Getting the jump on Neverwinter: User generated content

[Bradik_Losdar]

With Neverwinter coming soon(TM) and emphasizing user generated content as a big draw to the game, I thought it might be time to float this idea again in order to give Turbine a jump on that 'other' D&D game, taking some of the wind out of their sails (and sales )

So, here's an idea for UGC for DDO:

Way back when, the original Neverwinter Nights proved if players were given the proper tools, user generated content in a D&D video game could work (for good or bad). There were some staggeringly beautiful and fun dungeons built by players, but also some abysmally bad ones too.

User generated content is a tricky subject in any MMO. Many folks look to it not only as a means of exponentially increasing in-game material, but also as an alternate to the constant 'grind' of combat. Others despise it, citing massive exploitation and terrible quality control.

In my opinion, user generated content - or more specifically, player made quests (because 'user generated content' is a bit of a broad stroke - 'content' also includes stuff like spells, feats, new races, etc.), could be implemented in DDO under a simple set of specific criteria that would result in a winning situation for all involved.

There are essentially three key elements required to make player made quests a success: 1) High quality, 2) Exploit free, 3) Official rewards (treasure and xp)

High quality
As amazing as Keeper and company are at creating fantastic quest settings, they are limited in the amount of man (woman) hours they can work. As in any MMO, it's impossible to keep up with the voracious demand that thousands of players have. By using player made quests, Turbine could continue with its current production/release schedule for updates unhindered, but we, the player base, would also see many additional quests for ALL levels released on a monthly basis (see below).

Possibly the biggest problem is how to keep the quality of such quests on par with the amazing work we have been spoiled with, err, gotten used to from our talented Turbine team. There are two ways this could be accomplished in DDO – Competition and Rating. See ‘Oracle of Stormreach’ below for an explanation.

Exploit free
Equally as important as quality control (some would say even more important) is the need to address any possibility of quest exploitation. 100% exploit elimination could be accomplished relatively simply: no player would have the ability to place ANY treasure or assign ANY xp when building a quest.

Wait a minute. No treasure or xp??? I thought you said one of the key elements to success was having player made quests include treasure and xp rewards. I did. But to remove any exploitation, only the Devs would assign treasure and xp to a quest.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on a sec smart guy, let’s say 5000 quests just got submitted; how in Khyber are the Devs supposed to wade through all that and assign treasure and xp to each quest - let alone the massive amount of time this would take away from work on updates, etc!?!

Well, not all quests would receive Dev attention - only the highest rated quests would - having the player base do the filtering work for them.

Filtering? How?

Oracle of Stormreach (official rewards)
One of the greatest challenges to user generated content is to make it viable in real game terms with real in game rewards. In order to do so, a ‘filtering/playtesting’ system must be set up. Only the best quests, filtered by the player base and then hand chosen by the Devs, would go on to become ‘real’ quests (officially included in the game). An “Oracle of Stormreach’ would serve this purpose perfectly.

Oracles are people who can see future events through ‘visions’; though in almost all cases these visions are hazy, obscured, or riddled with inaccuracies. Each player made quest submitted would initially become a 'vision' of a possible future event that players can experience by visiting the Oracle. Players would rate each 'vision' on a scale of 1-10 when finished with it (only once per account). This rating system would free up dev time from having to review each quest individually – then only looking over what the player base thought was the very best. Those 'visions' they deem worthy of inclusion as official content become 'reality' - in other words, real quests in the game (complete with treasure and xp awards at that time). This way we get the best of both worlds: perhaps dozens of new high quality, dev approved dungeons on a monthly basis AND all regular Turbine updates without interruption as well.

The sheer number of players in the game should negate any intentional attempts at 'skewing' quest ratings; either high or low. Setting up a ratio of rating vs. number of players who have experienced the ‘vision’ would produce the best results. A rating of 9.7/10000 players would hold significantly more weight than a vision rated 10.0/2 players. The quests/visions could be organized by level and type (outdoor, indoor, combination, etc) when the player visits the Oracle for ease of selection. The Devs can then take as many or as few of these player made quests as they wish each month and turn them into official quests. They could sprinkle these new quests throughout various areas of the game they feel need it, or where a quest would be appropriate (such as a high level giant oriented quest in Gianthold, a mid level fire based quest in Searing Heights, etc.).

As player made quests are initially only visions, they may or may not become reality. Obviously all quests submitted become the property of Turbine, to do with as they see fit. Each quest submission would be completely open to change, IN ANY WAY, by the Dev team should they decide to include it in the game. Oracle visions are tricky things; they may or may not be entirely accurate when, or even if, their events unfold in the 'real' world. In other words, a submitted quest that is selected may not come out exactly the same way as it was originally built.

