Thanks for the link Feyshtey,
And, I would be on board with that with qualifiers like you suggest in your OP. I also like it a feature as Aradune suggested in his blog - that it would be a post-launch (near sunset feature) almost like stand-alone player generated DLC packs at that point versus something that would be attempted near launch.
yeah, user generated content is something that Brad and co. need to clarify, explain, and expand upon ASAP - especially if it is a 'big part of the Grand Vision'. what are we specifically speaking about. how is user generated content going to fit into a world with no instances. is it a D&D style where a player can design a dungeon? is it player actions effecting the world? TELL US. ive said it before. this is kind of a big deal and isnt somethingt that can be pawned off into the 'not ready to divulge' category.
The only problem I have with UGC in games is that they often break the fourth wall to provide players with developer-style tools. As long as UGC in Pantheon work entirely from within the confines of the world, with the worlds tools, I'm a big fan. What I don't want to see is what you have with Neverwinter or Ryzom where you basically design an entire area or instance of the game world, build your own NPCs, scripts and dialogues, and then release it to players.
When I log in, I want to live in the mmo world with all of the appropriate limitation as but a person in that world. I don't want to become a developer from the outside looking in.
werzul said:Aradune said:UGC is a big part of the Grand Vision, which is what I call the plans for Pantheon post-launch.
may i ask why something that is a 'big part' of the games future has never been mentioned or even hinted at until now?
The context of the article was the sunset period of the game. I hope we all desire that sunset to be a decade or more in our future. And if UGC is a part of that far future vision, I commend them for thinking so far in advance, and fault them not in the least for not broadcasting those thoughts today.
Its actually been mentioned several times in the past. And thats why consolidation and elaboration of info in the FAQ, Tenets, and Features could be very helpful.
But yes if it can be done right and made meaningful I love UGC. Ive had a lot of fun with it in some games and others it was sort of a disaster. Implementation is the key!
Dullahan said:The only problem I have with UGC in games is that they often break the fourth wall to provide players with developer-style tools. As long as UGC in Pantheon work entirely from within the confines of the world, with the worlds tools, I'm a big fan. What I don't want to see is what you have with Neverwinter or Ryzom where you basically design an entire area or instance of the game world, build your own NPCs, scripts and dialogues, and then release it to players.
When I log in, I want to live in the mmo world with all of the appropriate limitation as but a person in that world. I don't want to become a developer from the outside looking in.
I have two thoughts on this.
1) The initial concept that comes to mind for me is things like the Player Studio that Sony introduced, and which Daybreak continues. It allows for player artists to create 3d models of in game items. These items are restricted to weapons, shields cloaks and items that can be placed in player-owned houses. They do not influence stats, and are entirely cosmetic. It is encouraged that players create a backstory for the item aesthetics that they create. In game terms there's no impact to gameplay at all. None. I approve of this approach. If things are entirely cosmetic then there isnt really any impact to the play of any other player so long as the vetting process prevents the ridiculous looking items from invading the gamespace.
2) If the UGC allows zone-creation, I'm torn. On the one hand it would be interesting to see what players could create. To your concern of seeing behind the curtain, I'm afraid that's a bridge crossed and well past burned. MMO games are increasingly built on off the shelf game platforms. Pantheon is no exception, utilizing the Unity engine. Any person able to familiarize themselves with these publically available tools wil be ablet to understand the geography creation. You might not be able to understand the underlying stats of a given mob but most of that will be deduced within weeks of the game's release anyway. Anyone really interested in that level of contribution to the gameworld can reverse engineer anything they might like to know regardless.
There is a big difference between understanding how something works, and actually going behind the curtain yourself.
I think the DBG system is kind of cool. Its all 100% external. Its basically like the Unity store. You build stuff, and they can utilize it. You build it outside of the game, in the appropriate 3d design applications, and submit the files. That is a lot different than opening something of a 3d design interface, within the game world, and seeing the 3d grid lines on the ground and spontaneously generating objects rather than crafting them through in game systems, using in-game materials.
