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Let's ask devs to hold a lockbox concept contest
jebidiahbeetus
Posts: 550 Arc User
I recently asked one of the devs if they could look at my idea for a new lockbox. He informed me that legally, they are not able to look at or comment on it because they could be sued if they implemented something similar in the future after browsing the topic thread. Unless, the idea was specifically submitted for a contest.
Players in Zone chat informed me that almost all of the Alert villains were created by players years ago; Devana, Ripper, Rockjaw, and so on. The only contests I have seen since joining CO three years ago have been costume contests. If creating and implementing new villains for alerts would be too labor intensive, then I propose the devs hold a contest for a new lockbox theme.
Once in a while, our ideas for costume pieces are added to the game. (I know for sure that the Sacred Rope was added to the monthly gold vendor after it was requested in the Costume Suggestion thread) So the devs are receptive to the ideas we submit. Since there hasn't been a contest in years, and there's a new lockbox released every few months, let's all get together and ask the devs to host one.
The player whose concept is chosen could be given some in-game rewards and have their lockbox created and credited to them, if there were up to three winners then first place would have their lockbox created first, followed by second and third place. I've got a great lockbox theme fleshed out and I would be happy to submit the idea for free if it meant there was a chance it could be created in the future.
What do you think, Champions? Vote below and maybe we could make this idea a reality.
Players in Zone chat informed me that almost all of the Alert villains were created by players years ago; Devana, Ripper, Rockjaw, and so on. The only contests I have seen since joining CO three years ago have been costume contests. If creating and implementing new villains for alerts would be too labor intensive, then I propose the devs hold a contest for a new lockbox theme.
Once in a while, our ideas for costume pieces are added to the game. (I know for sure that the Sacred Rope was added to the monthly gold vendor after it was requested in the Costume Suggestion thread) So the devs are receptive to the ideas we submit. Since there hasn't been a contest in years, and there's a new lockbox released every few months, let's all get together and ask the devs to host one.
The player whose concept is chosen could be given some in-game rewards and have their lockbox created and credited to them, if there were up to three winners then first place would have their lockbox created first, followed by second and third place. I've got a great lockbox theme fleshed out and I would be happy to submit the idea for free if it meant there was a chance it could be created in the future.
What do you think, Champions? Vote below and maybe we could make this idea a reality.
Let's ask devs to hold a lockbox concept contest 24 votes
Yes
54%
13 votes
No
45%
11 votes
0
Comments
I wasn't here for those..why did the virtual robot costume go badly?
Only some of the Alert Villains were created by Players. (Devana Hawke, Rockjaw, Ao'quethoth, Hrodegnir), the others are lore based villains.
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It might be a nice idea to bring back contests, but I think that channels of communication between the winner and Cryptic's Development staff as well as what can reasonably be accomplished need to be established waaaay in advance of a contest being proposed.
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They way I picture it the devs announce the contest to be held during a month, players submit their concept here on the forum with the guidelines being something like, a specific number of costume piece ideas, an emote, an aura, one Loyal Sidekick and one new Ultimate power and maybe a new mod. Most lockboxes tend to have these things included in them.
Perhaps players could also create the lockbox preview hero to appear in Ren Cen?
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Then maybe a costume set contest instead?
There ya go! Better overall and less expensive on the player wallet
42 40s, LTSer.
I'm happy with either, but the main idea is to persuade the devs to hold another contest, so that our ideas can legally be looked at without fear of litigation.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/253830/variable-robot-and-the-sorry-state-of-staff-communication/p1
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/comment/12727564
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/253799/fc-31-20150528a-4-pts-update/p1
About Frosticus and Blaze, you can read the designer's apology here:
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/comment/1792047
I miss meed's comments. I'm sure they stopped playing though/posting, which sucks. They were always a good read
42 40s, LTSer.
So things didn't go well the first time around, does this mean we shouldn't ever try again? Maybe this could be a learning experience. If we want CO to be better then it's up to us to submit new ideas for content. Since they won't review our suggestions without a contest, then the only way for this to happen is to hold another one. I've been part of CO three, almost four years now and haven't seen a contest since i've joined, I think we're overdue.
Whether it be a lockbox or costume set or a whole new archetype, i'm all for any opportunity to share ideas. Costume pieces that were added after being requested in the Costume Suggestion thread seem to be well received, I don't recall seeing anybody complain about them having texture problems. Maybe the devs finally found their costume creating groove and can do a better job today than a few years ago.
