it was a good episode, but I'd rather my XO NOT try to take over the ship! XD
Heh, true. I liked the whole episode, but I think the best part was "seeing" Seska again after she had died in the previous season. (I've always like Seska, even though, as a whole, I don't really care for Cardassians.)
Its been commented on before by the Devs, but this UGC has nothing to do with the game's rating.
young children play this game, people who are easily offended or want total immersion play this game. if there is no initial approval process then if that child or person is the first person to play the mission there wont be any ratings or comments.
there is still a risk it could happen even with the approval process but it cuts down the risk.
young children play this game, people who are easily offended or want total immersion play this game.
People who want "total immersion" have nothing to do with this discussion. The review system is only meant to weed out inappropriate content, not judge the story of the mission or its level of immersion. The fact that you dont even understand that only shows the problems that will arise when people such as yourself say a mission shouldnt be published for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual purpose of the review system.
In my opinion, there really is no need for this poll, and I like polls, but there really is no issue with the system that Cryptic has been telling you about, it's going to work.
Go to the Dev tracker and just read every single post over the last 4 - 6 pages, which should clear everything up.
Now I'm not concerned in anyway what so ever with anything that Cryptic has described so far regarding "The Foundry (beta)", but remember, that is all just my opinion.
So please, if you will, explain to me what your concerns are?
I am actually personally interested, and getting to the root of the so called "issue" can help a great deal.
I still feel that the UGC should be in the form of Holo-novels. And the computer chip containing the "holo-novel" could be shared with friends or sold on the Exchange. Having each player/ship capable of holding 3 to 4 holo-novels at a time.
People who want "total immersion" have nothing to do with this discussion. The review system is only meant to weed out inappropriate content, not judge the story of the mission or its level of immersion. The fact that you dont even understand that only shows the problems that will arise when people such as yourself say a mission shouldnt be published for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual purpose of the review system.
yes i understand it perfectly nagus, perhaps immersion was the wrong word but let me clarify my point.
immersion is affected if you walk in and cardassians are swearing at each other. that affects immersion, it also is vulgar at the same time.
yes i understand it perfectly nagus, perhaps immersion was the wrong word but let me clarify my point.
immersion is affected if you walk in and cardassians are swearing at each other. that affects immersion, it also is vulgar at the same time.
Are you saying Cardassians dont swear? I agree that is profanity, but I dont think that has anything to do with immersion. And the fact that we dont agree on this just goes to show how nonsensical it will be when people are saying something is inappropriate based on their own personal definition of the word.
Are you saying Cardassians dont swear? I agree that is profanity, but I dont think that has anything to do with immersion. And the fact that we dont agree on this just goes to show how nonsensical it will be when people are saying something is inappropriate based on their own personal definition of the word.
That's why it has to be a checklist format, with strict guidelines about what entitles you to vote against something.
Are you saying Cardassians dont swear? I agree that is profanity, but I dont think that has anything to do with immersion. And the fact that we dont agree on this just goes to show how nonsensical it will be when people are saying something is inappropriate based on their own personal definition of the word.
i would consider that to be both vulgar and immersion breaking from a computer game based on star trek that is for the whole family.
ok then how about if i walk in and two cardssians are talking about pornographic material. what if they in very graphic detail explain that pornographic material. is that immersion breaking enough for you in family game about star trek?
either way it would not pass the approval stage and nor should it. i think we both agree it should not.
yes there will be some grey areas, of course there will be but those grey areas will exist with or without a review board which is where cryptic would step in and decide after someone flags it after its got past the approval process.
yes we all have different viewpoints and ultimately it may come down to cryptic to decide on some missions, but how does the review board change that. adding a layer of extra security is a good thing. it does not stop people from finding those missions if they so choose to do so, but it protects people that dont want to be subjected to potentially very bad stuff.
if you want to play any mission you sign the EAUL and off you go and you can access any mission, if someone wants to have others test it and make sure its clean then they can. getting rid of the review board does not affect the person who has already signed the EAUL but does affect the person who only wants clean content.
People who want "total immersion" have nothing to do with this discussion. The review system is only meant to weed out inappropriate content, not judge the story of the mission or its level of immersion.