Dullahan said:The only problem I have with UGC in games is that they often break the fourth wall to provide players with developer-style tools. As long as UGC in Pantheon work entirely from within the confines of the world, with the worlds tools, I'm a big fan. What I don't want to see is what you have with Neverwinter or Ryzom where you basically design an entire area or instance of the game world, build your own NPCs, scripts and dialogues, and then release it to players.
When I log in, I want to live in the mmo world with all of the appropriate limitation as but a person in that world. I don't want to become a developer from the outside looking in.
Well, ideally you only provide developer style tools to a very small percentage of your player base. I think it's safe to say that there should be at least 1% of your playerbase who has the skill and integrity to be equipped with a version of your in-house developer tool(s). But even 1% is huge -- if you have 100,000 players, that means you suddenly, in theory, have 1000 additional game designers at your disposal. This could truly change the face of your game, the quality and quantity of content generation could skyrocket, and truly dynamic worlds could suddenly be within your grasp. Likewise, since it's only 1%, you didn't necessarily break that fourth wall for the other 99%.
As for why I haven't written much about our long term plans and how they involve UGC, I guess the reason is threefold:
1. Truly harnessing that 1% is no easy endeavor -- creating that tool you would then distribute to non-employees is no simple task. Lots of planning and restrictions need to be incorporated. Obviously, for example, you need to have a solid item point pool system in place before you allowed your 1% to create items. And if you didn’t, the consequences could be quite nasty (Fiery Avengers dropping from mobs in low level dungeons and the creation of seriously broken and imbalanced content).
2. The Sekret Sauce factor. While I prefer to be as open and accessible as possible, I don't know if we're quite ready to release our UGC plans to the public yet. Incredible potential lies within the realm of UGC, but unless you're creating a true sandbox there's still a game whose integrity must be guarded. I think we should probably be quite a bit farther along and much closer to reaching the Grand Vision before we get too open Kimono.
3. You don't want to distract your playerbase with ideas and plans that, at least on the surface, could be interpreted as a significant departure from people's understanding of Pantheon: The Game. I've found it very easy to unintentionally panic our community by throwing new ideas for game mechanics and features out there without very carefully establishing and explaining the context and how it does indeed mesh with the Vision. I do talk about the Grand Vision on occasion and I usually do so because I want our community to know that we're in this for the long haul and that we have some great places we want to take Pantheon after release. I want them to know we are both focused on making a great game now but also have exciting long term plans. So I try to limit the details in order to avoid creating chaos and concern.
Likewise, you also don't want to needlessly panic your development team, stressing to them on one hand the importance of establishing a solid foundation upon which to build new ideas and differentiators and then potentially on the other hand derailing the focus necessary to move an MMO's development forward, slowly but surely, by talking too much about long term, post launch, and potentially risky plans that would require both a significant effort and also some significant changes.
Mostly, though, it's probably the sekret sauce factor that I have to admit restrains me. I think the first MMO that successfully and significantly harnesses UGC is going to change the face of MMOs forever -- it really could be and should be a paradigm shift. And whoever gets there first not only likely reaps some real commercial rewards but also will find themselves in a position to shape the emergence of real UGC for everyone.
I think there may be a bit of a disconnect between the kind of UDC we are talking about as it can vary so much.
Having players making content is great. Turning a game into a glorified development tool is not (imo). I'd personally love to help design stuff and have a ton of ideas. I just don't want it to become integrated into the game. This was a big topic with Landmark/EQN over the years where they talked about people building their own dungeons and filling it with npcs and such, but that kind of dev and design work that might have made sense in Landmark just didn't seem right in the virtual world for EQN proper.
