Suppose they rolled out a Mission Architect-like system that works like this:
Subscribers (and people who paid for the Mission Architect micro-sub, or whatever) have the ability to make missions, sets of missions, etc and the general player base (subs and non-subs alike) can access these missions.
The person who made the mission has to pay a monthly or weekly fee (in Stars or real money) to have their mission listed for the general public to play, like renting theater space to exhibit a movie.
The people accessing the missions have to pay Inf to do so (like paying a ticket price to go see a movie), and some of that Inf goes to the person who made the mission.
So the mission makers pay Stars to make missions which then get them Inf in return.
When a mission a person made starts to get old and ceases to be profitable (number of Stars paid per month to keep it going no longer a good deal for the Inf it's making for the creator), they let it go "out of print" or whatever. It still exists, it can be brought back for Stars again later, etc.
You could even have some missions get "top billing" by giving them ads in the Mission Architect system (for an increased exhibitor fee) whereas others that only pay the lower "basic exhibiting fee" just get listed alphabetically on a list, like in the white pages of the phone book.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I suspect that charging people to PLAY player-created missions is going to fall a bit flat, and will lead to analysis of "character improvement per currency unit" rather than any desirable measure of quality in player-generated missions.
But this is an area worth investigating. Should mission creation be a subscriber benefit?
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I think a lot of people abused the MA system in CoX for maximum XP/Inf anyway, but yeah, I can see that issue.
One thing I keep trying to figure out is: assuming my monthly sub gives me an allowance of Stars, what am I, the full subscriber, going to be spending those Stars on every month? I mean, sure I can sell them on the AH for Inf, or use them to get consumables like respecs, etc, but I'm at a loss to figure out how many Stars is then appropriate for a $15/mo sub, and where I'm going to spend them to avoid them just piling up on me.
A lot of people feel like everything should come unlocked for the full subber, and that makes a full sub worthwhile, certainly, but what then are the Stars for and how many am I getting? And how many will I actually spend per month.
I feel like keeping the full-sub person in a state where they need to save up their Stars for the occasional big ticket item is okay, but it would be nice to have something to regularly spend them on besides just dumping them to the market for Inf.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The way I would like to see it done - and I feel I must repeat again that this does not mean it is how it necessarily WILL be done - is that all you get for a regular monthly payment of dollars is a stipend of Stars.
You then use those Stars to buy items in the Starmart or to subscribe to the various microsubscriptions.
So you use your Stars the same way everybody else - whether they get them from one-off Star purchases or from trading on the AH - does. You shop in the Starmart or subscribe to various microsubscriptions to build the subscription package you want.
This makes it irrelevant how you get your Stars; you can use them to have as much access to paid content as you want and your quantity of Stars allows.
To those who want a "traditional monthly subscription," they will be able to sign up for a monthly payment of whatever they like (say, $15/month) and get a stipend of Stars based on that monthly payment. (I won't go into pay schedules and the like, here, but I expect we'll have loyalty rewards for how long you've been thus signed up for a stipend.)
Microsubscriptions will cost various amounts of Stars per month. We'll probably have a "standard subscription package" that includes a list of popular (or possibly all) microsubscriptions for those who just want to sign up that way.
Stars are debited from your account each month to pay for your package of microsubscriptions. Stars flow in to your account each month due to your monthly payments. If the number of Stars you get from your monthly payments is greater than what your package of microsubscriptions costs, you'll accumulate surplus Stars. If it is less, then you'll need to find other sources of Stars (most likely trading on the market) to cover them.
If, say, you had a subscription package that cost $12 worth of Stars per month, and were paying $15/month, you'd get that package plus whatever the difference in Stars is based on your $15/month payment rate.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
The company obviously values player generated content.. but how that value translates to the content creator is a nuanced decision.
1) I would prefer if all User generated content had an approval and polish stage where the devs actually released it to the game patch.
