Million dollar idea or Million ton failure?
By
2hawks,
Posted on: 2007-05-19 01:13 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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My take on this:
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Potential drama off the top of my head: "why did you endorse his missions and not mine?" Also: "all my friends endorsed this, there's over a hundred names here, why did the devs veto it?"
I realize that this is trivial and petty, but a lot of drama is created via trivial and petty things.
Besides, I don't think it's really going to impact it that much. It's a well-thought idea.
Current main:
Schrodinger's Gun, Dual Pistols/Mental Blaster, Virtue
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I realize that this is trivial and petty, but a lot of drama is created via trivial and petty things.
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the uproar over costume drops, for instance.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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I realize that this is trivial and petty, but a lot of drama is created via trivial and petty things.
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the uproar over costume drops, for instance.
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Just another example of one person's trash being another person's treasure.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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My take on this:
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Potential drama off the top of my head: "why did you endorse his missions and not mine?" Also: "all my friends endorsed this, there's over a hundred names here, why did the devs veto it?"
I realize that this is trivial and petty, but a lot of drama is created via trivial and petty things.
Besides, I don't think it's really going to impact it that much. It's a well-thought idea.
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Agree on the potential drama, but it's not drama that causes much dev overhead. Much of it is akin to the level of "myspace friends" drama. The dev veto could easily identify concerns (spawn mix imbalancing, time to completion issues, writing content or simply "not consistent with the direction of the game.")
It was more of a "shoot from the hip" model inspired in part by the Pirates of the Burning Sea "vote" system for flags, in part social networking sites.
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Perhaps Cryptic should impliments a 10% "own project" time like Google, where their art/code/numbers people get 10% of their paid time to devote to any feature they like.
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It hasn't worked out real well for Google - it has (mostly) produced a bunch of poor-to-middling applications that will be fixed and finished at some uncertain future date.
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Yeah, it's worked out just terribly for them. Would that CoH enjoyed the same level of failure as Google.
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I see - you assume that somehow the 10% program is a significant contributor to that sucess. Care to back up that assumption with facts?
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
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Just ask the UO people about how that works. They used "Freely submitted" code and then got sued for it and lost.
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Cite?
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
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Just ask the UO people about how that works. They used "Freely submitted" code and then got sued for it and lost.
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Cite?
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I think he's referring to the UO "volunteer" program. It wasn't code-based, but volunteer guides. A few years ago, there was a dept. of labor review that examined "volunteer programs" and employment law.
First I remember hearing of was the AOL volunteer forum moderators. While they were "volunteers" they started getting perks (like discounts) and even were scheduled by AOL like employees. In some instances, the line between "volunteer" was crossed and the people won class-action suits in some states claiming violations of "labor laws" (if they weren't volunteers, then child labor and even minimum wage compensation applied.)
This hit UO- where UO's volunteer guide system similarly crossed the line (to the point where the volunteer (unpaid) guides TRAINED the not-so-volunteer (paid) replacements (without their knowledge.) They sued. They won.
Games are much more careful with their organized "volunteer" programs as a result. When I "battlemastered" WizKids official tournaments, for example, I had to file as a private contractor and report my limited edition "thank you" mechs as compensation.
You're starting to see a return to volunteer-related stuff online, but with few of the old perks or organizational structure, as nobody wants to get burned again.
This is indeed something that I could get behind. I think ChaseArcanum has come up with a great idea of getting the missions into the game in a fairly simple and straight-forward manner. The difficult part, however, is actual implementation. I think by improving the features available to SG Bases, we can get to the point to where players can create their own missions.
Step one would be to alter the interface in Base creation to use something similar to the system used in the CS. Allowing players to sift through Styles/Rooms/Objects/Mobiles/etc and then filter by name, would allow players to sort through the thousands of objects that would be needed in Mission Creation.
After that, they would need to change how objects are placed, allowing players to place objects how they see fit, not determined by a rectangular bounding box. This would allow players to put a chair up to a table where it should be, place jars and bottles on objects that currently cannot take them even though there is no reason they shouldn't, put objects inside an another larger hollow object, etc.
