Mission Creator: A new direction for MMOs?
By
Alphane,
Posted on: 2008-08-27 07:05 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Hopefully it will allow me to make my own Marshall Blitz Story Arc, if the Devs aren't making one, I might as well make one myself, the rogue arachnos in Warberg keep saying that "Marshall Blitz defends what is his", but where is the *******, he's a bit hypocritical with his inaction if he accused Lord Recluse of it
Well good luck to them.
AFAIK this is the first attempt at a modern MMO allowing player content on there servers, I loved NWN and it was my first intro to online gaming but as stated earlier Bioware wouldn't 'host' for you.
Err farming, I imagine these tools will allow you little access to spawn size, enemy lvl (min,liet etc) or spawn density, I would disagree with Val because if the rewards are lesser than 'official' missions why would anyone play them at all. But yes basically abuse is possible and highly likely!!! So what enemy don't resist my dmg type, Who does just S/L damage again, I can kill 15 freaks per 30 secs or 25 hellions for a net gain of X, If I never face a end drain enemy again do I really 'need' Stamina. The questions are endless (And no I'm not available to hire for 'custom' missions)
A lot rides on the success of this IMO (issue 13 mmmm?) this could make it City of Endless Content or just City of Min/Maxers. Who knows which way it will go but as I said earlier best of luck to them glad I'm here along for the ride
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Am i the first one to think, "Hmmm i can create my own farm map" !!
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If by first you mean "almost 6 months later" then sure 
Been there. Had the flamewar 
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Bit longer ago than that see DIY missions
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And longer than that... note that my post in that thread stated that I'd contributed a fair bit to a thread on this several months before yours.
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I'd forgotten about that 
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My search fu was weak then, so I'm not even going to try finding it now!
I'd guess that some people have wondered about PCC since about a day after seeing their 1st MMO...
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Very true! 
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Well good luck to them.
AFAIK this is the first attempt at a modern MMO allowing player content on there servers, I loved NWN and it was my first intro to online gaming but as stated earlier Bioware wouldn't 'host' for you.
Err farming, I imagine these tools will allow you little access to spawn size, enemy lvl (min,liet etc) or spawn density, I would disagree with Val because if the rewards are lesser than 'official' missions why would anyone play them at all. But yes basically abuse is possible and highly likely!!! So what enemy don't resist my dmg type, Who does just S/L damage again, I can kill 15 freaks per 30 secs or 25 hellions for a net gain of X, If I never face a end drain enemy again do I really 'need' Stamina. The questions are endless (And no I'm not available to hire for 'custom' missions)
A lot rides on the success of this IMO (issue 13 mmmm?) this could make it City of Endless Content or just City of Min/Maxers. Who knows which way it will go but as I said earlier best of luck to them glad I'm here along for the ride
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I reckon you've covered all the salient points there but I'm also highly confident that NCNC will have considered all the above and more and will have been working on this a long time to ensure that the player developed content is both immersive without being game breaking.
We've seen time and again that the new regime gives us great content without borking the game, and yet with each discussion of new content the "oh woe" cry goes up. I personally trust the Devs wholeheartedly on this and I have a real hunch that the most frequently played player-created missions will be those with the best stories and content and NOT simply those that are perceived to be about the best rewards.
I am equally confident that there will be plenty of people try and build their own version of the "Dreck" farm mission, which will fall over pretty quickly because they will be boring in comparison to the good content out there.
What would you rather do? The same damned boring mission ad-infinitum or a great arc that might not give you quite the same level of reward but a much better gaming experience?
Thelonious Monk
The downside is that in terms of variety of missions we have seen everything there is to see, its not impossible but highly likely players will not be able to come up with a radically new challenge...the real interest will be in the variety of stories and settings, so I am hoping there will be ways to weave an evolving story that doesnt intrude on the action but adds some depth to what you are doing.
Likewise it would be nice to develop some player contention short of outright pvp, villians setting challenges for heroes and vica versa.
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What would you rather do? The same damned boring mission ad-infinitum or a great arc that might not give you quite the same level of reward but a much better gaming experience?
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Better gaming experience IS the greatest level of reward. This is a game, and we play for fun... don't we? 
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Well good luck to them.
AFAIK this is the first attempt at a modern MMO allowing player content on there servers, I loved NWN and it was my first intro to online gaming but as stated earlier Bioware wouldn't 'host' for you.
Err farming, I imagine these tools will allow you little access to spawn size, enemy lvl (min,liet etc) or spawn density, I would disagree with Val because if the rewards are lesser than 'official' missions why would anyone play them at all. But yes basically abuse is possible and highly likely!!! So what enemy don't resist my dmg type, Who does just S/L damage again, I can kill 15 freaks per 30 secs or 25 hellions for a net gain of X, If I never face a end drain enemy again do I really 'need' Stamina. The questions are endless (And no I'm not available to hire for 'custom' missions)
A lot rides on the success of this IMO (issue 13 mmmm?) this could make it City of Endless Content or just City of Min/Maxers. Who knows which way it will go but as I said earlier best of luck to them glad I'm here along for the ride
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Yes because, you know, any wet-behind-the-ears-player can, in like 10 minutes, think of something that the whole team of developers, who are gaming professionals with years of experience, have not thought in the several months that they have spent developing this feature. Of course.
