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In a slower development MMO like this player made content should be a thing


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In a MMO like this that rely on a more strick limited resource pool to keep future content coming and cost of upkeep going,

We have large gaps in content updates because of this.

The concept of Player Made Content would be a good solution as Middleware between these large gaps to let player make their own fun.

Things like Player Housing, Dungeon Builder, PvP builder, can all be forms of instanced content that players in theory can customize and build in their unique creative manner and share with other players. Something totally instanced and separate from the developer made content so they don't influence developer content unless approved to do so.

Stike Missions for example I believe could be a very good method to introduce player made content. They shorter than a typical dungeon, but with 10 players and some boss fights and jumping puzzle and other stuff. I imagine a system in which player can make Strike Missions and community players can test and rate different instances to be submitted to Anet for approval to have higher rewards added to them and placed on a daily Strike Missions objective to be rotated in.This would provide a endless supply of content.

Also player housing if done right with full customization like dropping walls down and full rotation and stuff like that could really provide endless hours of gameplay and can be a revenue stream for more skins to place. Minecraft/7 Days is popular on the concept of being able to build things and being creative with your building construction ideas. That could be fun in this game as well.

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@AzureTerra.1642 said:Trouble with player made content is that it needs a sizable baseline established with the tools for players to add that content which further dely whatever is bing worked on for actual development at any given time.They do have the means if we look at guild halls. So a Fractal builder with bucket of assets would probably work. The thing is Neverwinter had The Foundry(build instance thing) and it got removed for some reason maybe the same reason it wouldn't be added here.

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@Knighthonor.4061 said:In a MMO like this that rely on a more strick limited resource pool to keep future content coming and cost of upkeep going,

We have large gaps in content updates because of this.This game has up until the past 6 months maintained a very aggressive update schedule since the beginning of S3. We see more frequent updates than most other MMOs.

The concept of Player Made Content would be a good solution as Middleware between these large gaps to let player make their own fun.

Things like Player Housing, Dungeon Builder, PvP builder, can all be forms of instanced content that players in theory can customize and build in their unique creative manner and share with other players. Something totally instanced and separate from the developer made content so they don't influence developer content unless approved to do so.Please then address the following:

  1. If there are no rewards the players will not engage with the content
  2. If there are rewards, players will simply metagame it and combine the easiest content, with builds designed to faceroll it and farm the rewards.

User Generated content has been attempted in several MMOs. All of them have abandoned the concept (ST:O, Neverwinter) or are no longer sunning outside private servers (CoH)But I suppose you know better?

Also player housing if done right with full customization like dropping walls down and full rotation and stuff like that could really provide endless hours of gameplay......to the niche audience this appeals to.

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Player made content screams to me something along the lines of: 'We don't want to and/or know how to produce interesting content any more. Here, do it yourselves.'

I don't know about that. ANet would never give up creative control over any aspect of their game.

Besides, imagine the technical nightmare that a publicly available level editor would present in a game that was never meant to be modded by users. This is an MMO, not Skyrim or Fallout 4. Probably there is a reason why similar ideas didn't work out in other MMOs in the end...

As stated above, player housing only attracts a niche audience. Guild halls have a similar mechanic with the decorations and I don't think ANet will ever do anything to that, even (beyond adding new items to the list every now and again), let alone developing a system based solely around that specific concept...

I still think that they can do something with home instances, as they are the closest thing we have in terms of player housing. Further customisation and decoration by players could be fun and might be much easier to implement than an original concept. But I don't know about that, either.

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@"Obtena.7952" said:There is no way this idea could work, even if everyone was of good intention. There are far too many legal and technical challenges.

Given that other games (including another NCSoft game) have done it, I think it's safe to say that the legal problems could be fairly easily dealt with.

The technical problems, though... Those are pretty huge. Especially when the standard of this game seems to be voice acting for important characters.

But... what about player influenced content? Something where we can add a bit of ourselves to the content, but not totally control it? You may have noticed that when people ask for Heroes to be added to this game, they often ask for them to look like the other characters on the player's account, even if they use a more limited "AI Friendly" build rather than a full player build. That's an example of player influenced content.