2) By combining this user generated content with dev approval (not just for story.. for costumes, FX, and more) you can give content creators rewards based on your game system (Stars)
3) End users should generally have access to the user created content pretty freely regularly thus stemming the need for large costs to the studio in developing non-expansion content.
Popularity of the content is its own reward. No need for a royalty model for user created content.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
This is a really really terrible idea. I try to keep my posts on the calm side, but this is are really really terrible idea.
The idea charges creators Real Money in order for MWM to use their content in order to attract players. I find it hard to express how backwards this is. This is literally the exact opposite of how this sort of thing operates. This would be like a MWM paying EA to sell their product while letting EA keep 100% of revenues from sales.
No. Just no.
I have a fairly lax tolerance for how businesses go about getting money for their products, but this idea turns my stomach. It is both evil in a way only our characters should be and painfully stupid.
Charging creators for their content will stifle what would otherwise be a source of free content for the development team. They'd get less content, less customers, and run off a lot of players.
There are bad ideas that can be considered shooting yourself in the foot. This is a bad idea that should be considered shooting yourself in the torso.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
I'm not sure which side of the issue Sand_Trout comes down, but it is an interesting topic.
I agree with Segev that requiring gamers to pay, in any form, for content that someone else created is not likely to go over, unless the content can offer at least the possibility of some kind of in-game reward that can't be gotten anywhere else. I know that the AE mission list was mind-bogglingly long and unless you were able to get the word out about your arc, it could languish. Instead of charging players to play, perhaps mission creators could pay up-front to publish their game (using the standard in-game currency) for a fixed period like a week, and during that time their account would earn back some in-game currency each time their arc gets played. That might help reduce the clutter, but I still think there will be thousands of arcs available at any time. And it would be vulnerable to abuse as long as people can create multiple in-game accounts for free.
Which brings up another point - how does the game remain profitable enough to stay in business?
It seems to me that fundamentally, what a MMO has to offer the public is time spent engaged in an enjoyable activity, whether is fighting adversaries, designing and tweaking your toon, or just hanging out and using the game as an IIRC with pictures. This enjoyable time is what people pay for; offering the right selection of payment plans is the key to making a game financially viable.
What about offering a pay-as-you-go plan in addition to monthly subscriptions? The game could be offered at two levels: basic and premium. The basic level would be free; .you can sign on, create a new toon or play an existing one, but some features like XP accumulation and item drops are disabled - these enjoyable features are part of the premium service. Pay-as-you-go players wanting the premium service could add money to their account whenever they want, and only pay for the time they use. Of course, the game could still offer an item store.
In the long run, the end game has to offer enough continuing enjoyment that players are willing to pay for, and ask players to pay for it. Giving the whole game away in the hopes that people will drop ten or twenty bucks on pretty pictures seems like an awfully expensive loss-leader.
- If you wan to rent disk space for MWM to host your custom missions, you pay some odd starts every month.
- you try and get back what you spent in Stars every month by having players pay you in influence for playing your custom missions.
Someone could have just summarized this:
You pay Real money (stars) in Exchange for in-game money (influence). ;)
I really am trying to keep a level head, but anything that PUNISHES people for adding content to the game is a bad idea.
Selling stars on the auction house is fine, I have no problem with Real-to-ingame currency conversion. Works well in Eve Online with PLEX as it provides free players a service(Technically, it allows them to pay for free, but still) as well as giving paying players a reason to spend more money on the game. There is 0, absolutely 0, none, nill, the amount of light escaping the event horizon, reason to complicate this process. Simply making it more difficult to convert cash to in-game influence is a bad idea in and of itself. We want that part to be easy so it's done a lot.
Charging the consumers of the content, which I maintain is a bad idea in most circumstances, is one thing. I can understand the argument for that, even if I disagree. Its something reasonable people can disagree about. Heck, I can even support MWM for taking a cut from sales of freelance royalty-based content because it will get content that we wouldn't have otherwise.