Using this ‘Oracle’ system allows the largest possible sampling on LIVE servers for the best possible feedback for the Devs (as opposed to relegating testing of player made quests to Lamania only, where the results would be skewed by the relatively small and specialized population there). In addition, the Oracle system adds a massive amount of live ‘quasi’ content accessible to the entire player base, if they chose to experience it.

Though there is no treasure or quest xp awarded for experiencing Oracle visions, there would be, of course, no death penalty or equipment wear either. Maybe as a reward for playtesting/rating possible future official content through the ‘Oracle’ system, perhaps assign a very minor amount of xp for completion of said "possible future events" - a one time per quest 10xp per level of character for completion? (So a 5th level character would receive 50xp for experiencing each new, completed 'vision' regardless of the level of the quest), that way the player would receive something (as there is no treasure) for the effort. This minor, one time only reward would certainly eliminate any 'exploiting' of the Oracle system.

Visions are tenuous things however, and much as vendors drop items off their lists over time, the Oracle would only show each 'vision' for one month, resetting the rating system at the end of that time (allowing for additional improvement to submitted quests on a monthly basis - or they could stay with the Oracle as long as Turbine wants them to – depending on the need the data space). A monthly time frame however supports a better competition style atmosphere. In fact, this would be a huge factor in the quality of quests submitted – because there would be rewards for each winning submission each month.

Each quest chosen for official inclusion in the game would receive an award of Turbine Points. This award could possibly be based off the quality of its ratio/player ranking – the highest scoring quest (1st place) would get 2x the TP that 2nd place got, 2nd place would get 2x the TP 3rd place got, and 3rd place would get 2x the TP that any other normal quests would receive for being officially included. For example, if the standard reward was, say, 1000 TP for having a quest officially included in the game, 4th place and lower monthly 'winners' would each receive 1000 TP for getting their quest in the game. The 3rd place winner would get 2000 TP, the 2nd place winner 4000 TP, and the first place winner 8000 TP. In addition, those players who consistently had quests 'win' could possibly receive forum titles as well.

Now of course, there may be rare times when none of the quests turned in to the Oracle during a month are good enough to win/be officially included, in the development teams opinion - even if there are ratings saying that one quest is much better than another (because something bad, even if it is five times better than another awful quest, is still BAD). It is entirely at the discretion of the Dev team to chose winning quests (if any) each month - regardless of player rating results. The rating system is only to assist the Devs filter out the grain from the chaff.

Extra revenue for Turbine
Player made quests would be an additional large source of revenue for Turbine, both up front and over the long term. There would be a charge (for non-VIPs) in the DDO store for quest building ability (giving players all the tools to design any kind of quest they wish (indoor or outdoor) using all currently available quest building blocks). Then, when the winning quests were officially released each month as real content, these "player made quest" packs would also cost TP to purchase just like any other set of new quests created by Turbine. Access to the Oracle would remain free at all times however in order to facilitate the largest possible ongoing feedback on player made quests.

It's a win-win situation for both Turbine and for DDO customers. Players get many more good quests on a monthly basis (both official and vision style) and Turbine gets, in addition to a bunch of free content (because TP rewards to winning players really cost them nothing), a lot more money generated through creation tool/quest pack sales at the DDO store.

Conclusion
Player made quests, quality controlled through player rating and competition, with treasure and xp rewards applied only through Dev approval and implementation seem like an ideal solution to making our 'visions' of high quality, exploit free, rewarding user generated content become a reality.

[Bradik_Losdar]

(Oops, in my wall of text above I forgot to add the number of quest slots that would be available.)

There probably should be some limit to the number of quests a person (account) can make, afterall storage space isn't unlimited. I would propose that each account would have 10 slots available for quest creation. This seems like a reasonable number given how other games have their "UGC" models built.

Of course there are people who are very creative and would need additional space. This again would be another opportunity for both increasing the quality of quests and generating income for Turbine.

Quests that are picked by the devs for inclusion would be taken off a players slot incumbrance. So if a player had filled 7 of his 10 slots and had one of his quests picked by the devs, he would now only have 6 slots taken up, giving him 4 more slots to work with.

As a revenue generator, additional slots (or groups of slots) could be sold in the Turbine store. So those folks who love to build things would have all the space they need by buying it.

[Uska]

I dont think its gonna happen for one thing checking what others have made and placing treasure or whatever would take to much time and for another I dont think they have an easily usable set of tools to put out for people to use I think they use a lot of custom tools


But the biggest reason is 99.999999999999999999% of what people would make woiuld be total **** most people arent as creative as they think they are. I would say 1 in a 10000 of the old nwn stuff was even playable and maybe 1% of 1% of was actually any good.