Let's imagine a new kind of mission where the players have some influence over the content. So... everyone that enters has the ability to set up a few "NPCs" based on their own characters. Race and looks come from them, then they just pick the "archetype" the AI will use. You then tell it your group size and the mission will set you into a premade dungeon-ish area based on your size and what enemy group it randomly rolls for you. Along the way, you might encounter the NPCs from anyone on the team, on either side of the fight. Say it's all really Watchwork and illusions for training, and you don't even have to worry about actual plot beyond "random roll on this chart to see what the end goal is".

Make something like that, and make it so it can be set for everything from solo to full groups/10 people, and the ability to set the length from short to long, and people would play that. The rewards wouldn't even have to be better than what's out there normally, because it would have the novelty of our characters showing up in it.

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Just afew things to consider.1) It would be nice to put ones creativity to work within a known framework. That's why level editors worked so well in the past or why sandbox games exist.2) Technical limitations will always limit your capability of creating what you are imagining. This will always result in unhappiness.3) Legal issues, brought up by people with less imagination that are just reenact a given franchise they like would have to be solved by Anet. This would either have ANet revise each and every entry to the system(a huge admistrative task) or, if automated in any way, would reduce the players capability to create a lot.4) Legal issues with various regional laws concerning racism, cybermobbing and many other hot topics would havae to be accounted for leading to the immense task given to ANet to monitor each and every entry again. And those are just the obvious one not counting the possibility of slander or political activism that Anet might not want to associate with.5) Inapropiate designs not fit for a lawsuit yet outside of ANets ToS would further either warrant a large monitoring system or a cut to the things you might want to create.6) Farms and the appropriate Farmbots would also need monitoring if the system incorporated would effect tha economy of the game, i.e. drops, loot currency etc.7) If the system exists outside of the economy, i.e. there is no loot whatsoever, most players probably won't care about the created content. I know ther is a small but active RP scene, or at east there was one and I know that these players exist. But I doubt that there would be enough of those players to make such a system pay for the work that would go into developing and monitoring it.

GW2 is as themepark as it gets. The game is set up to give ANet complete control over content and they're not eager to give that up or give the player any freedom in that direction. There are sandbox games out there, GW2 will just never be one of them.

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I'd rather just see a type of content that randomizes things. A dungeon type thing along the lines of Palace of the Dead in FFXIV.

Repeatable content is the best content. The best way to make content more repeatable, is design from the ground up to be different every time you run it. It's why roguelikes have such a dedicated following.

I don't know why more MMOs don't do things like this. I don't know why SE didn't develop more into it. It's a lot easier for MMOs to half ass the randomized parts and create a set number of floor layouts that randomly get selected, and have the objectives be randomized, to very quickly create a piece of content that will last longer than damn near anything else they can develop, with half the effort. I think something like this could work really well in GW2.

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Sound cool to be able to create custom dungeon/arena/fractals. And for those saying creator will abuse the rewards and create build for it, they have an easy solution called......

PRESETS! Let's say you make a fractals, you will have to put 3 champion bosses and a legendary and some foes. Champs are already programmed to loot a regular champ bag, foes will drop what they drop normally. Players DON'T SET THE REWARDS.

I agree some will use the system to create the best gold farm ever, it's bad but that what happens when there is 0 limits. I would use this system to make fun small story arcs or convey an fun expeience. I don't care that much about gold at this point.Custom fractals and dungeons even arena seems ok imho I'm more scared about a player made pve map.

But this is far from us currently nothing is already made to allow us to generate those things but note we are now able to build the mad labyrinth in guild hall...

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@Rakan Buuyon.8576 said:I'd rather just see a type of content that randomizes things. A dungeon type thing along the lines of Palace of the Dead in FFXIV.We used to have that in fractals. It got changed because players would just reset the instance until they got the variant that was easiest to do.

