Very interesting. I'm trying to work out, as it's taken from a secondary source, whether that stuff is likely, definitely, or possibly going to end up in the mission creator.
I'd guess an offline version is out of the question, as it'd have to integrate a costume editor.
I said weeks back that the mission creator would be useless to me if you couldn't design the villain of the piece; I wonder if it'll be possible to design every mob on the map (if time-consuming) using items 3 and 4.
The one thing I feared most was that it'd work like radio missions; set the map type and the villain group and objective then write a briefing and some dialogue. That'd be near pointless. It looks like they're moving in a direction that'll take them around the outskirts of that village, staying on the bypass signposted for awesomeville.
The rewards system would be inherently abusable; get a couple of mates to rate your missions and you're away. Whether it's stifling creativity to not have all the content available to everyone immediately is tricky to say; It'll encourage more people to try their hand at a quality arc.
I'm going to be using it for a few arc concepts; I've quite a few more ideas bubbling around up there. I wonder how copyright infringement will be policed; I guess via the petition system again. Shame, I was looking forward to making a 'Defeat wl0vr1ne, s0perm4n and tarantulaman and get the kyrptoniet chnuk' mission.
I'm really looking forward to it; it's the one feature in the history of the game (at least, since I started in I3) that's got me truly excited about being able to make something meaningful. Between this and Spore, I rather suspect I'm going to be a hermit next year. Suits me.
DON'T eat muffins while I'm developing you.
Pants! Turkey Magnates! A man in a box! Rogue AI! Come one, come all, to arc ID 10107 - It's [i]'Not as long as some other arcs'[/i]!
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9. Creators don't have access to high level content (environments, NPCs, etc.) until their own characters have encountered/defeated them in the main game.
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Unfortunately, that means that Heroes won't get access to any maps which are uniquely villains and vice versa. 
I hope the rating system works with low criteria - as in if rate get 1 out of 5 stars a hundred times, you still get the same stuff as someone who got 5 out of 5 20 times. (This is just an example).
What I don't want to see is someone creating a long, intricate story arc, but because they've called it Zachariah's Zebra, no one ever plays it cause it's at the bottom of the list. Putting a lot of effort in and then not getting a lot of it is the surest way to put people off, so making it strictly dependent on the whims of strangers - not so sure.
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Very interesting. I'm trying to work out, as it's taken from a secondary source, whether that stuff is likely, definitely, or possibly going to end up in the mission creator.
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As I said in the other thread, NCSoft confirmed they'd sent out the survey, so it's been put together by them. Even if it's just a mock up (which at this stage is doubtful), it's probably pretty close to how they'll do it when it's launched.
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
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Very interesting. I'm trying to work out, as it's taken from a secondary source, whether that stuff is likely, definitely, or possibly going to end up in the mission creator.
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As I said in the other thread, NCSoft confirmed they'd sent out the survey, so it's been put together by them. Even if it's just a mock up (which at this stage is doubtful), it's probably pretty close to how they'll do it when it's launched.
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Ah, cheers. First thing I looked for when I saw how awesome it looked was the date; wondered if April had come around again.
DON'T eat muffins while I'm developing you.
Pants! Turkey Magnates! A man in a box! Rogue AI! Come one, come all, to arc ID 10107 - It's [i]'Not as long as some other arcs'[/i]!
[ QUOTE ]
The rewards system would be inherently abusable; get a couple of mates to rate your missions and you're away. Whether it's stifling creativity to not have all the content available to everyone immediately is tricky to say; It'll encourage more people to try their hand at a quality arc.
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Which is why, IMO, the creator's name needs to be hidden. OK, that doesn't stop it completely, as people can tell others the name of their mission; but it's probably the best NC can do to limit that sort of thing.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The trouble with hiding the name of the mission writer:
I've just played a really excellent mission by someone called FFM. So I want to look for more missions by the same author.
I really should do something about this signature.
Thank you for the info 
Just wondering will the XP gained from creating our own missions be the same XP gained in the normal missions? :P
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I've just played a really excellent mission by someone called FFM. So I want to look for more missions by the same author.
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You could still have a link sending you to more of the same, even if you don't see the name. Granted, that's still open to abuse, but at least you'd just be abusing someone anonymously.
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
I agree with floatingfatman that the name of the creater needs to be hidden. However the downside to that is that if you find a storyarc you like you cannot find their name and find others by them.