[Xenostrata]

I dont think its gonna happen for one thing checking what others have made and placing treasure or whatever would take to much time and for another I dont think they have an easily usable set of tools to put out for people to use I think they use a lot of custom tools


But the biggest reason is 99.999999999999999999% of what people would make woiuld be total **** most people arent as creative as they think they are. I would say 1 in a 10000 of the old nwn stuff was even playable and maybe 1% of 1% of was actually any good.

...1 in 10000 and 1% of 1% are the same thing.

OP - haven't you suggested this before?

My suggestion, as far as quality control and convenience, is that any account can only have 1 quest submitted to the oracle at a time. Creating a quest is free to VIP and Premium, but Premiums must buy any packs that come out for the quests (if a Premium gets his quest chosen, he gets the pack it's sold in for free). A charge for testing the quests might be ok, but I'd advise against it.

At the oracle, you get sent to a RANDOM* quest and play it. You can quit at any time, and upon completion or a quit you are prompted to rate it on several levels. The quests with the best ratings get viewed by the devs.

*this is to prevent certain quests getting skipped over, and people running the same quests multiple times in a row.

[Ruhbdahbudah]

Personally, I agree with this. I think that the people who are attracted to DDO rather than other games are by nature more likely to come up with ideas that are, if not awesome, at least interesting.

For example, a DDO player who has played for several months has a good grasp of how a party should work could probably design a short low-level quest near the quality of Durk's Got a Secret. An experienced player (or better, a guild of experienced players) could take the time to make a Mid to High level chain that could be more fun than several chains out there right now. Of course, there will be the refuse that will have to be sorted through (cause you know every VIP and Premium would make at least one quest as a test run), but over time, this could be a gold mine of ideas.

[AZgreentea]

I dont think its gonna happen for one thing checking what others have made and placing treasure or whatever would take to much time and for another I dont think they have an easily usable set of tools to put out for people to use I think they use a lot of custom tools


But the biggest reason is 99.999999999999999999% of what people would make woiuld be total **** most people arent as creative as they think they are. I would say 1 in a 10000 of the old nwn stuff was even playable and maybe 1% of 1% of was actually any good.

Exactly. The devs use custom tools. I can remember some old devs talking about the development process in some of the old dev diaries. It would cost turbine lots of money to develop a universal tool set (which would probably have less functionality) and then they would have to employee a team of devs and QA people (a new team) to police the user content for bugs and major exploits. Additionally, someone would have to make sure that the tool itself does not expose any Turbine trade secrets.

By the time Turbine got around to all of this, NWN might actually get to beta. I mean, it would take at least a year, if not longer, to build that kind of thing.

[MartinusWyllt]

Protecting against copyright infringement would be a huge barrier in implementing such a system, aside from the exploitability of it, of course.

[Bradik_Losdar]

<snip>
But the biggest reason is 99.999999999999999999% of what people would make woiuld be total **** most people arent as creative as they think they are. I would say 1 in a 10000 of the old nwn stuff was even playable and maybe 1% of 1% of was actually any good.

I think you need to re-evaluate your position on UGC.

Cryptic's current game that uses the Foundry (the same "toolset" that Neverwinter will be using) is Star Trek Online. There have been hundreds of missions created for the game and out of those, several DOZEN are, by the development teams own admission, BETTER than what they have made - and that is just with the very basics they have made available so far in the Foundry.

Their ranking system (much like the system I proposed in the OP) makes it easy to play just the good ones, so you aren't forced to hunt for them. If you don't believe me, drop $15 on a month's subscription and take a look for yourself.

Exactly. The devs use custom tools. I can remember some old devs talking about the development process in some of the old dev diaries. It would cost turbine lots of money to develop a universal tool set (which would probably have less functionality) and then they would have to employee a team of devs and QA people (a new team) to police the user content for bugs and major exploits. Additionally, someone would have to make sure that the tool itself does not expose any Turbine trade secrets.

By the time Turbine got around to all of this, NWN might actually get to beta. I mean, it would take at least a year, if not longer, to build that kind of thing.

STO began without the Foundry, so they had to build it after the fact (just like Turbine would have to do with DDO). Yes it would cost Turbine money to do, but as the old business axiom goes, "You have to spend money, to make money". The OP at the top of the page listed how Turbine could make money with this. The OP also addressed exploits and how they would be vitually non-existant using the system described there in. If Cryptic can make the Foundry available without exposing any "trade" secrets, especially with it being a major part of DDO's direct competitor Neverwinter, I'm sure our clever and talented dev team can come up with something.

As I stated in the OP, giving DDO a "Foundry" before (or at around the same time) Neverwinter launches would take a lot of wind out of their sails - and sales. The Foundry is a big selling point for them right now, the sooner DDO gets started on something like this, the better positioned they will be.

Protecting against copyright infringement would be a huge barrier in implementing such a system, aside from the exploitability of it, of course.