So anyone who signs the EULA and I'm sure that includes every single players who decides to become an author will be able to flag any inappropriate content, preventing such [worse case scenario] content from being made available to the public.
Which means that no child, teenage or adult, no single unique individual who has not signed the EULA will ever come to play a [worse case scenario] mission, authored and published by a player.
I'm sure you are aware of this, and I'm sure StormShade has stated something along the same lines.
The fact that you dont even understand that only shows the problems that will arise when people such as yourself say a mission shouldnt be published for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual purpose of the review system.
So here lies the root cause of most forum members concerns with the proposed "review system" for authored missions.
Many players like yourself, fear that another player who has signed the EULA will flag your mission as inappropriate simply because it does not meet their individual standards, correct?
Now I assume that within the EULA, it will be stated in brief (at least) what is to be deemed inappropriate, so any player who does flag your authored mission for inappropriate content, when no inappropriate content is actually contained within your mission would be abusing the system.
Which is why X number of reviewers must first review your "private" authored mission before it is ever made available to the "public", meaning that if the number of reviewers who are testing your authored mission are actually doing so by the book, outweigh the number of reviewers who are testing your authored mission and flagging it due to their own personal opinions of the content, then your authored mission is more than likely ok or not, depending on the reason for the authored mission getting flagged.
Anyway, so I'm not sure about this part (I'm not sure about any of it, best guess on my part), but I think that if a mission is flagged, someone at Cryptic would be able to read a comment (much like a bug report) describing why the the authored mission in question has been flagged, then check it out themselves.
Now if that is the case, the only issue that I can see happening, is a possibility of a back log of flagged authored missions due to Cryptic not having enough man power to review them, but again, I really am not sure of the exact process that will occur.
Not knowing the exact details of how the "review system" will work, is what I believe has stricken fear into most, if not all forum members here showing concern.
Perhaps StormShade could reply to the root cause of the issue and clear a couple of things up.
So anyone who signs the EULA and I'm sure that includes every single players who decides to become an author will be able to flag any inappropriate content, preventing such [worse case scenario] content from being made available to the public.
Which means that no child, teenage or adult, no single unique individual who has not signed the EULA will ever come to play a [worse case scenario] mission, authored and published by a player.
What's to prevent a child from simply signing the EULA without reading it? Clicking the "Yes I agree to the EULA that I totally for sure read and didn't just scroll to the bottom of so I could get to UGC faster" button does not prevent a child from playing such a mission. Good parenting does, but that's another thread.
How about this: instead of a "reviewers" system, just a simple EULA saying "you may find inappropriate content in this portion of the UGC". Much simpler, and it allows for an opt-in/opt-out system, without any of this "reviewers" stuff.
They are MAKING SURE it has nothing to do with it by allowing inappropriate content to be filtered out by testers in Tribble.
I think you misunderstand. The content will all be on the live servers - but some of it will only be accessible to people who have clicked a button. Ostensibly these people will be "reviewing" or whatever, but since everyone will just click the button and be done with it, it's kind of a moot point.
How about this: instead of a "reviewers" system, just a simple EULA saying "you may find inappropriate content in this portion of the UGC". Much simpler, and it allows for an opt-in/opt-out system, without any of this "reviewers" stuff.
What you have just described is exactly what it will be, every single player will have the option to choose whether or not they wish to sign the EULA and those who do will more than likely be either interested in approving (we'll use this word instead of reviewing) new authored missions to make sure they do not contain any inappropriate content before they go public or they will be interested in authoring missions, or both.
P.S. I can not answer your question regarding how easy it would be for a child to agree to the EULA as I only have the information that Cryptic has provided via these forums.
That's why it has to be a checklist format, with strict guidelines about what entitles you to vote against something.
I hope you're right. I hope that the review process uses a checklist instead of a rating system.
This would remind the reviewers that they're not supposed to be judging the mission on content, but looking for inappropriate text, NPC actions, maps and objects. Inappropriate map and objects you say? How could that possibly be a problem?
It is my hope that:
The reviewers will not be able to see the name of the author, makes favoritism more difficult.
