Turbine should give out a quest making platform

[mgoldb2]

sure you could, if the devs approved the quests.

It takes them long enough to get the bugs out of the quests they make, I rather not thing how long it would take them to test player made quests.

[Dori]

This will never ever happen. Here is why...

1) In order to make an open source game engine you must create it with that purpose in mind. I doubt this was done.

2) I doubt Turbine has the current resouces to comb through all of the **** they would receive. They can't even keep up with there own current schedule. It would take more people to sort through all of the submissions and then even more programmers to tweek it and make it compatible.

3) Right now even though a lot of people don't realize it there is a story and theme to what is going on in Stormreach. That aspect would not be managable.

4) This has already been done with a game called Never Winter Nights. It failed because there were no dedicated servers for major quests.

It would be cool but it is a pipe dream. To create these environments it would take a good amount of game design knowledge unless Turbine put out a cookie cutter texture mapper. This would take developement and I think they are busy.

[Trinarius]

Even though the game itself is not necessarily open-source, that does not preclude the developers from creating an SDK (Software Development Kit) for aspiring quest developers to use. There are many games out on the market right now where, if you can find yourself a copy of the exporter, you can use common development applications like 3ds max, Maya, and others, to build your own "dungeon" (not that they're cheap, but more of us have access to them than you'd think).

If you also had access to common scenery palettes (through the SDK), the process becomes even easier. Look at all the sewer quests and their common scenery palette, for example.

And using standard scripts to place monsters and set encounters is a typical development technique. Simply pre-packaging a bunch of the common scripts into the SDK would make things terribly simple.

And, finally, the story-arc material is already out on the market. It was long before DDO came into being. That *is*, afterall, how Turbine created the game. Just pick up yourself a copy of the Ebberon Campaign Setting and the Secrets of Xen'drik, both published by Wizards of the Coast. These two books tell you everything you need to know about the basic story arcs DDO is built upon. My copy of the Ebberon Campaign Setting was $29.95, and Secrets of Xen'drik was $19.95. Just a drop in the bucket for those serious about becoming content developers.

And, a new test server specifically for this puprose is a great idea. Then Turbine's devs can evaluate what's out there for possible inclusion, albeit with a few mods, I'm sure.

Brilliant idea!

Where do I sign up? Turbine???

You know, I'd even pay for a separate "Premium Services Package" to have this ability. Better yet, make it a retail package. Even at $49.95, I'd bet a lot of people would *fight* for the opportunity.

(Are those the magic words? "I'd pay"???)

[djinni69]

You want user created content?

Then make housing for PCs available, and allow the housing to be:
1 - populated with guards, by the PC (at a cost, of course!)
2 - RAIDABLE by other PCs
4 - completely configurable, and the design could be as small or big as we can afford

I am imagining the housing be of castle size, not a hut. Keep this in mind.

Age of Conan is allowing this type of thing, and I really believe it's the best answer to our DDO issue. We make our own content, populate the housing with acceptable DDO creatures (that already have loot and xp tables assigned and approved by Turbine), and we get to fight off parties of PCs. Allow our guards to respawn, and this makes it viable for instancing of the housing areas. I could go on and on with this one.

This is another age-old PnP D&D storyline ... raiding the tower stronghold of some wizzie that's gone completely nuts I've got a few characters that could fit this bill! HAHAHA

[OKCRandy1]

This will never ever happen. Here is why...

1) In order to make an open source game engine you must create it with that purpose in mind. I doubt this was done.

2) I doubt Turbine has the current resouces to comb through all of the **** they would receive. They can't even keep up with there own current schedule. It would take more people to sort through all of the submissions and then even more programmers to tweek it and make it compatible.

3) Right now even though a lot of people don't realize it there is a story and theme to what is going on in Stormreach. That aspect would not be managable.

4) This has already been done with a game called Never Winter Nights. It failed because there were no dedicated servers for major quests.

It would be cool but it is a pipe dream. To create these environments it would take a good amount of game design knowledge unless Turbine put out a cookie cutter texture mapper. This would take developement and I think they are busy.

I agree that it will probably never happen, but because it is such a great idea then perhaps there is a slim hope. For each of your reasons why not, I think one could make an argument that it could be possible (slim whisper of a chance).

1) We're not talking about an open source "game engine". Many games have development tools so it's been proven to be a practical way to grow game content. Also, there are multitudes of skilled computer programmers and talent in the DDO gaming community, I believe many have far above average computer skills. It may be the most complicated map generator ever, but essentially that's all it would be and enough would be equal to the task to generate more content than could be added by Turbine - good problem to have. Besides, the development program could be marketed and sold for profit as well, doesn't have to ride on the back of DDO income, it could be it's own income generator.

2) Turbine has invested much in the game and it has an existing subscriber base, D&D loyalty ferver, and a perfect universe for aspring dungeon crafters. True they may get more content than they could sift through, but what a problem to have. It would be a real honor to have your quest added to the game. Two or three full time hires could be assigned to the task, small investment for adding massive content. Publishing houses get more submissions than they want to print every year, but you don't see them closing up shop for having too many submissions?

