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UGC Could Mean STO's Death

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
This is the simple truth, and anyone who played CoX knows this to be basically true. I played CoH/CoV for years, and when they brought in Architect Edition, it totally killed the game. There was nothing but abuse of the system and turned CoH in a power levelling farm game, and made it as boring as hell. It's like removing banking regulations - it's only a matter of time before abuse is rampant and collapses.
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  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    I feel the same way....also the reason I quit COH/COV. Finding a team that didn't want to lvl the lazy farm way was like looking for waldo in the great land of candy canes.....verrrrryyyyyy un-nerving.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    But, new content could also make the game far better. Regardless, it's something that Cryptic's doing. So the real question is what features should the UGC toolset have to avoid the problems that you've experienced.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    They may not do it all yet. They may hit all sorts of problems and scrape it. Besides the obvious copy write issues, the devs here could hit the same issue the NCSoft devs hit. The NCSoft devs knew their UGC system could easily be corrupted and still rolled with it.

    You want a good idea: hold a contest by allowing people to use a story writing tool for a mission. If the mission meets the copy write requirements, and has the votes by the devs, implement it as a mission content of the week.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    This is the simple truth, and anyone who played CoX knows this to be basically true. I played CoH/CoV for years, and when they brought in Architect Edition, it totally killed the game. There was nothing but abuse of the system and turned CoH in a power levelling farm game, and made it as boring as hell. It's like removing banking regulations - it's only a matter of time before abuse is rampant and collapses.
    How many times are you going to type this same post? I've seen two copies of this post in at least two other threads now.

    And in response to your post, no it didn't "kill the game." The devs confirmed that the subscriber base is up compared to before the MA Edition was released.

    Yes, the CoH/V devs screwed up when creating the MA. They screwed up big-time by ignoring us during beta testing. We told them literally hundreds of times while it was still on the test server, almost every single bad thing that was going to happen. And it did. It happened because they wouldn't listen to the testers.

    Positron's since been demoted. The new lead dev, Warwitch, is unlikely to make that same mistakes that he did. Point is that just because mistakes happened in CoH/V that does not mean that UGC can't be properly implemented in an MMO.

    Your OP is like the old man that says, "That new-fangled auto mobily thingy crashed and killed a man! We need to ban them autos. They're dangerous!"

    Aren't you glad that people ignored that crazy old man? If we'd listened to him we wouldn't have cars or trucks or buses.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010

    They screwed up big-time by ignoring us during beta testing. We told them literally hundreds of times while it was still on the test server, almost every single bad thing that was going to happen. And it did. It happened because they wouldn't listen to the testers.

    To keep things in perspective, they were just as stubborn with other pieces of broken content throughout their history. Testers told them really obvious things (like in CoV, one shot kills are bad for PVP ... but they went live ... and had to later be changed ... or in CoH, so much broken content ... so little attention paid to the feedback or bug reports).

    So yeah, I'm not sure they're a shining example of open communication with the playerbase. In fact, it might be those "past mistakes" that have prompted THIS Cryptic, and THIS dev team to try and do better in those areas.

    ;)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    superchum wrote: »
    To keep things in perspective, they were just as stubborn with other pieces of broken content throughout their history. Testers told them really obvious things (like in CoV, one shot kills are bad for PVP ... but they went live ... and had to later be changed ... or in CoH, so much broken content ... so little attention paid to the feedback or bug reports).

    So yeah, I'm not sure they're a shining example of open communication with the playerbase. In fact, it might be those "past mistakes" that have prompted THIS Cryptic, and THIS dev team to try and do better in those areas.

    ;)
    Isn't that the truth.

    That's the exact reason why, after having been in 3 of CoH/V's closed beta tests of upcoming issues, I told them flat out that I would never test for them ever again.

    Many, many times, we told them about bugs. They went live anyway. Many, many times we told them; "This is going to be a problem", it went live anyway. Only to have them change it in a later update to what we had recommended, because it was a problem. Oddly enough, most of those changes "accidentally" didn't make it into the patch notes, because the Paragon dev team refuses to ever admit to a mistake.

    It got so bad that one of their devs, Back Alley Brawler, finally made something of a rant post explaining to people how their beta process works. In that post he flat out said, we're not going to listen to your suggestions, we're just going to datamine and then do whatever we think is best.

    And I'm sorry for veering off topic here. I'll quit now.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    B]UGC Could Mean STO's Death[/B This is the simple truth, and anyone who played CoX knows this to be basically true...
    I completely disagree, but I'm glad you put "could" in your title! ;)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    lol

    the beta boys

    you test for free someone's game

    they listen to what they want

    This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Cryptic Studios Forum Usage Guidelines ~Your Pal, Indigofyre
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    How many times are you going to type this same post? I've seen two copies of this post in at least two other threads now.