Once approved, players will be able to see the name of the author. Being able to play all of a particular author's missions, because you like his style, is like buying all of particular author's books for the same reason. It's a good thing.
Once approved, the mission should start with no rating. The reviewer shouldn't be able to rate the mission, that's not what they're supposed to be doing.
The players of approved missions should be able to rate them. This process of natural selection allows the best stories to rise to the top, while the McMissions and other "Mary Sue" garbage slides down into the trash heap where it belongs.
Essentially this would create a Two-Tiered filter. The reviewing process filters out inappropriate content, e.g. language and other offensive symbols. While the ratings process filters out bad content, e.g. missions written by whomever wrote Starship Troopers 2.
Abuses are going to happen, regardless. This is the nature of online interaction. By having UGC content go public immediately you will absolutely see inappropriate content, boatloads of it. By requiring content to be reviewed first, it may take some content longer than it should to be made public. It also opens things up for favoritism and other abuses (I personally see this kind of thing as much less likely then some of you folks seem to).
What it comes down to for me is this; I'd rather have the content be reviewed first. I think the positives outweigh the negatives that way. Only time will tell.
Keep this in mind too, it's going to take several months of people trying out UGC and deciding it isn't for them to weed out the inappropriate and not-so-great content. However, after that I think the reviewers (if they are still around) and the UGC authors are going to become a pretty tight-knit community.
Any player can sign up to review newly published community authored missions.
The reason we require a sign up, and have a separate EULA for this is because we believe that since STO is a family game, and inevitably someone will create content which is inappropriate, we need to provide a filter of sorts to be able to catch this sort of material.
By asking for people who are not concerned about coming across this content, but whom understand why someone's episode about [Insert your worst case scenario here] isn't healthy for the game, we can catch a large amount of this content before it is seen by those who would rather not be subjected to unvetted material.
Thanks,
Stormshade
stormshade.......Star Trek has always aired predominately in a late night time slot here in australia, your arguement is invalid
just you wait, there's going to be some seven of nine and t'pol saucy action in the sonic shower, but dw, i'll make sure its in context for the mission, broken power coupling good enough for you?
stormshade.......Star Trek has always aired predominately in a late night time slot here in australia, your arguement is invalid
just you wait, there's going to be some seven of nine and t'pol saucy action in the sonic shower, but dw, i'll make sure its in context for the mission, broken power coupling good enough for you?
You'll end up getting flagged for using characters from the IP if you do that.
Any player can sign up to review newly published community authored missions.
The reason we require a sign up, and have a separate EULA for this is because we believe that since STO is a family game, and inevitably someone will create content which is inappropriate, we need to provide a filter of sorts to be able to catch this sort of material.
By asking for people who are not concerned about coming across this content, but whom understand why someone's episode about [Insert your worst case scenario here] isn't healthy for the game, we can catch a large amount of this content before it is seen by those who would rather not be subjected to unvetted material.
Thanks,
Stormshade
OK
A generic translation
folks that sign up to be a reviewer are volunteers that will go through it to make sure the adventure
is G rated - PG13 rated (US Movie standards) and to make sure that it is not 'vile'
nothing so adult that it could not be shown to children
no racism - unless it is "trek" racism and is a key point of the story....getting Yefthats to get allong
with andorians....or the like.
no real politics 'trek politics are ok'
no real religion ...STO is not for that
no promoting activities that are wholely unsavory...if it would make you puke, thats a clue.
That
What reviewing is not -
Checking for canon violations
Suppressing a part of the star trek universe you personally don't like ..ie I hate paklids so I will shut
....down any mission with them..
Enforcing 'true' canon over 'soft' canon
being judge jury and executioner on story quality <star system handles that>
being a perfectionist judge...that plant is partially stuck in a wall...REJECTED ! --just send the guy a note.
................all that is fine.
There needs to be a writer appeal function as well...SO if some 'reviewer'
starts over reaching the review rules, a writer can appeal to a Developer.