Then allow players to place NPCs, complete with pathing, powers, and possible AI choices as well as conversation quotes. This would allow players to place a Doctor with Aid Other in the Infirmary that walks a specific path (or three), recognizes a wounded player is nearby and goes over to heal them, and has a variety of things to say when they are idle, healing, or clicked on. You could even get slightly creative and have a few If Then Else options. If 'Player' is 'Bitterfrost' Then Say: "Good %timeofday%, Bitterfrost. How is your battle with the %villaingroup% going?" Else Emote: "Jumpingjacks"
At this point, the only thing left is to allow players the use of prefabs, multi-floors, and special objects like Oranbega teleporters. Prefabs should be easy as they are preset rooms with preset connectors. Elevators and Teleporters could be set up as objects with Properties. A connects to B.
Yes, there is a lot more to it than that, but by expanding upon the Base Creation System they could both make SG Bases much more interesting and robust, but also be working to get that much closer to allowing players to create their own missions. Of course, this only allows player created indoor missions. Outdoor missions could use the current prefab maps that are available. I would guess that outdoor maps use a very different toolset than indoor maps and may be beyond the scope of what the Devs are willing to do, beyond releasing the tools themselves (which is probably beyond what they are willing to do).
I know I personally would go to town on making small stories pertaining to Outcasts, Banished Pantheon, Circle of Thorns, Freakshow, Sky Raiders, Malta, Knives of Artemis, Carnies and Reflections. The big one for me, though, would be Malta. I have a Task Force from hell for them that I would love to play.
So, whatever it takes. /signed
Cyclone Jack
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[size=1]Arc ID: 3155 - Project Prometheus (Seeking Feedback, now with less invalidation)[/size]
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Just ask the UO people about how that works. They used "Freely submitted" code and then got sued for it and lost.
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Cite?
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I think he's referring to the UO "volunteer" program. It wasn't code-based, but volunteer guides. A few years ago, there was a dept. of labor review that examined "volunteer programs" and employment law.
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I'm familiar with that one - and it didn't sound like what he was referring to, so I didn't know if he was confused or (unlikely) there was a suit this long time UO player hadn't heard of.
I wasn't a UO Seer, but I was an AOL moderator back then - and it was indeed ugly the way AOL and the more senior moderators treated us.
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
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Wrong.
What I did was respond to Positron's post. I mentioned that I don't think it'd be as manpower intensive as Positron states. And I suggested a possible time frame for work to begin on this project. How exactly is this dOOOOm?
I realize of course that my statements are just my opinion, and Positron is certainly in a better position to know just how manpower intensive a project would be than I am. That combined with my low post count and my lack of a level 50 character will certainly lead a number of people to discount my posts no matter how sensible they are. This isn't going to stop me from stating my opinion.
It is my belief that the forum is here for all of us to state our opinions, not for all of us to simply agree with yours.
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what
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I think he got confused because we so seldom see statesman on the forums.
Idea: Have a contest with player submitted story lines. The stories could be either a draft or a complete script (to include tile sets to be used).
You might take one story for the heroes side and one from the villians, and reward the players with some sort of super fantastico prize be it in game or out. 
You just have to set the criteria and I am sure you would get a ton of submissions.
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This is indeed something that I could get behind. I think ChaseArcanum has come up with a great idea of getting the missions into the game in a fairly simple and straight-forward manner. The difficult part, however, is actual implementation. I think by improving the features available to SG Bases, we can get to the point to where players can create their own missions.
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The more I think of it... the more polished I think our editors may already be.
I remember reading in an interview that the devs' "zone builder" is essentially integrated with the game engine... you can probably say that the base builder is a natural extension of it.
If that's accurate, then a "watered down" mob placement and scripting element might not be too-too difficult to port. Still an investment, mind you, but one with many pieces already in place.
The trick would be: would it offer enough to bring in more subscribers to make the investment worthwhile?
I'd say yes, but I love being GM/storyteller.
Player created content?
Unlike many I really don't think that what you're asking for is too much. But there'd be a need to scale it back a bit perhaps.
As anyone who's played this game to 50 even once knows - there's a lot of content (map) reuse. Selecting a map that's already in existence ... isn't a problem.
