allow us to create addons within the game so we can customize our world. After reading the book, "What would Google Do?" I've come to a debate that Blizzard's Warcraft gained much momentum with it's open source. Allowing players to completely customize their worlds and allow them to make the game their own, within reason. I'd love to see Turbine makes this leap of faith and put this open source control in the hands of their fans, as I think you'd be greatly surprised at the things we can do for you. Let us build better combat log displays, Social menus, AH frames, DPS/HPS meters and custom action bars for DDO. Really consider this option; and for now to make the community and game economy happy, place a search on the AH. :)

[Angelus_dead]

Back in the day I was part of the beta team that was privileged to test the Titan and I was also allowed to remain on and be part of the small live beta test team that had access to the forums. Here we talked to devs on a daily basis, and it was very productive.
That claim appears self-contradictory.

The Warforged Titan raid as originally released to the DDO-playing public was horrendously bad, giving the impression that either no testing had been done, or it had been ignored. Also the loot was mostly terrible and there were other big problems, which put together gave no impression that something "very productive" was going on.


I've come to a debate that Blizzard's Warcraft gained much momentum with it's open source.
It is quite true that supporting add-ons from outside developers was a crucial part of WOW's success. It allowed important functionality gaps to be handled without the official programmers needing to touch them. But allowing add-ons also creates dangerous difficulties for a multiplayer game design, so it's not a simple matter to decide to permit that.

[DoctorWhofan]

...adding that a search function for the Auction House will be added to the game this year.

[Amiculum_Nocturnus]

That claim appears self-contradictory.

The Warforged Titan raid as originally released to the DDO-playing public was horrendously bad, giving the impression that either no testing had been done, or it had been ignored. Also the loot was mostly terrible and there were other big problems, which put together gave no impression that something "very productive" was going on.

.

Yep, it was and we shouted it. We even found how susceptible he was to Grease. Which was then, as we were told, fixed in beta. Guess how the first guild brought him down. With Grease.

[blitzschlag]

Yep, it was and we shouted it. We even found how susceptible he was to Grease. Which was then, as we were told, fixed in beta. Guess how the first guild brought him down. With Grease.

thats usual practice i'd say. i'm in 2 closed beta tests at the moment and have done literally more than 40 in general. 9 out of 10 critical bugs make it live. mostly because of deadlines or the complexity of fixing involved. on around 80+ % of my closed/open beta participations its obvious that the company was looking for advice from experienced players but the deadlines they got from their marketing (or the producing company) are to fierce to release a working game. however there are still companies that can make their own shedule (turbine used to be one of em). still they often failed miserably with their new released material (even if those annoying bugs were discussed in beta forums broad and wide).

you know i can accept client related bugs on a pc-game (there is no fixed hardware platform like on console games) but i can't accept gamebreaking bugs that were known long before and still made it live due to deadlines or because developers give a **** about their testers.

[Irinis]

I really doubt Turbine's marketing is advanced enough for them to be proponents of opensource.

*cough*Offerwallfiasco*cough*

[Amiculum_Nocturnus]

An MMO's engine that doesn't really have the capability to allow addons can still have a productive open source community by opening up functions through the web in a development environment. Great examples of these environments are Codeplex.com and Google Code. Turbine can use these platforms or build a similar platform within there site. Here users can edit a developers code and submit them, so that the original Dev's may analyze it, accept and deny changes.

Sure we can accept that there will be some wait time to get things in order to allow this, but it would be great to know that any MMO is open to these options.

[Eladiun]

That claim appears self-contradictory.

The Warforged Titan raid as originally released to the DDO-playing public was horrendously bad, giving the impression that either no testing had been done, or it had been ignored. Also the loot was mostly terrible and there were other big problems, which put together gave no impression that something "very productive" was going on.



If I remember correctly wasn't it shutdown with weeks of it's release due to all the issues.

To address the OP, I don't think open source is reasonable in an MMO environ because for ever person trying to do good there will be 2 trying to find exploits and ways to manipulate the system by pouring through the same code.

[Eladiun]

thats usual practice i'd say. i'm in 2 closed beta tests at the moment and have done literally more than 40 in general. 9 out of 10 critical bugs make it live. mostly because of deadlines or the complexity of fixing involved.

I have worked on software release teams not for games but for commercial products that cost upwards of $10,000 per a PC. Bug triage meetings are committee meetings where bugs are classified by severity and difficulty then argued over whether or not they will be fixed for release or by patch after release or never. Development, QA, Support, Sales, Marketing, and Management all have a finger in the pie. No one leaves happy. All software releases with known bugs...it the way of things. The biggest problem is misclassification assuming that it's a minor issue that will only effect a few when in reality it's a much bigger deal. It's gotten worse not better with the advent of the internet and the ability to patch on demand.

[Amiculum_Nocturnus]

If I remember correctly wasn't it shutdown with weeks of it's release due to all the issues.