Just to kind of demonstrate what I mean, this is a cool idea for a game called Dual Universe.
https://youtu.be/6dPmVdMU434?t=146
Its almost like a spacy minecraft meets no man's sky type of game. It boasts the ability to create all kinds of stuff etc, but once you get into how you do this, it looks a lot less like you're building stuff in a virtual world, and a lot more like you're using some sort of design software. Dropping prefabs everywhere, mixing and matching shapes and magically turning them into ships etc. There is no process involved, no explanation in game of how it works with technology, you are basically just going through menus just like you would in Blender or 3DSmax, selecting shapes and boom - stuff appears.
Dullahan said:I think there may be a bit of a disconnect between the kind of UDC we are talking about as it can vary so much.
Having players making content is great. Turning a game into a glorified development tool is not (imo). I'd personally love to help design stuff and have a ton of ideas. I just don't want it to become integrated into the game. This was a big topic with Landmark/EQN over the years where they talked about people building their own dungeons and filling it with npcs and such, but that kind of dev and design work that might have made sense in Landmark just didn't seem right in the virtual world for EQN proper.
But the real goal is indeed to integrate UGC into the game itself. At the very least, that's what I'm mostly excited about. Merely dabbling with it and making sure it stays safely within a black box is pretty much Landmark. It's been done and it's arguably useful only to a point. Voxels are one thing, but having hundreds of external content creators actually contributing to the game itself -- when that happens, that's going to be the gamechanger (pardon the pun).
Aradune said:Dullahan said:I think there may be a bit of a disconnect between the kind of UDC we are talking about as it can vary so much.
Having players making content is great. Turning a game into a glorified development tool is not (imo). I'd personally love to help design stuff and have a ton of ideas. I just don't want it to become integrated into the game. This was a big topic with Landmark/EQN over the years where they talked about people building their own dungeons and filling it with npcs and such, but that kind of dev and design work that might have made sense in Landmark just didn't seem right in the virtual world for EQN proper.
But the real goal is indeed to integrate UGC into the game itself. At the very least, that's what I'm mostly excited about. Merely dabbling with it and making sure it stays safely within a black box is pretty much Landmark. It's been done and it's arguably useful only to a point. Voxels are one thing, but having hundreds of external content creators actually contributing to the game itself -- when that happens, that's going to be the gamechanger (pardon the pun).
Absolutely. You definitely want to utilize the stuff being built in game. I'm more talking about separating the process of creating stuff from the in-game experience.
Hopefully my edited post makes a little more sense.
The idea of making content in-game is interesting to me if you're keeping that in the realm of gear, or cosmetic house items. Or houses themselves I guess. Making a town isnt even completely out of the realm of possibility I suppose, though I fear the people making houses that just happen to look like an X-Wing...
What fascinates me far more, however, is the content creation possibilities for adventure areas. Two of the ongoing struggles of every MMO I've ever experienced are keeping the playerbase engaged from one expansion to the next, and the developers keeping ideas fresh and interesting without going the route of cats on the moon.
Keeping players engaged is largely directed at those players on the top end of the advancement curve, who drive to max level and min/max their gear thru raids. They consume content voraciously. Many will argue that it's counterproductive to produce content rapidly for that particular crowd because they are generally a smaller percentage of a game's population. Why dedicate the resources to a minority? Well, if they arent trying to figure out new content, they are farming old content for twinks and friends. And in a game where contested content is a tenent that's a big deal for most, if not all, the game's population. And eventually many of the game's players will consume that new content. They'll just do it months or years later. Developing this content is time-consuming and if your game is one that you know isnt going to be a block-buster with 300 devs on staff, you simply cannot hope to drive quality content at a pace thats sustainable. Tapping into the horde of creative minds out there would be as if having a never-ending vein of new developers on staff, and with that a never-ending fount of new ideas. If you can get the design of content and storyline pretty well fleshed out then a couple of developers can polish that in pretty short order before inserting it into the gameworld.