The part that really offends me, and I don't claim offence lightly, is the idea that you're going to block content until the CREATOR pays MWM. Charging the creators for creating content, regardless of popularity, is batshit insane. It's like your job charging you a fee for the privilege of working for them.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
I agree with Sand_Trout. Anyone who creates user-generated content is doing MWM (and by extension, the player base at large) a service by providing content free of charge. The last thing MWM should want is to give these people even a whiff of a middle finger. If money enters this equation it should go to the content provider, not vice versa.
Ideally, anything that can be earned for use in the mission creator through game play should be available in the Starmart. This provides the choice of paying for convenience.
As I pointed out in that other thread, I am unlikely to pay for individual missions or story arcs provided by MWM. You can imagine how enthused I'd be if I saw UGC with a price tag. Besides, CoH already had a solution for this: allow those people who play through UGC to leave tips.
I'll try to explain it for you using small words.
[img]http://memecrunch.com/meme/5AF/aliens-meme/image.png[/img]
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Agree with Sand_Trout; charging creators to make content is counterproductive to the game and to MWM's ability to market the UGC system to drive overall player numbers and retention up.
-Only if financially necessary, charge players a small amount of stars (UGC microsub?) for monthly access to play all UGC, or a one-time unlock fee.
-Only if financially necessary, charge creators a small amount of stars to store more than X missions...that's only if you've got a shortage of UGC-processing/storage capacity or human reviewers.
-Consider designing the system to use players as the first stage of review, volunteer reviewers as its second, and MWM employees as its final stage before featuring it and/or bundling into the new official issue. Auto-detect and ignore players who review in bad faith. You want quality content to flow upward and land, nearly complete, in your inbox.
-Ensure that the system automatically buries the garbage and elevates the jewels to help players locate what they'll probably like. If quality is still in danger despite this, lock out creators who abuse the system, and let them pay to try again. Essentially, a box purchase gives you a license to create...abuse it = lose it.
*Do* take full advantage of the UGC to add popular arcs to the core free content of the game and honor the players who contribute to the CoT world. Writing contests, featured UGC arcs, easily-searched "channels" of themed content, YouTube tutorials for mission editing, etc...all good ideas that I've seen put forward. A game that delivers superior and unfettered content customization will attract players (easy win versus CO's lack of Foundry and DCUO's ...uh...yeah.) and thus generate box sales. This rapidly-expanding content "endgame" is also something that few studios can match without player help; it's a way to retain players who would otherwise let subs lapse or stop buying cash shop items whenever there are gaps in official content releases.
I'm with Sand_Trout and Darth Fez on this one. MWM should [i]want[/i] players to add quality content to the game. Over in the monstrous Pay to Raid thread, it was argued that content is the most expensive and laborious element to add to the game in terms of development time and resources. If that's true, players would be doing everyone a great favor by creating quality content for the game. Charging players to play or produce content would hinder this.
What if I suggested we turn it around: reward players with Stars for creating content that becomes very popular or gets "blessed" by the devs (i.e., becomes canonical). This would give players an incentive to create quality content, and in turn, a steady stream of good content would reduce MWM's burden of constantly trying to pump out new content. It's a win-win scenario.
As an example, look at how users can earn money making YouTube videos. It's in YouTube's best interest to attract people to their site, and since they rely on users to attract viewers, they give the users behind popular channels and videos a cut of the earnings. This entices users to produce more popular content, and as a result, YouTube continues to make more money. It's a positive feedback loop that helps everyone: the host, the users, and the viewers.
I'm with Sand_Trout, Darth Fez, Scott Jackson, and Segev on this. Paying to access user generated content? That just lowers the amount of people using the generated content, which means fewer people will make content, which means less fun all around.
Let's make more fun instead.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Can't do it mechanically without adding a lot of work I just don't want to do. Once created, content can be played if made available by the creator.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I was only a thought. I seem to remember people in CoX exploiting the AE system for massive amounts of XP and swag etc because it was for a time the most efficient way to level and get stuff. I then reasoned : The person designing these "best option" missions is doing so to give themself and others the ability to level their way to level 50 as fast as possible, and on top of that they're able to get some great recipes too. Isn't that something people would pay for?