The Foundry in Star Trek Online uses a simple disclaimer and sets out a short set of rules about what can, and cannot be used in missions (quests) created by Foundry authors. If Cryptic has been successful doing that with a huge IP like Star Trek (and getting CBS's approval to do so - which is a miracle by itself), I think Turbine can easily do this with Dungeons and Dragons. And again, the exploit issue is covered in the OP.

People love to make things; I think that's abudantly clear from all the different crafting systems that DDO has. Turbine obviously sees this as well (and finds it profitable), thus the continued support with new crafting systems that are constantly being placed in the game.

Dungeon (quest) building is probably the biggest expression of this in a D&D game.

By giving us quest building tools, Turbine beats the competion to the punch, adds value to thier own game (customer retention), and generates a new revenue stream through DDO Store sales. We on the other hand get something fun to play with and scores and scores of new quests to run through. Some possibly better than the taleneted Turbine folks themselves have put out.

Where's the downside?

[Captain_Wizbang]

I've always supported the idea, and hope it comes to pass.

Didn't we actually get a dev response 2 years ago about this?

[Cyr]

Exactly. The devs use custom tools. I can remember some old devs talking about the development process in some of the old dev diaries. It would cost turbine lots of money to develop a universal tool set (which would probably have less functionality) and then they would have to employee a team of devs and QA people (a new team) to police the user content for bugs and major exploits. Additionally, someone would have to make sure that the tool itself does not expose any Turbine trade secrets.

By the time Turbine got around to all of this, NWN might actually get to beta. I mean, it would take at least a year, if not longer, to build that kind of thing.

Correction: It would cost Turbine lots of money UPFRONT to develop a unviersal toolset. It would save them money in the long run as less bugs would make it to live, QA needs would be reduced, and inhouse development time per product produced would be reduced. Oh yeah, and that ignores any effective free development they got from players doing the work for them.

As for developers needing to spend tons of time on loot and xp...nope. Take the top ten dungeons a month. Have a log for the data of runs of those quests. Set a standard average xp/min and apply it based upon the average time the quest takes to run. Do the same for loot, except apply it using some sort of ultimate random loot table (a universal development tool that would need to be developed once) which could drop any named loot with an ML of the quest level or lower or normal loot (odds balanced for more chances of at level named ML loot then lower level of course). Give the devs the option to tweak either of these values if they think the dungeon is a little easy or hard for it's level and done.

[AZgreentea]

Players will find a way to exploit, period. They always do, they always will. No QA team can ever catch them all, even with player support. Creating a development tool for players would only simplify that process. The only way to put a dent in that is a TSA style approval process for the content, which would stifle creation, add expense, and still not catch everything.

As far as profitability, I dont think that player generated content is very profitable. You have a huge upfront expenditure, and then you have to pay a QA team. I doubt that less QA would be needed with this in place. I dont foresee enough new Premium purchases or new VIP players to offset that, much less make it profitable. You would need new, because the existing VIPs and premiums are paying the current bills. I disagree that it makes development easy enough that player generated content would be cost savings. The tool itself still has to be maintained and updated, as well as the user content that makes it live. Additionally, there would have to be a whole DDO store dedicated to the tool, or Turbine would lose money from people not spending TP on the live game.

On top of all that, Turbine would still have to pay for in house development. PRE's, races, classes, area's, quests in line with the games story arch, all still need in house work.

I dont think that user generated content makes an MMO any better. Few (1-2 on the lists I have seen, none at all on some) top 10 MMO's for 2012 has this type of content, and the most successful MMO in history does not. Judging from that, Turbine should avoid user generated content like the plague, and instead invest that money in massive improvements to the game in house (like it did when it went F2P). To be perfectly honest, user content can make a game feel cheap. It says to me "We dont feel like spending real money on development, you do it." It feels like a gimick from MMO's that failed to make a profit.

I dont predict it will be a true draw for NWN online the way it was for the single player NWN. The main reason people will go to NWN online will be the setting or to try something new. It will be another B level competitor in a flooded market of B level MMO's. NWN online does nothing new, innovative, or interesting.

[Missing_Minds]

Where's the downside?

Simple, Foundry apparently is NOT easy to put in after the fact as CO still doesn't have that ability, and it is Cryptic also.

Also STO seemed to be so content starved they had to do something. CO is content starved.

Between Cryptic mismanagedmangled hell and Atari shoving things out WAY to dang early... I'm amazed they survived, honestly.

[Cyr]

Players will find a way to exploit, period. They always do, they always will. No QA team can ever catch them all, even with player support. Creating a development tool for players would only simplify that process. The only way to put a dent in that is a TSA style approval process for the content, which would stifle creation, add expense, and still not catch everything.

