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psychicslug
Posts: 725 Arc User
If you want to cause people to leave and seek other games which the people running them are less D%^& about. Then keep arbitrarily putting in changes that have no warranted or was never requested or wanted and was told not to do it and did it any way and refuse to change back because well you simply don't want to. This game is done once another better superhero game with much better graphics is up and running, i may have a life time sub to this but each year i play less and less due to this kind of stuff. As of now i only do events for the costume pieces and anything that unlocks account wide, because all the other stuff is annoying. I want to play the character with a aura or a look from the start not at the end of his levels, to only log in and grind for gold/silver recog. It is boring and tedious which is what this has become, all about getting to 40 fast to do the end game and get the recon gold/silver/nemess/what ever. I like the journey the climb to the top and the adventures and quest, the stories the challenges, the fun of exploring and learning new things and such. CoH had it's faults, but it had more missions, and content for everyone from start to finish than this has, do more of the lower level missions ad some variety to leveling. Do another start zone maybe include the bridge and have it on the other side. double the starting mission paths or quadruple them add some side missions random missions, a sewer craw for those who want a level craw vs foes. But above all improve the game play and add stuff that we would want, not what you think we want listen to a person who is a life time sub. I am just barely holding on to see if maybe the power sets are being fixed to open way for more and expanding if this is not the case then i like most may end up just moving on to the others who are on the horizon.
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New content doesn't make as much money as new costumes sold in the shop or through lockboxes, so there's more of that sort of thing.
New content is also generally either milked and discarded or derided as too hard (QZone, STE), so it 's barely worth the effort. I was hoping that the spaghetti code fixer they've made might help them renew existing lairs, Rampages, Unity, etc into a more layered end game experience, but that seems to be on the back burner at the moment.
Still, we seem to be here, playing (although I don't play as much as I did, and I've missed the point of all this Transformation/Emote stuff which seems to be all the rage). And as for those new hero games ... I hope you're a patient soul!
Thanks but for the time being I'd rather play an existing game, with all of it's flaws, than the best game ever not to come, in my imagination.
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This game can be better, but it's better than no super hero game. Yes, if they had more developers we would get more stuff but again, this is the game we have. Better than nothing, though I won't probably be giving any more money until they add more stuff personally. It's fun to play for nostalgia and for the customization but as a game I keep giving money to? I've moved on to Elderscrolls Online until that game particularly stops being worth it.
For a free game CO is okay. Is it as good as City of Heroes? No. But again for what's out there the game is alright. Or hey, go to DCUO if you really want something similar but different.
Are you some sort of casual? Get on my level.
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So. You want a bunch of game development to take place. I'm sure many people do. Let's hear your business case. If you can absolutely convince them that designing a bunch of levels is going to bring lots of money in, I have very little doubt that they absolutely will do it. They'd be crazy not to! What follow is not a criticism, but this is some of the obstacles your business case will have to overcome.
As they learned all the way back in City of Heroes, you can design a hundred zones, but in the end the players will tend to all glom together in just a few of them. Players generally like to be near other players! People could do alerts and form teams anywhere... but they do it in Millennium City and not the Desert or Lemuria. While it is true that some proportion of the players will visit and meticulously explore every detail, it is also true that some proportion will go once and never again. Already we have so many zones and missions that you MUST skip about half of them when you level (and some folk skip all of them to level as fast as possible). Adding more degrades the value of all the ones we already have. Compare this to things like new alerts or costume pieces which anyone anywhere can use.
For the record, I completely agree with you. I think the best angle of attack, however, it not to try and get them to spend money, but to democratize the process and lower the barrier to entry. Neverwinter Nights persisted for YEARS by allowing players to design levels for public consumption... the amount of content possibly available for free is limitless. And we know that City of Heroes also adopted this model for a time.
Of course here we have another barrier. City of Heroes DID try it and it created PROBLEMS. One problem was that the players could develop content that was inappropriate in difficulty, theme, or legally. Another was that it was all too successful - people stopped hanging out in public at all and spent all their time squirrelled away in private missions and the community vanished.
So I would suggest a compromise. Give players the tools to develop missions, perhaps mini-outdoor-areas, and even game art, but allow none of it to be automatically playable. Good, well-polished material can be submitted to the devs along with a disclaimer of ownership. Reviewing material takes them far less resources than developing it originally. Plus allowing more player development could easily bring players to the game, as it has done to a number of games elsewhere.
The developers will never find the time and money to develop very niche content, such as a set of missions meant to be played by a hero of one single specific archetype, or the multitudes of locations or enemies that are not likely to be of interest to the general public. But fan players very easily might. It is possible that the developers could even release something similar to the tools they themselves use and so making the tools to make the tools wouldn't be very laborious. Broad and high possible gain, perhaps a not very high investment.