I am being sarcastic, for if it was not evident enough.
I am of the opinion that believing any of us is more clever than the collective brains of all the developer team is...well... a bit arrogant.
Disclaimer: For the record, even if I am quoting a post from Alphane, I am not impliying the "wet-behind-the-ears-player" or the "arrogant" is him in any way.
Just that what he exposed served me to illustrate what I mean.
well. NWN had a developement team as well and many o fthe player created scenarios were much much more enjoyable , and in some cases technically more sophisticated than the already quite enjoyable main story of the game.
I ran a PnP game (ADnD, DnD, Champions, villains and Vigilantes, CoC, chill) for over 18 years, 12 of those with the same group and I wrote scenarios for those games myself which my groups enjoyed immensely (they still talk about one I wrote that dealt with court intrigue and political infighting that went way better than I expected!). I'm not saying I'm a fantastic writer, there are infinitely better writers and scenario developers out there who write and create for the love of creation and not as a career so, yes, I firmly believe that some of the player created content *will* rival , equal or better the content created by hte current Devs. giving these players a chance to showcase their talent is a great move on NCs part.
Of course, NWN had a load of farming modules created or empty rooms with treasure lying around for the taking (monty haul) and a ton of rubish/bugged or just very very immature (lets throw in a dragon to fight, that would be cool... actually 5 dragons as a random event would be even cooler!)
as proof of concept take a look a valkryst's beginner level co-op suggestion and his international airport suggestion. Both great ideas, both equal or better (on paper) than the current starting points, now imagine what he could do given the tools and the UI to achieve his goals ?
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Yes because, you know, any wet-behind-the-ears-player can, in like 10 minutes, think of something that the whole team of developers, who are gaming professionals with years of experience, have not thought in the several months that they have spent developing this feature. Of course.
...
I am of the opinion that believing any of us is more clever than the collective brains of all the developer team is...well... a bit arrogant.
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Well, taking NwN as an example of what player-created content is like, there will be vast amounts of dross and some absolute gems. There will be players out there who are just as creative as the designers at NCSoft if not more so in a few, rare, cases.
It will not require ten minutes, it will take a whole lot longer. Good NwN modules are crafted over months, just like good missions and arcs in CoH. Frankly, I don't expect that the Mission Architect will be even a patch on the flexibility of the NwN module Editor, but no arc worth playing is going to take less than a week or so to build.
Assuming that the playerbase contains no one with the creativity and skill to make arcs as good or better than the ones NCSoft have designed is kind of inverted arrogance. There will be good stuff out there, the question is whether we will be able to find it amongst the heaps of no-story mob bashes.
As an aside, perhaps we should run a sweepstake on how many modules have to be written before the first non-Freakshow one comes out...
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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I am of the opinion that believing any of us is more clever than the collective brains of all the developer team is...well... a bit arrogant.
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Stories aren't written by committe, and players will actually be able to spend a lot more time in polishing and editing a mission than the developers do. So, yes, the very best player created missions will probably be better than the best NCSoft created missions; on the other hand, the player created dross will be both more plentiful and more drossier than the developer created dross.
Obviously I didn't make myself clear.
What I was referring is NOT that players cannot create equal or better content than developers. Creativity is out of the question.
What I meant is that of course developers have thought about the possibilities of the system to be exploited to farm, PL, badge-hunting or whatever and have taken steps to prevent it.
I am sorry if my poor mastery of the English language didn't make it clear.
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Obviously I didn't make myself clear.
What I was referring is NOT that players cannot create equal or better content than developers. Creativity is out of the question.
What I meant is that of course developers have thought about the possibilities of the system to be exploited to farm, PL, badge-hunting or whatever and have taken steps to prevent it.
I am sorry if my poor mastery of the English language didn't make it clear.
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Thats not really true either, if you look at the history of things that have gotten ingame and then been exploited by the player base until the loophole is closed.
There's so many players trying different things that the breadth of their experimentation frequently exposes exploits the Devs never dreamt of when designing features.
You don't get XP for defeating enemies in the Mission Creator though, do you?
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Obviously I didn't make myself clear.
What I was referring is NOT that players cannot create equal or better content than developers. Creativity is out of the question.
What I meant is that of course developers have thought about the possibilities of the system to be exploited to farm, PL, badge-hunting or whatever and have taken steps to prevent it.
I am sorry if my poor mastery of the English language didn't make it clear.
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Thats not really true either, if you look at the history of things that have gotten ingame and then been exploited by the player base until the loophole is closed.
There's so many players trying different things that the breadth of their experimentation frequently exposes exploits the Devs never dreamt of when designing features.
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One thing is players farming Katie Hannon TF without beating the AV (for example)... and a very different thing is thinking the devs will allow players to create missions designed to be easily farmable. There is a world of difference.
Show some faith in the devs!