As far as profitability, I dont think that player generated content is very profitable. You have a huge upfront expenditure, and then you have to pay a QA team. I doubt that less QA would be needed with this in place. I dont foresee enough new Premium purchases or new VIP players to offset that, much less make it profitable. You would need new, because the existing VIPs and premiums are paying the current bills. I disagree that it makes development easy enough that player generated content would be cost savings. The tool itself still has to be maintained and updated, as well as the user content that makes it live. Additionally, there would have to be a whole DDO store dedicated to the tool, or Turbine would lose money from people not spending TP on the live game.

• Exploits will always pop up I agree. However, exploits often exist because things are done in a new way instead of treading upon a known pathway. Uniform tools really do cut down on exploits that occur because you are not trying to re-invent the wheel everytime you do something. Exploits that occur due to repeating a mistake are inexcusable and a player tool to make dungeons should automatically check and correct for anything that is a known exploit before it gets released.
• Less QA would be needed. This is not due to player generated content, but the development of a uniform dungeon building toolset that the developers would also use.
• Less development time would be needed per dungeon created due to this toolset. This also saves money in the long run.
• Monitizing this seems fairly simple to me. Pay X TP to unlock the tool to build dungeons! This helps defray the initial investment cost. Then charge a small amount of TP for each user generated pack which is given real xp and treasure.
• There would indeed be ongoing costs with maintaining the tool. This would be mostly due to more textures, skins, creatures, and whatnot being added to the tool. All this rolls into the normal cost of development though because the tool would be what the content developers use to develop content themselves. They just would have the power to have more levers added to it for something new they wanted (ie what we were talking about above).
• The tool is really a money saver long term by giving Turbine a good excuse to spend the upfront cost on making a uniform toolset to create dungeons it would have all the benefits of a uniform proccess and toolset which are increased efficiency (dev time, QA time, GM time), increased reliability (less bugs), and a higher potential throughput (less specialized knowledge being required means that production can be ramped up much easier).

Basically the difference here is making handwraps work as three different types of systems or one. You save a small amount of time upfront by just coding in something new, but you lose time in the long run. The toolset for dungeon building would just be a uniform method of making content.

[Symar-FangofLloth]

There's two important things you need to make this work, though.

1: A significant number of players that want to make their own content.

2: A significant number of players that want to run, or don't mind running, content created by other player.

[Pfold]

I like the idea of user generated content and mods. Unfortunately, Turbine can barely put out working product as is.

But the biggest reason is 99.999999999999999999% of what people would make woiuld be total **** most people arent as creative as they think they are. I would say 1 in a 10000 of the old nwn stuff was even playable and maybe 1% of 1% of was actually any good.

It wouldn't matter the number of poorly made dungeons. People will quickly learn who is putting up quality content and which ones to avoid. Also, it g0es without saying that to each their own, so those lists may be different according to different people.

[Uska]

...1 in 10000 and 1% of 1% are the same thing.

OP - haven't you suggested this before?

My suggestion, as far as quality control and convenience, is that any account can only have 1 quest submitted to the oracle at a time. Creating a quest is free to VIP and Premium, but Premiums must buy any packs that come out for the quests (if a Premium gets his quest chosen, he gets the pack it's sold in for free). A charge for testing the quests might be ok, but I'd advise against it.

At the oracle, you get sent to a RANDOM* quest and play it. You can quit at any time, and upon completion or a quit you are prompted to rate it on several levels. The quests with the best ratings get viewed by the devs.

*this is to prevent certain quests getting skipped over, and people running the same quests multiple times in a row.

your werent getting my point I was saying that 1% of 1% of the 1% of 1% would actually be any good its not every gonna happen do to the drains it would put on the devs plus there arent any tools they can actually give it has been stated they use a lot of custom tools

and getting sent to a random quest wouild be right out for most since this would drasticly increase your chance of getting one of the majority horrible quests and you would likely never find the one gem the yoiur friend told you about. and the rating thing could easily be messed up by one or two large guilds just voting for a quest that they knew the design and could keep an exploit hidden for their own use.

[Uska]

I think you need to re-evaluate your position on UGC.

Cryptic's current game that uses the Foundry (the same "toolset" that Neverwinter will be using) is Star Trek Online. There have been hundreds of missions created for the game and out of those, several DOZEN are, by the development teams own admission, BETTER than what they have made - and that is just with the very basics they have made available so far in the Foundry.

Their ranking system (much like the system I proposed in the OP) makes it easy to play just the good ones, so you aren't forced to hunt for them. If you don't believe me, drop $15 on a month's subscription and take a look for yourself.



STO began without the Foundry, so they had to build it after the fact (just like Turbine would have to do with DDO). Yes it would cost Turbine money to do, but as the old business axiom goes, "You have to spend money, to make money". The OP at the top of the page listed how Turbine could make money with this. The OP also addressed exploits and how they would be vitually non-existant using the system described there in. If Cryptic can make the Foundry available without exposing any "trade" secrets, especially with it being a major part of DDO's direct competitor Neverwinter, I'm sure our clever and talented dev team can come up with something.

