Any thought to player made content?

[Flavilandile]

While the idea has it's appeal, it's something that needs to be thought of from the begining... It's not something that can be brought up after 9 years.

From the few pictures I've seen here and there. Making a quest in DDO is handcrafted ( and I really mean handcrafted )... By comparison, making a quest in NWN ( the first one ) and creating all the artwork required for said quest to be put in a specific hackpak seems to be easier. If you've ever played with the Aurora Toolset you know how long and tedious it can be ( especially if you added your own artwork ).

The game is too old for that kind of update.

[IronClan]

Ah it's my favorite kind of thread just chock full of players speculating with no inside knowledge about whats possible or not, anythings possible if they put there minds to it, if they are motivated to do it. If a Dev at Turbine can use the tools to make a quest, there are plenty of players who would be able to as well.

Someone mentioned cosmetics, yes for 8 years people have been asking to take the appearance off stuff, then one day a brand new Dev popped in and said "hey how would you feel about a store item that takes the appearance of something" and we said "what the actual eff, we've been asking for this forever, do eeet now" and low and behold something claimed to have been "outside our tech" by past Dev's suddenly is the consensus best store item of 2014.

I am sure if they WANTED TO they very much could open DDO up to UGC.

"their tools are too complex" this is a copout, yes they have actually already stated that to do UGC their tools would need improvement. however a very large percentage of gamers are actually into the development of games, many of us could use their tools without so much as a readme effin file (I could, I taught myself 3DS Max I also have modded dozens of games and put out UGC content for NWN, Morrowind (with tools that were not very dumbed down at all), several strategy games and many FPS's) The truth is we don't even need easy peazy Snap-Tite map editors or NPC scripting like NWN had.

A) a user-unfriendly toolset would encourage only the better modders to make Quests, while it sounds arrogant, there is something to be said for the bulk of UGC coming from skilled creative types who pass the test of "basic ability to figure out the tools". This way much of the utter dreck that must be sifted through with UGC is pre-filtered. And yes I am saying that I like UGC but a lot of it ends up being garbage, nature of the beast. UGC works just like the current version of the music industry works: the creme rises to the top with plenty of room for sub genres and specificity and creativity.

B) Every single objection to the basic concept of UGC in this thread (and every other one like it) has been met, tackled (more or less successfully) mitigated or circumvented by simple checks and balances in games that have UGC.

Upvoting/Rating systems
Flagging (inappropriate or exploitative)
Player control pre-screening groups (gets rid of cheese)
Probation (allows cheeze to be found before it harms the live game)
Author rating systems (eliminates cheese producers)
Putting the source code of the toolset out to allow the players to improve it. (takes the manpower problem out of the equation for the developer.)

If I was tweaking the X/Y/Z coordinates of brushes using a text based interface, scripting with Quake C and compiling BSP's for 16 hours per map iteration just to run a test map in 1996, then you can not tell me Turbine's mapping and quest creation tools are too hard to use. I bet they are LIGHT YEARS ahead of the first Doom level editors (literally assigning vertexes using 2d coordinates and choosing/aligning textures by editing the data inside each vertex LOL). While I'm sure they aren't as dumbed down and fool proof as the original UGC MMO NWN (and the person who said this wasn't a MMO arbitrarily call it what you want but have you ever had a 64 player battle in DDO? We did in NWN, every player on the server could be in any given area at the same time... this is not possible in DDO... and in many ways was more social and more "massive" because of it. Yes it was only 64 (and 32 was less laggy if you were on dialup) but this is still more "massively" than 12 players at a time...

Anyway rant over, if Turbine decided that UGC would help DDO they could do it, They wont do it, because their priorities are elsewhere, and this may or may not be the best thing depending on your outlook.

Personally I am hoping they will release the tools when they put the game in maintenance mode some day. A move that is not unprecedented in gaming.

[rohmer]

Ah it's my favorite kind of thread just chock full of players speculating with no inside knowledge about whats possible or not, anythings possible if they put there minds to it, if they are motivated to do it. If a Dev at Turbine can use the tools to make a quest, there are plenty of players who would be able to as well.