    And in response to your post, no it didn't "kill the game." The devs confirmed that the subscriber base is up compared to before the MA Edition was released.


    In his defense, I believe he's saying that it killed his enjoyment of the game because it became harder to find teams to actually play real content as opposed to MA and he's concerned that it will 'kill' STO in the same fashion for him and others.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    i'd like to believe that cryptic would learn from mistakes made with the CoX UGC system and create one here that will allow an influx of content without all the abuse problems that come with it.

    im sure it's not difficult in concept. Cryptic has proven so far that they've been really good at listening to their players and making key changes based on that direct feedback, im sure UGC system wont be an exception.

    im looking forward to this, especially in a star trek universe, the creative minds out there waiting to feed this game im sure is quite large...hopefully Cryptic will work hard to make sure the system is not horribly abused! :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    I've posted in another thread on the same topic (I think P_F started), but in case they data mine, might as well add the suggestion to both.

    Make UGC earn ZERO experience, ZERO merits, ZERO items. Make it a holo-novel meant for entertainment purposes only.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    If done right, UGC could also become STO's greatest success. What's your point?

    Please learn to properly express your personal opinions. "AE killed the game for me personally" is true in your case. "AE killed the game" - inferring the game got shut down because of it - is totally false.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    ...Make UGC earn ZERO experience, ZERO merits, ZERO items. Make it a holo-novel meant for entertainment purposes only.
    I can agree with you about the ZERO rewards, as in, the story/experience should be its own reward, what I'll never agree on, is making it just a virtual holo-novel!

    Especially with the promise of the cluster exploration system has to offer. Imagine exploring an "Unknown System" and finding a UGC quest-line there? I think that is the way to go about spawning UGC missions. In unexplored clustered, seeded by authors who've been there and chose to anchor their UGC story in that system, thus fleshing it out in a cooperative effort, i.e. one system could host many stories.

    The rewards of UGC stories could in fact be UGC-tokens to be utilized for making more UGC stories, and these tokens could perhaps be traded/sold on the Exchange to stimulate and expand the games' economy. That's how I'd do it, if I were Cryptic.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Four days after AE came out, everyone in the entire game was level 50. Level 50s didn't know what their own powers were. Goldfarmers and PL services made thousands upon thousands of dollars that week.

    A month later, half the "missions" in AE were "hamidon goo farm"

    Two months later, there were 10 people per server still playing.

    A month and a half later they decided to fix it, but everyone was already gone. Some of them came back after the "grey side" change, but the damage was done. I'll never go back, the fourteen hundred people in my SG alliance will never go back. There are only 2 servers left out of a dozen and a half that people still play on. The other servers are populated by goldfarmbots that have been on autopilot since the Clinton years.

    Maybe you refuse to believe a game is dead until, like Matrix:Online, they unplug the server. Let me tell you about the final days of Matrix:Online. There were still 50 people playing at the end. 25 of them were GMs hand-picked from the community for playing all around the clock and remaining fanbois in the face of game-ending madness. They had implimented a player-generated-content system without ever doing a single bugfix on anything in the entire game. There were never a whole lot of people playing Matrix, but 95% of them left within two weeks of the PGC system going live. One year later nobody had bothered coming back, and the company had declared bankruptcy for the game, and handed the server over to voulunteer GMs. The voulunteer GMs cliqued up and didn't let new players into the game. Eventually even the hardcore fanbois left.

    PGC systems are dangerous to the bottom line, and when you do see one implimented, it's because the marketing team has moved on to a game that's still making a profit. History has shown us that every game which impliments a PGC loses a huge chunk of its playerbase within days. It's pretty much stuck with that reputation until some MMO company comes out with a game that STARTS with a PGC system already in place. I'm betting that company will be White Wolf Studios, because that's how their entire philosophy works in the first place.

    I love the idea of a PGC, but I also have been around to experience the past. I feel bad for you lot who really want this, not because of anything to do with you, but because of what will happen when you finally get what you want. See: Pyrrhic Victory
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Keldor wrote:
    Four days after AE came out, everyone in the entire game was level 50. Level 50s didn't know what their own powers were. Goldfarmers and PL services made thousands upon thousands of dollars that week.

    A month later, half the "missions" in AE were "hamidon goo farm"

    Two months later, there were 10 people per server still playing.
    Really? And the source of those numbers is....?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Keldor wrote:
    Four days after AE came out, everyone in the entire game was level 50. Level 50s didn't know what their own powers were. Goldfarmers and PL services made thousands upon thousands of dollars that week.

    A month later, half the "missions" in AE were "hamidon goo farm"

    Two months later, there were 10 people per server still playing.

    A month and a half later they decided to fix it, but everyone was already gone. Some of them came back after the "grey side" change, but the damage was done. I'll never go back, the fourteen hundred people in my SG alliance will never go back. There are only 2 servers left out of a dozen and a half that people still play on. The other servers are populated by goldfarmbots that have been on autopilot since the Clinton years.