As I stated in the OP, giving DDO a "Foundry" before (or at around the same time) Neverwinter launches would take a lot of wind out of their sails - and sales. The Foundry is a big selling point for them right now, the sooner DDO gets started on something like this, the better positioned they will be.



The Foundry in Star Trek Online uses a simple disclaimer and sets out a short set of rules about what can, and cannot be used in missions (quests) created by Foundry authors. If Cryptic has been successful doing that with a huge IP like Star Trek (and getting CBS's approval to do so - which is a miracle by itself), I think Turbine can easily do this with Dungeons and Dragons. And again, the exploit issue is covered in the OP.

People love to make things; I think that's abudantly clear from all the different crafting systems that DDO has. Turbine obviously sees this as well (and finds it profitable), thus the continued support with new crafting systems that are constantly being placed in the game.

Dungeon (quest) building is probably the biggest expression of this in a D&D game.

By giving us quest building tools, Turbine beats the competion to the punch, adds value to thier own game (customer retention), and generates a new revenue stream through DDO Store sales. We on the other hand get something fun to play with and scores and scores of new quests to run through. Some possibly better than the taleneted Turbine folks themselves have put out.

Where's the downside?

STO is a horrible game and its quests arent anywhere near as complex as ddo's the downside is time wasted making a toolset that isnt going to allow as complex quests as the devs can make. They dont have a ready made set of tools they can release so it would take time to make them and be a huge drain on what devs have time to do.

[HarveyMilk]

I think the majority of Ddo players would want to see this. D&D afterall is built on user-generated, often, content. The downsides of implementing it just might outweigh the benefits though.

Specifically, think about how turbine makes money. Ddo store purchases. What drains tp most? Buying packs deemed essential. I'm willing to make bet the vale is Ddo's biggest money-maker. Also, things like pots and rez cakes, which you grab while running the quest.

Turbine would need to do a player survey, to see how many would buy a universal toolset, and how much they would pay. and you know it would not be free to vips.

But, I think a sizable majority would want to be able to make an adventure their friends/guildies could run. However, the adventures really shouldn't give any xp or treasure. They should have their own reward system, hopefully heavily cosmetic, titles, etc... this ensures no exploitation. They should be run because they are fun.

I'd pay 1500TP for the toolset. And if half the players would pay that, you bet turbine would code it. And if you remove this dev time quality review thing, so next to no ongoing support is required, then we'd get somewhere.

[ssgcmwatson]

I used to love checking out userr generated content in games like Thief, Jedi Knight, Red Faction, etc. A fair amount of it was garbage, but there were some missions / multiplayer maps that were so good they became de facto standard to have.

Yes, Turbine would have to divert resources up-front to create a "dungeon builder," however as previous posters have noted that has advantages to them as well. As noted before, sell access to this tool with TPs to recoup some of the investment.

If implemented, I would like to see a server set up to "test" the new content (also sell access to this server with TPs - not everyone who wants to play the new content will have the time/desire to create new content). Similar to Lammania we could import copies of toons and play around with new stuff. Have a single NPC in the harbor somewhere that gives you a list of quests with a quick description, average completion time, and average rating (how players rated the quest - one vote per account please ).

Turbine can use not only the mean but the median (which is more resistant to outliers and therefore to vote tampering) to judge which missions should receive a "final polish" from the devs and go live. They could add in the loot, xp, etc, and find an appropriate place to put the mission entrance and quest giver in the "real" game.

Voila!

[spyyder976]

With Neverwinter coming soon(TM) and emphasizing user generated content as a big draw to the game, I thought it might be time to float this idea again in order to give Turbine a jump on that 'other' D&D game, taking some of the wind out of their sails (and sales )

So, here's an idea for UGC for DDO:

Way back when, the original Neverwinter Nights proved if players were given the proper tools, user generated content in a D&D video game could work (for good or bad). There were some staggeringly beautiful and fun dungeons built by players, but also some abysmally bad ones too.

User generated content is a tricky subject in any MMO. Many folks look to it not only as a means of exponentially increasing in-game material, but also as an alternate to the constant 'grind' of combat. Others despise it, citing massive exploitation and terrible quality control.

In my opinion, user generated content - or more specifically, player made quests (because 'user generated content' is a bit of a broad stroke - 'content' also includes stuff like spells, feats, new races, etc.), could be implemented in DDO under a simple set of specific criteria that would result in a winning situation for all involved.

