To the development team, and anyone else intrested

[Seikojin]

Alright here, I have a couple questions. Know how lots of the d&d games have the ability for users to create scenarios and mods? Have you considered having a way to process user-generated content? Have a toolset separate from the main game which which serious developers could create quests / packs and submit them for approval. I am certain that, even if they were unpaid, you would have a LOT of people wanting to do this, simply for the fun of it or the prestige of having a quest with their name on it. There would be both talented and untalented developers, yes; but you could also have a user-based system of rating maps so the dev team would only have to look at the good ones. Not only would this be beneficial for you'all, but it would make your fans ecstatic; instead of having one new quest series once per update; you could have one once a week! A lot of the enjoyment for me, at least, is exploring new quests.

Going off of the enjoyment of exploring new quests, would it be ridiculously difficult to have procedurally or randomly generated content? I'm thinking something like a map made of of say, 20 tiles, in a 5X4 pattern. The tiles would have connections at different sides, with monsters, treasure, and quest objectives assigned to the tiles randomly. Even if it was only one quest; it would be different every time the quest reset, which, even using the same 20 tiles and the same set of monsters rolled from a list, would keep the feeling of exploration fresh. Just a couple ideas, if either of them are liked, I would be more than happy to donate time in figuring out more details in the way it would work and with working around the computers' logic blocks.

Can someone advise me as to the problems with these? I'm very interested in game design, specifically the intuitive side of it, but as I know little to nothing of programming, I'm unable to know what's feasible and not.

here is the thread I made about the idea I had:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=202231

[Ungood]

So what you all are asking is to turn DDO into Brickquest!

[hityawithastick]

This would be awesome. Don't see it happening soon though. The Lord of the Rings RTS game had a tool like this--pretty unpleasantly complex, but entertaining enough.

If this is ever considered, /signed.

[Khumbaaba]

Also we need the devs to divide by zero IMO.

[Seikojin]

I'm pretty sure they use some in-house tools. The question is whether or not they can mock them up for public-use.

The only tools (at least from my conversations on this subject in the past with devs) they have are things to make the process easier. Nothing like what we are talking about.

Look up level editing for quake 2 to get an idea of what I think they essentially have.

From what it sounds like, they have tools that deal with art assets (maya, 3d studio max), then they use a script to merge the art assets with program libraries and event handlers and compile it into a single package the game engine utilizes.

Then they probably use another script to merge the package into the game packages, so NPC's, dialogs, entry points, etc are activated and useable.

Then a launch to test, debug, refine, retest, repeat, lamannia, debug, test, launch to public.

What they do not have in that whole process is anything that takes the exp and loot management away from them. That is part of the custom tailoring that we see. Even if they had a tool to do that for them, the dungeons/areas themselves can look like anything they want.

The tool I am thinking of takes all the loot and exp calculating out of their hands.

If people would complain about the devs not having the power they need... I call shenanigans to that. The same tool can have a dev mode and a public mode. Dev mode would have the same interface and script management to give a point value for the quest/area, but also allow direct input to alter the points to buy things with and rewards, etc.

Or they could leave it and enforce a standard for exp and loot in the game.

Again, it is an investment that has a much higher return opportunity than what is currently in place.

I would go for it if I worked for them.