Placement of items/villians on that map - that comes into some problems. We're not talking a base here. We're talking a level of interaction. So - you'd probably be looking setting the expected level of the mission, and placement of the map A/V. From there you'd have to deal with default mobs and roaming mobs appropriately.
Could it be done? Sure ... the question - which is always the big question - does the cost justify it. In the words of the infamous film producer Rodger Corman, when asked why he always made low budget films instead of higher quality flicks ... "Would it sell one more ticket (copy of the game) if I do that?".
I'm not sure the answer of that is yes. To allow us these capabilities I'd guess a lot of the game would need to be re-written from the bottom up. And the cost on that would be prohibitive.
Now -- and since we know Jack IS listening here... here's a clue... When the time comes for CoH to be redone from bottom to top - a version 2.0 if you will - this should make it on the list of gotta have features. Being the first MMO to allow player customizable (essentially "mashup") content would bury WoW and anything out there hands down.
Just my 2 cents.
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Peregrine_Falcon wrote:
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This can't be anymore of a problem than creating the content yourself. In fact if anything it'd be much less manpower intensive.
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No offense, but I love it when someone not intimately involved in the project tells someone who is that it =must= be simple or it =can't= be that hard.
And some people wonder why the devs don't post as much any more.
--NT
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It's the filtering problem. As is generally agreed, 99% of player generated content is garbage. Sad, harsh, but true.
"Can you give me a quick number crunch on that?"
170,000 active subscribers.
Say just 2% of them decide to create modules. That's 3,400 people.
Say they each create a module a week. That's 3,400 modules per week to audit.
Assuming just five minutes to look at a module, an auditor can look at 480 modules in a 40 hour work week. At that rate, they'd need to hire 7 full time staff just to audit modules.
Now do you begin to get a grasp as to the scope of this?
Ryzom has a prayer of pulling this off because they have a much smaller subscriber base: single digits of thousands are what I've heard. Combine that with their initial audit by the players, and they have a manageable problem.
But without some way to get a first pass at eliminating most of the 99% garbage before Cryptic people see stuff, there's not a lot of hope for this.
-- Edit --
P.S. Nuclear, if it's not abundantly clear from my post, I'm agreeing with you.
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Perhaps Cryptic should impliments a 10% "own project" time like Google, where their art/code/numbers people get 10% of their paid time to devote to any feature they like.
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It hasn't worked out real well for Google - it has (mostly) produced a bunch of poor-to-middling applications that will be fixed and finished at some uncertain future date.
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Yeah, it's worked out just terribly for them. Would that CoH enjoyed the same level of failure as Google.
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I see - you assume that somehow the 10% program is a significant contributor to that sucess. Care to back up that assumption with facts?
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Nah, too OT, and anyway given Google's success I think the burden of proof really falls on a person disagreeing with their business/engineering/project decisions. The 10% rule isn't just about creating product. In fact that's probably the least of it's goals. Creating product is what the 90% is about.
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Just ask the UO people about how that works. They used "Freely submitted" code and then got sued for it and lost.
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Cite?
[/ QUOTE ]
I think he's referring to the UO "volunteer" program. It wasn't code-based, but volunteer guides. A few years ago, there was a dept. of labor review that examined "volunteer programs" and employment law.
First I remember hearing of was the AOL volunteer forum moderators. While they were "volunteers" they started getting perks (like discounts) and even were scheduled by AOL like employees. In some instances, the line between "volunteer" was crossed and the people won class-action suits in some states claiming violations of "labor laws" (if they weren't volunteers, then child labor and even minimum wage compensation applied.)
This hit UO- where UO's volunteer guide system similarly crossed the line (to the point where the volunteer (unpaid) guides TRAINED the not-so-volunteer (paid) replacements (without their knowledge.) They sued. They won.
Games are much more careful with their organized "volunteer" programs as a result. When I "battlemastered" WizKids official tournaments, for example, I had to file as a private contractor and report my limited edition "thank you" mechs as compensation.
You're starting to see a return to volunteer-related stuff online, but with few of the old perks or organizational structure, as nobody wants to get burned again.
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Actually I was referring to the people who "fixed" UO since the original release was basically unplayable and fans actually released code to get it on its feet so they could play. They signed releases, but because UO made money off of their work they were later sued by the people who signed the releases and lost.