There are essentially three key elements required to make player made quests a success: 1) High quality, 2) Exploit free, 3) Official rewards (treasure and xp)

High quality
As amazing as Keeper and company are at creating fantastic quest settings, they are limited in the amount of man (woman) hours they can work. As in any MMO, it's impossible to keep up with the voracious demand that thousands of players have. By using player made quests, Turbine could continue with its current production/release schedule for updates unhindered, but we, the player base, would also see many additional quests for ALL levels released on a monthly basis (see below).

Possibly the biggest problem is how to keep the quality of such quests on par with the amazing work we have been spoiled with, err, gotten used to from our talented Turbine team. There are two ways this could be accomplished in DDO – Competition and Rating. See ‘Oracle of Stormreach’ below for an explanation.

Exploit free
Equally as important as quality control (some would say even more important) is the need to address any possibility of quest exploitation. 100% exploit elimination could be accomplished relatively simply: no player would have the ability to place ANY treasure or assign ANY xp when building a quest.

Wait a minute. No treasure or xp??? I thought you said one of the key elements to success was having player made quests include treasure and xp rewards. I did. But to remove any exploitation, only the Devs would assign treasure and xp to a quest.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on a sec smart guy, let’s say 5000 quests just got submitted; how in Khyber are the Devs supposed to wade through all that and assign treasure and xp to each quest - let alone the massive amount of time this would take away from work on updates, etc!?!

Well, not all quests would receive Dev attention - only the highest rated quests would - having the player base do the filtering work for them.

Filtering? How?

Oracle of Stormreach (official rewards)
One of the greatest challenges to user generated content is to make it viable in real game terms with real in game rewards. In order to do so, a ‘filtering/playtesting’ system must be set up. Only the best quests, filtered by the player base and then hand chosen by the Devs, would go on to become ‘real’ quests (officially included in the game). An “Oracle of Stormreach’ would serve this purpose perfectly.

Oracles are people who can see future events through ‘visions’; though in almost all cases these visions are hazy, obscured, or riddled with inaccuracies. Each player made quest submitted would initially become a 'vision' of a possible future event that players can experience by visiting the Oracle. Players would rate each 'vision' on a scale of 1-10 when finished with it (only once per account). This rating system would free up dev time from having to review each quest individually – then only looking over what the player base thought was the very best. Those 'visions' they deem worthy of inclusion as official content become 'reality' - in other words, real quests in the game (complete with treasure and xp awards at that time). This way we get the best of both worlds: perhaps dozens of new high quality, dev approved dungeons on a monthly basis AND all regular Turbine updates without interruption as well.

The sheer number of players in the game should negate any intentional attempts at 'skewing' quest ratings; either high or low. Setting up a ratio of rating vs. number of players who have experienced the ‘vision’ would produce the best results. A rating of 9.7/10000 players would hold significantly more weight than a vision rated 10.0/2 players. The quests/visions could be organized by level and type (outdoor, indoor, combination, etc) when the player visits the Oracle for ease of selection. The Devs can then take as many or as few of these player made quests as they wish each month and turn them into official quests. They could sprinkle these new quests throughout various areas of the game they feel need it, or where a quest would be appropriate (such as a high level giant oriented quest in Gianthold, a mid level fire based quest in Searing Heights, etc.).

As player made quests are initially only visions, they may or may not become reality. Obviously all quests submitted become the property of Turbine, to do with as they see fit. Each quest submission would be completely open to change, IN ANY WAY, by the Dev team should they decide to include it in the game. Oracle visions are tricky things; they may or may not be entirely accurate when, or even if, their events unfold in the 'real' world. In other words, a submitted quest that is selected may not come out exactly the same way as it was originally built.

Using this ‘Oracle’ system allows the largest possible sampling on LIVE servers for the best possible feedback for the Devs (as opposed to relegating testing of player made quests to Lamania only, where the results would be skewed by the relatively small and specialized population there). In addition, the Oracle system adds a massive amount of live ‘quasi’ content accessible to the entire player base, if they chose to experience it.

Though there is no treasure or quest xp awarded for experiencing Oracle visions, there would be, of course, no death penalty or equipment wear either. Maybe as a reward for playtesting/rating possible future official content through the ‘Oracle’ system, perhaps assign a very minor amount of xp for completion of said "possible future events" - a one time per quest 10xp per level of character for completion? (So a 5th level character would receive 50xp for experiencing each new, completed 'vision' regardless of the level of the quest), that way the player would receive something (as there is no treasure) for the effort. This minor, one time only reward would certainly eliminate any 'exploiting' of the Oracle system.

Visions are tenuous things however, and much as vendors drop items off their lists over time, the Oracle would only show each 'vision' for one month, resetting the rating system at the end of that time (allowing for additional improvement to submitted quests on a monthly basis - or they could stay with the Oracle as long as Turbine wants them to – depending on the need the data space). A monthly time frame however supports a better competition style atmosphere. In fact, this would be a huge factor in the quality of quests submitted – because there would be rewards for each winning submission each month.