The costume sets and lockboxes that have been released lately are nice, but unfortunately none of them appealed to me all that much. I'd really like my preferred genre to be shown some love in an MMO for once, but it's unlikely that will happen unless we can get some sort of dialogue going between devs and players. It appears a contest is the surest way for that to happen.
The bottom line is, we either push for a new contest (and chance to show off our creativity) or sit and twiddle our thumbs while talking to ourselves, because the devs can't legally look at our ideas and add them to the game without one.
There were at least three people who implemented the designs for the player voted on sets.
- Players who made the design
- The amazing Meatiator who created holo/psi set and actually had concept work for the others.
- And then the wet behind the ear dev who actually made the remainder of the sets, based off his work.
So for instance, alien tights...those cool torn skin ones and the bug eye plate bit....that was meant for the archnid set. It’s in Meatiator concept art.
So player made designs are fine....but it’s the follow through that is the issue.
If Meatiators concepts were done by him, we would be praising all those sets.
And this was about three years ago right? Devs seem to do a much better job with costume sets and clipping problems now, so maybe this time around things will go more smoothly.
Let's try to get a contest scheduled, then we can quibble all we like about communication afterwards. There's no guarantee there wouldn't be player to dev interaction in CO's current state.
1. Duratok Gorehowl, the Malvan Gladiator
Duratok is a long-time past player of the game, very enthusiastic and almost always posting/communicating in character. Information on this is hard to find, and I personally don't remember it since it was from before I started playing, but he seemingly won a contest run in beta to become included in the game somehow.
The short of it was that technically Cryptic did do good on their deal. Around 2011 the Duratok sidekick device was released, and it was actually developed by using voice clips that the player themselves supplied. However sidekicks aren't a very exciting addition to the game, and by far, this sidekick device was one of the more obnoxious ones to have around because it was one of the only sidekicks to use voice clips (people would often be very confused as to where the screaming was coming from). Not catastrophic, but still, less than the player likely expected.
After some years Gorehowl stopped playing. Well before the year that Forum Malvanum was introduced in 2015, and Duratok shows up once again as a boss. Unfortunately it's also the most tankiest boss with a time limit, leading many players to despise this leg of the FM fight. At some point Gorehowl's dialog was re-recorded (the subtitles include grunts like "Pah!" that can be read, but aren't heard in the second take.) I don't know if it's still the same player as the VO, but the mic quality is much higher, and it could either mean they're still on good terms (I would hope) or they just got someone else to do his voice to match the rest of the game's VO quality.
Point is Gorehowl hasn't been around as a player for a while now.
2. Roxstar, and the Earth Powerset
Roxstar was another avid CO fan in its early days, not just being a leader of a supergroup, but also the maintenance updater for the original build-tracking program, Champion Builder, the predecessor of both PowerHouse and HeroCreator. Basically, early on, very much a big deal and big proponent of the game.
Roxstar was also originally a CoX player, where he was also a fairly notable regular. I even remember chatting with him on CoX's forums back in my teen years. Anyways, in CoX, he played the Tanker class, which back then had access to the Earth sets for both melee and defense, which had features such as constructing huge suits of rock armor around yourself, smashing people with stone hammers, and other elemental-manipulation tricks. Naturally, he wanted to see Earth come to Champions so that he could more faithfully craft his main in this game.
The Earth powerset would see its debut in 2011 (with some delays). Still, Roxstar was certainly hyped, and the Champs team got their mojo together to ensure a solid launch. The Earth Powerset release was coordinated with also the prototype of the lockboxes we have now, grab bags, which could be bought and could drop random costume and weapon unlocks. Much like with current Lockboxes, Roxstar was also the NPC you could talk to to get information about the grab bag and its contents (he was also voiced, but I'm not sure if it's the players voice that was used?) and his own costume design was even used for the Mountain AT. Finally, Roxstar himself was given a device he could use freely to straight-up give people grab bags (by throwing a rock at them.)
Time passed and people then quickly realized a few things:
For a conglomeration of those reasons, it's probably easy to see why Roxstar stopped playing a bit after that. Further combined with the closure of CoX a year later, it's likely he's now returned to his roots and is collaborating with the CoX revival teams to see that game's rise to glory again.
3. Villain Contest
As for contests/stuff I directly participated in, there was the Villain Contest of 2012 - a competition to create villains who would be featured in a Rampage alert. A lot of these contests are easier to find for me in the forum, even if they're archived, so here's the contest entry thread if you wanna take a look. It's very old, many of the entries originally were file attachments to the posts (since that was a thing you could do back then).
