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UGC Concerns from Mike Apolis Interview
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I have a couple concerns and questions about UGC after listening to the Subspace Radio Interview with Mike Apolis where he discusses in length how the devs think The Foundry will operate:
I realize what Mike Apolis disclosed isn't set in stone. However, it's the direction Cryptic is moving in and so worthy of discussion. What do you think?
- UGC Reviewers - Player Council all over again?
My concern here is about granting a few players power over many. It seems Cryptic is thinking of having a panel of player "reviewers" make the initial call on whether to let new UGC missions be published for others to play or not. Mike Apolis says players can sign up to be a reviewer.
Everyone should be concerned about this because the people who sign up will have their own ideas as to what should be published and what shouldn't be. Strict Canonists will be sure to sign up and stop anything that doesn't meet their personal approval.
This sounds reasonable for stopping plain inappropriate content but... Will these "reviewers" have the power to "deny" your UGC mission just because they don't think your story is canon? Or that your mission has a ship in it that they don't think should exist?
I wouldn't take anyone's fun away from piloting a T5 NX-Class but there are others who would in an instant. I do not want them making a "judgment call" on my UGC missions.
Who will the initial "reviewers" be? Perhaps the players chosen to be in The Foundry's Closed Beta?
Is there voting on who can be a reviewer? And who is going to review the reviewer to make sure they aren't being too lenient or too strict?
This is bothering me almost as much as The Player Council did - I don't like a select few having this much power. In my opinion, this is a rather stringent level of vetting.
I think any content that's too wierd or non-canon should simply be policed by everyone via the rating system. Anything wonky can be moved to the Holosuite in Quark's Bar and the Holodeck on our ships as fantasy programs. - Diminishing Returns for UGC Mission XP - Not the savior of Klingon PvE?
Mike Apolis also says they are thinking of implementing diminishing returns for UGC content that we complete each day. The 1st UGC mission - you get ok XP. The 2nd mission - your get similar XP and an item. The 3rd mission - your XP goes way down. After the 3rd you're not getting XP at all for running UGC content that day.
What bothers me about this is obvious. For Klingons it's not the savior of their PvE experience like a few devs have implied. Being able to get (ok) XP from 2 missions per day won't fill the huge gaps in PvE that Klingons have.
In just about every interview, DStahl says Klingons will never have the same amount of episodes as Feds. Well, leveling a Klingon won't be that much better with this. Feds can log in, play PvE all day long and gain a couple ranks. Klingons still won't be able to with UGC.
Why even lead us to believe that The Foundry will fill the Klingon content gap when you knew up front you were going to implement diminishing returns?!
I realize what Mike Apolis disclosed isn't set in stone. However, it's the direction Cryptic is moving in and so worthy of discussion. What do you think?
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1. the reviews need to be elected by the community, and it needs to be for missions that are added to the game. ( as in make them non UGC missions, but make them like normal game missions.. that way every one gets published, but the best missions become official... )
2. Klingons can't play UGC.. or they cant get as much XP... Klingon players need to have the limit of the amount of XP increased. instead of the first mission giving normal XP make it the first 5 or so missions for them, and then start decreasing the XP.
Also I think I remember something about them only being around for a certain number of months or weeks before being replaced by another bunch. So I guess it's like jury service or something.
2. Surely having something new to do is welcome? So there's a diminishing returns system to prevent exploits, e.g. farming. That's OK. You'll at least get some skill points from around 3 missions per day. Compared to now where there's only one new feature episode every week.
I'm sure these are over-concerns. Everything so far seems reasonable in theory. Let's see how it works for real in the beta test first before further speculation either way.
Placing customers into positions of power and privilege over other customers - especially such a subjective sort of power - turns my gut. I really don't think that UGC should be slipped into the 'main game' anyway since it works out to padding the product with volunteer work. Rating, search features, all that is necessary... appointing a cultural jury is not.
And massively-dimishing returns on running UGC makes no sense, especially given that it's almost guaranteed to involve more interesting variety than grinding Exploration. Even if 99% of UGC missions are TRIBBLE, at least they wouldn't be the same madlib over and over agan.