My notion, for what it's worth.
By the nature of things, 90+% of user generated content is going to be crap (and plenty of professionally generated content is crap too), but as long as it's siloed, so what? Once it's shared, though, the crap overwhelms the good.
You can, of course, make it so user generated content is completely worthless, but that violates the implied contract (of MMOs) that content will provide rewards, and thus players just won't play the content at all.
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If it were true that it's easier and less expensive to create your own content than to get unpaid people to make it for you, then why have virtually no book publishers done this? Why do they accept submissions at all?
If it were true that distinguishing good content from poor content was so difficult, why do we all do this every day when we log on to the Internet and visit new pages?
Old, established ways of getting content give us lots of tips on how to find good content without breaking the bank. One way: a person who does good content once probably does again. Another way: set strict standards and agents to filter through it for you.
Fan art and fan fiction exists anyway, whether we use it or not. So why not use it?
In any case, I didn't say that volunteer content is more expensive than content created in house. The point is that curated and edited volunteer content is way more expensive than content where you don't bother having quality standards. Most people do not scan a thousand manuscripts a day looking for the one good product (go trawling in a fanfic archive some day), they rely on other people to give pointers to better and worse stuff. Because it means paying editors.
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Of course, there are ways to solve that problem. Having players rate levels and then only looking at a handful of the top-rated levels could significantly cut down on the load, and also makes it so that you're more likely to publish something that's going to be popular. Limiting players to one submission per cycle also cuts down on the numbers and means authors will be more likely to put time in to making something good, rather than shotgun-submitting a bunch of stuff. You could even make it so that authors can only submit a level once per four cycles, which both cuts down on the sheer numbers and makes it so the same people can't win every time.
As for the devs needing to edit the content, if that's too much work then just cut the editing entirely. Won't be necessary, just pick something that doesn't need to be edited.
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Oh! Well of course! I apologize for misunderstanding.
However, if I'm allowed to use a book publishing analogy again, even Stephen King and Tom Clancy have their books edited by someone. I'm sure no matter who makes content - even someone in-house - they have someone else look it over anyway. I wouldn't dream of proposing taking that away or lowering standards. That, I think, was one of the problems of free content creation back in City of heroes.
All I'm trying to suggest is that whatever part of the process that is turning out to be their sticking point they could probably open it up.
I've heard comments about how limited they are in art and critters, digging through archives to find old unused stuff... I wouldn't know if that was really so. But with the right tools, they could have all the costume pieces they could handle from people who would even pay them to be able to wear them on their characters. Maple Story 2 does exactly this (though they rely on player reports to get rid of unacceptable content).
I have read complaints that everyone everywhere starts in Millennium City and the alien invasion. I'm sure there's lots of folk who would be thrilled to make maps and place buildings that replicate at least part of their hometown. This isn't necessarily more complex or controversial than Sim City. As starting areas with only small-time crime it would be understandable that so many heroes would end up moving to where things are really happening... but it would broaden the 'world' of Champions to have a block from Tokyo, London, and Moscow as well as a couple small towns or completely alien worlds just to start in. None of this is really important enough to Devs themselves spend lots of time on, but could be fun for players and alt-ing.
Giving players some means to provide free content doesn't mean that all controls are out the window. Again, that's the LAST thing I want! If nothing else, having some kind of submissions process would let the Devs get a better idea of what players want to see so they can direct their own design efforts better. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas!
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Yeah I think we're getting lost in the book analogy. If they can't find something that doesn't need to be heavily edited then they'll just say that there wasn't anything quality enough to put in the game and that people need to try harder. If it needs a few touch ups here and there which can be finished in a day or less, then that's not the massive load of extra work that's being discussed. Again, if nothing qualifies for light touch ups or less, then just publish nothing and say that all entries were too riddled with mistakes. If someone decides to be a smart **** and says "huh huh, riddled with mistakes, you mean like the stuff the devs put out?" say "yes, that's why we don't have time to clean up your messes".
Skyrim mods show otherwise, i.e. expansion-sized mods made without anyone being paid a single cent. I'm betting the Foundrys in STO and NWO had some pretty quality stuff made for free as well. As it turns out when people love something, they'll make stuff that takes a lot of work, and with a fairly high bar for quality, all for free.
Again, I think you're getting lost in the book analogy.
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Skyrim is a good example of what people do for free. Cryptic doesn't care enough. I've messaged Kaizerin with my ideas and I also have posted them many times in the suggestions forum. For a game about superheroes which are fairly popular it could be better. I even laid out how you can implement my ideas so really all they need to do is code it.
I say this game has about a year left. I'm enjoying it for what it is, but also wish it could be more. With CoH back but not officially, this game is the only super hero game besides DC Online. Almost a monopoly on super hero games actually. Fantasy games are dimes a dozen - World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 and ESO bring it because the devs know there are other games out there like it.
