Player Created Content *Maps*

Putting on my thickest pair of asbestos thongs..



But I would really like to know from the tech savvy people in this area what you think about the possibilities.


What if players could create maps and maybe even costume features on their own and submit them via some host storage for the devs to sort through, and add to the game if their standards are met.

Even if the content were only used for the Mission Architect, for example, which was widely requested around it's release.


I know a dev has said the sorting through player uploaded content would be time intensive and thus unlikely, but power customization was never suppose to happen either.


The idea has been brought up many times before I'm aware, but they have a full team now, and while they shouldn't do anything specifically because of the new competition, it would give CoH another feature unrivaled by DCO or CO.



Players have created some beautiful, near industry standard additions to numerous games.
For example, the Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942, which was of such high quality it became part of the retail game.
Just look at a tiny sampling of vehicles and maps created entirely for free by player enthusiasts.













Imagine that level of skilled creativity from subscribers unleashed on say, a remodeling of Atlas Park, or totally unique locations like outer space or alien cities, while the devs could decide the lore of the additions and mold it into the city of heroes world.


Many things in this game were impossible, before they became possible, is player created content a final barrier of untapped possibilities?


You may flame, but if you could mix in a real comment, I'd just like to see what you think.

If the Cryptic thing could be overcome, which I do think it's likely that's a main cause for this, they could easily release something similar to what Valve has done and have their Hammer Editor out there for general use. With something similar it might even make their OWN devs have a much easier time, as I recall talking to Clayton at year before lasts' comic con party, the new character gen stuff is very different from what they even had before at that time.

So... I am all for it. I doubt I'd ever be able to USE it myself, I've tried using Hammer lol - I know how deep that pool is. But there ARE some truly incredible modders out there for any given game community that DOES have a shared or reasonably open-source method of making their game.

I don't see why something like this couldn't be done for MA, although it might have to be limited to tilesets that the devs create. They already have the framework in-place in the base editor.

It's a cool idea, but my guess is that the game currently requires that all graphics assets be downloaded in the patches. That means the patch files would grow quite large because (probably) every player has to be able to view any other player, base or mission.

This could be gotten around by having the graphics assets be downloaded on demand. But since those can be quite large, a player could be hit by a huge download at any random time. I'm not sure, but the in-game ads may not be included in the patches and could be the basis for on-demand graphics downloads. It would obviously require a lot of work.

I think the real legal issue with this is that of trademarks and copyright, and the game's rating. The legal team at NCsoft would have to approve every single item that was uploaded to make sure that they didn't contain trademarks or something inappropriate for the T rating. For example, if someone made a chest emblem that was a Nike swoosh it would be an issue. Now, NCsoft would probably win any lawsuit involved based on prior precedents, but it would still cost a lot to litigate.

If they allowed costume pieces to be created someone would create anatomically correct nude body costume parts. While the MA allows you to create some pretty graphic stories, you have to go and find them. This would allow the offenders to parade around the city and immediately trash the game's T rating. Similarly, if you allowed users to create sections of the city, walls could be painted with graphic images. Users could hide nasty "easter eggs" in sections of the city that the devs would be unable to find during their testing.

The Mission Architect allows you to upload similar kinds of content with issues of trademark, copyright and social convention, but the editor has a filter that weeds out problem terms. Such a filter would not be possible with graphics.

A first step toward this might be to allow custom chest emblems and cape patterns. Those would be relatively small. They have the same issues as I mentioned above, but would be much less expensive to review. These could be in-game rewards or -- wait for it -- micro transactions!

I'd love to see some sort of fine-grained map creation utility along the lines of an upgraded Base Editor, but I won't be holding my breath.

User created maps are a stable of the FPS world, but in that realm players deal with a biased map themselves. Unbalanced maps don't make the rotation, or players walk away when they come up.

In an MMO a biased map would be viewed as a feature, not a bug, by a sizable demographic.

I'm inclined to believe the dev energy required to make such a system function would be better spent creating new 'official' maps for us to mess around with.

So the consensus so far is that most who've posted would like to see it, with some player created content potentially being of very high quality.
But the devs wont do it because:

1 Legal issues.
2 Time requirements.
3 Size and performance issues.
4 The game engine is unable to facilitate it.
5 The devs would rather just keep making their own content.



Some of your positive comments:

" it'd be interesting to see what people came up with."
"So... I am all for it.-- there ARE some truly incredible modders out there."
"I don't see why something like this couldn't be done for MA."
"It's a cool idea."
"I'd love to see some sort of fine-grained map creation utility along the lines of an upgraded Base Editor."