I mean people have been selling in-game currency for real world money in games for years, not to mention PLing services, or whatever. I'm just trying to figure out a way that the game developers get that money instead of the aftermarket gold farmers.
I don't agree with the idea of "Let's develop a mission architect system (developer pays costs of making that happen) then have employees of the game company vet which missions are good and which are not (on the company's dime) then turn around and give the mission creator some money for creating the mission." That's a money loser for the company, isn't it?
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
And it's best to put thoughts out there even if they end up not being popular. And looking for ways for MWM to monetize the game so that they can survive is a worthy goal.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Being able to give a UGC creator a "tip" of 1 Star after finishing their story ... that would make sense. It would mean that if a lot of people like what you do, they'd effectively be "paying" you to create content for the game.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Intuitively, it may seem like a big loss to MWM, but it's not necessarily. I'll address each point in turn.
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In regards to the development cost of creating the mission architect, it will take development time, but [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/75289#comment-75289]warcabbit stated[/url] that the mission creator will be a subset of their own mission creator. That's not to discount their hard work, but the impression I got from his post is that most of the development work involved will be finished by the time the game launches.
As for vetting missions, I'm sure there are a few ways to reduce the candidate pool. Data analysis (what gets played the most or gets good feedback), community input (voting and popularity), contests (devs looking for content), etc. Official review would take time, but creating content also takes time. Would the time taken to promote player-created content outweigh the time spent creating it themselves? I don't know, but it's something to consider.
Lastly, giving Stars in exchange for fundamental contributions to the game wouldn't necessarily be a loss. A good reward would act as a sort of "bounty" for good content, encouraging players to do their best to create quality stuff. The influx of content would make the game more attractive---ideally, attractive to future customers/subscribers. Plus, it feeds existing players' insatiable hunger for new content, giving them more reason to stick around and play (and spend).
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That's not to say this is absolutely a viable way to grow the game, but I think it's worth a second thought.
This is not likely going to work for many reasons already pointed out.
In addition to that, what use has a player for more influence? Any system that allows a transaction between bought playtime and goods that are obtained through actually playing only works in games that are fairly grind heavy, or worse.
In eve online it works because that game is pretty grindy and players who like to blow stuff up (and thereby run a big risk of losing their expensive ships) can use this market as a shortcut, while players who can not afford the shortcut can use it to help fund their game time.
In a game like everquest it is pretty much a dead market because hardly anybody has such a desperate need for in game currency or the rare items that they are willing to exchange real money for in game currency for it (through the tradeable playtime tokens).
City of Titans would run into the same problem but worse because there is going to be even less of a market to spend in game money on. Unless of course the developers add play to win consumables. Which I strongly suggest they do not :)
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What might work, but is probably not going to endear you to many of the posters here is turning the model around. Allow (vetted) player generated content to be added to the star market. Players who are creating content are rewarded for that in the form of 'free' playtime or other perks that can normally only be bought indirectly with real money. For vetted games MWM takes a small cut of the purchase price (for the approval proces and for the cost of hosting, advertising and running the content). Unvetted missions can be put on the market for whatever price the creator sees fit to charge, including nothing, and will never be deducted a cut. However those unvetted content packs will have a cut of the experience earned applied to them, to counter the exploits that the mission architect system, despite all efforts to prevent them, was still rife with.
MWM then becomes a publisher of game content, and if succesful the players have a much larger range of missions and mission packs to choose from, hopefully in a range of prices too. In theory they will have to compete against player generated content with their own expansions and mission packs as well.
And of course the game, and each expansion, should ship with enough content that buying more is not a requirement. Just a way to do new things in the game that is otherwise already playable. Daz Studio and Poser have adopted this model, succesfully, with their 3D computer imaging applications, and SOE has this with their Playerstudio (though that is limited to cosmetic items. For EQ Next however they are experimenting with more expansive user generated content).