@hugo.4705 said:I agree some will use the system to create the best gold farm ever, it's bad but that what happens when there is 0 limits. I would use this system to make fun small story arcs or convey an fun expeience. I don't care that much about gold at this point.Similar experiments by other MMOs (like Neverwinter that was mentioned above) indicate that it's not just some players gaming the system for personal farming, but enough to have a pronounced negative effect on everyone in the game. You'll mess up the economy big time, even with preset rewards, because there will be enough people mindlessly farming user-made farms rather than actually playing the game. As a side effect, you will also have less people in all other game modes, because the common preconception will be that anything outside the (custom made) best-gph-farms isn't worth doing. Plus all of the legal problems mentioned above (protected content from other ips, violence, sexually explicit content, ...) that would make it mandatory for ANet to approve every single bit of content and likely create more workload than the current development process.

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@hugo.4705 said:Sound cool to be able to create custom dungeon/arena/fractals. And for those saying creator will abuse the rewards and create build for it, they have an easy solution called......

PRESETS! Let's say you make a fractals, you will have to put 3 champion bosses and a legendary and some foes. Champs are already programmed to loot a regular champ bag, foes will drop what they drop normally. Players DON'T SET THE REWARDS.

I agree some will use the system to create the best gold farm ever, it's bad but that what happens when there is 0 limits. I would use this system to make fun small story arcs or convey an fun expeience. I don't care that much about gold at this point.Custom fractals and dungeons even arena seems ok imho I'm more scared about a player made pve map.

But this is far from us currently nothing is already made to allow us to generate those things but note we are now able to build the mad labyrinth in guild hall...

sounds easily abusable. just have them spawn in a lava pit or something.

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@derd.6413 said:

@hugo.4705 said:Sound cool to be able to create custom dungeon/arena/fractals. And for those saying creator will abuse the rewards and create build for it, they have an easy solution called......

PRESETS! Let's say you make a fractals, you will have to put 3 champion bosses and a legendary and some foes. Champs are already programmed to loot a regular champ bag, foes will drop what they drop normally. Players DON'T SET THE REWARDS.

I agree some will use the system to create the best gold farm ever, it's bad but that what happens when there is 0 limits. I would use this system to make fun small story arcs or convey an fun expeience. I don't care that much about gold at this point.Custom fractals and dungeons even arena seems ok imho I'm more scared about a player made pve map.

But this is far from us currently nothing is already made to allow us to generate those things but note we are now able to build the mad labyrinth in guild hall...

sounds easily abusable. just have them spawn in a lava pit or something.

The editor interface wouldn't be that dumb, disallowing putting mob in poison cloud, lava or void, plus if the foe suicide itself I don't think you earn the reward :/

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"A sad fact about you players, as a whole: you only do what you are rewarded for. You will do something less fun if you see a carrot at the end of the stick, and you will ignore something more fun if it doesn’t give you a 'ding' or an XP reward or a title." – Raph Koster / Holocron (11-26-2002), SWG

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@hugo.4705 said:

@hugo.4705 said:Sound cool to be able to create custom dungeon/arena/fractals. And for those saying creator will abuse the rewards and create build for it, they have an easy solution called......

PRESETS! Let's say you make a fractals, you will have to put 3 champion bosses and a legendary and some foes. Champs are already programmed to loot a regular champ bag, foes will drop what they drop normally. Players DON'T SET THE REWARDS.

I agree some will use the system to create the best gold farm ever, it's bad but that what happens when there is 0 limits. I would use this system to make fun small story arcs or convey an fun expeience. I don't care that much about gold at this point.Custom fractals and dungeons even arena seems ok imho I'm more scared about a player made pve map.

But this is far from us currently nothing is already made to allow us to generate those things but note we are now able to build the mad labyrinth in guild hall...

sounds easily abusable. just have them spawn in a lava pit or something.

The editor interface wouldn't be that dumb, disallowing putting mob in poison cloud, lava or void, plus if the foe suicide itself I don't think you earn the reward :/

ppl always find a work around. always

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I've put my thoughts on this idea below, but I'm also curious about the reasons behind it. Does this game really have a slower release schedule than most MMOs?

