51 replies to this topic

[Victor Morson]

This is a long shot. But here's the situation as described by PGI right now: They lack the manpower to do everything they are trying to do and it's cost them greatly. Also they are suffering from a huge PR backlash due to their misunderstandings with the community. It's fostered a bad atmosphere.

Let's wipe it out.

PGI has a problem: They need more manpower, they don't have the money to hire that manpower. And to that I say: BRING IN THE COMMUNITY. Stop shutting us out. There's a ton of people here that are professional mappers, modelers, you name it. That are willing to donate their time to improving this game.

My point: You have a pool of hardcore BattleTech fans that are willing to pitch in and improve this game at an unheard of pace. For free. Because we love this franchise.

There is literally not a downside to you guys putting out some devkit tools and taking user submissions for maps. Star Citizen did a similar thing recently and only received praise for it. You guys obviously have to be the "bucks stops here" quality control, but I don't think that'd be a problem.

Would your customers like to start getting 2 new maps a month? What do you think? Absolutely! And if you start taking community submissions, you can have that and not pay a dime for it.

Obviously, it would be nice if these fine people got a little more say into things like gameplay balance, too. They understand the franchise. They love it, and some of them are quite good resources for it. Again, for free and absolutely no risk to PGI you can take care of the vast majority of serious, ongoing balance issues in maps & 'mechs in a way that satisfies the majority of your players.

There are programmers who would love to enhance that UI, one of the biggest issues encountered at PGI. There are map designers that would love to do new designs. There are modelers who could churn out a slew of support vehicles, turrets, or even 3D versions of concept art because they care about the IP.

You know what else? Going this route changes everything from a PR standpoint. You might even get press for really embracing such a long time, fanatic, and face it: Older and more tech savvy than some franchise audience.

Literally everyone wins. I will say what an awesome turn of events this was indefinitely, we might actually get a rockin' version of CW on time, and almost all of our complaints would no longer be valid. I know a lot of folks would reinstall in a heartbeat if that happened.

Again, this is the community that made Living Legends, which MW:O is based heavily on. This is the community that added four times the original 'mechs and guns to MechWarrior 4. I myself was the one to suggest Mektek add a grid to the minimaps, and when they did, it changed the way we play this game: You can't picture MechWarrior maps sans grids today.

Let's call a flat out truce for 2014 PGI. Let's start working together. The people will come back, new people will be interested, and the people that are here will have even more great content (that they will gladly pay for). At no cost to you guys.

This is a great change to put everything that's happened under the bridge and really kick the game off right this year. You've literally got nothing to lose by giving it a shot!

Edited by Victor Morson, 02 January 2014 - 10:45 PM.

[kesuga7]

250k $

To make one map?!



A Teamfortress 2 like submission (Workshop) system would be nice but it would be Mapfiles or videos instead perhaps

I don't doubt some mechwarrior guys here do know how to map some professional stuff (with allot of time) and even if their all bad perhaps
probably some forum polls with threads /video's pictures/formats that are needed to submit

Edited by kesuga7, 02 January 2014 - 10:54 PM.

[Egomane]

Victor Morson, on 02 January 2014 - 10:44 PM, said:

PGI has a problem: They need more manpower, they don't have the money to hire that manpower.

If they don't have the money why are there open job offerings?
http://piranhagames.com/#CAREERS

And while I support the idea of fan content, you forgot to mention that even fan content is not free for the company, that wants to implement it. There are quality and production standards that need to be met. So there needs to be someone who checks every entry for those. The more entries you get, the more personal you need to control them. That guy (probably more then one) needs to be paid as well. You can just as well hire a map designer for the money. Those quality checks can't be done by the community.

[Corvus Antaka]

Absolutely.

Witness the success of Skyrim/elder scrolls due to modding.

Whatever F2P company figures out how to let in user content like maps for MWO in example will be a huge success.