To address the OP, I don't think open source is reasonable in an MMO environ because for ever person trying to do good there will be 2 trying to find exploits and ways to manipulate the system by pouring through the same code.


You know, we see this argument a lot. Companies not wanting to open up their code in fear of maliciousness. But the truth is there would be a lot of good work by the community to combat it. Wikipidedia is only ran by less then 9% of its users.

MMO's don't need to open it all up. I'm not looking for the AI bug that lets a kobolds ninja leap backwards over any obstacle and spiderman walls (they would be the king farmers of purple coins), though it would be nice if MMO's trust their communities to look at input on the bugs in the form of code submissions. MMO's can start small. Release the UI code to us. Let us make modifications to the UI first, see how well it goes. Maybe incorporate some of the best choices.

The potential is amazing on the prospect of tasking some of the top input on small things like the UI. Then allowing those people to access to different levels of code. The community would relish in this and it would make games that more fun to play.

There's two books I suggest, "Wisdom of Crowds," and "What would Google Do?" These are two amazing books on the social change happening now and the power of open collaboration.

[Angelus_dead]

If I remember correctly wasn't it shutdown with weeks of it's release due to all the issues.
That is incorrect- maybe you're confusing it with Abbot or Shroud.

The Titan raid was left open with no developer acknowledgment that there was a problem until just a few days before the release of the next module. They let thousands of players bang their heads against a broken raid, causing tremendous ill will and a major loss of subscribers.

That three months of the premier quest being broken was viewed (by outsiders) as an enormous developer failure, although it was later overshadowed when the Abbot raid was left broken for an astounding 23 months. In fact, that's the thing that amazes me most about the Titan fiasco: that the devs didn't learn from it and avoid repeating the problem.

[Karranor]

Yes please!

The mod community WOULD bust out some great things for this game if only we could plug in.

Oh the possibilities!

[Eladiun]

You know, we see this argument a lot. Companies not wanting to open up their code in fear of maliciousness. But the truth is there would be a lot of good work by the community to combat it. Wikipidedia is only ran by less then 9% of its users.

I'm not anti-open source but I just can't see the reward for a gaming company to do so unless it's an end of life product. There is too much money to be made by farmers, dupers, and cheaters. I would love UI mods if they opened an API to do so. I just look at how they developed this game with no macros and no scripting, I find it hard to believe they will ever move in this direction. How many large open source games are there? I would rather have the bugs than rampant abuse by paid exploiters.

[Amiculum_Nocturnus]

I'm not anti-open source but I just can't see the reward for a gaming company to do so unless it's an end of life product. There is too much money to be made by farmers, dupers, and cheaters. I would love UI mods if they opened an API to do so. I just look at how they developed this game with no macros and no scripting, I find it hard to believe they will ever move in this direction. How many large open source games are there? I would rather have the bugs than rampant abuse by paid exploiters.

Two that I know of; Blizzard's Warcraft (and they acknowledged all future games will have it), and Mythic's Warhammer. Warhammer though was an after thought. I watched a Dev video where they said they would not do it, and then they allowed it with a very sloppy last minute addition for mod'n. The community was still very handcuffed in Mythic's source development.

What Blizzard does is great for their community. They look at community addons and will incorporate community input (if it's helpful) into their standard UI's. They've resigned many standard UI features based off of popular addons used by the community to support community wisdom driven work.

Economics are tough for MMO's. Companies always want more staff for their creative dreams but the budget doesn't support it, so they're left with a balanced ratio of developers doing what another poster stated earlier, "assembling a triage," of whats important from new content to old bugs. In a world of fast technological change, there is a nice community willing to do a lot of work for free (still my favorite word) for things they love.

[Eladiun]

Can I see a link to that? As far as I know WoW and Warhammer have published UI API's which is a far cry from open source.

[Amiculum_Nocturnus]

Can I see a link to that? As far as I know WoW and Warhammer have published UI API's which is a far cry from open source.

You are correct. I think my point has been misunderstood, and if that's the case it is my fault for not articulating correctly as to what it is I'm suggesting. As this is a suggestion forum where ideas go to die anyways.

Would I like a an MMO with a full open source? Yes. Will it happen? No. When a game has IP rights owners and publishers fingers in the honey pots, we will never see a game fully get released to the community. Though, we can argue in another forum that D&D itself, is truly ran by the community and the GM's imagination in the system D&D provides with the physics and boundaries of their worlds.

So understanding this, and understanding that it would take a cataclysmic event for Turbine to build a secure code hooking environment (LUA hooking C for example) for community driven addons like Blizzard and Mythic did. I'm asking them to open their source for the UI first. Since that would be easier and the UI is dealing with info in (combat log, Damage taken) and function call outs (Action Bar 1/slot 1 mouse click). No Game mechanics in jeapordy, I hope.

From there, if Turbine wanted to, they can evaluate community submissions and decide a good way for them to go with their games. As I so lackadaisically stated in other posts, they can then take the active community that provided solid positive submissions and move them to a more secure NDA environement, where they may have access to other portions of code, like bugs on old content or new content. I would understand as I'm sure the community would if Turbine kept a vault around things like the Random loot generator, raid boss puzzles and certain game mechanics to avoid possible exploitation.