The only other one I'm currently playing is Elder Scrolls Online and that gets 4 new releases a year, two of which are just dungeons (2 paths per DLC), 1 map/story DLC and 1 expansion which always seems much smaller than GW2 expansions to me. Not just because it's all contained in one map, it also takes me less time to complete than GW2 expansions even though I play both games the same way. (They also have 8 raids, which they call trials; 3 in the base game, 1 in each expansion and 2 in DLC.) Outside of those there's no new releases. There's 'festivals' which are basically just double drops on a particular type of boss or quest for a week, no festival maps, mini games or other content.

So GW2's slowest years are equal to that game, and we often get much more (and for less money since all ESO updates are paid, either indivdually or by subscribing). But as I don't follow other games release schedules I don't know, maybe I've just managed to pick the two MMOs with the slowest releases, but for some reason ESO players don't mind and GW2 players do?

@hugo.4705 said:

@hugo.4705 said:Sound cool to be able to create custom dungeon/arena/fractals. And for those saying creator will abuse the rewards and create build for it, they have an easy solution called......

PRESETS! Let's say you make a fractals, you will have to put 3 champion bosses and a legendary and some foes. Champs are already programmed to loot a regular champ bag, foes will drop what they drop normally. Players DON'T SET THE REWARDS.

I agree some will use the system to create the best gold farm ever, it's bad but that what happens when there is 0 limits. I would use this system to make fun small story arcs or convey an fun expeience. I don't care that much about gold at this point.Custom fractals and dungeons even arena seems ok imho I'm more scared about a player made pve map.

But this is far from us currently nothing is already made to allow us to generate those things but note we are now able to build the mad labyrinth in guild hall...

sounds easily abusable. just have them spawn in a lava pit or something.

The editor interface wouldn't be that dumb, disallowing putting mob in poison cloud, lava or void, plus if the foe suicide itself I don't think you earn the reward :/

It's really easy to disable bosses though. Look at all the dungeon bosses who go from being an actual challenge to dying in a few seconds if you can trap them in a corner where their mechanics don't work and they can't avoid players attacks. I think it would be almost impossible to have a system where players can design a boss encounter and can't make it stupidly easy.

On a related note I don't know the details but I've heard that a lot of dungeon bosses and definitely world bosses wouldn't work if they were moved to a new location because some of their big attacks and special mechanics aren't actually something the boss does, it's seperate objects which are either built into the room or invisible (another invisible bunny guns situation I think) so letting players create their own dungeons, even using existing assets, might be harder than it seems.

I like the idea in theory, but I'm not sure it would work in practice. We already see a lot of players spending the majority of their time in-game farming whichever areas are easiest and/or have the best rewards. They would seek to use this system in exactly the same way and I'd be very surprised if they couldn't find a way to do it, short of making it so player created areas give no rewards, in which case they'd be ignored by the majority of players.

The obvious solution is for someone at Anet to approve player submissions before they get into the game. But that has it's own problems - for a start it would take up the QA team's time testing it, especially because anyone with half a brain isn't going to tell them "I designed this so you can drag the boss over to this corner and then burn them down in seconds to make it easy to farm" they'll make it look like a normal enounter and then tell their friends how to farm it for stupidly easy loot, so QA would have to figure out the trick and that's time they can't spend on testing official releases. Then there's the inevitable backlash when they don't approve something by a popular player or which has been hyped on fan sites before being submitted, and even worse if they initially approve something then change or remove it because they didn't realise at first how horribly broken it is.

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@"Danikat.8537" said:maybe I've just managed to pick the two MMOs with the slowest releases, but for some reason ESO players don't mind and GW2 players do?

ESO uses a form or content stretching that doesn't go well with a large part of the GW2 playerbase: they regularly "balance" classes and skills to the point where you need different equipment stats to have a well-working build, especially for instanced and pvp content. This usually means farming delves, world bosses, dungeons etc. for a lucky drop of the right set items.

GW2 is more robust in that equipment isn't as easily outclassed as it is in ESO, plus the impact of less-than-perfect equipment is much smaller than over there. This leads to the part of the community that is used to farming for best-in-slot equipment (and enjoys said farming) being without a carrot to chase in GW2, which in turn leads to the illusion of less to do for that part of the playerbase.