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Thank you for the info Just wondering will the XP gained from creating our own missions be the same XP gained in the normal missions? :P
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No idea. But the way they phrased it makes me think No.
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
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9. Creators don't have access to high level content (environments, NPCs, etc.) until their own characters have encountered/defeated them in the main game.
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Unfortunately, that means that Heroes won't get access to any maps which are uniquely villains and vice versa.
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I would imagine the unlocking would be done on a per acount basis, so as long as you played both heroes and villains you would be able to unlock everything.
I really should do something about this signature.
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I would imagine the unlocking would be done on a per acount basis, so as long as you played both heroes and villains you would be able to unlock everything.
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That'd be fine.
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
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9. Creators don't have access to high level content (environments, NPCs, etc.) until their own characters have encountered/defeated them in the main game.
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Unfortunately, that means that Heroes won't get access to any maps which are uniquely villains and vice versa.
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I would imagine the unlocking would be done on a per acount basis, so as long as you played both heroes and villains you would be able to unlock everything.
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I'm not reading the snippets we know so far as saying that nothing is unlocked until you've met it in-game. Just that some high level content (environments, NPCs, etc.) needs meeting in-game to unlock.
E.g. I'd see it fine that people needed to visit RWZ/Cimerora or Shadow Shards to unlock outdoor maps for these places but I wouldn't necessarily think that you'd need to play villains at all to have access to the CoV office textures.
That bit about encountered/defeated in game makes me wonder if it's just linked to the badge (and maybe souvenir) system. That could easily cover most outdoor environments and a lot of the big bads, foe factions etc.
I wonder if textures like the hellion(?) burning office or the superadine warehouse will make it in, and if they'll be available without unlocking, as not everyone encounters these but they appear very early on for heroes that do encounter them. I don't think they give badges or are in souvenir arcs either, and even if you're of the right origin you may not have done the mission.
Having it account-based makes sense - or, rather, not basing it on accounts makes no sense whatsoever. I guess an account-wide badge position could be created (if it doesn't exist already for the normal ingame badges).
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Being account based for unlocking content makes perfect sense; however. There IS that part about putting your own character in the missions as a contact. That COULD mean it's character based; unless you get to select from a list of your chars for who the contact is.
If so, I'd think the character would need to be at or above, the mission level.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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As for rewards, I think they are essential to get people to play the missions, but they'll need to be careful here or we'll be overloaded with farming missions.
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It is unavoidable that there will be lots of farming missions as well because rewards will have to be same with current mission system and be based on that.
As long as there is no tweaking with drop rate and xp values from mobs should be ok.
Lessened rewards will lead to the system not being very used until after level 50.
Besides noone will force you to play farming missions.
I think it would be nice to have tags for mission types for example Roleplay,Increased challenge,Farming etc etc etc
First of all, good idea of creating this thread FFM!
Generally highly hopeful and can't wait to get my hands on this.
Couple of issues I have because of the way I want to use the creator, basically as a GM on tabletop, create story arcs for certain friends to have fun with.
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11. Rewarding creators of the most popular content with exclusive unlockable content such as signature heroes and villains or unique maps
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I don't wanna create popular content, I want to create content for my friends. 
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12. A rating system that allows players to rate missions or flag them for inappropriate content, allowing the developer to remove bad content and potentially ban players
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This inappropriate content thing worries me, I mean I might want go a bit on the dark and grim on certain plots, however since I don't have a taste for being too graphic in my stories I don't think it will be a real issue as long as I can go as far as CoV goes. Still would prefer if I could have control over who can play my stories.
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This is a new module for City of Heroes, fictionally presented as a training exercise for Heroes and Villains
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I can see why they did this, however it might be a bit immersion breaking, however the fact that you can put contacts in the mission makes me hope that you can actually create minor instances of Paragon City or something, we'll have to see.
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<QR>
Hopefully, you would need to play through the entire mission/arc before you could rate it. This should cut down the potential griefing.
I still agree that they need to somehow protect the creator, be it via anonymous submissions or in some other way.
Icelock - Ice/Storm Controller
Command Bot 1 - Bot/Traps MM
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Hopefully, you would need to play through the entire mission/arc before you could rate it. This should cut down the potential griefing.
I still agree that they need to somehow protect the creator, be it via anonymous submissions or in some other way.
