One of the little things that bugs me in existing Superhero MMOs is the lack of emblems and Logos. I feel this is a restriction in creating your own UNIQUE Superhero and I feel that making it where you can customize your own Superhero Emblem would be great, that way your superhero will represent something different than anyone else.
Example: Say I want my logo to be a bird but I want inside a circle, now the default bird logo has no circle, so I'm able add a circle and place the bird inside it.
What do you think about this idea???
—
I accidently ate a bowl of radioactive soup....ok I guess that makes me a Soup-er Hero
I've been an advocate of custom logos from the beginning. However, there have been lots of reasonable arguments against being able to design ANYthing you want. This would obviously and immediately become a challenge for the devs in maintaining the Teen rating, 'cuz penises, apparently.
OTH, what you propose, maybe having a selection of simple "grounds' that you could put your emblem on might be workable. Shield shapes, circles, stars, diamonds, etc. Especially if we could size them independent of the emblem and maybe do 'subtractive' effects on a single layer.
Didn't we have this in CoH?
Be Well!
Fireheart
I played CO and you had more logos to choose than DCU Online, but I don't thing you could costomize them other than color
I accidently ate a bowl of radioactive soup....ok I guess that makes me a Soup-er Hero
One of the things mentioned in the kickstarter was that they want to make emblems which can be moved around and, I think, stretched and/or rotated, which will give us a lot more mileage out of the whatever emblems they give us.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
I think what I would like is just havign a huge selection of symbols and shapes to use, then allow people to add more than one, so you can superimpose a letter "A" over a filled in circle, over a five pointed star, and then have more, smaller stars to the left and right of it, etc.
Just having a reasonably good library of geometric shapes, the ability to scale them up or down, and the ability to superimpose them on top of each other, and the ability to give each one it's own color(s), and the aforementioned ability to move them around on the avatar goes a long way.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I think they are aiming to have a similar system as the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDWV79wg_N4]marking/tattoo system in APB Reloaded[/url]. That is that you get a set of "basic" tattoos and shapes that you can combine and color in essentially any way you want to create a much larger and/or complex one, or apply them directly.
If MWM does such a system then emblems would just be one of the things you create in it.
I wonder if the Terms of Service will come the same things like APB:Reloaded.
Googling... found [url=http://steamcommunity.com/app/113400/discussions/0/522729358745630531/]this thread[/url]:
Reply by a player kinda summarizes the PermaBan Reasons...
Should MWM add, remove, modify their ToC too much? And which parts?
It is inevitable that someone will try to make something offensive (eye of the beholder not withstanding) when you allow something like customizable logos.
I just don't think that is enough of a reason to not include something like this.
Personally, I'd like to have the same levels you get in the Forza or Need for Speed customization garages, but I don't think that will happen in an MMO with a Teen rating. I don't play any of the online versions of these racing games, though. Anybody out there who does? Is there a constant onslaught of inappropriate imagery just because its available? Is there a reporting process or what?
So we can't use THIS logo?
[IMG]http://i63.tinypic.com/244xgr5.jpg[/IMG]
But what if my character's name was always BEEEED
Except in his secret I.D. when it's just BEED
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Individual examples are pointless. The game cannot police based on a case by case basis, it would require too much resources and time. There is just no way to open allow for artistic design (such as emblems or logos) without allowing for the idea that some will abuse it which in turn requires more individual effort to police. I personally think the extra cost to police is worth the gain of allowing more customization in this area...but admittedly its not based on any fact or study just a personal opinion.
Yeah but BEEEED---<
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
The technical term for the problem here is "Time To Dick." (TTD) And thanks for the ... impromptu demonstration, Paladin. Now go make an alignment check. :P
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Its the main reason why all of the alliance logos in Eve Online get vetted manually for submission (and for copyright reasons as well).
Oh and also SomethingAwful as well would have a field day otherwise.
Side note: Goons are quite a fun bunch in person (along with the VETO pirate corp). VETO corp were *especially* nice to me and my (then) girlfriend at one of their open player meets. I even had a few drinks with the "enemy alliance" who kicked my alliance out of 0.0 space.