On the other hand if there were a once a year event in place where a panel of reviewers pulled from Cryptic, CBS, and the player base were to review the best UGC missions in the game and then officially add the best of the best as regular missions in the game then I could see this working.
The only sole reason I have put up with all the bugs and gameplay issues is the promise of the UGC. If this ****-poor idea of implementation actually makes it past the "is this a dumb idea" stage, then I will absolutely no reason to continue playing.
This. Diminishing returns just makes no sense. This is a way of creating content for ourselves.. why should they do anything but encourage that?
Sure there will be some really good missions some will come up and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Cryptic ends up taking some of those missions and adding them to existing content. But in the long run, it's just an overgloried mission creator using STO tools, instead of creating the same mission with mods of previous Star Trek games like Bridge Commander.
Be honest, given how bad Space Combat has gotten with repetitiveness and the over dependance on BO Abilities, I'm starting to think that playing Bridge Commander is a better deal in being "Star Trek".
Here's hoping this idea isn't a precursor to just getting us to do all the developing so they can cannibalize the dev team for their other projects.
1) Flat rewards for missions.
2) No rewards for missions under X minutes.
3) Users with missions that are rated well get a personal author rating. A good author rating nlocks Silver, Gold, and Latinum Author status, which allows your new missions to get rated up to rewards status faster. However, get any infractions for missions that break the content guidelines and you get busted back down to the start for 30 days.
4) If you're going to go the player-testing route, actually hire the players. It will provide a much cleaner standard in terms of results and professionalism. It will face less criticism than simply elevating a few players in unpaid positions and give them resume credentials for the work they're doing. You can always give them the option between cash and Cryptic Points for a week.
Personally, I think the smart move is to just to hire 10 or so distance employees as Foundry testers. Give them a separate green name for the forums. Give them a code of conduct and an NDA preventing them from disclosing their player identity. Break it and you're out. Do well and you get brought into official content design and maybe working to assist on something like a guest author program.
You can go by an hourly payscale (easy enough to check) or make it a commission basis where they get, say, $4 for every star that the missions they approve get rated by players. Say... $10 an hour with an additional $10 for 4 star rated missions and $20 for 5 star. So you get bonuses for greenlighting quality missions.
Get caught fixing the polls and you're out. You approve too many missions with a low rating, you get terminated and replaced. You approve too few missions per week and you get laid off and replaced and put back into the queue of applicants. If players are generating too few missions, the supervisor will set it up so that you can meet your quota by creating missions to submit to other testers.
By having professional UGC testers, you have some standards in place that would be harder with volunteers.
Alternatively, if hiring isn't an option, you can incentivize accurate reviewing. Anyone who reviews within one point of the average rating for a mission gets entered in a daily Cryptic Points drawing for 250 CP, for example. So it gets people in the mentality of trying to assign a rating they'd expect other people to give the mission. This could strip some bias out.
Why are we freaking out over a casual interview? Cryptic hasn't even presented the so-called "review" system and people are already lighting torches and raising pitchforks.
In the immortal words of Douglas Adams DON'T PANIC. At least, not until you have been presented with and used the system in question. I am ABSOLUTELY certain that Cryptic will do everything in their power to curb abuse to a minimum.
And as far as the rewards go, how is this going to be any different from B'Tran and PvP dailies? Did you notice you can only do those once a day?
Believe me, if there are valid concerns about the implementation after we have been presented the system and tried it out ourselves, I'll grab a pitchfork too. But it is just way too early to freak out about all this.
That's good to hear. It just seems like these things are subject to change so fast that a new statement turns everything on its ear, potentially.
End-User Licensing Agreement
you know that legal mumbo jumbo you always ignore when installing a game?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=EULA+
As far as i know there is only one other MMORPG that offer an UGC tool and that's CIty of Heroes/Villains (originaly developed by cryptic for NCsoft. now developed by former cryptic employees now working for NCsoft under the name Paragon Studios) and this Mission-Architect like it is called there is a very cool feature .. you can really develop missions like the devs do and release it for all players. The serach-tool also is very strong and you can rate missions there and can send comments to the one who has developed the mission.