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@"Danikat.8537" said:I've put my thoughts on this idea below, but I'm also curious about the reasons behind it. Does this game really have a slower release schedule than most MMOs?

It depends on how you define the metrics. Players regularly misinterpret their own metrics when doing statistical analysis, either out bias or simple ignorance.

When you aggregate everything, players measure/"feel" the existence of content as the "inverse of drive absence". Its a fancy way of saying "how much time they spend hooked into the dopamine stream".... But I've found the need to emphasize the explicitness of the double negative, because whats actually there has a non-linear relationship to what they perceive.

WoW had an expansion roughly every 6-12 months for its first 4 years. Thats insanely fast, and is what set the bar for our unrealistic expectations across every single game. But if you look at the interest curve (if you can still find those statistics now), the pattern of the engagement rates (ie people actively playing) is a sawtooth pattern. If you graph that as a trend, you'll notice the rate of decay over an expansion can vary significantly. That statistic is whats important to this conversation.

People only really care how fast new content is being released, based on how fast they are running out of stuff in the existing content block. Blizzard has this down to a Science- which is why the release schedules for content within an expansion are carefully metered out over time. The Xpac drops, and the first raid wing doesn't get released until 2-3 weeks into it. Then its another 2-3 week gap for every wing after that (usually breaking for Festivals). They based this on well documented trends in its player base over the years, and is represented as their average "burn rate" for content.

The Psychology here is that players have a rough idea of how much "content" is in an expansion, and the anticipation of an upcoming scheduled update increases their tolerance for downtime. This is partly why roadmaps exploded in popularity over the last year or so, because players are more willing to put up with something, if there is the promise of a reward at the end. Sound familiar? They found a way to present content releases the same way they present reward systems. Its also why the season pass was so popular in the previous paradigm, despite practically being the same thing. And the promise of DLC (at all) a selling point for the main title in the one before that.

The reason this falling off in effectiveness is largely attributed to the last 8 years of constantly being burned for displaying any ounce of trust. All these things I've mentioned above is essentially taking advantage of how player "forward thinking" operates in their cost/reward analysis. Since the "rewards" of looking far forward have been unsatisfying (to put it nicely), this has directly shrunk the span in which value assessments are being made. This is why terms like "incomplete game", "at least it released", and "I'll wait till its finished" became the part and parcel vernacular for everything In-Dev, be it AAA or Indie in nature. We're now less concerned about what a game "could be", and even more intently focused on "what is" when making long term extrapolation, and sweeping conclusions about everything. This narrowing of our perception of a game has had a direct effect on how we view burn rates for content.

Around 8 years ago, the average burn rate of a big release (be a game, an Xpac, or even a balance pass) had a half life of around 4-5 weeks. That means you need something every 6 weeks to keep the majority on-track, even if that big thing is spaced out over multiple weeks. The End cap and New start point is needed to ensure a degree of satisfaction. By my current observations, most games now have a half life of 10 days. And that is absolutely fucking terrifying when you realize its happening in brand new game releases just as much as new content blocks for existing games. Players are also a lot more sensitive to content recycling, partly due to stuff not being satisfying enough the first time around. So if your content is too similar, or is repeated too many times over the course of play, that accelerates the burn rate by almost double.

This phenomenon is but one factor contributing to the rapid player fall off of content blocks in both GW2 and WoW, despite similar amounts lasting significantly longer in previous years. Our tolerance for repetition (or even obstacles in some arguments) is the lowest I've EVER seen in all my years of online games.

Which brings me back to the original question. The timing of the releases are actually not the issue. Its the fact that we're getting bored faster then they're putting stuff out thats the problem. This has always had a truth to it.... but its exacerbated by the % of time we're now spending "bored", and how quick the novelty of new content wears off. I spend a lot of time around In-Dev games between Steam and Kickstarter, and you can track similar cycles in their develop releases. There is definitely a correlation between the level of practical repetition in the game, and how fast players get bored with it.