[url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/641418] What you speak of is here[/url]
The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One
Avatar by lilshironeko
that sound like great idea i alway wantend make my OWN superhero logo
Will we be able to put rows of letters and numbers on the surface of our toons so as to make words or acronyms, like giving them an FBI, ATF or TCPD t-shirt or cap?
"TRUST ME."
This reminds me of a funny story. I knew a kid on college once who had gotten a hold of a Syracuse University Crew hat. It was a standard baseball cap, but the style that the school had the sports teams hats made in that year was like "S football U"
so the Crew one read as "S crew U"
He said he managed to get one before they caught the obvious problem and took them off the shelves.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Ohhhh... A Collectable! :O
In Sesame Street fashion ...
This thread was brought you by:
The letter F.
The letter U.
And the number 2.
Again, you're up against the Time To Dick constraints of letting people have enough stuff to free form their own messaging.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Heh.
When my sister was living in Germany she sent me a t-shirt with the logo of a local team: the Fussball Club of Kaiserslautern. The logo is basically a stylized FCK. I loved all the double-takes I got while wearing it!
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
In my business travels I often fly through a city in Japan called Fukuoka. It's one of their larger cities and it's actually quite a lovely place, but unfortunately its 3-letter airport code is "FUK". I've gotten several silly comments from people about it here in the States when they look at my checked luggage and see the big "FUK" on the claim stickers. ;)
P.S. Just as another example of how good-intentioned logos can be ruined there was a news story about a year ago where a sheriff's office in Florida had installed a new rug in their lobby which had their logo emblazened on it. The only problem was that the crest on the rug read "In Dog We Trust".
[img=300x400]http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2496034/original.jpg[/img]
The extra funny part was that they later auctioned off the typoed rug for nearly $10k...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Praise Dog! Dog is Watching! Dog is Love! Dog just wants a bite of your sandwich. Dog is Great!
Be Well!
Fireheart
And these examples are probably why we will not be able to string letters together for our logos.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Depending on how many individual pieces/layers we can use we would be able to make fairly long words or even meanings by making our own letters from basic shapes like rectangles circles triangles and such. It would be even easier if we cold make "sub components" that is treated as one single piece/layer in another assembly.
the ability to string multiple letters/numbers in a row for a customized logo...yeah, two second after the game there will be scores of questionable "logo's" created and this would be a nightmare for the dev's to monitor. as such, I wouldn't hold my breath on getting that function. heck, I would suggest against doing it given the inherent "pain in the butt" it would be on multiple levels.
I like the idea behind customized logo's but allowing for player generated logo's is a dangerous line given the mentality of some of the folks out there. Along a similar line, while it would be cool to over lap pre-generated in-game logo's/images to create unique logo's this also falls short given the questionable creativity of people out there as such I would suggest against this as well.
the answer? create scores and scores of Logo's for the players to use. Ranging from a buncha generic words, acronyms (including oddball collections of random letters) and images in general.
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
Here's a proposal
I don't know how far along the build for the costume creator is, obviously. And I'm going to making a couple of (I think) reasonable assumptions.
Assumption 1) We are going to have an array of pre-designed colorable 'patterns' to use as a basis for a 'tights' layer, just like CoH with stripes and geometric figures, etc.
Assumption 2) We will be able to place a pre-defined logo, chosen from an extensive approved library, anywhere on the costume, and distort it i.e. size/rotate/stretch/etc. as we like. (This was previewed to us, if I'm not mistaken, so I consider it a reasonable assumption)
So, let's say that on top of the base costume layer, which I'm calling the 'tights' layer there are a limited number of, let's call them 'graphic', layers. I think at least two or three. For the sake of this proposal, let's call the layer FURTHEST from the 'tights' layer, or closest to the viewer, LAYER 1, and the CLOSEST to the base, or 'tights' LAYER 3. You can use any and all of the layers, or none, leaving them essentially transparent.
Now, I propose that the 'logo' graphics, the pre-defined symbols, can only be used on LAYER 1, the 'top' layer. LAYERS 2 & 3 would have a limited set of more generic shapes (Circles, polygons, stars, maybe with some gradient effects, etc.) designed primarily, but not exclusively, as a base or background for LAYER 1. You only get to use one object per layer but you can manipulate them all with the same distortion tools and, of course, color them separately.