Given mechwarriors history of modders & nerds you would think that a smart company would figure out how to harness all htat power.

like 20,000 MC for making an awesome map in example.

or 10,000 MC for a new mech model.

War thunder allows for user created decals & paint jobs, again something PGI could allow here.

Get to it PGI!!!

[Roland]

Egomane, on 03 January 2014 - 03:31 AM, said:

Those quality checks can't be done by the community.

They absolutely CAN be done by the community, and ARE done by the community in a ton of games.

Take a game like Neverwinter Nights Online, with its content creation system.. or GTA Online with its new mission editor. Anyone can contribute content to the game and have it availible pretty much immediately.

For things like offensive content, you provide users with the ability to flag it as such, and then it gets reviewed... although this really isn't an issue in MWO, unless you're afraid people will make giant ***** maps.

For quality control, you give users the ability to rate content, and use that to decide what kind of stuff percolates to the top where its most commonly used.

For things like MWO maps, you could effectively do such a thing with a separate playlist for user created maps. Essentially, by playing in that playlist, you're saying, "I accept the fact that some of these maps will be garbage, and my mech will get stuck, and all kinds of {Scrap} may happen."

Then after matches are complete, folks rate the map... Then, PGI only has to check out the highest rated maps, and say, "Yep, everyone likes this map, and it's good." and then they consume those and put them into the regular playlists.

[NuclearPanda]

I'm NuclearPanda, and as a Legendary Founder from way way back I support the above suggestions.

[General Taskeen]

^and chuck norris agrees too

I so want this game to be moddable, in my dreams

Edited by General Taskeen, 03 January 2014 - 11:52 AM.

[Bhael Fire]

I'm a professional artist in the game industry and I support this idea.

I'd be more than happy to contribute if they allowed community contributions.

[Thomas G Wolf]

Sorry to bust your bubble but your mistaking these guys at PGI as guys that are able to read and understand what they read, add to that, that they do not give a flying fart as to what their core player base says as we are not their target players, the idear as great as it is, is a stillbirth becuase
a) these guys do not really care about their product
have not got a clue at how to even work togather as a team within their own company never mind outsiders c) do not give a flying f**K about what the players want or think (the silence from their side is deafening)
d) and have their collective heads in the sand and fingers in their ears singing la la We cannot hear you nor see the writing on the wall.

I for one would love to be proven wrong but I doubt that. What they did have time for was to make up new rules for posting here and now I await my ban hammer lol.

Edited by Eric Wulfen, 03 January 2014 - 12:07 PM.

[Modo44]

Roland, on 03 January 2014 - 09:47 AM, said:

For things like offensive content, you provide users with the ability to flag it as such, and then it gets reviewed... although this really isn't an issue in MWO, unless you're afraid people will make giant ***** maps.

"It gets reviewed" by a lot of paid employees, which PGI can not afford. I agree that serious modding would be great, but you need to figure out a system that 1) does not compete vs things available for MC, and 2) is very resource-light for PGI to implement.

[Victor Morson]

Roland, on 03 January 2014 - 09:47 AM, said:

They absolutely CAN be done by the community, and ARE done by the community in a ton of games.

Take a game like Neverwinter Nights Online, with its content creation system.. or GTA Online with its new mission editor. Anyone can contribute content to the game and have it availible pretty much immediately.

To be honest, we don't even have to go to "full community content" levels of change; simply giving people the basic kits for the map editor, for example, and then allowing the community to vote new community-created maps - or have PGI simply chose the ones they feel fit the best / meet their quality standard - would be incredible just on that front alone.

If you go way back to closed beta when people extracted the packs and did some maps in Crytek just to show what was possible, there were some incredibly good looking maps - at least as good as what we have - posted up. I think there's a ton of potential there.

Of course, I know there's a lot of talented UI & Coding people out there too!

[DaZur]

While I agree community involvement would expedite the process... I fear the wicked web that would be spun.

I've been party to both paid community contribution as well as free... and one constant has been present in both: Community content creators are inherently narcissistic egomaniacs.