There were tons of entries, and a bit of confusion as to why they were asking for two entries per person. In addition to the main winner becoming a rampage, extra finalists would end up becoming standard Alert bosses (honestly, with how events unfolded, those guys ended up becoming the main winners since we see them so more frequently). The final results were as follows:
Now, thing about the contest is that all decisions were made by the dev team on who won and got runner-up status. So a good portion of us were confused as to then how the rampage winner choices were picked, as out of the bunch the two had some of the strangest costumes we had ever seen. We were under the impression that the winning entry would be a singular entity to fight against, and not working as a duo. To make matters even more confusing, the original name of Frosticus (freon) was already used - Freon is an ice villain under VIPER's employ! So, in preparation for the rampage to be made, they had to make a small change, and soon gave the duo their own personalities (making Kenina sound like Rita Repulsa and Frosticus sound like Mr. Freeze as played by Arnold Schwarzenegger)
The fact of the matter is that many of the entries had lots of pre-conceptions about what the dev team would and wouldn't do - So for example, my entries included a shark-pirate who would fight you in Millennium City's river on a ship, and his pirate minions would constantly be adds trying to help him. The other was a goofy stoplight robot that fought you in the middle of a traffic jam. Those'd require much more mantime to create new map areas, set up more NPCs... I'm sure a lot of the entries had tons of detail like that. Kenina and Freon had the most room for the dev team to make their own decisions, and unfortunately that probably shouldn't be the point of a contest.
The feedback of these two costumes/characters winning was so bad, the original designer felt the need to apologize for Cryptic's decision. Which I mean, in of itself is ridiculous since it's not inherently their fault for winning.
The lessons learned from this contest lead Cryptic to realize that maybe having players have even the slightest influence on gameplay decisions, when development muscle is limited, isn't a great idea when ideas don't have a budget.
4. The Costume Set Contest
This one I also remember since it's more recent and very much less based directly on individual player personas (a good plan honestly considering the past 2 cases). Also easier to remember since there's more directly archived records of this event.
SO, 2013, Trailturtle and the rest of the dev team at the time decide to hold a forum costume contest to get some costume design ideas from the players and create some Z-store sets for people to purchase. Submit either a drawing, picture, or diagram detailing the kind of things you'd want, and you could get a shot at winning the contest. Winners were decided essentially by dev choices.
The finalists of the contest ended up being as follows:
The voting would only really determine which order these would get released in - that is to say, all of these sets got released eventually, but the winner of this voting process would be the first one to get made.
The winner of the voting round by players ended up being the Holo Armor set, and so it was the first one to be made. Now, no joke, I still find its resulting sets (the Holoforce armor and Psionic Dragon armor) to be some of the best ones in the game simply because they're so simple; they work with almost everything, and they got great material options. Ok, now that I'm done fawning on them, on to the actual strifes of this entry.
Second to be released was the Cosmic Knight set (or just Cosmic as it came to be known). Thing about Meedacthunist is that they were an expert artist. Like, legit awesome concept sketches. However, all the details in the concept sketch were a bit too much for the dev team and their modelers to handle, so not all the options in the sketch were included in the final release of the set. Meedacthurnist probably wasn't very pleased with this.
The third set to come to fruition was, I believe, Urban Anime. This was probably the most contentious winner among the bunch of finalists, simply because unlike a lot of the entries to the contest which were often detailed (though sometimes sketched/unskilled) concept blueprints that separate out and detail individual costume parts, this entry was just a stock photo of an anime girl. Congratulations, you win by searching on google! It's around here that issues with the costume modelers begin to show, as the set features very strange coloring patterns, strangely undetailed parts (like the completely flat-texture hood) and very strange design decisions (why jiggle physics on that hair in particular??)
The fourth set to come to light is Variable Robot, and HOOEY, if you thought the Cosmic Knight skimped on Meedacthurnist's details, then this is going to look like a real trainwreck. Variable Robot, on initial testing, had terrible scaling issues, strange rigging on parts such as the shoulders, and essentially only included half (if not less) of the total concept's parts, with only the jet items included. Likewise, the artist's reaction was even more vocal at the apparent mistreatment of their creation. A few bugs were fixed, but even so, the set never expanded beyond its original parts, and to this day, a dark and strange taint lies upon this set... (seriously, though, @kaiserin, the Variable Robot sets have this weird dark detail layer that causes them to constantly be like a shade darker in color compared to other armor parts, please fix this?)
Lastly is the Steel Arachnid set. Thing is, when the Variable Robot set came out, the costume modeler had just been hired, so it was the very first thing that a 3D modeler, new to how all the intricate rigging and fitting-together of CO characters worked, all the coloring options, and so forth, was commissioned to do. Kind of like asking a novice painter to reproduce mona lisa or something. Steel Arachnid set came out to much less fanfare than the rest, though still a solid set (could use more color options though...)