To get some perspective on matters; something Minecraft does that manages its repetitive nature is how its tiers its activities, and how it scales production. The vast majority of the game is about gathering and processing resources. But the issues it would normally face are mitigated by the frame work of Multi-level Project Management. The relationship between tools and productivity creates a dynamic where you are always solving similar problems differently at different phases of a play through. At early stages, you do a lot of things manually at small scale. As you move up the tools ladder, you start industrializing. You're attention span is still the same size, but the way you can break down and compartmentalize tasks is what keeps the repetition from being overbearing.

For a Master class on this concept, play Factorio. I am 110% serious. I've yet to find another game that elegantly creates this natural experience of progressively expanding industrialization. Rough spots and all. And in this perspective of what pitfalls this game avoids, and which ones it has, you quickly start to recognize the problem we're seeing with Modern reward systems, and the framework in which most games have us do things like farm and grind.

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@Danikat.8537 said:

@hugo.4705 said:Sound cool to be able to create custom dungeon/arena/fractals. And for those saying creator will abuse the rewards and create build for it, they have an easy solution called......

PRESETS! Let's say you make a fractals, you will have to put 3 champion bosses and a legendary and some foes. Champs are already programmed to loot a regular champ bag, foes will drop what they drop normally. Players DON'T SET THE REWARDS.

I agree some will use the system to create the best gold farm ever, it's bad but that what happens when there is 0 limits. I would use this system to make fun small story arcs or convey an fun expeience. I don't care that much about gold at this point.Custom fractals and dungeons even arena seems ok imho I'm more scared about a player made pve map.

But this is far from us currently nothing is already made to allow us to generate those things but note we are now able to build the mad labyrinth in guild hall...

sounds easily abusable. just have them spawn in a lava pit or something.

The editor interface wouldn't be that dumb, disallowing putting mob in poison cloud, lava or void, plus if the foe suicide itself I don't think you earn the reward :/

It's really easy to disable bosses though. Look at all the dungeon bosses who go from being an actual challenge to dying in a few seconds if you can trap them in a corner where their mechanics don't work and they can't avoid players attacks. I think it would be almost impossible to have a system where players can design a boss encounter and can't make it stupidly easy.

On a related note I don't know the details but I've heard that a lot of dungeon bosses and definitely world bosses wouldn't work if they were moved to a new location because some of their big attacks and special mechanics aren't actually something the boss does, it's seperate objects which are either built into the room or invisible (another
situation I think) so letting players create their own dungeons, even using existing assets, might be harder than it seems.

I like the idea in theory, but I'm not sure it would work in practice. We already see a lot of players spending the majority of their time in-game farming whichever areas are easiest and/or have the best rewards. They would seek to use this system in exactly the same way and I'd be very surprised if they couldn't find a way to do it, short of making it so player created areas give no rewards, in which case they'd be ignored by the majority of players.

The obvious solution is for someone at Anet to approve player submissions before they get into the game. But that has it's own problems - for a start it would take up the QA team's time testing it, especially because anyone with half a brain isn't going to tell them "I designed this so you can drag the boss over to this corner and then burn them down in seconds to make it easy to farm" they'll make it look like a normal enounter and then tell their friends how to farm it for stupidly easy loot, so QA would have to figure out the trick and that's time they can't spend on testing official releases. Then there's the inevitable backlash when they don't approve something by a popular player or which has been hyped on fan sites before being submitted, and even worse if they initially approve something then change or remove it because they didn't realise at first how horribly broken it is.

A workaround would be a boss that is static and use teleports mechanics during the fight. Yeah world bosses and some dungeons bosses are really linked/enchained at a specific location but in this case you would have a panel where you choose permit the basic enemies let's say for the sake of an example, a basic nightmare courtier, a skritt or a branded that you can elevate yourself at champion rank. You would have champion rank skills you can add to it. Or even easier, you can add only preexisting champions you meet around Tyria.