I'm not your lawyer so I can't give you the details just that even with signed releases you aren't guarenteed you will be getting free content.
Free content works for other games because no one charges for it. No one has tried it (successfully) on an MMO.
The best bet would be for an MMO which is all player content to work out all the bugs for everyone else first. Because odds are the game will be trashed if most of the suggestions above were tried. They are just too trusting.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
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Perhaps Cryptic should impliments a 10% "own project" time like Google, where their art/code/numbers people get 10% of their paid time to devote to any feature they like.
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It hasn't worked out real well for Google - it has (mostly) produced a bunch of poor-to-middling applications that will be fixed and finished at some uncertain future date.
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Yeah, it's worked out just terribly for them. Would that CoH enjoyed the same level of failure as Google.
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I see - you assume that somehow the 10% program is a significant contributor to that sucess. Care to back up that assumption with facts?
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Nah, too OT,
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In other words, you are willing to challenge my conclusions - but you aren't willing to back that challenge up with facts.
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and anyway given Google's success I think the burden of proof really falls on a person disagreeing with their business/engineering/project decisions.
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Had I challenged their business/engineering/project decisions, you'd have a point. Instead, what you have is a smokescreen to divert attention from your inabilty or unwillingness to bring facts to the table.
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
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Perhaps Cryptic should impliments a 10% "own project" time like Google, where their art/code/numbers people get 10% of their paid time to devote to any feature they like.
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It hasn't worked out real well for Google - it has (mostly) produced a bunch of poor-to-middling applications that will be fixed and finished at some uncertain future date.
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Yeah, it's worked out just terribly for them. Would that CoH enjoyed the same level of failure as Google.
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I see - you assume that somehow the 10% program is a significant contributor to that sucess. Care to back up that assumption with facts?
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They attract a significant amount of talent with the 10% program, among other things. If the 10% program *never* generates a single commericially viable product, it will still have been worth it. If it does, it will be even more worth it.
The presumption Google is making is two-fold. One: happy workers are more productive workers, and the very people they tend to attract and seek out are the kind of people that need the 10% program. Two: 99.99% of all ideas suck, and its virtually impossible to target only the good ones. So you let smart people go after as many as is reasonably possible, like trying to buy as many tickets to the lottery as possible.
If the 10% program generates *one* commerically viable blockbuster for Google, anytime in the next ten years, the program will ultimately be a wild success for Google.
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"Can you give me a quick number crunch on that?"
170,000 active subscribers.
Say just 2% of them decide to create modules. That's 3,400 people.
Say they each create a module a week. That's 3,400 modules per week to audit.
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those numbers are.....uh....quite optimistic.
A more realisic prediction would be a fraction of one percent of players attempting and completing one module, forget churning out a stream of them. Even with a powerful, intuitive SDK making content takes a huge amount of time and energy, and not many people get past opening the program and realizing it's not going to do the work for them.
The talented people who put in the effort to make original, appealing & playable modules would swiftly rise to the top, and my estimate is you could count all of them on two hands.
Again, the early stages of screening would be taken care of by players. Players would be very adept at filtering out the generic, the boring and the unplayable.
Given any sort of halfway effective filter system, our hypothetical dev in charge of player submissions would be looking at maybe 1-3 suitable candidates per week, not thousands.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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I see - you assume that somehow the 10% program is a significant contributor to that sucess. Care to back up that assumption with facts?
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let's take 5 seconds to get some via...google.
"Twenty percent" time
All Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors.
In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, stated that her analysis showed that half of new product launches originated from 20% time."
Adsense is one of their major revenue sources.
Gmail revolutionized webmail.
Google News is causing seizemic changes in the news industry.
Pretty gigantic dividends for a tiny corporate investment.
And that's ignoring the hiring benefits of being able to tell potential employees "hey, one day a week you can work on whatever you want".
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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"Can you give me a quick number crunch on that?"
170,000 active subscribers.
Say just 2% of them decide to create modules. That's 3,400 people.
Say they each create a module a week. That's 3,400 modules per week to audit.
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those numbers are.....uh....quite optimistic.