Each quest chosen for official inclusion in the game would receive an award of Turbine Points. This award could possibly be based off the quality of its ratio/player ranking – the highest scoring quest (1st place) would get 2x the TP that 2nd place got, 2nd place would get 2x the TP 3rd place got, and 3rd place would get 2x the TP that any other normal quests would receive for being officially included. For example, if the standard reward was, say, 1000 TP for having a quest officially included in the game, 4th place and lower monthly 'winners' would each receive 1000 TP for getting their quest in the game. The 3rd place winner would get 2000 TP, the 2nd place winner 4000 TP, and the first place winner 8000 TP. In addition, those players who consistently had quests 'win' could possibly receive forum titles as well.

Now of course, there may be rare times when none of the quests turned in to the Oracle during a month are good enough to win/be officially included, in the development teams opinion - even if there are ratings saying that one quest is much better than another (because something bad, even if it is five times better than another awful quest, is still BAD). It is entirely at the discretion of the Dev team to chose winning quests (if any) each month - regardless of player rating results. The rating system is only to assist the Devs filter out the grain from the chaff.

Extra revenue for Turbine
Player made quests would be an additional large source of revenue for Turbine, both up front and over the long term. There would be a charge (for non-VIPs) in the DDO store for quest building ability (giving players all the tools to design any kind of quest they wish (indoor or outdoor) using all currently available quest building blocks). Then, when the winning quests were officially released each month as real content, these "player made quest" packs would also cost TP to purchase just like any other set of new quests created by Turbine. Access to the Oracle would remain free at all times however in order to facilitate the largest possible ongoing feedback on player made quests.

It's a win-win situation for both Turbine and for DDO customers. Players get many more good quests on a monthly basis (both official and vision style) and Turbine gets, in addition to a bunch of free content (because TP rewards to winning players really cost them nothing), a lot more money generated through creation tool/quest pack sales at the DDO store.

Conclusion
Player made quests, quality controlled through player rating and competition, with treasure and xp rewards applied only through Dev approval and implementation seem like an ideal solution to making our 'visions' of high quality, exploit free, rewarding user generated content become a reality.

We've been begging for this forever, and I hope we one day get it. They say it would be hard to implement with the tools the devs use to make quests. I say they could make some new tools or have some way to at least let us write stories with objectives and attach them to content already in the game, similar to the way Star Wars Galaxies did it, although that is kind of a dumbed down version of user-content. They can't give us drag and drop quest making like Neverwinter Nights by Bioware with what they have now, but it would be great if they would make a toolset like that and release it for us to use. They could sell the toolset, as well as premium monsters, dungeon decor, layouts, tilesets, etc., in the store to make lots of cash on the project.

I do like your oracle idea, but instead of only allowing devs to assign xp and loot, an easy way to fairly let us do it ourselves is that based on the number of monsters/traps/hazards/objectives, and the quest level of course, the quest builder itself could calculate its xp value based on all that we added to it. Similarly, for every so many groups of monsters/encounters/traps/etc., you would be allowed to drop in 1 chest wherever you wanted, and the chest of course would just be a chest that generated random loot for that quest level, which was also determined after everything was added. It really wouldn't be hard at all to let the builder figure xp and number of chests allowed based on what you put in it. And if you said to begin with you were making a level 1 quest, there should be a hard limit as to the number of monsters per encounter based on their CR to make sure you weren't making some quest too difficult for a level 1 character to run, as well as the max level of the final boss or any mini-bosses (not more than 2 -4 levels above the quest level or whatever). Of course a boss (or mini-bosses) would allow you to add a chest just for him (or each of them), and possibly even based on his level and not the final quest level, or however they would want to figure it. I could see a system where you could place a room, and each room would have a limit on the number of creatures based on their level, and during the quest, once you have placed so many creatures/traps/etc., you are allowed a chest, and every time you place that many, you are allowed another chest, and so forth. The facebook game Heroes of Neverwinter even has this system for user-made quests where it counts up how many monsters you can have per room based on their level, so it's not like it's a difficult thing to program.

And since Neverwinter Online has been delayed for at least another year now, they have plenty of time to do something like this, especially since we've been discussing it here for years, and they have shown interest in it, although they've never promised it. We won't ever see it if they don't put it on their to-do list though, and who knows what all is already on their list for the next few years? I'm sure they've already made everything for the next 6 months, and are already working on things for the last half of this year, and planning for next year. They are always working ahead, which kind of concerns me that if they don't get the show on the road, we'll be the ONLY online game worth anything which doesn't allow user-created content, as many already have it, and more are coming out with it all the time. It's the biggest draw for people due to the sheer unlimited scope of creative content it allows, which is why I told them years ago that it would skyrocket this game if they'd just add it. Maybe one day they'll listen to me.