For the verification system, let's spare Anet devs times and make it player based:1-When you have finished your let's say fractal, you have to try it, it will be validated only if completed and of course can't be uploaded if not meeting some rules, if edited you have to redo the beta test. For the beta test you will be accompanied by 4 kitty golems you can customize with specific classes, they wear berserk/condi stats.2-Having limitations: Like guild halls, you can't put more than x numbers of enemies in the same radius of 20 feet. You can't put more than 1 leg, 5 champions, 10 elites, 20 vets and 40 foes.....3-System of assets ala guild hall decos with a panel where you chose them to create the environment.

But yeah, it's always hard to create a good level editor, I know I would not abuse rewards and make it easy as a farm but many will. It's not that it's a bad idea again, but hard to build to live imho, 6 years after launch. The issue is whatever you are doing, you will find players trying to abuse it, but I think it can be solved.The real issue with bosses is they are that dumb to follow you, if they are immobile and do attacks forcing you to move/ synchronize/ avoid, it makes the fight more interesting.

Another major issues, not only that game but every game and players is the gold rush, the search of rewards. It's kinda sad, because of course when you farm an event a lot of time you want a reward, but what about player-made content? RP? All those socials aspects, do you expect you friend in real life, to give you 2g each time he/she speaks to you? Those players contents should be played for FUN. And I seriously don't care if it restricts the players of them to a niche. Would be at least a niche of interested players!So the rule to keep in mind: Shouldn't be farm-able. I have the answer: NO REWARDS. Just FUN. Currently I'm only farming lab to gain some candies for mad lab walls decos, if player content was added, I would participate in those too.

Or as some said above, they organize a contest, pick the best fractal, verify it, edit it if needed, add it to game.

I remember the old days when I've played Crash Bandicoot 1, Secret of Mana or Sonic Heroes without expecting any rewards in return, was just fun.Omg little big planet.... minecraft.... Super mario maker...

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@"joneirikb.7506" said:"A sad fact about you players, as a whole: you only do what you are rewarded for. You will do something less fun if you see a carrot at the end of the stick, and you will ignore something more fun if it doesn’t give you a 'ding' or an XP reward or a title." – Raph Koster / Holocron (11-26-2002), SWG

I find the GW2 community's obsession with rewards really weird, so to me it's quite disconcerting to read this quote and realise not only is this obsession much more universal than that, but that it existed back in 2002! Around 2002 I spent a lot of time playing player-made content (and attempting to make it, though usually with little success), mostly for WarCraft III and Age of Empires II. There was no reward for playing it (other than fun, of course) and it never occurred to me that there should be, or even could be, since the whole idea of "rewards" in that sense doesn't even make sense in those games. And although I think player-made content for GW2 could work with the right tool to make it, I don't think it would go down well with the community, since (for reasons other people in this thread have covered) it would pretty much have to come with no rewards at all.

@"Danikat.8537" said:On a related note I don't know the details but I've heard that a lot of dungeon bosses and definitely world bosses wouldn't work if they were moved to a new location because some of their big attacks and special mechanics aren't actually something the boss does, it's seperate objects which are either built into the room or invisible (another invisible bunny guns situation I think) so letting players create their own dungeons, even using existing assets, might be harder than it seems.

Wow, that invisible bunny guns technique is very similar to a hacky method people used in the WarCraft III map editor to make certain types of custom spells/abilities. I find it kind of amazing that the pros actually use the same technique in WoW!

@Rakan Buuyon.8576 said:I'd rather just see a type of content that randomizes things. A dungeon type thing along the lines of Palace of the Dead in FFXIV.

Repeatable content is the best content. The best way to make content more repeatable, is design from the ground up to be different every time you run it. It's why roguelikes have such a dedicated following.

Perhaps this is lack of imagination on my part, but I don't really see how randomised content would work in GW2 - how do you envisage it working? (I don't know anything about how Palace of the Dead works, so maybe the answer would be obvious if I did.)

I've only seen randomised content work well in situations where the game (or even the genre) was specifically made for randomisation. For instance, it's relatively easy to do that kind of randomisation in an isometric game where there are clear ways to fit terrain together. I can't really imagine how it would go in GW2 without the results being rather bland.