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If this will go over well with the players is a bit too early to tell at this stage, but it is fairly certain that if this is part of the income model of the game from launch day it is much more likely to be accepted than if it is added at a later stage. The biggest danger of any such system is that it creates the impression that purchased content is required to play the game (and that therefor the game shipped in an incomplete state).
Experience with SW:G taught me that any activity that relies on tips by the players for services already rendered is as harsh in a game as it is for the waiters in the american restaurants. Being an entertainer (dancer or musician) in that game was a lot of fun but you really had to do it because you loved it because it was a lot of work for very little reward. And probably the worst ever decision made in any game since the dawn of time, was when the developers saw fit to force players who had no interest in entertaining or hanging out in a cantina, to grind their way to master levels (on their quest to unlock the jedi class). It filled up the cantinas with buff bots and drove the last few remaining players who genuinely enjoyed the unique playstyle of those two classes.
Which has little to do with the point of this reply other than as a caution that relying on the generosity of players is more likely to sour potential content creators after a while than not.
First off, the idea that every little thing has to be monetized in game that allows some form of Free to Play is a false premise, as shown by games like Planetside, DotA, LoL, and any number of other successful microtransaction business models. Most of the content of these games, such as areas/arenas you can play in, is completely free and open to 1st day free-to-play players. Only some tools, that are designed to be within a tolerable range of game balance, can be bought, and those can be earned relatively quickly through game-play. Radiac, you seem to not grasp the concept that some things are there to draw people into other monetized aspects of the game rather than being a marketed product in and of themselves.
There are two routes to go with the UGC that would be productive.
1) Playhouse: Minimal developer interaction with the UGC besides the typical policing when someone complains about inappropriate content. The Mission Builder is a toy that you let players play with so that they can amuse themselves with whatever they want to do. Mission Creator is not used in conjunction with the RMS.
2) Royalty: UGC is submitted to MWM for sale in the RMS. Both the creator and MWM get a standardized cut of sales. (IE: MWM pays the creator 10-20% of the value of stars used to purchase the content). While there is some cost associated with screening the content, they could have a small team do a cursory review of hundreds of submissions a day, where generating one good mission arc in house would be subject to several days of labor from an individual (at least). Also, there can be a lot of automated filtering such as any content using certain words, or content must be of cetain length. Naturally players known for wasting screener time could be banned from the service.
These two modes of operation are not mutually exclusive, and it seems reasonable to have both options available to content creators, though perhaps the Royalty option would be necessarily limited to be available to creators that have a certain level of reputability, such as established freelance writers or UGC creators that have become notable within the community. Thinking about it now, MWM might just use the UGC playhouse as a tool to recruit quality creators, with the Royalty system being essentially invitation only.
Radiac, from my perspective, your idea is basically this:
Creator creates content(labor), and then must give MWM the money to pay for their review of the content. Players must then pay MWM to access this content.
You apparently think that this will result in "Yay! More moneys to MWM!" when in reality, no sane content creator will ever use this system because it costs them money and labor to create something only MWM is benefiting from. This system will simply not be used by anyone who's content would be worth selling.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
In response to Sand_Trout's above post:
1. While it might not be the best option to try to monetize each and every aspect of the game, I think it definitely benefits us all to CONSIDER each and every aspect of the game as a POTENTIAL source of revenue, in whatever way it could possibly be, at this point in time. That doesn't happen if people like me stop posting ideas about monetization which are somehow actually in favor of the developer actually getting money for something at some point. My original post was about one possible idea, and I'm all for the idea of thinking about how to monetize EVERYTHING, even if the most optimal monetization scheme ends up not actually monetizing some amount of stuff. At this time, there's nothing to lose by at least kicking the tires on everything in terms of revenue, I feel, and I don't think any one individual on here (rednames aside) has any better idea of how to monetize each individual thing in this game than any other. All we have is our own opinions, and none of us are experts, IMO. Not one person here on this forum has the right to speak for everyone here, let alone everyone out there in the world that might play CoT when it rolls out.