    Maybe you refuse to believe a game is dead until, like Matrix:Online, they unplug the server. Let me tell you about the final days of Matrix:Online. There were still 50 people playing at the end. 25 of them were GMs hand-picked from the community for playing all around the clock and remaining fanbois in the face of game-ending madness. They had implimented a player-generated-content system without ever doing a single bugfix on anything in the entire game. There were never a whole lot of people playing Matrix, but 95% of them left within two weeks of the PGC system going live. One year later nobody had bothered coming back, and the company had declared bankruptcy for the game, and handed the server over to voulunteer GMs. The voulunteer GMs cliqued up and didn't let new players into the game. Eventually even the hardcore fanbois left.

    PGC systems are dangerous to the bottom line, and when you do see one implimented, it's because the marketing team has moved on to a game that's still making a profit. History has shown us that every game which impliments a PGC loses a huge chunk of its playerbase within days. It's pretty much stuck with that reputation until some MMO company comes out with a game that STARTS with a PGC system already in place. I'm betting that company will be White Wolf Studios, because that's how their entire philosophy works in the first place.

    I love the idea of a PGC, but I also have been around to experience the past. I feel bad for you lot who really want this, not because of anything to do with you, but because of what will happen when you finally get what you want. See: Pyrrhic Victory

    Hate to say it, but this post is complete and utter nonsense.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    This is the simple truth, and anyone who played CoX knows this to be basically true. I played CoH/CoV for years, and when they brought in Architect Edition, it totally killed the game. There was nothing but abuse of the system and turned CoH in a power levelling farm game, and made it as boring as hell. It's like removing banking regulations - it's only a matter of time before abuse is rampant and collapses.

    If only this post was human readable. All those abbreviations don't tell me anything and what has abuse and the collapse of abuse in wherever to do with STO and its death ??

    And why is this cryptic message the truth ?? I thought it was 42.

    :O
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    How many times are you going to type this same post? I've seen two copies of this post in at least two other threads now.

    And in response to your post, no it didn't "kill the game." The devs confirmed that the subscriber base is up compared to before the MA Edition was released.

    Yes, the CoH/V devs screwed up when creating the MA. They screwed up big-time by ignoring us during beta testing. We told them literally hundreds of times while it was still on the test server, almost every single bad thing that was going to happen. And it did. It happened because they wouldn't listen to the testers.

    Positron's since been demoted. The new lead dev, Warwitch, is unlikely to make that same mistakes that he did. Point is that just because mistakes happened in CoH/V that does not mean that UGC can't be properly implemented in an MMO.

    Your OP is like the old man that says, "That new-fangled auto mobily thingy crashed and killed a man! We need to ban them autos. They're dangerous!"

    Aren't you glad that people ignored that crazy old man? If we'd listened to him we wouldn't have cars or trucks or buses.

    Really, I thought it was more I hope history doesn't repeat itself. After all, the word COULD is in the title. It's not like a bunch of people pointed out stuff to the devs here in beta for CO and STO and they didn't listen. No history repeating there.

    Yes it did kill the game. Server pops dropped left right and centre, people dropped/sold their sub accounts. Most of the poeple I played with for years left. Some I know only came back after AE was nerfed to hades and back (oh now, a repeat of a line) If CoX pop is up, I would like to know as compared to when? Before AE? During the huge pop boom with the release of AE, the pop after a few months of AE, or due to pre sales of Rogue were some maybe coming back?

    And sometimes it is better to be the "new fangled" old man pointing out the shark infested water than the young twit swimming in shark infested waters becuase the twit ignored all the signs.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    I agree with the guy with the Bing Bang Theory avatar. Also, wouldn't adding some peripheral functions for the game like city simulation and real time strategy aspects (for admirals/generals) be fairly easy to do and add a lot of dimension to the game?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    so.. what would change?

    its not like leveling takes long....
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Without one it will make thing worse. This is number one for UGC system . Could be as simple as adding 30 minute timer. Seem to work for the Nebla quest.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Keldor wrote:
    Four days after AE came out, everyone in the entire game was level 50. Level 50s didn't know what their own powers were. Goldfarmers and PL services made thousands upon thousands of dollars that week.

    A month later, half the "missions" in AE were "hamidon goo farm"

    Two months later, there were 10 people per server still playing.

    A month and a half later they decided to fix it, but everyone was already gone. Some of them came back after the "grey side" change, but the damage was done. I'll never go back, the fourteen hundred people in my SG alliance will never go back. There are only 2 servers left out of a dozen and a half that people still play on. The other servers are populated by goldfarmbots that have been on autopilot since the Clinton years.