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@Tommo Chocolate.5870 said:

@"joneirikb.7506" said:"A sad fact about you players, as a whole: you only do what you are rewarded for. You will do something less fun if you see a carrot at the end of the stick, and you will ignore something more fun if it doesn’t give you a 'ding' or an XP reward or a title." – Raph Koster / Holocron (11-26-2002), SWG

I find the GW2 community's obsession with rewards really weird, so to me it's quite disconcerting to read this quote and realise not only is this obsession much more universal than that, but that it existed back in 2002! Around 2002 I spent a lot of time playing player-made content (and attempting to make it, though usually with little success), mostly for WarCraft III and Age of Empires II. There was no reward for playing it (other than fun, of course) and it never occurred to me that there should be, or even could be, since the whole idea of "rewards" in that sense doesn't even make sense in those games. And although I think player-made content for GW2 could work with the right tool to make it, I don't think it would go down well with the community, since (for reasons other people in this thread have covered) it would pretty much have to come with no rewards at all.

It's not just the GW2 community. In my experience it seems to depend on the type of games the person in question is most used to playing, and is particularly common among MMO players because so many MMOs rely on their reward system to motivate players, in some cases including motivating them to do things they explictly do not find fun like grinding the same area over and over to artifically increase the amount of time they have to spend playing and therefore pay a subscription for. I find it strange as well, because my mentality is pretty much the opposite - I play games because they're fun and I do things in those games just because it's there to do, I almost never worry about what the rewards will be until afterwards, except in rare cases where I go looking for a specific item I want. I don't think I've ever wanted to check before accepting a quest or whatever to see if it's a good source of XP or gold, or if the rewards are useful, I just do it and decide what to do with whatever I get afterwards. But I've learned that there are people who will worry about that even in single-player games where it doesn't really have any impact.

It's not remotely universal however. Recently I've been following a lot of the reactions to Untitled Goose Game, partially because I really like the game but also because I find it reassuring having mainly been dealing with MMO players and my Pokemon Go group at work (who are also very goal focused) to remember that there are lots of people out there who will play a game simply because it's fun and don't care if you don't earn anything for it. Untitled Goose Game is a perfect example of that - you don't gain any levels or abilities or anything, at the end of the game you're the same goose you started out as, and each time you turn it off all the items return to their original locations, the only thing which is saved is your access to new areas. But people still really enjoy playing it. It's the same with player-created activities like no-death challenges or role-playing - the game won't ever recognise that you're doing this and you don't get anything for it, but people do it because it's fun.

But when you're talking about letting players design content you need to consider all of them. In a single player game it's not such a big deal if someone breaks it - if someone makes a mod which gives you 10,000g and every item right at the start it's only their copy of the game that's affected so it doesn't matter. But in a multiplayer game (especially an MMO with a player driven economy) they can seriously mess things up for other people too, so it needs to be taken into consideration.

@"Danikat.8537" said:On a related note I don't know the details but I've heard that a lot of dungeon bosses and definitely world bosses wouldn't work if they were moved to a new location because some of their big attacks and special mechanics aren't actually something the boss does, it's seperate objects which are either built into the room or invisible (another
situation I think) so letting players create their own dungeons, even using existing assets, might be harder than it seems.

Wow, that invisible bunny guns technique is very similar to a hacky method people used in the WarCraft III map editor to make certain types of custom spells/abilities. I find it kind of amazing that the pros actually use the same technique in WoW!

That is genuinely one of my favourite articles on game design. I've been fascinated by the process since I was a kid and although I quickly learned I didn't want to make games myself I love learning about how they're made, especially because of that creativity in 'repurposing' the available tools to do things which should be impossible. I like when it carries over into the game design too and players are encouraged to take a similar 'out of the box thinking' approach to solving problems.

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Halo Reach is an action fps, but forge mode allowed players to turn the game into so much more (for little to no benefit). So long as players have the tools, they can generally make some neat content.

I feel like guildhalls do have this sort of potential, but the sheer cost prohibits potential decorators and JP makers, while the people who can make enough gold to fund a guildhall probably doesn't want to spend hours aligning floor tiles or testing how deep in the water you can go before you start getting dismounted or swim.

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