So you could layer white Wings(LAYER 1 symbol) on top of a blue Star(LAYER 2 shape) Surrounded by a red Circle(LAYER 3 shape)
Using a little judgement on what to include for the layers 2&3 library would probably head off the vast majority of inappropriate combinations, like I would say that all letters & numerals are in the LAYER 1 library exclusively, so you only get to pick one. I think this would increase our ability to add some originality to our 'symbol'.
Whaddaya think?
How about this: Ppl get to chose a temp symbol from an accepted listing, and then, if they want to submit a symbol they have specially created, they can pay a fee. That should weed out most of the ID10Ts (lol)...
Add perhaps, the layers idea, and it should be ok... Also a word or a few letters wrapped around an "object" might be allowable. One for me IRL might be the image of a metal screw wrapped around a "baseball" or the word "ODD" on a "tennis ball"...
Adhd tends to make me a bit off in what I say at times, so, as long as they aren't obscene, racist, politically incorrect, or trademarked, there will be a lot of super symbols that can be vetted I think...
If players could submit symbols/icons for review and pay a fee to have them "added" to the game then it should pretty much "weed out" ALL of the idiots because MWM would have final say whether to add them to the game or not. At that point they could be treated like the other Kickstarter submissions where the player paying for it could choose to have the symbol/icon exclusively for a period of one year. After the one year was up the symbol/icon would become available to everyone.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Congratulations. You've just created a "job" for someone to do Full Time.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Yeah, I guess so. *shrugs* Not honestly sure if you're implying that would be a good thing or a bad thing...
Whatever it's worth the Devs could decide for themselves exactly how many they'd want to deal with per unit time regardless. For example if they decided they only want to accept one custom logo per month and make it like some kind of special lottery then the "winner" would be the only one they'd be spending any serious time/effort with per month.
Nothing says they'd actually have to permanently "employ" anybody to handle this if they didn't want to.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
You could also hire it out as 'piece work.' Say you charge $20 for a submission. That weeds out casual idiots. Then allow a small group to do the review process for $2 per approval. Since it would only take seconds to do each one, that's a pretty good hourly wage. Everybody wins. Especially if designing a new logo doesn't make it exclusively 'yours'. Or maybe, for your $20, you get it exclusive for a specific time (6mo-1 year) then it goes public.
Granted, you'd want to set up some kind of on-line submission site with a log-in for the judges, then someone has to upload the new images to the game library. Other considerations would be how often do these new logos get updated? Weekly Monthly? Quarterly?
Additionally, I would want to make the submission as 'upload ready' as possible, so as to streamline the game inclusion process. Perhaps some kind of online app with a template where you design the logo as a 1-bit object.
Really, setting up the review process seems a lot less complicated to me than the taking payment/refunding rejections process. But I know zip about online commerce so...
Well we know the Devs are already going to have to "fight the battle" of figuring out how to charge us money for things because they're already going to have the in-game cash store set up in some fashion. Doesn't really seem like a galactic hurdle to adapt that infrastructure to a method that would let players submit their logo ideas in a systematic fashion.
And again I as pointed out before the Devs would be in complete control of just how much effort they'd want something like this to take. If for whatever reason they decide that they can only process say 5 submissions a week then that's all they have to focus on.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I'm implying that you've added to the burden of logistics for running the game. That then requires an analysis of Return on Investment.
Warbird cavalierly assumes people can make decisions about art "in a few seconds" ... to which my response is, anyone spending that little time on the task of Judging Art is ripping you off. Doing it AS A JOB, I'd expect nothing less than a full minute per image [i]on average[/i]. Granted, there will be plenty of "trash" that's easy enough to reject in just a few seconds, but it's when you need to make a Judgement Call to accept or reject that you have to take the time to THINK and weigh the pros and cons, and I wouldn't want that to be done "in a few seconds" as supposed above. If you aren't doing that, you're edging closer and closer towards dispensing with Careful Consideration and simply going with "whatever" when it comes to judging, and that is NOT a good place to be when it comes to this kind of responsibility. And that's what it really would be ... a RESPONSIBILITY.