My point is, open it up a little and see what comes out from the community, open it some more for the best there, and then open it up some more for the best there. Let Dev's build new stuff and the community clean up old and help with new.

I hope I cleared it up better.

[Eladiun]

/signed I'm 100% behind a fully moddable UI.

[Amiculum_Nocturnus]

SWTOR will allow User created UI's. There's a game that will have a rabid fan base the same as D&D.

[Mockduck]

SWTOR will allow User created UI's. There's a game that will have a rabid fan base the same as D&D.

Really? I've been looking online for more information about this but have not been able to find any links of use. Do you mean user-created quest content or the ability to modify the look of the UI as DDO does now?

[Eladiun]

SWTOR will allow User created UI's. There's a game that will have a rabid fan base the same as D&D.

This may be hard to believe but rabid SW fans are way more geeky than rabid D&D fans. Ever read the arguments over extended universe lore...it's frightening.

[Xionanx]

Having been a part of the Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 mod communities I have to say the type of talent sitting out there chomping at the bit to mod an MMO is incalculable.

If Turbine were to open set up a "Trial" Program where they screened applicants and gave them limited access to code, they could IMO make the best MMO ever created, toppling WoW.

Here's how:

Open to the Community at large:

The "3D Modeling" tools available and let the community create new 3D Models to be implemented. There would be no real harm from this as they cant change any "code" related to actual gameplay. However I would almost gauruntee in a few months Turbine would have thousands of new skins and models available for new monters. Turbine could set "Project" goals like "We need the following 3D Models: Bears, Owlbears, ThriKeen, etc" that would direct the community to create whats needed.

Open to Verified Applicants:

Make the "Quest Scripting" tools available, how many new quests would be produced in a short amount of time? You could, in theory set up a server similar to Lama where users could then try out and rate the new quests and only move the highest rated quests to the "live" servers. Once again, the I'll effects on the live servers would be next to none as the exploit quests could be weeded out (kill 1 kobold get 100,000xp) and only the "Cream" would be made live.

Open to Verified and Screened Applicants:

General code with the requirements of signing a NDA and requiring Drivers License or Passport identity verification and agreeing to certain terms and conditions. Violations of said terms and conditions would terminate the users access.

Now, that may seem like a lot of "Extra" work on the part of the developers to implement, but when you calculate the amount of "free man hours" gained and the potential word of mouth advertising for being the "First Community Source" MMO:D I personally would sign up for the quest scripting and be churning those out on a regular basis!

[ngn-Aeo]

...adding that a search function for the Auction House will be added to the game this year.

Not enough.

The AH needs price ranges, sortable lists (not just sorting one page), etc etc.

It needs a total overhaul.

[Xionanx]

This may be hard to believe but rabid SW fans are way more geeky than rabid D&D fans. Ever read the arguments over extended universe lore...it's frightening.

The problem with extended universe lore is that at any point in time all it takes is one movie or in the case of the "Animated" series and it completely goes out the window.. invalidated forever more.

D&D on the other hard.. you dont see writers coming behind each other with "Official" changes to the lore.. for instance if "Raistlin and Drizzt: The Animated Series" were to be produced where they were secretly gay lovers it would be official lore.. but like I said that doesn't happen in the D&D lore:rolleyes:

Star Wars and Star Trek on the other hand both have a policy of: Movie > TV Series > Game > Authorised Books > UnAuthorised Works > Fanfiction

Recently the lame animated cartoon invalidated a large portion of what was considered established Mandalorian/Bounty Hunter lore with a bunch of IMO drivel. Thankfully I could really give a **** about SW lore as I'm "not" really a fan of it, though I am aware of it.

[azrael4h]

EUO, while not exactly on the same level as DDO, has a large amount of content developed by the community (dungeons, towns, etc). A map editor was made available, and a method of submission so if they wanted to, they could add to their favorite MMO.

Again, it'd require using Lam or another server as a "test bed" for community content, some legal mumbo jumbo, 4 fried chickens, a coke, and some dry white toast to make it work. There'd have to be someone screening the submissions, ensuring the inevitable drivel doesn't get shoved in and tested. No Vorpal-Metalline-Everything-Burst-Bastiche-Sword-of-Slaying-Everything-That-Moves-Except-Space-Dolphins, etc.

The same could be done for models, weapons, etc... anything that fits within the existing game mechanics; if a user can make the animations and models and art for it, maps and so forth, then let it be tested and fall to the judging of players.

The only thing is that IMO the people who made the content, if it's used as a pay to play thing, should get their own stuff for free. At least in terms of submitted races, classes, and adventures. Otherwise, they probably won't be making much more if they have to pay to play something that they submitted, and you're back to square one, minus some of your most ardent (and formerly willing to pay money) players.

I could see a lot of the D20SRD/core stuff being made fairly quickly.