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Also, there should be no way you could skip rating it. You can't exit until rated/if you log out the rating is waiting for you when you log back in.
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
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Being account based for unlocking content makes perfect sense; however. There IS that part about putting your own character in the missions as a contact. That COULD mean it's character based; unless you get to select from a list of your chars for who the contact is.
If so, I'd think the character would need to be at or above, the mission level.
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I'd have thought that, given everything else they'll be doing to make this work, allowing you to pick one of your charcters from a list isn't going to be a great deal (comparatively).
Besides - missions are available on all shards/servers, which sounds like the PCC server will be akin to the auction server and service US/EU. This means that your character contact will appear globally... and if they can appear globally doesn't limiting which character you can choose seem a bit of a cop-out?
Interesting... I know PCC missions are in a seperate gauntlet-test-holodeck-thingy, but presumably your character keeps the name that they have (or possibly the one you assign at mission creation time?) Guess you're fine to play missions given by 'yourself' and that name clashes aren't a problem between PCC contact NPCs and PCs.
It wouldn't surprise me if you could create a totally new mission contact instead of your own character and it's just that you can select one of your own characters as a shortcut. This makes sense as:
* The missions are claiming player designed bigbads, so some form of character design is being stored with the mission/arc.
* The PCC mission is presumably storing a clone/copy of your character if used as a contact, otherwise what happens if you delete the character? Rename? Change their looks in game? Much simpler, I'd have thought, to store a copy.
And stating that you can use your own character as a contact is a much better marketing/selling point than saying you can design bespoke contacts, so could do one that looks like your own character and has the same name.
Your point about mission level wouldn't surprise me, but then it could be totally irrelevant... IIRC the survey we saw said your character can appear as a contact, not as an combatant in the mission. What level is Paula Dempsey or Burke? Sure we know what level their missions may be, but what level are they themselves?
Final asides:
If you do put yourself ingame as the contact (and I'm sure that this will be very popular) then how the heck can any rating be anonymous???
If you come across a mission with Judgement Dave as the contact then I'd be a bit upset if you didn't think I'd done it... and rate it accordingly low!
And if you can create bespoke mission contacts or rename them, what if I create a mission with the contact name of another player? You never realised that Ghost Raptor would design such a poor mission nor that his costume looks like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen in full gimpsuit!
By my mohawk shall ye know me!
my toons
Funny: Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh! #3662 * The foul-mouthed Handyman! #1076 * City of Norms #132944
Serious: To Save A Single World (#83744) * Marketing Opportunity (#83747)
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You never realised that Ghost Raptor would design such a poor mission nor that his costume looks like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen in full gimpsuit!
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5 stars right there
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
There are lots of ways to reduce the ratings problem, from anonymity through weighted scores to not using the mean rating, but ultimately all you can do is *try* and stop griefing/abuse because if people are determined enough they'll find ways around it.
As for inappropriate content, I presume it's designed to stop dialogue along the lines of "What the [censored] do you think you're [censored] doing, you [censored] [censored]", highly offensive content, or copyright infringing content, rather than penalising those who want to create missions for more mature audiences.
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All of it sounds just full of win!
Hopefully all/most map types will be available with the option to add effects to them (the ghost fog in croatoa for example) for added feeling.
Only things im wondering whether we get or not are;
*Cutscenes - if these get implemented (with a time limit to a scene obv to prevent a mini movie) then all my stories will be making it into the game.
*Giant monsters - if you could one of these in the missions after defeating it ingame (would create incentive to go after them again) as a small epic battle. Would have to be a weakened version obviously again.
*Combo mission objectives - The defeat all/kill boss/get glowy missions WILL be great if it is just them, but to make it perfect they should allow us to combine mission complete objectives. For example putting out 7 fires in the building (like steel canyon), rescuing the hostages and defeating hellion boss.
Me Want Now!!!!!!!
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I doubt cut scene's will make it in. When I was chatting with War Witch at Omega Sektor, she said they were incredibly difficult to set up. It's a lot more than just the dialog; it's the avatar positions and emotes, plus the camera angles as well. The timings are big issue also. I'd be surprised if they let us do them, considering they themselves find them a chore.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Hopefully, you would need to play through the entire mission/arc before you could rate it.
[/ QUOTE ]You'd need some way to mark content that's either really hard or just plain unfinishable due to being broken though.