Someone mentioned cosmetics, yes for 8 years people have been asking to take the appearance off stuff, then one day a brand new Dev popped in and said "hey how would you feel about a store item that takes the appearance of something" and we said "what the actual eff, we've been asking for this forever, do eeet now" and low and behold something claimed to have been "outside our tech" by past Dev's suddenly is the consensus best store item of 2014.

I am sure if they WANTED TO they very much could open DDO up to UGC.

"their tools are too complex" this is a copout, yes they have actually already stated that to do UGC their tools would need improvement. however a very large percentage of gamers are actually into the development of games, many of us could use their tools without so much as a readme effin file (I could, I taught myself 3DS Max I also have modded dozens of games and put out UGC content for NWN, Morrowind (with tools that were not very dumbed down at all), several strategy games and many FPS's) The truth is we don't even need easy peazy Snap-Tite map editors or NPC scripting like NWN had.

A) a user-unfriendly toolset would encourage only the better modders to make Quests, while it sounds arrogant, there is something to be said for the bulk of UGC coming from skilled creative types who pass the test of "basic ability to figure out the tools". This way much of the utter dreck that must be sifted through with UGC is pre-filtered. And yes I am saying that I like UGC but a lot of it ends up being garbage, nature of the beast. UGC works just like the current version of the music industry works: the creme rises to the top with plenty of room for sub genres and specificity and creativity.

B) Every single objection to the basic concept of UGC in this thread (and every other one like it) has been met, tackled (more or less successfully) mitigated or circumvented by simple checks and balances in games that have UGC.

Upvoting/Rating systems
Flagging (inappropriate or exploitative)
Player control pre-screening groups (gets rid of cheese)
Probation (allows cheeze to be found before it harms the live game)
Author rating systems (eliminates cheese producers)
Putting the source code of the toolset out to allow the players to improve it. (takes the manpower problem out of the equation for the developer.)

If I was tweaking the X/Y/Z coordinates of brushes using a text based interface, scripting with Quake C and compiling BSP's for 16 hours per map iteration just to run a test map in 1996, then you can not tell me Turbine's mapping and quest creation tools are too hard to use. I bet they are LIGHT YEARS ahead of the first Doom level editors (literally assigning vertexes using 2d coordinates and choosing/aligning textures by editing the data inside each vertex LOL). While I'm sure they aren't as dumbed down and fool proof as the original UGC MMO NWN (and the person who said this wasn't a MMO arbitrarily call it what you want but have you ever had a 64 player battle in DDO? We did in NWN, every player on the server could be in any given area at the same time... this is not possible in DDO... and in many ways was more social and more "massive" because of it. Yes it was only 64 (and 32 was less laggy if you were on dialup) but this is still more "massively" than 12 players at a time...

Anyway rant over, if Turbine decided that UGC would help DDO they could do it, They wont do it, because their priorities are elsewhere, and this may or may not be the best thing depending on your outlook.

Personally I am hoping they will release the tools when they put the game in maintenance mode some day. A move that is not unprecedented in gaming.

All good ideas. I just think it would be an interesting move. I have a few ideas for quests I would love to see and make.

[Cardoor]

The easiest way is probably to get a job at Turbine. If the quest is going to be good, it will require a lot of time and effort (might as well get paid for it).

[PsychoBlonde]

I want someone to make a DDO version of Orc and Pie.

Quite aside from any technological problems is the general problem of how do you pass out loot and xp for player-generated content? The only real way to be "fair" with this kind of thing would be to have no chests in the player-made quests (so people can't just make a room with 500 chests in it), only end rewards, and have them all be TIMED dungeons, along the lines of "you must stay in here for 10:00 minutes and complete the objectives" instead of "finish this before the timer runs out". That way the XP could be linked to the timer and thus be reasonably "fair".

So, that being said . . . why not have player-created CHALLENGES? It's been quite a while since we've had a challenge pack. Because they're challenges, there wouldn't be that much need for a coherent "story" or anything along those lines. The loot return would be quite static, and XP after first-time bonus would be low. They could set it up so that you could use a number of preexisting maps and your job as the creator would be just to set up the challenge goals and place monsters, mob spawn points, bosses, and interactables around the place.