A more realisic prediction would be a fraction of one percent of players attempting and completing one module, forget churning out a stream of them. Even with a powerful, intuitive SDK making content takes a huge amount of time and energy, and not many people get past opening the program and realizing it's not going to do the work for them.
The talented people who put in the effort to make original, appealing & playable modules would swiftly rise to the top, and my estimate is you could count all of them on two hands.
Again, the early stages of screening would be taken care of by players. Players would be very adept at filtering out the generic, the boring and the unplayable.
Given any sort of halfway effective filter system, our hypothetical dev in charge of player submissions would be looking at maybe 1-3 suitable candidates per week, not thousands.
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I have no numbers for you, but I do have have a "best case" (imo) example: NWN (NeverWinterNights). While not a true MMO, several persistent world servers are out there, some entirely custom made. As others have mentioned, the game editor that shipped to end users was the one the designers used to make the game, so there was no need to re-engineer an editor for players. There was content out very quickly, and afaik, continues to be new content drummed out. NWN has a pretty significant player base, comparible if not larger than CoX. I have no idea what kind of resources umm...BioWare?...set aside for QA on player created content, but I know none of the stuff I tried - even stuff that won "awards" - was anywhere near the same quality as what BioWare itself put out. And that's the stickler for me. I don't really care if PCC adds a ton of new content for me to play, if it's a ton of...garbage. And an insanely high percentage of it will be. I'd rather Cryptic devotes it's energies on developing new stuff itself, instead of filtering through our junk.
I don't doubt that there are a handful of players out there that could actually make a really decent mission/TF/whatever...I just doubt most of us would ever see it over the mountain of trash in the way.
Ok...thinking about this way too much...maybe the filtering needs to be done BEFORE anything is actually created? Send out some kind of competancy test (like they do for cartoonists with that turtle 
) and then release some editing tools to those that do well on that, and then release more stuff to people that do well on that, etc etc. like a multi-staged interview, till finally you get your handfull of submitters that are actually any good. Still a lot of time invested filtering all the tests, but the end result (in my mind) would be far far better.
That is all.
Guardien, you make good points, and I have seen several on this thread.
But I would like to share why I feel that this is a really good idea (very rare for me, I never post in this forum )
The Super Group I have been a part of for the past two years, The Concrete Gurus, is composed of very creative people. Extremely creative, making excellent costumes, fun bases, and amazing over all character concepts or themed teams. We do not roleplay however, at least not most of the time. Every once in a while we will have a classic comic book filler type conversation, lots of back and forth dialogue that involves no real action or important significance except to give us better insight to our own characters, but that is about the extent of our roleplaying. We perfer to leave the game to do that for us.
However, we have a universe of heroes and villains that we contribute to and bring to the table, we picture epic battles, and while a few of us write these, it just isnt the same as the feeling when you go against Lord Recluse, or Antimatter, characters that are not even ours. To allow us the opportunity to go up against our arch nemesis, many of which appear in the City of Villains side played by the same people, would be amazing. A story arc to show a more personal attempt at saving the world.
There are complications to that. For instance, one of our universe's main arch villains is named Mantis. Sure, naming him is nice, and simply doing that would require ALOT of work I am sure, but it would not be worth it if we were supposed to be fighting someone who appears in CoV as a robot/force field mastermind, but ends up having fire powers instead, and looks exactly like Captain Mako (throwing out random examples). To imagine customizing a villain at the end, you would have to put a costume generator into each mission generator. And what if you dont want to fight Skulls or Council? What if even the minions should be customized? The manpower needed to make this happen would most likely be immense.
But going back to the advantages, and looking from a different approach, think about this: City of Heroes movies. How often do you have to keep doing missions because you need this ONE room for a shot and just cannot get it? And when you finally get the shot and you wanted Circle of Thorns in it, oops, its Banished Pantheon. Bases are a big help to making movies, you can customize your set. You cant put enemies in there though, and with this you could.
Alot of what would be required for this is already in the game. Base generator on a slightly larger scale, costume generator, and a concept similar to gladiators, picking what villains you want to show (would need a much larger selection).