Saying "oh well the Devs can do it" is just another way of saying "it can be somebody ELSE'S problem" without appreciating that someone is going to actually go ahead and dig through all that to get it done.
I do Customer Support Tickets for a living, so I *KNOW* that just saying "someone will handle it" doesn't even come close to appreciating what that requires in actual fact. At even $10 per hour, 20 hours per week, that's $800 PER MONTH just for payroll, not including everything else that goes above and beyond salary, doing as trivial a job as judging art over the internet. If MWM has got [b]money to burn[/b] that's fine ... but what if they don't? Is there something BETTER they could be doing with $800 per month than paying someone to judge art submissions?
There's a difference between Nice To Have, which is what I'd consider this job (and make no mistake, it would be a JOB) ... and things that you NEED TO HAVE. This isn't a cherry on top of a cake you're already making, baking and eating ... it's a whole extra dessert above and beyond the meal that's already being prepared. Is there room in the budget for it? Is there TIME? Is it necessary? What is the added value to the game as a whole? Does that added value support the cost of the service on its own?
These are non-trivial questions that would need to be answered.
So it's easy to SAY that "someone will do it" in a forum, which is essentially volunteering someone ELSE to do work for you ... but it's a lot harder to actually DO, reliably, in a timely fashion, to a specified standard, transparently and equitably ... especially since you will literally "get what you pay for" when it comes to this kind of thing, since it's all about decisions and judgement. Pay nothing and you'll get lousy judgements, just like with any human endeavor.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I think you may be looking at this a little bit too much in isolation like this would have to be a completely unique job that would need to be handled completely separately from anything else the Devs already are doing in order to maintain the game.
First off we already know that the Devs will likely be periodically adding new things to the game which could even include new sets of logos from time to time. The Devs will be doing those kinds of things even if they decide NOT to allow any players to submit customized anything.
Second we know the game is already going to establish an in-game store where players will be able to buy things for real money. That system will already be in place.
All we're suggesting is a sort of "queued commission" setup where people could submit logo ideas that have NO specific expectation of completion (because they can be rejected for any reason) and NO specific expectation for timeliness (because the Devs can choose how quickly or slowly they want to work on any submissions).
So even if the players hypothetically send in a hundred logos a day if the Devs decide they'll only bother to look at five of them per day that's all that'll be done. Also because they'll already have an established update schedule there's no need to make these things some kind of special, standalone updates to the game. If the Devs manage to patch the game with updates say once a month then whatever logos get looked at since the last month (whether it's ten of them or a million of them) those will be all that's going to be handled by this.
Again the key is that the Devs are in 100% complete control over how much (or how little) they want to handle. It's not like your Customer Support example where the guiding concept is (hopefully) that ALL tickets get handled ASAP. In this scenario the Devs are free to do as much or as little as they choose to because again if they wanted to they could just flat out reject submissions on ANY grounds, including if they simply don't have enough spare time to handle them.
I can't help but think you're making a bit of a mountain out of a molehill with this. *shrugs*
P.S. Yet another consideration is that they could always charge a relatively restrictive fee for this service. For example if they charged say $250 per logo then not only would that drastically limit the number of submissions they'd get but the few they did get would be worth doing because they'd involve a good chunk of change for the company.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
If you want to minimize costs, then you really do need to look at it as a separate task and not pull the PHB move of tossing it on someone's to-do list when their job description is already overloaded. Task switching between this and what they're supposed to be doing will make things even less efficient, and one-minute-per-image will not be achievable.
Also, there's a lot of benefit to having some specialization here. If you spread these approvals across all the devs, it will be easier for noxious actors to keep trying their logo submissions in the hope that someone, eventually, will let it leak through. Whereas if you have only a few people dealing with these things, they get a lot better at picking up patterns and figuring out which accounts are all sock puppets of the same asshole.
Okay, so that's irrelevant. There's going to be a whole different approval process for that stuff, probably including a final signoff by Dr. Tyche or a later officeholder, because that stuff is their direct professional product. What, you think they'll want to use that same workflow to vet every bit of player-submitted tripe? Not if they don't want development to halt. you can DDoS people, too.