- Who decides what content meets necessary standards or for that matter who decides what handful of community content passes the mustard to be considered in the first place? Oh, we can wax poetically about a common goal but the reality is if your stuff makes it in and mind don't there will be hell to pay...

- Once created, there is the issue of import and rigging... Because MW:O is server authoritative, PGI is not about to release any of the import tools for fear of reverse engineering and or nefarious intent. This then becomes an operational issue for PGI to allocate resources for someone to verify game-engine compliance and rigg and import. $$$

- IP Issues: In the same vein as EULAs this are difficult to enforce globally, there is hay to be made if / when a content author become disenamoured with a title and demands their IP be removed from the game (I'm not kidding... I watch this unfold in gory detail elsewhere) be it a full contribution or a single authors contribution to a larger contribution.... Signed release of ownership are not bulletproof.

Seriously... I'd love to see this happen and don't mean to poo-poo it... I just have seen the greed and arrogance of man in this regard and as much as it solves... there is equal potential for it to explode in out faces.

Edited by DaZur, 03 January 2014 - 01:57 PM.

[Corvus Antaka]

Egomane, on 03 January 2014 - 03:31 AM, said:

If they don't have the money why are there open job offerings?
http://piranhagames.com/#CAREERS

And while I support the idea of fan content, you forgot to mention that even fan content is not free for the company, that wants to implement it. There are quality and production standards that need to be met. So there needs to be someone who checks every entry for those. The more entries you get, the more personal you need to control them. That guy (probably more then one) needs to be paid as well. You can just as well hire a map designer for the money. Those quality checks can't be done by the community.

I have to say I disagree here. PGI should be able to take 1 employee, and put them in charge of vetting user created maps. Map makers could create their own "pre-vetting council" under the care of this employee that would screen all the maps before ever submitting them. Once the player council agrees that the map is valid, well-designed and does not contain offensive content, the employee can review the map for final approval.

It would further be quite simple to set guidelines for content (offensieve, etc) and any map-maker violating those guidelines would be doing so under the knowledge that a perma ban from map making awaits if he/she breaks the rules.

I doubt PGI even would need to hire someone, if the current map team at 250,000 a map diverted 50K of that budget per map to overseeing community maps and if we look at the current # of maps plus stated costs by Bryan Ekman I'm actually fairly sure that with some organization & intelligent fore-thought allowing user created content would work.

If war thunder can screen & allow for user decals that are available to all, I fail to see why PGI can not achieve the same.

Everytime I read about the difficulty of bringing these features in, I need only turn to user created massive mods for other games to see that in general gaming communities are far more capable & able to enhance any game than many game developers seem to want to accept.

Taleworlds got huge in part due to the moddablility of the game, and so did Skyrim. yes, single player games. But, given the growth of gaming, the booming future ahead, well

a forward thinking company would figure out a way to harness the power of free modders. If 1 employee at 50-100K per year can vet & monitor 12 user created maps per year for approval and decals for offensive content/****, etc, and that content would double the maps we have, give us user avatars and tons of other content, I bet PGI would make far more in sales based on this user content than the minor expense of 1 employee to monitor it.

in addition player council would surely help with all this for free.

Where there is a will, there is a way. Some forward thinking F2P MMO title will one day see the power of this user created content. Neverwinter has already experimented with it to great success.

Edited by Colonel Pada Vinson, 03 January 2014 - 03:20 PM.

[Elyam]

This sure seems like a good time to work this into the plan. Ditto for RPG and written content at some point. I'm no programmer, but an IT Ops manager who leads teams with a focus on the user experience. Yet my apex skills are as a tabletop game designer, GM and writer with decades under the belt (including the whole time of this franchise)...and there are others here of similar makeup. Let a few of us at those new mech scenes and stand back. Let us develop the game's descriptions of world and situation backgrounds. Stories behind objective-driven missions. Let us fill this creature out as it grows.