2. It feels like a lot of people on these forums have their own personal sacred cow(s) which they feel CANNOT and MUST NOT BE MONETIZED on pain of everyone rage-quitting the game because people will be so offended by the developer actually having the AUDACITY to ask for money for that. Every time I hear anyone say "People will hate that." I interpret it to mean "I, the person writing this response, personally hate that." and nothing more. In most cases I feel this practice of each objector replacing the word "me" with the word "everyone" is being done in order to try to make their argument carry more perceived weight. What's worse, these people claim they want the company to turn enough of a profit to be successful and keep the game running for years to come, but chafe at the suggestion that the company actually ever ask anyone for money for anything the customer might actually want. Demanding that the part of the game you like the most be given out for free is the modern version of people photocopying DnD source books instead of buying them.
3. In the system I originally proposed, which I've since admitted isn't perfect, the person generating the content would, in theory, get influence from people who play their content. That's not "no reward" that's "reward in the form of influence". If you want, you can amend that to some kind of deal where the people playing the UGC pay real money and then divide that real money between the creator and the devs, that's fine with me, although everyone in the "pay to raid" thread will take issue with it, I suspect. Even if all that amounts to is only letting subscribers generate content with the mission architect you're at least in theory making money as a developer on that because it encourages at least some subscription time among players who want to create content. And people did create a lot of content in CoX just because they wanted to tell the stories they wanted to tell and have others play them. People will make UGC, I feel, just because they enjoy it. Since that's an optional sub-system of the game, I'd like to at least consider the options of how to monetize that, if at all possible. Maybe only let people play a creator's missions as long as the creator pays their sub. I don't know.
4. Creators creating content for themselves is one thing, actually releasing that content so that the general player base can access it is something else. MWM has the right, I feel, to pick and choose which content they allow into the game, and if they want to get paid for exhibiting, and effectively distributing and advertizing that, then I'm all for it. That said, I don't know what the legal copyright aspects of all this are in the first place, so maybe this is all a moot point.
5. If the players are to be rewarded for making any content (even making individual costume pieces, if that ever became a thing) I would personally try to confine that to free stuff from the Starmart and/or Influence (or whatever we're callling the fake in-game money the heroes and villains use to buy Enhancements etc). Being able to subsidize all your toons with created content is pretty nice if it get's you more Purple recipes off the auction house, etc without having to grind for months to get them, so there's a benefit there to the player.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
1. Yup. Everyone has the ability to post thier opinions about any aspect of the game and / or company (within forum rules). This goes both ways with someone posting thier opinion on a topic and others posting thier opinions of the original and subsequent opinions.
2. This is in large part covered be point 1. From what I've read the primary concern of people who have posted regrding monetization isnt that the game not turn a prophet but that there isnt a pay wall at every turn in the game which forces a divide betwern people who do pay and those that don't limited the interactions between the two.
3 and 4. If the concen here is to monitize UCG to support the game there are ways to explore that without automatically shooting for the pay wall method. Example: user generated conent like a mission creator be a package thats purchased as an add on as a micro-sub. Only those who purchase the add on can create and publish missions. Everyone gaets to play them, those with the add on can earn rewards usable with the add on while playing UCG or purchase those extras with Stars. They can also purchase additionl storage sace for their UCG so their maps can be bigger / more complex or they can design full story arcs or even task-force level multi-missions. Stars transfers for "paying or tipping" is easervsaid than done especaly if it results in a work around using the AH to tradefir Stars. At best if a UCG is tagged with the creator's global gift them in-game currency as a thank you but this should be a personal action rather than a required one.