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You don't get XP for defeating enemies in the Mission Creator though, do you?
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The general consensus seems to be that there will be XP of some level. Although of course to be sure we'll just have to wait and see
From Positron
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To that end, the Rewards in the Mission Architect are something we, ahem, discussed with raised voices time and time again. How much was too much? How little was too little? What limits needed to be put into place to stop farming? Should we even have such limits? Etc. In the end, we made a system that we believe is best suited for what the Mission Architect was made for, and made sure it cannot be abused. Time and testing will tell if that is really the case though. Like the Invention System, there will be many iterations on the Mission Architect to make sure we get it right before it goes to the Live servers.
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Show some faith in the devs!
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I always do
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Disclaimer: For the record, even if I am quoting a post from Alphane, I am not impliying the "wet-behind-the-ears-player" or the "arrogant" is him in any way.
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Oh OK I got the scary sense you actually knew me from somewhere
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as proof of concept take a look a valkryst's beginner level co-op suggestion and his international airport suggestion. Both great ideas, both equal or better (on paper) than the current starting points, now imagine what he could do given the tools and the UI to achieve his goals ?
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It's a frightening thought - the universe would probably implode 
Actually you'd think if anyone was bouncing around excited about the mission architect it would be me (yeah I used to be the GM for my long-running PnP RPG group as well), but actually I'm not that thrilled about it yet - probably because I'm a cynic and I suspect it won't be anywhere near as powerful as everyone is guessing/hoping. I'm very happy to be proved wrong, but until we have more information I'm reserving judgement - and perhaps even dreading it a little (it could split our already small playerbase even further, by segregating those who love story over xp/inf rewards in the user-created missions from those who primarily seek xp/inf rewards more than story in the official content).
At the moment we don't even know if the mission architect is going to be macro-focused construction ("pick your mission variables from a dropdown list of pre-made/existing instance maps, factions and existing bosses then bookend it with your own briefing/debriefing/boss text, and let the architect create your mission") or micro-focused construction ("build the map block-by-block like we do with SG bases, use multiple factions and place them spawn-by-spawn exactly where you want, place glowies/ambush-triggers one-by-one exactly where you want, create a boss in the costume creator and place him exactly where you want then write all his text for both first contact and at the quartile HP levels as he is defeated, then add your briefing/debriefing text for the mission") - obviously I'd prefer the latter, but I have an unshakeable suspicion we'll be getting the former.
Plus I could never really work my magic until the Devs gave me the power to create outdoor persistent zones, and that's never going to happen
Well I hope to gain at least *something* out of playing player created missions; otherwise what's the point. Just playing to 'read' the story isn't what I'm looking for; then I'd just rather finish reading some books.
From what I understood is that there would be some reward just not enough to make it worth while to farm but enough to play the missions.
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The downside is that in terms of variety of missions we have seen everything there is to see, its not impossible but highly likely players will not be able to come up with a radically new challenge...
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I disagree, I can think of at least one scenario that I have yet to see in game. (This game at any rate.)
I won't outline it here as it will be the first mission arc I try and create
Farming: There are already an abundance of boring repetitive farming missions that I can do now. My lvl50 however only has paper missions left to do. I'm certainly looking forward to having some 'content' for her to do.
Personal Idea would be for each mission/arc to be a script that can either be created offline, or at least be saved offline so that we can share missions far easier than having them online only. The added advantage to that is that providing the scrip is not encrypted it can be edied by tools other than those provided. The users might not create their own tools which provide greater control but if they have the option they might. Having the scripts stored locally won't change the quality control one iota as they'll still need to be interpreted by the game. And AFAIK the missions in game now are stored in text files.
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imagine what he could do given the tools and the UI to achieve his goals ?
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I'd like the ones BAB uses
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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well. NWN had a developement team as well and many o fthe player created scenarios were much much more enjoyable , and in some cases technically more sophisticated than the already quite enjoyable main story of the game.
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NWN's singleplayer campaign was a toolset with an example campaign attached. Later on in their advertising they tried to sell it as a full blown RPG.
/shrug
Most true. The two sequels had considerably better storylines and very much better scripting.
Oddly, the best bit of the main NwN2 campaign was a sub-game which had you building up a ruined castle into a working fortress. Quite satisfying. Sadly, your efforts have almost no effect on the battle that happens there.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
Yeah that was a bit annoying after all the fun of building it up to see no actual effect for it (ran through twice and the fight was no more difficult without working on the castle)
"Well, they found my diary today.
They were appropriately appalled
at the discovery of the eight victims
They're now putting it all together.
Women wrapped in silk
with one leg missing
Eight legs, one body, silk,
spider, brilliant!"
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Am i the first one to think, "Hmmm i can create my own farm map" !!
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If by first you mean "almost 6 months later" then sure
Been there. Had the flamewar
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Bit longer ago than that see DIY missions
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And longer than that... note that my post in that thread stated that I'd contributed a fair bit to a thread on this several months before yours. My search fu was weak then, so I'm not even going to try finding it now!
I'd guess that some people have wondered about PCC since about a day after seeing their 1st MMO...
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