Edited by Elyam, 03 January 2014 - 06:24 PM.

[luxebo]

While I agree with this idea, we should at least wait a bit for basic stuff, like UI 2.0 and CW in. Then maybe we can package out mission editors and the like, hopefully pretty user-friendly similar to Mechcommander's editors.

[Victor Morson]

luxebo, on 03 January 2014 - 04:54 PM, said:

While I agree with this idea, we should at least wait a bit for basic stuff, like UI 2.0 and CW in. Then maybe we can package out mission editors and the like, hopefully pretty user-friendly similar to Mechcommander's editors.

Perhaps UI 2.0 since it's supposedly February, but no way on waiting until CW; in fact community involvement would help CW a lot I think.

PGI shouldn't worry too much about user friendly if they go this route. The bottom line is they don't want to start taking everything made by the users; there's a lot of ideas out here, and many people with more concepts than capability.

Yet, there's a lot - and I mean a very disproportionate amount to other fan bases - of people out here that don't need user friendly tools. You give us a few package files to use, and we'll give you content we pour hours into. For nothing but getting it in the game, in this case.

It's a very unique franchise that way, again. It's just the crowd and demographic it has appealed too, really. Also the people that went on to be professional programmers and artists are often the same ones that would spend hours messing around with Kali to get MechWarrior 2 working on the internet before internet play was a common thing. The end result is there's a lot of people here who just need the OK to make some submissions and that's all PGI needs to do, until they want to look through the most popular choices.

What's more is if they want them more polished or changes done, I bet you that won't be a problem either.

I really hope they at least consider it now that the license is up. Improving your image for gaining free labor is a hard deal to pass up.

[Steven Dixon]

I voted yes and I think it would be a good idea, but I am aware that their could be several complications that make it easier said than done. As DaZur mentioned legal issues can arise, especially when you consider that their isn't all that much case law or precedence for this sort of thing and we are dealing with an international community. You can sign away your rights, but if you essentially sign away your rights for something that you created and PGI profits directly from a lot of countries would probably throw that out in court (maybe, but companies don't like uncertainty). PGI could pay these people and the MC idea is a good one but again if you go to court and show that PGI gave you $100 of store credit to make something that usually costs them hundreds of thousands of $, you are going to have a good case. After all unless you are a lawyer or have reasonable access to a lawyer many courts in several countries could see this as exploitation and nullify the contract.

Then PGI might also have the fear that they will get a ton of partially completed maps or maps that are buggy or not play tested or ugly, ect. Then PGI will have to spend quite a bit of time redoing the map which will take time and money and then the original creator might get mad that they 'ruined' their map and it wasn't even a map that PGI wanted in the first place. I'm not saying that this will happen but it sure could and I think its likely that PGI fears this.

I doubt that PGI will take the risk. This might be a hobby that is very important to us but it is literally these people's livelihood at stake and most corporations tend to prefer to take the slower and surer path. However if this turns out to be the case my hope is that some passionate and talented people actually get together and make a map to demonstrate their capability. If they can make something up to PGI's standards to show them then maybe they will reconsider.

[Victor Morson]

89% positive so far, and only one No vote. Definitely seems like people are on board with the idea so far.

As for quality control? Again, this is something that needs someone vetting it at PGI, for sure. This should NOT be user managed, in that way, if it were to happen. That said, if a map is buggy or not polished, they can tell the author that - not invest more time into repairing it themselves.

[3endless8oogie]

kesuga7, on 02 January 2014 - 10:53 PM, said:

250k $

To make one map?!

Thats a joke. Especially with all the bugs they have in every map.

[Oppresor]

I have some knowledge of elevation and visibility databaseing and am also a good level 1 and a bit VBA developer. I would love to get involved with detail work on new or existing maps / units, just need the skills and any tools that are required. I don't expect any form of payment; the payment is in seeing my work 'Maybe a crustacean on a broken propeller blade in the sand' appear in MWO.