3) Quests could be all be placed in a common zone created specifically to house player generated quests, they don't need an entire story line, just a place to put them all. Stand alone quests that wrap up there own small adventure...come'on that's as much D&D as the great story arcs.

4) Dedicated servers for major quests? I'm not sure what this has to do with it. Content would be added similiar to Turbine generated quests, the way I see it:
1) Player/Creator submits to Turbine. (prays and hopes)
2) A Turbine staffer reviews submissions all day every day, gives to a developer the best of the best.
3) Developer tweaks content, all chests are assigned loot by Turbine, monsters lvls are tweaked if necessary, level assigned to quest.
4) Quest is added to the player content zone on Risia and play tested.
5) After the typical Risia tour and fixes made by the player content assigned developer(s), it is added to all servers in the player content zone for everyone's enjoyment.

How many quests could be added each month this way? Probably only a fraction of the submissions. Would it require investment and development by Turbine? Sure, but seems to me there are two reasons (a) profit from the development program sales (b) new subscribers from those who were brought to the game through the development program; (c) massive new content to grow subscribers. What's not to like?

Pipe dream, probably. But if it ever happened, wouldn't it propel DDO to new heights of subscribers?

I'd love to play the content.

[Vandos]

THe reason that extra content is slow in coming is that I dont think turbine actually developed a quest toolset or SDK. If there was such a toolset then I think content would be a lot quicker to generate.

Take a look at the quests we have, a lot of them have unique features that dont appear in any other quests and the ability to interract with props/items in these quests would have to be hard coded for that quest. Skulls with buttons in the Necropolis, pillars in stormcleave, the breakable arms crates in stormcleave, puzzles in tangleroot etc, etc. Quest objectives and the steps taken to reach those objectives rarely fall into a cookie cutter scenario. Even a basic plotline like Durks "kill the 2 kobold brothers" have levers/valves that need to be activated for additional xp.

If they ever do release a toolset then the content generated by it would be boring. All you could do is layout a dungeon and populate it with mobs, pull this lever to open this door etc. Anything requiring complicated interaction with the dungeon would require additional specific coding.

Like I said, judging by the amount of content and frequency of additional content it does not look like Turbine has any sort of toolset.

[maddong]

Even if you aren't able to do a lot of the custom stuff I think home brew designers could potentially come up with some diabolical stuff, even if it is hack/slash and trap based.

[Trinarius]

(snip) If they ever do release a toolset then the content generated by it would be boring. All you could do is layout a dungeon and populate it with mobs, pull this lever to open this door etc. Anything requiring complicated interaction with the dungeon would require additional specific coding. (snip)

Not to be argumentative, since you've made some worthy assertions, but I think you're seriously underestimating the capabilities of the DDO fanbase.

Besides, we're talking about computer programs. As a programmer myself, I can attest to the fact that once something has been created, it can easily be copied, and, generally, modified for a new use. Look at all of the hullabaloo over the porting of significant portions of the DDO engine to LOTRO, and, in the process, improving it.

The point of this discussion, however, is to show Turbine there are people out there interested in a new aspect of the game, and that some (maybe many) are willing to pay for that privilege. From where they stand, Turbine would have to evaluate whether such a venture would make business sense for them, since they are, first and foremost, a business.

Ultimately, the whole issue is up to Turbine to cast judgement upon. It is simply that those of us in favor of the concept are hoping that our opinions (and our dollars) will have enough sway to tip the balance in our favor.

In the mean time, it would be nice to hear from Turbine that we've at least been heard, even if they don't intend to do anything about it right away.

And, yes, my glass is always half-full.

[rootATdarkstar]

An excellent idea.

[Ghoste]

This idea as well as this solution has already been posted on these forums:

Limit what can be gained permanently from player created content.

That way Turbine doesnt have to worry about ppl making quests just for power levelling, or with chests full of vorpals. Then Turbine can approve quests at its own pace to be upgraded to official content. Anything other than official content would exist just for fun - no xp, and you cant take the loot out of the quest like the vorpals in BAM and VoN 1.

[transtemporal]

Why hire testers? many players will be happy to test the content given the opportunity, even if there is no reward.

Its a good idea getting players to perform playtesting (otherwise known as user acceptance testing) but there are many other types of testing that have to occur in a given release that players don't necessarily know how to perform - unit, system, regression, functional to name a few. And its not simply a question of thoroughness either, enthusiastic users can be incredibly thorough. Its more to do with performing the testing in an efficient, verifiable and repeatable fashion.

1) development time in creating the developer tools. Releasing these tools in the first place could be an issue for many many reasons.