There was and is only one drawback within the Mission-Architect, it is "soft-exploitable" as i would call it. Players develeoped exp farming missions where you can level up really fast. That leads to the problem, that many ppl only level their chars with such Mission-Architect missions, level up to high level and have no idea how to play the real game, beside that ppl who want to play the normal game missions no longer find teammembers.
So Cryptic learned from the mistakes Paragon Studios has done. They need a functionality to stop ppl from soft-exploiting the UGC tool by creating pure farming missions with UBER-EXP.
The reality is anyone can be on the UGC panel, reviewing missions.
The diminishing returns are to prevent farming.
Both positions sound fair: democracy on one hand and preventing abuse on the other.
the reality is that the initial tools will be fairly limited but as time goes on the dev team will expand said tools. also that the community here is resourceful enough to get around said limitations.
And the people who let everything through are the ones who will be applauded. Every time a mission gets rejected you'll have the player base up in arms screaming, "OMG WHY ARE YOU RUINING MY FUN!?"
If Cryptic is responsible for setting the rewards then there's no "abuse" in farming UGC, anymore than there's "abuse" in farming DSE's.
players can simultaneously report missions that are pants on head stupid meaning the devs can take away reviewing rights from sloppy reviewers.
And any can sign up to review - you just have to work to keep it that way. The diminished returns are to prevent people from creating TRIBBLE farming missions. If you've seen other games with UGC, you'd understand why this is necessary.
Also, they put a cooldown on DSEs to prevent farming. I remember exploiting the DSEs to get through the game's content gaps. I can't do it the same way anymore (which also happened to get rid of farmers who'd instance hop for it, due to no cooldown).
If reviewers are anonymous and we (ie, the mission creator) appeals, who reviews the reviewer? Cryptic? What's to prevent a reviewer from letting TRIBBLE UGC missions through? If a TRIBBLE mission gets through, will it be pulled back if the reviewer is determined by Cryptic to have been making poor judgments? Or will the mission then be given to another reviewer to approve or reject?
It sounds like quite the clusterf*ck setup to me, ultimately dependent either on the population choosing reviewers without knowing who they are and/or dependent upon Cryptic to watch the watchers.
Cryptic is suppose to be responsible for determining UGC rewards, no? If so... they have the capacity to prevent "farming missions".
And considering I find most episode missions TRIBBLE (save the new weeklies), I rely pretty heavily on farming DSE's. I do all the patrols that pop up, but DSE's are necessary for my leveling. So yup. I farm them, and I instance hop. The 30 minute cooldown doesn't prevent farming all that much.
From what I understand Cryptic themselves will be setting the xp and item reward for UGC missions from the get go. So it should be impossible to create farm missions from the way I understand it.
Actually, no. The XP/credit rewards are determined by average playthrough for the mission.
You report a bad review or vetting of a mission. Cryptic's GM/Community team can then determine who let what through.
Nothing prevents them from putting TRIBBLE missions through. however, the risk of being cut-off from reviewing UGC will discourage letting TRIBBLE through. TRIBBLE will still occur but people will be mindful that allowing it to slide (to be popular) could mean losing their privileges. Cryptic doesn't quite set the rewards. The rewards are based off average playtime and also how many missions that player has run that day. Funnily enough, this system is more progressive. You can play as much UGC as you want - it's just that after a certain point, it is more efficient to do other content to level per day.
As for DSEs, the 30 minute cooldown does mean that the rate of XP gain is decreased - before you could simply hop complete hop complete - now there's a 30 minute wait before you can accept the mission again.
Cryptic's system for managing UGC rewards actually sounds like it would discourage Ker'rat and Ortha farmers.