So in result, the contest ended up generating one (two if you count holoforce and psi dragon as separate) good costume set, a couple of mediocre ones, and then two that have extremely sub-par quality. This is likely a result of working against player expectations, deadlines set by this, and internal strife and instability of the company at the time (I don't even remember if this was the Cryptic North team or what, but still lots of switching around was going on). Meedacthurnist seemed to have quit the game around 2016, maybe earlier, because of this.
The lesson to learn is that player expectations are a very deadly thing to work around. Which really is just the bottom-line of the whole story here.
And lastly, not really an incident just as further reinforcement:
V: Kaiserin
Kaiserin is a former player of this game, now a developer. She's been around since the earliest days back in 2009, and prior to joining the team, was performing lots of arcane and hacky experiments with the game's engine - unpacking the game's PIGG files and rearranging them - creating mods that would alter available costume part choices, extend body-scale sliders, and even simpler stuff like replacing costume and ground textures. With a bit of experimenting, she got quite familiar with how the game's tailor and costume system fit together.
Even prior to her joining the team, some of her mod work was getting featured as official additions to the game. The default jackal head, for example, got an alternate texture made for it by her with some detailed face-paint options in 2014. Not long after in 2015, she was officially signed on as a dev, and to my understanding is now the de-facto dev lead for this game.
We basically have her to thank for very well-attuned game features we've gotten since then, including removal of a ton of the restrictions in the tailor, regular upgrades to the powersets over time, the addition of number-based timers for power effect durations (still one of my favorite game mechanic/UI upgrades to date, thank goodness), extra tailor colors, essentially reviving the endgame cosmic-raid scene of this game from nothing, and coordination of costume set designs. Much of this is due to her having a keen sense of what players like her want - both a benefit for keeping long-time players going, but perhaps an obstacle to designing things that might draw in newer players.
But with this knowledge also comes well-placed wariness - she's also seen all these past events unfold with how player-based content contests have gone in the past, what it can do to the community, and how it can potentially turn it against the winners, driving them away. And in a game with such a small community ring, that's likely a very dangerous and costly thing to do.
So I have no doubt that she'd figure out a way to do it right, if she felt the team had the resources, time, and energy to devote to a player's vision, but with how lofty some ideas can get (and especially with how well-thought-out those lofty ideas can be, how deserving they can seem to others), it'll be a balancing act I doubt the team will try to tackle in this lifetime.
It sounds like the contests were a good idea poorly executed, to hear you tell of it. As I suspected, it seems like a lot of the problems occurred because of a shift in developers and alterations in game mechanics (going from grab bags to lockboxes). I don't know how directly involved @kaizerin was in the creation of villains, Duratok or these costume sets, so I couldn't attest to whether or not any developer is better at costume part creation than previous Cryptic employees might have been.
The devs do indeed listen to player feedback, however in the time that i've been here it seems like only when something is poorly received by the entire playerbase do any changes/alterations happen. The thunderous uproar over the removal of subscribers and everything did cause the devs to take a step back and reevaluate the changes, delaying the Premium pack among other things. Next, there seemed to be a largely negative reaction to the changes to the growth devices. Somebody must be listening, because now there is a personal growth magnifier device in the works.
Is the only way to bring about changes in CO is with a swarm of torches and pitchforks? Our ideas can't legally be looked at and implemented outside of a contest. I am only one person with no angry mob to generate attention, so how else should I try to contribute outside of spending more money? If @kaizerin would honor me with a reply to a message sometime, i'd be willing to sign any statement/contract or whatever decreeing that I would not sue if my concepts were added to the game so long as it meant there'd be a chance I could bring something new to the table.
I don't know how new costume sets or lockboxes are chosen or where the ideas for them come from, but it isn't from us since they can't look at our ideas. If a new contest never happens, no devs reply to forum concept posts, and don't host open dialogues with the players, then I guess all I can do is slouch in my computer chair and hope one day somebody decides to create similar ideas to the ones I have.
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I'd be up for a Lockbox costume contest, if devs won't make it backfire. After reading Bluhman's post(wow that was long), I feel wary with player-inspired content.
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They could just vote on the player costume suggestions in a poll, and the ones which receive the most votes will be added in a lockbox.
Again, if they fixed the costume sets that got meh'd on, I think they can start the process of starting a new contest.
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By coming together as a community to ask the devs. It seemed to work for everybody who griped about the growth device changes.
