steelbadger
12-02-2011, 08:01 AM
<p>I am, unfortunately, rather disappointed in what I see coming to us in this feature. I'm not particularly surprised, as from the moment I heard about the basics I rather suspected that this would be what we get, but that doesn't mean I didn't have hope.</p><p>I feel I should perhaps try and explain the point of trying to mobilise Player Created Content first of all:</p><p>Player Created Content (PCC) is, once the feature is added, essentially free content for the devs and game. A number of people will willingly devote their time, for free, to add new and interesting content to the game. This is the first important part of PCC; the content they are able to produce must be capable of being fun and interesting. Unfortunately this content, no matter how well designed, does not look particularly inviting. A four-button avatar is simply not (as) interesting (as a fully fledged character). I know why you did it, but by doing it you have, in all likelyhood, killed the feature stone dead. If the rewards for completing these dungeons are very good then many people will run them but most will not thank you for making them spend time on such shallow and uninteresting characters, and once they have what they want they will never look back.</p><p>Additionally, the creators must have a level of freedom to pursue their plans to the limits of their own abilities as must as possible. This was the beauty of 'breakout' homes; they meant the designers were no longer constrained by the physical layout of the zone provided. SOE moved to embrase this with their open plan island house design. Again, I understand the reason why soe shied away from this, mob pathing particularly would be a nightmare in such places, but in so doing they have greatly reduced the range of possibilities for creating dungeons. That makes them less attractive places to design, and makes them less attractive places to visit, as all will be essentially similar.</p><p>PCC is NOT about having a low entry requirement, or simple and easy to use interface. Most people, if given the best tools in the world, will still produce boring content and that will not change by making the tools simpler. By making a complex and hard to grasp system you do, yes, damage the quality of content that most people can create but their content is not the reason for having the feature. But their content will be poor anyway, and by simplifying the tools to a level where everyone can jump in you have removed possiblities for those who would be willing to spend many hours working out how to get their dungeon exactly the way they dream it to be. Consider hex edited house layouts, this is far beyond the scope of the majority of players, but those few willing to learn how to use it can produce amazing work.</p><p>It is how OpenSource works, most people will never touch the source code of the programs they use, but just a few folks willing to spend their own free time on improving the working of the program can produce something amazing.</p><p>Don't bother angsting over a level playing field; hand that dilemma over to the free content designers, give them the full range of choice, let them build content for solo, group and raid, let them build instances for well geared and poorly geared players, let them deal with those headaches.</p><p>Because, if you asked it of them, many would try and a few would succeed. And those who do succeed would have created something really great.</p><p>It is, however, rather a case of trying to get a chap to shut the door after the horse has bolted. This feature is not going to change, and nothing I say can change that, but I am sad. I saw this as a possibility for something truly innovative and great; a real attempt to fix the eternal problem of MMOs: Creating enough content to appease the masses. Crowdsourcing the design of dungeons is a brilliant way of dealing with that problem, but these dungeons are too limited, and too far removed from normal gameplay to really 'count' as content in the same way as dev-created dungeons.</p>