But it doesnt really make sense to me for that content to be built in-game by the players. The adventure content is generally the antagonist, and the player the protaganist. It almost seems as though the player's role would have to flip in order for his creation of content to make sense. Unless your ancestor in the progeny system has gone rogue...
As Aradune points out, it is the meta-development and meta-integration that will be the determining factor.
If you consider EQN and EQNL, you could argue that they had 'integrated' UGC into the game via the (arguably clumsy and ultimately unworkable - think optimization) voxel manipulation tools they provided. I put the word integration in quotes as this was not an automated integration. It required no validation, just insertion. Looking at NWN, and it's UGC, you can see that there was proper integration, but the flaw here was a lack of pre-integration validation. Technically, UGC integration (without validation) has been about since The Sims 2. The limiting issue in these cases was insufficient meta-development.
Meta-development = consideration of how to develop and integrate the development tools
Meta-Integration = consideration of how to provide internally-consistent integration of content via external development tools
Here, we are talking about creating a set of development tools that have built-in validation pipelines to ensure consistency with the game world as a whole. This may be provided for by use of a wrapper tool during the final stage of UGC development which generates a set of measurable values (metrics) from the content. This wrapper layer is then interrogated by the integration tool to determine internal consistency.
This means that external UGC developers don't have direct access to primary DBs, merely access to pointers to choose a DB from a (sub-)set of the pre-defined ones available. Without this creation of internally consistent 'lists of lists', no UGC would be possible that would conform to the original parameters defined for that Game World. I.e. external DEVs get to add 'assets' from pre-defined lists, or choose 'loot tables' from a list of pre-detremined ones... all said tables having explicit metrics attached for use in validating Game-World consistency.
Effects:
1. The developers have to ensure that all developement tools used are, themselves, created tools with internally-consistent and interrogatable list structures. This will add a 2nd interation to the initial development cycle, I imagine. This is since it seems unlikely vanilla Unity development tools would track all the developemnt metrics needed for later validation checks.
2. The Game World would be able to be setup as a 'variant' World bu changing easily accessible configuration values.
3. Once the developers start using these developement tools and ensure a World-Extension tool is made, then 'true' UGC implementation becomes possible.
What does it mean?:
What it *does* mean is that it is possible for the VR team to determine a 'Vision' and ensure that this vision is maintained through all internal-development consistently and that, in the event of some decision (hopefully fairly far down the road) to implement
player-control of servers and UGC as the primary 'update' model ... or even a decision to
allow 'splinter worlds'/shards primarily governed as player-run with player-CS and UGC
it would still be possible to maintain a commonality of vision through these servers/Game Worlds.
TLDR: By looking into the future and creating a set of metrics within the game for all assets and components, it is possible for the VR team to establish and maintain consistently, a set of values to be met to ensure maintaining critical parts of the 'Vision' for the Game *within* the development tools. Eg: when you create a zone filled with a slew of mobs... meta-analysis of the zone could produce a set of variables such as 'Player_Usage_level' (optimum level for use) and 'Challenge_Level' (Value to show how challenging a zone is in terms of risk-vs-reward). These composite values could then be compared to ensure they are internally consistent, or meet a 'Game_World_Minimum' value for each.
NO-BUZZ-WORDS version: It *is* possible to have Game Worlds where User Generated Content (UGC) is checked to make sure it isn't silly, but is of a least a certain level of 'challenge'.
Player created content is a 2 edged sword. Some parts of it (like being able to custmize how stuff you craft looks) is relatively easy to add and make little impact on actual gameplay.
Some stuff like player created instanced dungeons leads to 99% crap content, often with bad risk vs reward loot and should not be used in MMOs (it is fine in regular multipålayer games as Biowares Neverwinter nights proved).
And some content is hard to add but have potential in the right type of game. Guild created towns and keeps could work if done right. It is not something that is easy to put in the game but if done right it could add a lot to guilds and factions.
Guild created dungeons would not work in Pantheon, it could work in a PvP focused sandbox game with the right mechanics (something like Crowfall).