Almost all of thr complaints I've seen are in regards to a completely different dev team entirely that chose badly. So in my opinion they're none issues. If the current devs make bad choices it has nothing to do with the other team making bad choices. It's purely coincidental.
Just make sure to avoid the vagueness of that last dev ran CC that caused a debacle and angry peeps.
After reading all CO's content history attempts AND having to remember the majority of them which i have experienced both in forums and ingame, I prefer to see DEVs spend their time and resources on revamping the game and providing bug fixes+quality of life instead of PR Stunts
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Hence why I said "But, at the same time, the dev team would have to make it clear what they expect and what players should not expect."
Also, I think the players should be the ones to do the voting, not the devs.
so while the forum polling did accomplish something... not that much really.
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We can't even agree on what "new" means, how could we ever pick good content u3u
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
New costume pieces are what the devs spend their time and resources on, those aren't PR stunts.
More nuanced than that, the lesson to learn is that player expectations are a very touchy thing to directly deal with, and it gets worse when egos become involved - especially the latter, because that can absolutely ruin some players' game experiences in MMO settings like this.
This is why most game studios don't go on record with doing popularity or art contests that determine what new content gets added to the game. It's why Overwatch or LOL likely won't take fanmade character suggestions, or really put development time or effort into them - even if the ideas and concept sketches look cool, there's still a lot of balance to take into consideration. Then there's the impact that the fame/infamy has on the player that drafted up the idea!
Usually it's better if people show interest by, say, modeling or modding assets directly usable by devs (even if it's not legal, still it's stuff that's easier to implement for the dev team if some groundwork is laid.) This is kind of what I was getting at bringing up Kasierin and some of her mod work. Most of all, that was an effort agnostic from any kind of competition or contest.
What I'm saying is that, if you have the creative drive to try and add something to the game, you don't need to wait for a contest to roll around for you to show it.
Anyways, more back to the point, the current dev team's semi-regularly streamed/held costume contests are a pretty good middle-ground for this kind of stuff: the winners don't get too much publicity or gameplay influence from winning, and it generally keeps things lower-key, even with like the 100+ player turnouts. It's like holding a fan-art contest on social media; just for fun.
EDIT: and remember, Kais has gone on record saying that the devs do read the suggestions forums. You don't often see them reply, because usually dev responses are seen as sort of a 'promise' that they will implement a given idea. Being commital, especially in a game with ongoing development, is poison when you need to be flexible to adapt to the market (even considering how niche this game is.)
wow the "creator" must feel so PROUD, what an amazing accomplishment for such below mediocre costume set
also another thing, the jackets were advertised being able to be coloured
What's the deal with this? and why they cannot be actually coloured ingame?
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
But a developer just told me they legally can't look at any ideas or concepts because if they did and added the idea to the game, they could be sued.
I don't have any modeling or modding skills, I can't draw worth spit, and I don't have legions of friends to browbeat the developers into making changes, they way people here did for the growth magnifier device. So the only way I can try to add anything to the game is through a contest where our ideas are specifically requested, and free from litigation.
As I said before, I wasn't here when players created new villains in CO. I'm not asking for that kind of contest anyway, but even if they did decide to allow us to create villains again, then how about this idea: create one using existing costume pieces. Then nobody could mope about how their unique creation doesn't look the way they envisioned when the developers decided to alter their outfit.
You keep missing the part where I said a developer told me they can't look at/add our ideas unless specifically requested. This was the whole point of me making this forum post in the first place. I have a good concept in mind. I want to share it. The people in charge who could make it a reality someday, can't listen to/look at my idea, outside of a contest. So I make a poll asking for support in creating one, and since a lot of you are so bitter over how they went in the past, you're against the idea of a contest and by association, my concepts.
You should scan that thread, you’ll notice some familiar pieces in game now.
It really comes down to implementcation (yeah....that word)...and if it’s not perfect, people lose their minds.
Think about a simple costume contest ran by devs....you people lost your mind that a certain standard wasn’t met.
Same story here.
This is not directly relevant to a contest--you can't sue a game company for using something when you gave them permission to do so--but it does get into legal issues for writing a contract being pretty specific about what rights are being granted, and it doesn't prevent a PR fiasco when the person who submitted the idea is unhappy about what was done with it. The overall effect is that creating a costume set based on a contest or something is a lot more work than doing it internally, and isn't enough better to justify the extra work.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Um, I think you misunderstood what they said cause that doesn't appear to have ever been the case.
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I'll PM you the reply I received if you don't believe me.
Go for it. There is clearly something about what you're claiming that is off, since the devs look at/add our ideas without specifically requesting them quite often.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.