I just want to say to anyone who has been reading and debating this with me thus far that after getting all of my concerns out on the table, I'm feeling pretty good about the proposed system, with a few suggested changes. So I guess I'm not "anti review" anymore
I just want to say to anyone who has been reading and debating this with me thus far that after getting all of my concerns out on the table, I'm feeling pretty good about the proposed system, with a few suggested changes. So I guess I'm not "anti review" anymore
Comments
Heh, true. I liked the whole episode, but I think the best part was "seeing" Seska again after she had died in the previous season. (I've always like Seska, even though, as a whole, I don't really care for Cardassians.)
Its been commented on before by the Devs, but this UGC has nothing to do with the game's rating.
young children play this game, people who are easily offended or want total immersion play this game. if there is no initial approval process then if that child or person is the first person to play the mission there wont be any ratings or comments.
there is still a risk it could happen even with the approval process but it cuts down the risk.
People who want "total immersion" have nothing to do with this discussion. The review system is only meant to weed out inappropriate content, not judge the story of the mission or its level of immersion. The fact that you dont even understand that only shows the problems that will arise when people such as yourself say a mission shouldnt be published for reasons that have nothing to do with the actual purpose of the review system.
Go to the Dev tracker and just read every single post over the last 4 - 6 pages, which should clear everything up.
Now I'm not concerned in anyway what so ever with anything that Cryptic has described so far regarding "The Foundry (beta)", but remember, that is all just my opinion.
So please, if you will, explain to me what your concerns are?
I am actually personally interested, and getting to the root of the so called "issue" can help a great deal.
Thats completely fine, your more than free not to vote.
See my last post for one concern.
yes i understand it perfectly nagus, perhaps immersion was the wrong word but let me clarify my point.
immersion is affected if you walk in and cardassians are swearing at each other. that affects immersion, it also is vulgar at the same time.
Are you saying Cardassians dont swear? I agree that is profanity, but I dont think that has anything to do with immersion. And the fact that we dont agree on this just goes to show how nonsensical it will be when people are saying something is inappropriate based on their own personal definition of the word.
That's why it has to be a checklist format, with strict guidelines about what entitles you to vote against something.
i would consider that to be both vulgar and immersion breaking from a computer game based on star trek that is for the whole family.
ok then how about if i walk in and two cardssians are talking about pornographic material. what if they in very graphic detail explain that pornographic material. is that immersion breaking enough for you in family game about star trek?
either way it would not pass the approval stage and nor should it. i think we both agree it should not.
yes there will be some grey areas, of course there will be but those grey areas will exist with or without a review board which is where cryptic would step in and decide after someone flags it after its got past the approval process.
yes we all have different viewpoints and ultimately it may come down to cryptic to decide on some missions, but how does the review board change that. adding a layer of extra security is a good thing. it does not stop people from finding those missions if they so choose to do so, but it protects people that dont want to be subjected to potentially very bad stuff.
if you want to play any mission you sign the EAUL and off you go and you can access any mission, if someone wants to have others test it and make sure its clean then they can. getting rid of the review board does not affect the person who has already signed the EAUL but does affect the person who only wants clean content.
And yet, the Devs haveNT told us that it will be. Without that confirmation, then the issue is still on the table.
So anyone who signs the EULA and I'm sure that includes every single players who decides to become an author will be able to flag any inappropriate content, preventing such [worse case scenario] content from being made available to the public.
Which means that no child, teenage or adult, no single unique individual who has not signed the EULA will ever come to play a [worse case scenario] mission, authored and published by a player.
I'm sure you are aware of this, and I'm sure StormShade has stated something along the same lines.
So here lies the root cause of most forum members concerns with the proposed "review system" for authored missions.
Many players like yourself, fear that another player who has signed the EULA will flag your mission as inappropriate simply because it does not meet their individual standards, correct?
Now I assume that within the EULA, it will be stated in brief (at least) what is to be deemed inappropriate, so any player who does flag your authored mission for inappropriate content, when no inappropriate content is actually contained within your mission would be abusing the system.
Which is why X number of reviewers must first review your "private" authored mission before it is ever made available to the "public", meaning that if the number of reviewers who are testing your authored mission are actually doing so by the book, outweigh the number of reviewers who are testing your authored mission and flagging it due to their own personal opinions of the content, then your authored mission is more than likely ok or not, depending on the reason for the authored mission getting flagged.