5. Missing Worlds Media compensating players for any content made can be problematic on multiple levels. Going beyond the mission creator to design of other game elements I believe would fall within the realm of modding. Which is something that can't be guarateed to be properly supported other than the desire to be allowed. But if every single costume, animation, mission design, text alteration and so were required a review by the devs, the availability of anything created by players would seriously be impacted due to time and resources. This would also impact schedules for releasing official content. The UCG would certainly fall into a back log and wuld be seen as a failurev of the devs to get the player creations published. Keep the mission creator on its own track and other design elements (If they can be supported) as player mods would probably provide more favorable results.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Chiming in on this one, the concerns from a development point of view tend to center around quality, abuse, and (to at least some extent) public suitability of user-generated content. On the extreme, obvious end of that last bit, we probably would not want to have a front-and-center (or even easily-found...if extant ant all) "penis world" UGC mission, filled with somebody's lewd depictions of phalli and other unpleasant and moral-guardian-baiting material. If you feel censoring that is wrong, consider instead a "bash the gays" mod, or a "shoot the furries" mod, or a "lynch the black men" mod, or a "burn the flag" mod, or...well, pick your poison.
The concern about quality is related to the concern about mechanical abuse, honestly. While there is, potentially, argument to be made that a "farm the weak-to-fire minions" mod should be allowed to exist, there is concern when the model surrounding the way UGC is created encourages "farm" mods to dominate the tops of lists. Quality - as in quality of storytelling, fun and balanced challenge...the kinds of things developers are (hopefully) aiming to achieve in designing official missions - is already a tricky thing to find. Sturgeon's Law is a reality, and even in officially-generated content, there can be some question amongst some players as to how easy it is to find "good quality." Partially because taste is subjective, and partially because even development teams paid to do the work can make mistakes.
If we tied any sort of payment system to UGC, we would have to be very careful how we did so. We do not want to make it something that generates something for "nothing." For instance, in-game currency just for people playing it. If there were a way to create dummy accounts at all, this would permit people to generate currency as fast as they could generate accounts and drop them into the mod. It would encourage very short mods that can be completed rapidly. At the same time, limiting reward based on the same person having played different content the same creator generated would limit encouragement for those who are the most popular content-creators to generate more. (Beyond, of course, the accolades that freely distributed works generate online in general.)
As I stated before, a careless "pay to play" model on UGC would likely lead to a push for farms over interesting story content, because high-quality story content is harder and more intensive to create than "fire farm number five." This isn't to disparage the fire farm - I'm sure for some it is exactly what they want - but to point out that one is frankly easier to make than the other. And yet, when measuring the cost of doing a high-story mission, no matter how "good," versus the rewards it gives, the fast-run fire farm will both tend to be more popular (because the pay-return ratio is higher) and done more often (because it is over faster). It also will be easier to make. So competitors will crop up faster and choke out the "story" content.
Notabily, this happens WITHOUT a pay-to-play stricture, as the time sink of playing the missions is its own cost. And you can mathematically determine the efficiency of a farm, while story quality is, again, subjective. High reviews are helpful for it, but when ratings are numeric, you wind up with the farms and the story maps being compared on the same scale for wildly different qualities.
So a pay-to-play thing here would seem to only exacerbate an existing problem. Especially if the content-creators get a cut; they now have even MORE incentive to push out the fast-and-lucrative content.
(And then, it starts to sound like pay-to-win, as you just pay resources to churn your XP higher.)
Perhaps, therefore, we should focus our attention on what we WANT to see in UGC. What do we want from it? What kind of content do we want to encourage the players to generate? Then, we can analyze means of incentivizing that.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
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I do not fully understand the criticism about the creator has to pay a fee to put his missions online on MWM- servers. It is not a new concept that an artist has to pay for his work to get displayed. That's how it is in art shows an fairs and it was even precedented in CoH. You could only use AE if you were a VIP-Member or had spent enough money on the marked to earn the required number of reward tokens. To play the missions without any rewards you needed to advance to tier 2. At tier 4 you could play them with rewards and not until you reached tier 6 could you create missions yourself. In other words: you had to pay them money.
Yes, I too would be happy if it were free for everyone. But sadly, I think having to pay for it does help preventing abuse. The examples Segev brought up above would be the relatively tame ones of the things that would pop up. So in my opinion a little fee will be necessary. It does not have to be much.