They could even have a mandatory objective or two (for fairness) like "kill {duration of challenge * 20} monsters". Or let you select from a small list of mandatory objectives. The rewards would be set on the basis of the duration of the challenge--perhaps with a minimum and maximum duration.

Something like that could be small enough to function as a single update, but if it goes over well it could act as a bridge to gradually phasing in more and more of that kind of thing, as well as letting the devs work on the tools a bit at a time. And it'd let people try to torture each other with crazy challenges, which is extremely entertaining.

And, how about after player-created challenges (or before) you do player-created wilderness explorer areas? That also could work well, because wilderness explorers all operate along similar lines.

So, once you've got a challenge-making system and a wilderness-making system, THEN you can tackle the idea of a quest-making system.

Also, to keep resource drain reasonable, you'd probably need to sell "charters" on the DDO store. And IMO they should be pretty expensive. And here's another question--if I make a Challenge, which server(s) can you access it on? All of them? Thelanis only? A special server *just* for player-made content? Do the GM's have access to that content? What happens if someone gets stuck in my quest and submits a ticket? Do the GM's just say "sorry, player-made area, recall and try again"?

There are just SO MANY issues. How do you deal with people violating copyrights? What if someone just fills the GM text with swear words? What happens when someone makes a dungeon that is basically just an enormous three-dimensional male organ pic? ALL of those things WILL happen if they CAN happen.

[Loromir]

Instead of releasing developer toolkit or (for lack of a better word...a foundry). I would like to see Turbine open up a contest for DDO players to design a quest. Everyone who wants to submit an entry would pay a 250 TP entry fee. That person would write the story from beginning to end and it would be presented to the DDO community for a vote (with Turbine owning the right to veto a winner based on legal issues or technical issues or lore issues). Turbine with then develop the quest and the contest winner would get to be a consultant for that particular project from beginning to end. Winner would also win a lifetime VIP membership to DDO.

[rohmer]

Instead of releasing developer toolkit or (for lack of a better word...a foundry). I would like to see Turbine open up a contest for DDO players to design a quest. Everyone who wants to submit an entry would pay a 250 TP entry fee. That person would write the story from beginning to end and it would be presented to the DDO community for a vote (with Turbine owning the right to veto a winner based on legal issues or technical issues or lore issues). Turbine with then develop the quest and the contest winner would get to be a consultant for that particular project from beginning to end. Winner would also win a lifetime VIP membership to DDO.

That would be cool.

Anywhoo, I have a lot of exp programming (Its my day job) and a lot of exp doing graphics.. Also a lot of D&D exp, so as a fun hobby thing I would like to combine the 3 :-)

Its a dream.

[Uska]

Instead of releasing developer toolkit or (for lack of a better word...a foundry). I would like to see Turbine open up a contest for DDO players to design a quest. Everyone who wants to submit an entry would pay a 250 TP entry fee. That person would write the story from beginning to end and it would be presented to the DDO community for a vote (with Turbine owning the right to veto a winner based on legal issues or technical issues or lore issues). Turbine with then develop the quest and the contest winner would get to be a consultant for that particular project from beginning to end. Winner would also win a lifetime VIP membership to DDO.

That is much more feasible and could work

[RD2play]

The biggest problem is the engine does not support this, not to mention all the tools would have to be made "player proof" and/or be very limited. These are really the kind of things that need to be brought in at a games inception. Not to mention that this game is 9years old now so there will be all kind of systems added that might not work nicely with each other. We even see the devs at turbine having difficulty with this at times, in their words "spaghetti code". So although the idea is great I don't think we will ever see it in DDO.

[RD2play]

Instead of releasing developer toolkit or (for lack of a better word...a foundry). I would like to see Turbine open up a contest for DDO players to design a quest. Everyone who wants to submit an entry would pay a 250 TP entry fee. That person would write the story from beginning to end and it would be presented to the DDO community for a vote (with Turbine owning the right to veto a winner based on legal issues or technical issues or lore issues). Turbine with then develop the quest and the contest winner would get to be a consultant for that particular project from beginning to end. Winner would also win a lifetime VIP membership to DDO.

This sounds like a winner

[rohmer]

The easiest way is probably to get a job at Turbine. If the quest is going to be good, it will require a lot of time and effort (might as well get paid for it).

LOL, don't want the pay cut.