Yes, right, that's why over at City of Heroes half the patches are just exploit fixes for their Mission Architect system for players who found ways to abuse the automated reward system. Yep, that would be great for STO, wouldn't it? :rolleyes:
Personally, while I think the review system sounds good in theory, in practice it won't work well. Why? It supposes that everyone will rate content fairly and objectively; but here's what will happen (imo):
1) you'll get reviewers who pass (and put a 5 star rating on ANYTHING) for the right 'price' (be it in game equipment, EC, etc). yes cryptic can monitor and start to 'kick people' from being reviewers if they want; but that will just start a round of bad feelings in game, cause lost subs, and the reputation of STO and it's UGC system will drop and be seen as a liability.
2) Fleets will (again) pass (and 5 star) ANYTHING done by a Fleet mate; and if some don't, you can be sure it'll cause 'drama' in the Fleet, again leading to lost subs, bad feelings, etc.
3) Exploiters will band together to make and pass stuff that exploits the system.
And again, anytime Cryptic (rightfully) uses the 'exclude' option for these type of reviewers; it'll just cost subs as the people excluded feel cheated, and the argument will always be: "Hey, you guys MADE the system and set the rules. How can it be abuse if the Foundry editor doesn't 'red flag' what I did? It just goes to show Cryptic doesn't know what it's doing...etc."
And lets not get stated on the storm that will erupt even when missions that RIGHTLY deserve to be rejected or get one star start to show up. The forums will explode about the unfairness of the rating system, the review process, etc.
Personally, I do think the OP read too much into the interview comments; as (like has been stated) - anyone who accepts the Foundry EULA can see any published mission (whether 'accepted into the game' or not); but I really do think, given the nature of the average MMO player; and what we saw in the implementation of the CoX Mission Architect - no player run rating system will do what the Devs intend ONLY because they honestly think (much like the NCSoft Paragon Devs did); that players will be objective, and want to mostly create and honestly rate good content; when in reality, the majority will be the ones who want to 'game' the UGC system to create loot farms, Power Leveling farms, Accolade Farms, etc. And anything Cryptic does to curtail that will be seen as negative because "We're just using the system you Devs gave us" along with; "Why does anyone care if WE want to play STO 'this way' as we pay of $15 a month like everyone else.
I admit, I was optimistic thinking that perhaps Cryptic, with this extra level of player review might be on to something; but seeing the reaction of many people in this thread to just that, shows that whatever tools they give to the playerbase; the majority will just be out to exploit or 'game' it to the largest extent possible; and when Cryptic swoops in to try and regain control, it'll end up with the same result that the MA had for CoX.
So, yeah, at this point after seeing some of the player reactions in this thread; I honestly don't see any real benefit to STO in adding a full featured UGC system to the game. I REALLY DO hope I'm wrong; but (like what happened with CoX and the Mission Architect); 60+ Devs can't compete vs thousands of exploiters; and the one who will loose are the general players of the game; as well as the small minority of players who DO (and would) use the UGC as the Devs and CBS hoped they would.
For once we're in complete agreement. With regards to the UGC system, anyway.
I think Cryptic is doing a lot of things that sound good on paper but, in practice, will ultimately only cause problems for the game.
The canon purists complained and we're forced to have a review system that both gates content and has potential for abuse by reviewers.
It's a shame a simple report feature was used and been done with.
As for the XP issue, that should be determined based on mission length (there should at least 3 different time lengths; short, medium, long) and whether or not the enemies scale to your level or remain static. Some type of algorithm or formula should be used based on the above, IMHO.
I still don't understand what makes this system a good thing.
Sooooooo... Why not use the 3-pack cooldown system on the typical 30 minute timer?
It's increasingly apparent that they really don't want people actually playing the game much per day...
Source for this?
Seems this decision was made before UGC even became a common topic on the forums here. As a "canon purist" I have no problem with all content being available. Just slap ratings on it and all is fine. Put the mission entry in a simple dialogue list. So long as it's not sitting on the open game world map, purists should be able to easily excuse bad UGC away as not being part of the actual game world.
Heck... put all UGC on the holodeck and there's no problem at all from a purist's perspective.