Being able to design how your home look is the easiest sandbox feature to add, EQ2 had this to some degree and I think that is the likeliest thing we will get in the game. Since it doesn't matter at all for game balance and is very popular with players I believe it is the likeliest feature. It is also relatively easy to add to the game compared with most other player generated content.
this is sounds interesting, i think it goes without saying (well brad has already said so with his 1% comment) that the approval process will and should be pretty harsh.
i would like to add one thought. a sort of ratio for content implementation. having thirty player created dungeons that meet approval, and need to be plugged into the existing game world, sounds great on the surface, but could lead to things getting a bit crowded if there is a lack of new landmasses (zones) added. i think this would also help what could be a problem of floods of player created item drops, something that would diminish the wonder or prestige of getting that ubder drop. limiting the number with some ratio of UGC/landmass may seem too restrictive. but think on this. the person who can and has made 5 very good new dungeons, decides to collaborate with the person who is working on the entire landmass of a new zone, but is making slow progress. they work together and speed things up, allowing the player made dungeons someplace to be put rather than siting on the shelf. i think this is also in line with the game tenet of bringing people together, forming social bonds that last, etc.
this also, imho, would allow for UGC implentationto be done earlier in the games lifespan, as thing flow of content would be overall slower, rather than just a late in life 'everyone gets to do it' (resulting in a lot of bad UGC, but it all gets approved because thats the only reason many are playing - not saying this is what will happen in Pantheon, at all) attempt to stretch the games life or hold onto population.
lot of great potential with this.
After having listened to many of Brad's interviews and writeups I have a prediction regarding this UGC. He has a tendency to refer to the "emergent" properties and behaviors which came into existance in his previous games, i.e. the EC tunnels became a trade spot. I have a feeling this UGC is post-launch because he is going to let these naturally occuring emergent contents be formed by the players and then potentially outfit the world to reflect it. Emergent behaviors become inevitable when networks (social, trade, combat) are allowed to grow in any environment. After they appear, he might consider incorporating game content, or allow players to generate content, to suppliment the phenomena and root it in Terminus lore.
@Werzul, you have a point. It would feel really artificial if all of a sudden there were dozens of ancient dungeons littering zones. But I guess at the same time if they landmass of the game at release is substantial enough (and they've hinted they would like it to be so) then even a hundred or more dungeons added over time would not seem to clutter things up. As new expansions are released with new continents the philosophy can be expanded. You could leave land in reserve from earlier areas as well so that later (perhaps much later) players could breath new life into old lands with player-crafted content.
It might also be very possible to guide the player-created content to a degree. Imagine there's a dark, dead forest in some backwater area of the gameworld. Maybe the devs take a handful of players approved to create content aside and request submissions for a necromancer cult themed addition. Tell them they are expected to produce a level 35-40 point of interest, or maybe even a zone. It should have roughly 40-70 mobs. It should be spooky, focus on undead and ritual, have a backstory including the emergence of a new sect of some kind, etc.. Then the devs can take the best of the submissions and polish it for release. Maybe you dont even limit the submissions strictly to game-ready 3D content, but also allow 2D art concept submissions that the devs can elaborate on and develop internally.
@syntro, I really like that line of thinking. It seems so obvious, but I dont think I've ever actually seen a dev group pursue it. They always try to improve on things and replace that emergent behavior instead. (EC tunnel becomes the Luclin Bazaar.... bleh.)
Feyshtey said:@syntro, I really like that line of thinking. It seems so obvious, but I dont think I've ever actually seen a dev group pursue it. They always try to improve on things and replace that emergent behavior instead. (EC tunnel becomes the Luclin Bazaar.... bleh.)
Yeah you're right. Hopefully they've learned this time around and they'll work with the emergence and not try and supplant it. There is something to be said about the ability for an emergent behavior to also cease to exist. Whatever mechanism they introduce it should be able avoid perminance.