Champions has no real competition besides DC Universe. It really doesn't. I've been a long time supporter and played since launch. I've bought Zen many times. I am not just a free loader. But I won't be spending a dime until they make this game better.
We'll look past the ones where the main effect is adding a weapon, or changing the appearance of a weapon. Those aren't really good analogues for what we're discussing here. Instead we'll focus on those that purport to add to the story. (I will also note that those which appear in the Creation Club have been edited by Bethesda personnel; the basic writing skills are down to the originators, but tweaks have been made to ensure they stay true to existing game lore.)
There's a very popular series of mods, for instance, called "Project X". They give you weapons that are amusingly overpowered, as long as you don't mind most of your opponents being reduced to puddles of goo, and armors that wind up looking like the outfit worn by the Vault-Tec representative. They also give you notes left behind by the people from Project X that are overwrought, unreal, and often read about like the carving in the cave in Monty Python and the Holy Grail ("But why would he write 'Aaaarrrgh!' if he were dying? Wouldn't he just say it?").
There's also a lesser-known series offering some interesting items and new safehouses, based around the idea that an MI-6 agent was dispatched from what remained of the British government after the Resource Wars; he established a base of operations near Sanctuary Hills, then was ghouled during the War and befriended a first-gen Super Mutant. So far so good, right? Except that I kept getting yanked out of the narrative by the fact that the author had not even the most basic grasp of British slang, and absolutely no concept of correct address of royalty (the agent kept writing "the King" as if it were a name, rather than a title, and never once used "His Majesty", much less the abbreviation "H.M.", as a Brit actually would).
Unnecessary clipping, weapons based on our modern designs rather than designs following from the Divergence and its associated technologies, a radio station purporting to be a northern Galaxy News operated by a trainee of Three Dog but who sounds more like a Yale dropout... the quality of the mods section, unedited, is, shall we say, somewhat less than professional. (Imagine a new story taking place in Millennium City, offered as an official addition to CO, but in which Defender addresses everyone as "dawg" and Kinetik makes a guest appearance wielding twin Glocks. That's what you can get with unedited mods. That's what we got out of a lot of the Foundry missions in STO, too; the saving grace was that not one of those was ever offered as an official addition to the game.)
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"...how you can implement my ideas so really all they need to do is code it"
And how long would that take?
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Most modders in those games added little new art and mostly did stuff based on numbers. Kwok's "Balance Mod" is the most popular SE5 mod ever made, and the only new art is the mod logo. SE5 DOES have a lot of mods with art assets, but they're typically simple stuff. I've actually added art stuff, it has layers of complexity, but the hard part is making 3-d models. The easy stuff? Certain parts are 2-D clip art, like mod logos, race identity pics, and flags. The hardest part was new shipsets, and a lot of them were actually copied from other games. I did some work tweaking shipsets, and.... even when you didn't make the 3-d models, you could customize the skins, sizes and shapes of ships to make them look different. But there were also solar system and ground assets too!
In D2, BlueOrange's assassin mod was highly notable because it actually replaced the assassin character models. That's ALL it did, and the results weren't great, but it was something most D2 mods didn't do.
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"bad mods exist". And? Re-read what I said, I already accounted for that. I could list off a bunch of mods that don't have issues because the authors made sure to do them good, but I can safely assume you know they exist, and that's also besides the point. I think you're getting lost in analogy's again. Skyrim/Fallout 4 mods are made from scratch, with players having to do lots of coding and stuff. What we're talking about wouldn't involve any of that.
Okay, but why would anybody need to make new assets? We're talking about using something like the Foundry to have players make content, then the devs push a button and it becomes live content.
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But the criticism being levied here is that doing this whole thing would be too much work for the devs, and new assets directly contributes to that issue... so why characterize new asset creation as something positive or necessary? New assets are all things that would need to be checked and possibly edited, and the goal should be minimizing those sorts of things. If players wanted to add assets to the game they probably shouldn't try to do it through something like the Foundry. From what I've heard some of the new assets we've gotten come from outside contract work, so that would be the avenue those players should explore as it would have the proper communication channels needed to ensure that those assets are integrated efficiently.
It actually does apply here, because players weren't forced to participate in low quality content produced by the foundry, and they wouldn't be forced to participate in that content either in the curated content idea we're discussing. I'm sure there were plenty of terrible levels made with the Foundry. Also we're not talking about mods for public servers or mmos, we're talking about player-made content using the Foundry. That's not really a mod as that term is generally used since it's not a modification to the game, anymore than writing a paper using Microsoft Word is a modification to Microsoft Word. Players aren't installing Foundry levels. Remember that Skyrim mods were brought up to illustrate the amount of effort that people would put forth for free, not to imply some equivalence between the structure of Skyrim mods and Foundry content.