Much as I'd love for them to make it a Something Awful-like system where people have to pony up $10-$500 nonrefundable with every logo submission, I'll bet you'll be one of the first to protest such a system. Besides, all that does is filter out the non-whales; you're still burning a lot of dev time which could have been used to make the rest of the game better for everyone, not just that one SG or player.
If that percentage cannot be set to 0, they are not in complete control. Thanks for playing; don't forget to pick up your copy of the home game on the way out.
Again, specialist staff are still a far better, and more efficient, solution. Dumping it on the devs as extra make-work can only cost more. And even if you treated the devs like shit and didn't pay them extra for doign this vetting, it still costs them time and focus, both notoriously in short supply.
Better than trivializing significant amounts of work.
As we say about warfare, "Amateurs talk about capabilities and firepower. Professionals talk about logistics."
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I remain unconvinced we are talking about "significant amounts of work" when the Devs, once again, would be in absolute, complete 100% control over how much time and effort they would actually want to spend on any of this. Not sure how that's not taking the "logistics" of the Devs' time into account better to heart.
First off your silly notion that players could essentially "DDoS attack" the game with millions of submissions is laughable. If CoT figuratively ever gets "too many player submissions" to handle then that'll only mean this game is going gang-busters and could probably afford to hire all the extra dedicated art people they'd want. But back here in reality world all they'd need to do to handle any number of submissions they either can't or don't want to process is the liberal use of the "circular file". Again as I pointed out this system would work under the simple pretense that the Devs are under no obligation to seriously consider ANY player submission.
Obviously the Devs could very easily set this system up so that they would only take a player's money if a particular design is accepted for inclusion in the game. Any player submissions would ALWAYS take second priority to any already scheduled additions of new costume related updates. If that means only a handful of player submissions get done every month or two then so be it. The artistic Devs involved with continuous costume item additions are already going to be producing new content AS THEIR TIME PERMITS REGARDLESS. Quit talking like this is some kind of completely unique task that would need specialized single-focus effort - you frankly sound pedantically out-of-touch with hyperbolic talk like that. If this ultimately means that 5% or 10% of their overall output happens to include content that was player submitted instead of Dev generated then cool for us - if it's only 0.001% then STILL cool for us.
I'll once again ask how this could this possibly require "prohibitive" amounts of Dev effort when they're already going to employ a certain amount of continual Dev effort creating new costume items regardless. The only difference between the scenario where the Devs do not accept player submissions and where they do is that in the world where they don't they'd have to think up 100% of the ideas - if anything in the world where they do accept submissions at least some percentage of their work is DONE FOR THEM because it's stuff they literally don't have to think up for themselves. Player submissions would give the art Devs MORE ideas to work with making their jobs EASIER in the process.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
My estimation of time was based on the 'reviewer' deciding whether or not a given black and white image would be 'offensive' based on an objective set of criteria set forth by MWM. That shouldn't take more than 15 seconds per image. Making a subjective judgement about whether any submission is 'worthy' of inclusion in the game is something else entirely. The question is whether or not that's what we are doing.
You also go ahead to talk about the cost of this process as a pure expense, disregarding my suggestion of how to easily generate an income from it.
The assumption I am making is that somebody wants a custom logo that they designed themselves for their own use. They are willing to pay $20 for the privilege. They design it themselves and submit it. Somebody looks at it and decides whether it is offensive or not. It is not their job to judge it's artistic merits. If it is inoffensive, it gets approved. Period. That is not a difficult call given clear criteria.
The thing nobody can really say with authority is what kind of volume will need to be processed. If MWM gets 100 submissions per day, and it takes my estimated 15 seconds per image to review, that is a grand total of 25 minutes spent on that activity. I think those are both conservatively high numbers, myself BTW. 1000 submissions per day (ridiculous) would be a little over 4 hours a day. Now that latter would be a real job, admittedly, but a part-time job at worst. But I can't see that kind of everyday volume realistically.