Anyway, so I'm not sure about this part (I'm not sure about any of it, best guess on my part), but I think that if a mission is flagged, someone at Cryptic would be able to read a comment (much like a bug report) describing why the the authored mission in question has been flagged, then check it out themselves.
Now if that is the case, the only issue that I can see happening, is a possibility of a back log of flagged authored missions due to Cryptic not having enough man power to review them, but again, I really am not sure of the exact process that will occur.
Not knowing the exact details of how the "review system" will work, is what I believe has stricken fear into most, if not all forum members here showing concern.
Perhaps StormShade could reply to the root cause of the issue and clear a couple of things up.
They are MAKING SURE it has nothing to do with it by allowing inappropriate content to be filtered out by testers in Tribble.
There will be. I bet all my latinum on it.
What's to prevent a child from simply signing the EULA without reading it? Clicking the "Yes I agree to the EULA that I totally for sure read and didn't just scroll to the bottom of so I could get to UGC faster" button does not prevent a child from playing such a mission. Good parenting does, but that's another thread.
How about this: instead of a "reviewers" system, just a simple EULA saying "you may find inappropriate content in this portion of the UGC". Much simpler, and it allows for an opt-in/opt-out system, without any of this "reviewers" stuff.
I think you misunderstand. The content will all be on the live servers - but some of it will only be accessible to people who have clicked a button. Ostensibly these people will be "reviewing" or whatever, but since everyone will just click the button and be done with it, it's kind of a moot point.
What you have just described is exactly what it will be, every single player will have the option to choose whether or not they wish to sign the EULA and those who do will more than likely be either interested in approving (we'll use this word instead of reviewing) new authored missions to make sure they do not contain any inappropriate content before they go public or they will be interested in authoring missions, or both.
P.S. I can not answer your question regarding how easy it would be for a child to agree to the EULA as I only have the information that Cryptic has provided via these forums.
This would remind the reviewers that they're not supposed to be judging the mission on content, but looking for inappropriate text, NPC actions, maps and objects. Inappropriate map and objects you say? How could that possibly be a problem?
It is my hope that:
Essentially this would create a Two-Tiered filter. The reviewing process filters out inappropriate content, e.g. language and other offensive symbols. While the ratings process filters out bad content, e.g. missions written by whomever wrote Starship Troopers 2.
What it comes down to for me is this; I'd rather have the content be reviewed first. I think the positives outweigh the negatives that way. Only time will tell.
Keep this in mind too, it's going to take several months of people trying out UGC and deciding it isn't for them to weed out the inappropriate and not-so-great content. However, after that I think the reviewers (if they are still around) and the UGC authors are going to become a pretty tight-knit community.
stormshade.......Star Trek has always aired predominately in a late night time slot here in australia, your arguement is invalid
just you wait, there's going to be some seven of nine and t'pol saucy action in the sonic shower, but dw, i'll make sure its in context for the mission, broken power coupling good enough for you?
You'll end up getting flagged for using characters from the IP if you do that.
OK
A generic translation
folks that sign up to be a reviewer are volunteers that will go through it to make sure the adventure
is G rated - PG13 rated (US Movie standards) and to make sure that it is not 'vile'
nothing so adult that it could not be shown to children
no racism - unless it is "trek" racism and is a key point of the story....getting Yefthats to get allong
with andorians....or the like.
no real politics 'trek politics are ok'
no real religion ...STO is not for that
no promoting activities that are wholely unsavory...if it would make you puke, thats a clue.
That
What reviewing is not -
Checking for canon violations
Suppressing a part of the star trek universe you personally don't like ..ie I hate paklids so I will shut
....down any mission with them..
Enforcing 'true' canon over 'soft' canon
being judge jury and executioner on story quality <star system handles that>
being a perfectionist judge...that plant is partially stuck in a wall...REJECTED ! --just send the guy a note.
................all that is fine.
There needs to be a writer appeal function as well...SO if some 'reviewer'
starts over reaching the review rules, a writer can appeal to a Developer.
getting off my soap box
Glad to see you can be reasonable.