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The original premise was Foundry content being considered for addition to the game as official content ( i.e. giving players tools to add content to the game which with no other specification means the Foundry ), and that is the context in which I brought up Skyrim mods - to show the amount of effort people will put in for free. So no, Foundry is not a deflection, it was in fact the starting point of the conversation. Since you responded to me, that means you were agreeing to discuss that. If you wanted to discuss another premise, you should have responded to the person discussing that one ( I think nyghtshroud qualifies ). So no, I was quite clear on the conversation I was having, you're the one that tried to merge or change premises. If you don't want discussions to be conflated, then stop conflating them.
Also if you want to argue against someone saying that players coding in their own content would be a good idea with simple efficient outcomes, then look elsewhere because that clearly was never my position. Again, I think nyghtshroud might be the only person in the thread you can debate that topic with. Considering you've seen me join in on "hurdur u said coding is simple! it's not!" conversations you'd have to be having a serious lapse in memory to think I would be arguing the opposite position.
Why would it not being removed force them to participate? Also, curated content wouldn't need to have those things removed. Simply being player-created content isn't the reason rewards needed to be removed from Foundry content.
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Curating can somewhat handle this, but requires standards that are high enough that it will tend to drive away your free content creators, because going from 'almost good enough' to 'good enough' probably triples your development time and that last portion is really boring to do.
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I can see that it won't be a thing for everyone, but those of us that are tighter on our character concepts and portrayals are making good use of these. We had them available in past (current) games like CoX.
Patience will be a virtue for the 'next generation' superhero MMO's, but in the meantime, we have two cities to keep us happy.
>(Imagine a new story taking place in Millennium City, offered as an official addition to CO, but in which Defender addresses everyone as "dawg" and Kinetik makes a guest appearance wielding twin Glocks. That's what you can get with unedited mods. That's what we got out of a lot of the Foundry missions in STO, too; the saving grace was that not one of those was ever offered as an official addition to the game.)
Just gave me flash backs of readin people's bios that have nothin to do with COs established cannon
Also BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBS O3O
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The discussion isn't whether or not they should bring the Foundry back.
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What i mean to say is...with the current state of things, theres zero chances of getting a propper Collaboration with foreign brands.
At the stage we are in we could never afford something like a Vocaloids collab, or any other current or old weeb cartoon collab for the matter.
As things stand now, we couldn't even afford a collab/corssover with that sofware company that has Super Sonico as a mascot.
To the original poster, we sadly know how things are in regards of how the game is handled by this company, anyone who could or wanted to leave has probably done it already, you are trapped here with us...and those weirdos at Club Caprice
*starts throwing money at computer screen*
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I sort of understand what @psychicslug is attempting to convey in their message about improving the game. I don't completely agree or disagree with them. The video clip shows what can be done by 3 people. I have seen one or two people modify the hell out of existing games, such as the GTA franchise. Which brings us to @spinnytop 's point about the non-existent Foundry. While there never was a Foundry for Champions, imagine if they pulled the Tailor or the Nemesis from this game stating it was too much for the "budget". A lot of players would get irate and leave, new players come in and fill their shoes. This is the standard for all 3 of Cryptic's games.
The Foundry was and apparently still is a hook to reel in new players. They still have advertisements boasting about the Foundry and new people log on to Star Trek and Neverwinter looking for it. By the time they are able to ask about it, they have played the game for some extended time. If they were to allow players to create mods (aka Foundry quests) of this and the other games for additional content, it would be a very positive move toward an extended shelf life.
However from what I know about Cryptic and their games, Neverwinter and Star Trek will just stagnate just like Champions will remain with a tiny small following of players. I don't mean to be critical about Champions community, you are the smallest population of the three next to the PS4 community for Neverwinter. The company is in a crisis trying its best to get the new Magic the Gathering MMO together, and when they get in a rush they start getting sloppy. They hope this new game will shore up the others as Neverwinter shored up Star Trek and Champions for the beginning of its run. In short, unless PWE sells off Cryptic Studios, CBS or WoC pulls their IPs, these games will survive but they will languish with the limited budget.
A large company has a lot more people to pay at the end of the day. They had a great concept going for them with the Foundry, free new content created by the players for the players. No one needed to be paid. But they blew it. In fact, if it was my decision, I would have monetized the Foundry making 2 version for each game and expanded them to the consoles. Foundry Lite would have been a bare bones free version to create simple content and Foundry Master would have been a one time purchase for $50 with the ability to buy additional asset packs for $5 to $10, and include the privilege to create adult content. Then you would have the benefits of new content and more money. Ah but as the poet said, If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.