I've revised my initial pay rate for a reviewer down to $1 per review. That's still $24/hour if they were doing it full time. Now, let's say that fully 3/4 of the submissions are 'offensive.' If we pay the reviewer $1 per review, In the first scenario the reviewer gets paid $100 and MWM only makes $475 net. With, 1000 submissions, the reviewer makes $1,000 and MWM nets $4,750. That's per day. And only if 25% of submissions are accepted. Honestly, I don't think either of those scenarios are particularly realistic, I've been extremely conservative both in how long it takes to review a submission and how many I think would qualify as offensive. But there's no way to know for sure.
I would think it would be easy to find a person willing to do a responsible job of reviewing. Especially if it's their only responsibility to look at these images for an hour everyday, or probably more like 2 hours a month. The final control MWM has is that if they aren't doing a responsible job, or they are not properly enforcing the criteria, fire them and find someone else willing to make $24/hour from home in their spare time. Heck, sign me up.
However, if one is trying to decide whether a given piece of art is worthy of inclusion to the game AT ALL, I agree that is a different animal. We would be talking about very subjective criteria. In that case, it would be initially discouraging to make a submission at all, knowing that it will be very likely judged against other submissions, it becomes a contest. Not everyone is willing to enter a contest. So you would lower the number of total submissions, I'd expect. Also, far fewer would likely be approved, reducing the amount of income generated. So, in this scenario I'd have to agree that the reviewer needs to take longer to make a responsible, subjective decision. It makes sense to compensate them adequately. Oh, wait, $24/hour is pretty adequate. But you'd likely have fewer submissions, so MWM would be making less money, too, so....
Well, I can't really see a down side. Unless the submission queue is packed with swastikas and depictions of genitalia, AND the vast majority of submitters have not a single drop of creative ability. I think this would be a great way to engage the community and generate funds.
The only comment I'll make on this point is that it would still be within MWM's control to dictate/decide exactly how many (if any) they would review on any given day. There would be no obligation on MWM's part to review every single submission ASAP. Now if the submission volume was at a level where MWM could in fact handle all of them the same day they arrive then great for us. But just the same if it takes them multiple days or weeks to work through the backlog then that's what it'll take. Also if it actually got to the hyperbolic point of your "1000 submissions per day" example then obviously they'd need to take that minor miracle into account and figure out a special way to support that overwhelming demand.
Your question about the Devs having to spend time coming to a subjective judgement about the "worthiness" of given player submission is an interesting one. But don't you think if the Devs decide to allow player submissions at all that they'll have to keep the bar pretty low on their own personal tastes?
I mean it's one thing to reject a logo because it looks too much like a swastika. But if the Devs are going to spend too much time "overthinking" how a particular logo fits in with their grand vision of the game then why even allow players to possibly ruin their game with custom submissions in the first place? I guess what I'm saying is if they're going to allow player submissions at all then the Devs are already going to have to be willing to accept that they probably won't subjectively "like" many of the submissions even if they are completely non-offensive and otherwise acceptable for the game.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
To Lothic,
As an aside, it's amusing that the forum is attributing your quotes from me as coming from Redlynne. :)
But anyway, first, I think you are exactly right and kind of supporting my point. I was making up numbers and talking about averages. I certainly wouldn't expect every single submission to be reviewed as it popped up. I was thinking they would be reviewed in 'batches' every few days and sent on by the reviewer for inclusion on something like a monthly basis. That's a mechanical detail I am not concerned with.
Second, I wasn't considering that the criteria would require that a given logo fit into some kind of over-arching 'scheme'. Frankly, I expect there to be such variety among even the 'official' roster that such a criteria would be hard to demonstrate. No, I was just thinking in terms of the design, in and of itself, to be well-done and, possibly, of some general appeal to the player base. And, as you say, the reviewer would have to be able to set aside personal preference and judge the aesthetics of a design with a degree of neutrality.
But let me say, I only included this view in my considerations to address Red's take on why we would need an elaborate system with a highly qualified person sitting in judgment and undertaking a full-time job. I am much more in the egalitarian camp of "If it harm no-one, do what thou will." To my mind, if someone wants to pay a restrictive fee to get their personal design on the chest of their avatar, let 'em. As long as it isn't culturally offensive or in violation of copyright law, why not?