I can see the issue with the concept of having to pay to play user generated contend. I would prefer a donate- button instead of a fee. That way I could reward contend I liked and don't reward what I did not like.
I think the critiques of asking UGC creators to pay (except for extra slots beyond some basic number) stem mostly from the state of the game and the business model of the studio/publisher. CoH and CoT present very different situations.
CoH had a wide variety of content by the time its UGC system (AE) was developed. NCSoft/Paragon was a well-established standard business which saw no need to take user content and add it into the official game as a means of helping to expand City of Heroes. It was a sandbox that purely benefited the player, a game feature that cost time and money to develop, funded by subscription revenue. After the switch to free-to-play, it provided a source for F2P microtransactions and a reason to sub.
CoT and MWM, on the other hand, will be starting at an Issue 0 amount of content and has been volunteer-driven in all aspects. If the UGC system is released in one of the early issues, it has potential to assist MWM's own development of content, if players essentially become volunteer writers (just like the current writing staff, but less formal) through some kind of quality voting and review process. Since we wouldn't expect the current volunteer writing staff to pay MWM, asking UGC creators to pay above and beyond the cost of the game box (except perhaps a refundable review process fee, until their credibility is established?) for similar labor seems potentially counterproductive.
It depends on whether MWM expects to get more benefit from the UGC system as a source of future CoT content or as a source of funding, at least when UGC is first introduced.
I just noticed something. The box price completely slipped my mind! At the time the player enters the game he has already paid something. You'd risk that by submitting a storyline with offensive content which could get you banned...
My apologies. Somehow I got stuck to the free-to-play model, where everyone could make an account for free. Since that is not the case, I have nothing that I could or would want to say against your arguments.
I've found that being hit with micro-transactions at every turn is a huge turn-off. I know it appears to work as a model, but I bet the same studies would show a big difference between dollars-per-hour and longevity of game and retention of accounts. Good content (pick your own definition) and more of it will keep people playing. If it's good enough, and they hang around, they will eventually start looking to add "quality of life" stuff to their gaming experience. Charge for that. But first and foremost, keep them playing. Keep people in the common areas, and on missions, and in the forums. Give a good incentive for people to subscribe, of course, but part of that incentive is having people to play with and things to play. If your community is eager to provide more content, let 'em. It's good for everybody. But as the Devs keep telling us, they want to avoid as many pitfalls and improve on as many virtues of CoH as possible. The Architect system was great, improve the experience by organizing the way the content is presented.
I have always felt that CoH was made for, and attracted, more creative people as players than other MMO's. The Architect system was like mana from heaven for me and lots of other players, and seemed a natural outgrowth of a game where I could create my own unique character with his own unique story. I was disappointed that it quickly became a "Farm of the Week" factory, (not surprised, but still disappointed) and that there was very little way to distinguish those types from more thoughtful "story" designs.
Some sort of vetting/review process would be welcome by me. But I recognize the amount of time and resource this would take up. Having the Mission Creator only available to full sub players makes some sense to me, if only as a simple limiter to the deluge of content that was experienced by CoH.
Here are a couple of ideas:
1) Have a stable of volunteers (since this is a volunteerin' bunch of folks) that review the UGC before it gets rolled out. These people, of course, would need to be trusted and responsible, which is another set of issues. (okay, so maybe not a perfect solution)
2) Rather than just a simple "Five Star" rating system, allow players to recognize/label/rate different aspects of the content. I proposed this in another thread, a quick checkbox form filled out after running a UGC mission that seperates "story quality" from "XP generation" or "alignment with lore". Even "Humor", "Maturity level", "Challenge", "Solo Friendly", "Recommended Team #" etc. could be things that the community could rate. This would also allow players to search for the kind of content they want. As an addition/alternative you could let the player rate/label their creations within certain categories, then let the community decide how accurate their rating was.
For the record, I'm in line with the model of limiting who's allowed to create content, (whether gating simply by subscription or by game achievement,) but not limiting the access to that content as a means of monetization. Especially if the creator isn't compensated and MWM is sole benificiary.