And honestly, I do not think that the missions would not need to be read one at a time before being approved. I have three possible scenerios in mind to avoid this:
1) A list of the available missions on the server that can be arranged by the most played, or highest rated. This would mean that players after doing the mission/story arc would rate their experience (might be a good idea even if this idea is not chosen). Then when a mission is come across that could be considered offensable, just like when you see a character that could be, you report it, and at the earliest convinence it is addressed. (Genericmissioned?)
2) Players click on other players as if they would a contact and be able to get missions from them. The player that created the mission could then get a message saying "so and so has accepted mission X!" And later "So and so and his/her team of ? people completed mission X! 5 star rating awarded!" Or something along these lines. Ratings could go to badges! The report offensable mission could apply here as well.
3) The only way a player can enter a customized mission is if he/she is the one that made it, or if they are teamed with the person that did.
Those are my two cents! I'll post again in the next two years!
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This is indeed something that I could get behind. I think ChaseArcanum has come up with a great idea of getting the missions into the game in a fairly simple and straight-forward manner. The difficult part, however, is actual implementation. I think by improving the features available to SG Bases, we can get to the point to where players can create their own missions.
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The more I think of it... the more polished I think our editors may already be.
I remember reading in an interview that the devs' "zone builder" is essentially integrated with the game engine... you can probably say that the base builder is a natural extension of it.
If that's accurate, then a "watered down" mob placement and scripting element might not be too-too difficult to port. Still an investment, mind you, but one with many pieces already in place.
The trick would be: would it offer enough to bring in more subscribers to make the investment worthwhile?
I'd say yes, but I love being GM/storyteller.
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If the Zone Builder is integrated into the game engine itself, then I think this is something they should sit down and seriously consider. Adding a simple scripting element shouldn't be too difficult, though it would be time consuming, and it doesn't even have to be near as robust as the old StarCraft scripts. Sorting and placing Mobs would just be a subsection of objects, separated by faction of course. In the Base Editor, when you click on something, you get a little window that describes the object. They could add both description and a properties tab there.
Not only do I think it would bring in more clients, I think it could bring back a number of inactive clients. It is something new and unique for players to do, both in playing with the toolset and actually playing through missions created by other players. We have some very talented people on these boards, and if just a handful of them got together to make a few missions, we'd get some really fantastic stuff.
There is, of course, the concern of "Does the player mission fit the current story of City of?" If it doesn't, there is already an answer. Alternate dimension and/or Portal Corp. 
We already have good CoT and good Carnies in alternate realities, which can be traveled via Portal Corp. I don't see why a few of these player made stories couldn't be a part of some alternate reality.
Now, if what you way is true and the outdoor world builder is as integrated as the indoor map builder, then I think we would have the potential for some really, really good stuff. With the talent we have on the boards, I'm sure we'd be able to churn out at least one or two well designed zones, complete with story arcs and more.
Cyclone Jack
-= idspispopd =-
[size=1]Arc ID: 3155 - Project Prometheus (Seeking Feedback, now with less invalidation)[/size]
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I think player created content can be GREAT...if it's handled correctly.
The problem with OK'ing submissions is partially an issue because of manpower. Depending on the number of submissions, you'd need people entirely devoted to reviewing, approving and ultimately putting that stuff into the game. That's not trivial, to be honest, when dealing with 100,000+ subscribers.
We've always talked about ways to get player material into the game...imagine using the base creator tools to make your own missions! Or a your own training room? Maybe some day we can figure a way to put this stuff into the game. The imagination just on these forums alone is so amazing; I can only hope we find a way an outlet for it.
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Heres an idea... create a very basic simulator of your engine. Something that lets a person use a generic model to run around a new tileset or to test a costume option no powers or anything, though allow animations for emote and new attack animation testing.. Now allow it or setup an interface to accept user made stuff. Now do a community highlight on user made sights. Finally, let the players creae and test out the stuff for you, and vote on the better pieces. Kinda like some mod communitys work now. The best stuff floats to the top.
Jay Doherty: Yes, there was this one night that I was ready to go home but had to drop the browns off at the super bowl before I left for home. While on the throne it hit me. I stayed for a few more hours and that why we have the pain pads in the game.
Unfortunately you also have to think of how the idea can be abused. Someone will set up content solely aimed at power leveling or getting invention drops now that this is in place.