Player Content Creation Systems

vendood

I really support the idea of player content creation. Even though a great deal of it may be mediocre (at best) I think it has a lot of potential for the development of an MMO.

Off the top of my head, the only two systems I can recall seeing are City of Heroes 'Mission Architect' system (the first one I ever saw) and STO's Foundry. From my minimal experience I felt that the CoH Architect system was a little more in-depth and allowed for more creativity, but that may simply be due to not exploring them enough.

For people who have a broader experience than I in MMOs, are there other features that STO Foundry could use as a model to expand functionality? Which system was best? Who was the first?

One other question I had was, why doesn't the STO system (even dev missions) have anything like branching or multi-outcome design? It seems like, even when you are given a choice in a mission, basically all choices lead to the next linear step anyway with just a small 'flavor text' difference. Even choices such as 'let him live' or 'kill him' lead to the same ending.

Is that a game engine limitation, or simply the most efficient way to walk players through a mission without getting too confusing?

thay8472

Optional progression can be done using "Components" and if used correctly gives X mission some "Well hat if I had done this?" moments. It isn't that hard to do but it is time comsuming.

lincolninspace

My latest release: Paralells. Has two endings but I had to use interacts that were not part of the story chain to create them.

drogyn1701

There aren't a ton of player mission creators out there for Massively Multiplayer Online Games. MMOs are typically more concerned with keeping the integrity of the game than, for example, single player games. Cheating becomes something financial and a potential loss for the company, and UGC tools can lead to cheating. You have to be very restrictive in what you allow players to do. For example, you can't let players alter the code the way some single player games allow (either with their own modding tools or third party tools).

I believe Cryptic were the ones who set up the mission creator for City of Heroes back when they ran the place. I know there is a fairly new dungeon creator for Everquest 2, but I have not seen it in action, and there is Everquest Next, which is much more of a sandbox (did it die? I haven't heard anything about it in like a year).

Then there's the STO Foundry, which is actually a Beta for Neverwinter's Foundry. Cryptic knew they wanted to build Neverwinter from the ground up with a mission-creation tool, so they built one for Star Trek Online first. Make no mistake, a lot of the feedback we gave in the early days was implemented in STO. The Foundry went through many iterations on the test servers before going live. Triggers, branching dialogue trees, none of that was there initially. However, all of our feedback went into creating the Neverwinter Foundry. Personally, however, I don't really like its interface, and I think of the STO Foundry as superior in a lot of ways, (just with somewhat fewer toys).

As for truly branching stories with multiple outcomes. The basic answer is the game just wasn't built for it. Few games really are. This one was built a certain way, and we've had devs tell us the loopholes and whatever that they have to jump through when they want to do something different. For example, making your captain and ship look Klingon in the Doomsday Device was far more complicated jerryrigging than it might appear from the outside, which is why we can't do it in the Foundry.

There are, of course, other tools out there for user generated content that have good ideas. I was just looking at the new Forge system for Halo 5, which looks like a pretty good tool. Has stuff like object tinting and lighting effects. Can't imagine map building with an XBox controller though. Give me mouse and keyboard any day.

starswordc

drogyn1701 wrote: »

There are, of course, other tools out there for user generated content that have good ideas. I was just looking at the new Forge system for Halo 5, which looks like a pretty good tool. Has stuff like object tinting and lighting effects. Can't imagine map building with an XBox controller though. Give me mouse and keyboard any day.

Yeah, me neither. Fortunately, Xboxes have USB ports and can take a mouse and keyboard.