And of course its more of a "nice to have" than a "must have." But the decision isn't ours to make whether it's worth doing. Our job as loyal fans is to try and present pros and cons to the Devs to help them get a feel for the community. We can spend our not-so-precious time coming up with arguments that will save time in dev meetings down the road. Only they can decide whether having a thing is worth the effort to create it.
First off my bad for misquoting you. Various forums are subtly different on how they embed multiple quotes and I just messed up on the cutting-n-pasting. ;)
For the record I would not be against the "utopian ideal" of having an "elaborate system with a highly qualified person(s) sitting in judgment and undertaking a full-time job" such as Redlynne describes to handle this. I'm just considering things from the brutally practical side of things where the game may never get to the point where it could actually AFFORD such a elaborate scheme. A simplistic brute-force method may be all we'll ever have to work with here.
Obviously the decision to allow ANY player submissions would have to involve some amount of time and effort on some Devs' part to accomplish - I don't think these things could or would be handled magically without so-called logistical considerations. But we have to accept the possibility that our Devs might make the heroic attempt to offer a workable player submission service while accomplishing it in a somewhat disorganized, less than perfect part-time way.
To hijack the warfare analogy that Lin Chiao Feng was trying to use earlier nothing on a battlefield goes completely according to plan. In a perfect world it would be nice to have an entire team of artists dedicated full time to the effort of accepting player submissions for CoT. Everyone could easily agree that would be nice to have if money and time were no object. But in reality with the relatively frugal budget MWM has to work with I suspect if "player submissions" ever happen at all they're going to be done in the somewhat piecemeal fashion I have repeatedly alluded to. Player submissions in CoT will likely always be a messy, secondary effort at best. Let's stop trying to say we need "perfection or nothing" from this when a "good enough" mindset would be just fine for all involved.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
A Vote! A Vote. I call for a Vote.
The best option in my opinion is to leverage the power of the masses. Set up a submission website where the users can decide which if any submissions are in poor taste. Submit a decal and 5 (or 50) people would then have to vote in the positive to approve it a negative vote might require a brief explanation. From there submissions in good standing would go to a pool for final approval by MWM. This way a vast majority of negative submissions are weeded out without dev interference. That final pool is also easy and quick to approve because it's been vetted by a random jury of peers. If there are too many in the vetted pool for the devs to handle then a second vote could choose the top 10 to pass on. Sure it becomes a competitive process then, but it solves a lot of the "Cost" issues, allows for more community interaction with the development project which I hear people like, and you get a lot of eye's on each design before it gets into the game.
Second Chance: https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/CityOfTitans/SecondChance/
Dev Tracker: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/fixing-dev-digest
Dev Comments: https://cityoftitans.com/forum/dev-comments
These are Community Owned Logos? Not just for personal use?
And above the button to view the entry is this:
Or something similar, we'd have to run it past the lawyers, I think...
Also, I think a target number of positive votes before a certain number of negative votes, or a target ratio positive/negative over a given period of time. Possibly both?
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
[i]We'd be like an anarcho-syndicalist commune! We could take turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. All the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs or by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major external issues...[/i]
Sorry... couldn't resist. ;)
Just to be a bit more serious I have nothing against allowing players to vote for these things in principle but in practice I think setting the system up to allow for that would be far more trouble than it'd be worth.
I'd have complete faith that if the Devs ever allowed for player logo submissions that they could (internally among themselves) quickly and fairly determine more or less instantly whether a submitted logo was at least "acceptable" to be in the game. Now whether or not they'd go through the motions to actually spend time/effort to incorporate any given logo into the game is another matter, but the actual "voting" for it could be handled quite expediently without player involvement.
The "voting" isn't the time-consuming part of this; the hard part would be the creation of the artwork necessary to plug into the game. Obviously no artwork would be wasted on logos that weren't already completely vetted.
P.S. Besides I imagine if I ever submitted a logo for review and it got rejected I would likely feel less upset about it if a Dev shot it down for practical/objective reasons rather than a group of other players who voted it down first for subjectively random reasons. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]