This is a huge one. I could be completely wrong, but if Turbine is anything like a typical games/media/film outfit, they probably use a number of off-the-shelf packages, supplemented with a shedload of hacks, patches, unofficial add-ons, official-add-ons-that-are-essentially-untested-betas and in-house tools. And I bet anything it runs on an esoteric hardware setup with dev, test, qual environments running different versions of the data, platforms etc.
Getting that to a publically-usable state would be a major undertaking. I'm not saying its impossible to release an SDK, but look at how long it took to create the solstice toolset for NWN.

2) whether or not WotC would ever sign off on it. Remember, Wizards okays much/all of what goes into DDO.

Yeah, WotC seems to have a much stronger hand in managing its brand and OKing content than its precedessor. That in itself is enough of a sticking point to kill it.

3) how to distribute and execute the user-modules. Since user-content is such a deviation from the original demands of DDO, odds are it would be very expensive to get the system up and running at this point in time.

To be honest, this may be the least of the problems as the mechanism is already there for distribution (I'm assuming here that any delivery mechanism would have to be centralised and served by Turbine using their current deployment mechanism).

While my post is a bit negative, I wholeheartedly agree that it would be a great idea.
If "declining revenue as a result of players closing accounts" is a risk (and I'm not saying this is an active risk) and one of the contributing factors is "release of content", then one mitigation of that risk is to use volunteer developers from the user community to create new content, not to mention the brand loyalty that it generates. I kind of posited and answered my own question there which is a bit dodge but you get the idea.

[Vandos]

Not to be argumentative, since you've made some worthy assertions, but I think you're seriously underestimating the capabilities of the DDO fanbase.

Besides, we're talking about computer programs. As a programmer myself, I can attest to the fact that once something has been created, it can easily be copied, and, generally, modified for a new use. Look at all of the hullabaloo over the porting of significant portions of the DDO engine to LOTRO, and, in the process, improving it.

I'm not underestimating the DDO fanbase at all, look at the excellent pnp content available on the net.

I'm also a programmer and it comes down to what Turbine could do with a toolset that make me think all it could/would do is generate boring dungeons, all the designer would really have is a dungeon generator with a mob populator. Anything beyond levers to open doors would require additional coding/new graphics.

[wundernewb]

[FONT=Arial]Not to be argumentative, since you've made some worthy assertions, but I think you're seriously underestimating the capabilities of the DDO fanbase.

No offense, but I think you may be overestimating the capabilities of the DDO fanbase.

Not saying that there aren't some talented individuals out there who could do this, but there are also going to be a lot of people out there who think they can do this (technically or conceptually). And somebody(s) has to vet each and every submission to find out the difference.

Besides, we're talking about computer programs. As a programmer myself, I can attest to the fact that once something has been created, it can easily be copied, and, generally, modified for a new use. Look at all of the hullabaloo over the porting of significant portions of the DDO engine to LOTRO, and, in the process, improving it.

And as a programmer, you have no idea how easily half-trained eager people can screw that up. Again, every submission has to be checked.


Don't get me wrong, I would love to see something like this happen, but just can't see it in an MMO.

As has been said earlier, NWN and other games have this ability, but they are different games. Basically, they run on private servers, and the content can be whatever the involved players decide. And if there are bugs/offensive content or whatever, only those players have to deal with it, not the general paying public.

[OKCRandy1]

My guess (sort of educated guess given my lifetime involvement with computers, gamers, and D&D) is that the fanbase would have more than enough people with time, willingness, technical skills, and creativity to create interesting content. It's true a lot of useless content would be submitted, but that goes with every quest/map generating platform out there. A relatively cheap hire by turbine would be adequate to dispose of initial junk quests before elevating to a more serious look for possible inclussion as a player created quest.

[Talyn328]

This is actually an idea I've been thinking about myself for a bit before I found this thread.

Assuming Turbine has their own toolkit, releasing a watered-down version for us to use would be doable provided the existing programmers are familiar with the SDK's code.

We all know user-created content is a double-edged sword, and more than its fair share is complete and utter garbage, so some form of policing would be in order. Two ways to go about this: Turbine sets aside some of their time to handle QA with the user dungeons, or similiar to how CCP (EVE Online) is having a player-elected governing body to audit the company annually, Turbine could allow the player base to elect a committee to playtest the user dungeons and vote which ones were submitted to the live game.

The dungeons themselves. Does Turbine implement them into DDO in a patch? If so then it seems more like "official" content. They could go the route of FPS games where the dungeons could be hosted on any website and we can download whichever ones we want. Or if we forget, the dungeons could contain a URL in their header and will download while you're in-game, again just like FPS' do. Or, Turbine themselves could set aside a "user-created dungeon server" and we choose which dungeon(s) to download from in-game.

All in all, I think DDO is one of the few MMOs that absolutely *scream* for this to be done. It's been done in Star Wars Galaxies and Ryzom already, so it's very doable. Either way, it would dramatically increase the overall content in the game, with the added bonus that if some of the dungeons (or even user-created continuing storyline quests) were extremely popular, Turbine could exercise the option to spice it up and make it official content.