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Hopefully, you would need to play through the entire mission/arc before you could rate it.
[/ QUOTE ]You'd need some way to mark content that's either really hard or just plain unfinishable due to being broken though.
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I can't imagine the creator would allow you to set a broken mission and since it'll still just adjust things depending on team size/difficulty, it's not going to be "too hard", as such.
No harder than facing Banished Pantheon with a Dark for example.
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
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Seeing as the other thread is concentrating mostly on the switching sides system it appears we're probably getting, I thought I'd split off a thread to discuss what was shown of the mission creator in this article.
This should let us make truly unique mob types!
I'm going to look at each part in turn...
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This is a new module for City of Heroes, fictionally presented as a training exercise for Heroes and Villains, that allows players to build their own Missions and Story Arcs and share them with others in the game. Using an intuitive interface similar to the game's detailed Character Creator, players can create missions by selecting options like size and type of map/environment, mission objectives and encounter types, and difficulty level of each encounter. Additionally, players can write all mission story fiction and character dialogue.
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So the whole thing is being presented as a kind of "danger room"? I actually kind of like that idea. I think it'll fit well with the current mission structure, though it would have been nice to create "real" missions. I can see why they've made this choice though, as it removes any danger of PCC interfering with official canon.
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Players can create their own missions and they can play missions that have been created by other players. Once you have finalized and "published" your missions, they are accessible by all players across all servers. All players can rate player created missions and a Mission Browser lets players find available missions and story arcs through a variety of tabs, sorts and filters in an auction house type environment.
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I do hope that, once a mission is finalized and published, the creator name is hidden at least until AFTER you've rated it. IMO, they need to do that to prevent mis-rating through personality clashes etc.
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As missions are played and more people positively rate them, the creator gains rewards and access to unlockable content for his/her missions. Rewards will also be given to players of the missions. Players will gain rewards such as badges and even XP for playing user created missions and StoryArcs.
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So, unlockable content. It gives the mission creator the incentive to make the best missions they can, so as to get more goodies to add to future missions; but it could also have the opposite effect. As for rewards, I think they are essential to get people to play the missions, but they'll need to be careful here or we'll be overloaded with farming missions.
Now for the feature list.
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1. Write your own dialog for all aspects of the mission.
2. Build Missions and Story Arcs using a Character Creator-like interface
3. Players can build powers for some NPCs by selecting from a group of primary and secondary power pools and attaching them to the NPCs
4.Players can build a boss (and other NPCs) to place within their mission by creating its looks in the Character Creator and assigning it the powers of an existing NPC (non playable character)
5. Select a variety of components for the overall mission including Level Range, Map, Length, Villain Group, Pacing, Time to Complete, Goals/type of mission, etc.
6. Customize Encounters to your preference (Place in End Room, Select Villain Group, Name Boss, Select Critter Type, Select Hostage NPC Critter, etc.)
7. Using an in-game auction house type interface, other players can find user created StoryArcs across all shards
8. Creators can include their own character as a contact within the mission(s)
9. Creators don't have access to high level content (environments, NPCs, etc.) until their own characters have encountered/defeated them in the main game.
10. Using an out-of-game web interface, other players can find user created StoryArcs across all shards
11. Rewarding creators of the most popular content with exclusive unlockable content such as signature heroes and villains or unique maps
12. A rating system that allows players to rate missions or flag them for inappropriate content, allowing the developer to remove bad content and potentially ban players
13. Players can enter the mission maps to adjust placement of the NPC spawns from their pre-selected positions
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Items 3 & 4. I can't begin to say how incredible GREAT this idea is!
Item 8. TOTALLY awesome!
Item 9. This makes perfect sense, I think. Gives you an incentive to still remember to actually play the game, instead of sitting in the mission creator all the time.
Item 10. Not sure of the usability of this feature really. I guess it's OK that you can browse them, but what I'd REALLY like is to be able to create them offline!
Item 12. As I said before, this MUST be anonymous to prevent mission creators getting griefed. The only people who need to know who made the mission, are NCSoft.
Item 13. Very good, but please put bounding limits so that you can't do thinks like move the entire map's spawns into the same area. Although, if anyone did that, I think they would get pretty bad ratings.
Overall. So far, from what we've seen it's looking pretty damned awesome. This is the one feature, over ALL the others announced in that article, that I'm waiting for the most. GIMME GIMME GIMME!
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.