    Thats how it was for me. Played CoX for 5 years, enjoyed every minute of it, but found that the AE just brought the zerg out in everyone and brought the game to a point where its was no longer interesting. I left and never looked back.
    So if Cryptic does a UGC fro STO, it had better have some really good limitations on what a player can design. Possibly a Dev controlled acceptance process, so we don't end up seeing abunch of Kirk parody missions.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Dev control of user created content is a MUST!!!
    Play all the UGC you want on holodeck for 0 XP/merit/stuff for fun if you want to. But the XP/Merit giving content must be manually tested and audited by a dev or a small group of trusted players before it goes live.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    When I think of STO, I do not think of power leveling and farming as huge concerns. It is already easy for people to level and the best end game equipment is not hard to get. Is there some part of the game I am missing?

    It was also suggested that UGC missions should give no rewards. If there is nothing to gain from the UGC missions, I do not see many players wasting time on them. I know they would need to be really well done for me to do them. What is the difference in turning a possibly abused system into a possibly unused system? There needs to be a balance between reward and effort in the missions.

    Maybe add time limits and others requirements for the missions to meet in order for them to give specific types of rewards. Something like enemies need to be a certain difficulty and the missions need to be X amount of minutes. If the mission meets certain requirements, it can give type X whatever as a reward.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    I can see some posters have already come up with some suggestions with how to limit UGC. Be it limiting tools, or just special restrictions like no cred for UGC missions(if missions are even on the docket), or just a peer review system.

    I'm sure the Dev's would maintain some kind of control mechanism, they aren't going to let us tools, tool up their game.

    I am completely for UGC, especially with the Star Trek Community at the proverbial corny helm.

    Empowering the players to do work for the Devs to really flesh out the universe will go a long way toward immersion, the galaxy would suddenly become a very large place.

    Though, personally, I would rather see other features make their way into the game first. To me UGC is just the frosting, lets get the cake out of the oven first.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Rhaw wrote: »
    It was also suggested that UGC missions should give no rewards. If there is nothing to gain from the UGC missions, I do not see many players wasting time on them. I know they would need to be really well done for me to do them. What is the difference in turning a possibly abused system into a possibly unused system? There needs to be a balance between reward and effort in the missions.

    I agree this is a tricky subject and something the devs need to put a lot of thought and planning toward.

    There are those out there who feel the story itself is the reward. There are also those who won't use it unless there is some kind of in-game reward mechanism. There are those who simply won't use it at all no matter what. It will be quite a challenge for the devs to design a UGC system that provides something for everyone.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    I am VERY leery of UGC of the type people are espousing here on the forums. I have never appreciated content developed by players.

    The UGC I would like to see is the ability to add to the STO environment through being able to establish settlements on exploration planets, space stations, and via noncombat classes. Wandering through parts of the STO world where people make homes and do things other than the pew pew game play is far more entertaining. It is an infusion of life and living and not poorly crafted inane scenarios that end up being mined.

    The only real way I could accept scenarios is if we cannot gain experience in them. They should survive on the merit of being well written and crafted and NOT their value as a method of earning xp.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    Pendra37 wrote: »
    Dev control of user created content is a MUST!!!
    Play all the UGC you want on holodeck for 0 XP/merit/stuff for fun if you want to. But the XP/Merit giving content must be manually tested and audited by a dev or a small group of trusted players before it goes live.

    I'll throw in an option that any UGC that gets popular enough could be turned into a regular mission with XP and all that. Be a great way of promoting the system, getting people interesting in making quality content, and still provide a barrier to prevent someone making an XP farm.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited May 2010
    I'll throw in an option that any UGC that gets popular enough could be turned into a regular mission with XP and all that. Be a great way of promoting the system, getting people interesting in making quality content, and still provide a barrier to prevent someone making an XP farm.

    Good point, fair enough. Farming 'missions' are usually dull, easy and short. So, no point to play farming missions without reward. If a mission is popular and played even without reward, that mission is likely to be a really good one.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited September 2010
    Does anyone remember the original series episode All Our Yesterdays? That library could be a way to view the UGC/participate in it.

    Personally, I think it'll be interesting to see what level of content the community can produce. Will it be better or worse than the current content and how is it better or worse?

    The main problem is, of course that UGC takes money out of the developers' pockets, which isn't good. If the funding for the game has already dried up and the end is inevitable, then the people who take over development in this way should have the option of reviving the game under their own banner after their own effort, and see if they do a better job.

    If the plan is to cut and run, at least leave us with the tools do pick up and do the job properly, that's all I ask. One of the things that no-doubt makes the Fallout 3 modding community so veracious is the user-friendliness and all-encompasing scope of the SDK. And they churn out some good stuff, but for any serious group of developers to take it seriously they've got to be looking at some sort of financial return, because unfortunately we've all got bills to pay.

    It's a huge topic, this UGC thing, and one I'll gladly discuss all night, although I will be falling asleep before TOO much longer now that I've vented my spleen on a forum :D
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