How Would User Generated Content Work? (Part 2)
In my last User Generated Content (UGC) article I was looking at the placement of rooms and enemies, with some of the possible exploits a player could do.
Well after rooms and bad guys, what comes next? Why else would a WoW player play through a dungeon? The loot. The shinies. The purples. The epixxxx.
So let's look at possible loot mechanics for this UGC system for WoW.
When you beat a boss, he drops some random shiny items from a pre-determined list. In the case of the developer made bosses, these items are balanced around a point system called ilevels, higher ilevels = more stats. We want to try and implement something similar to that for this system, there's quite a few ways we could go about this.
If you let the players create their own items and build the loot tables, which in an ideal world would be fantastic, they will deliberately make unbalanced loot tables that heavily favour their class, possibly being better than developer raid drops, then they assign that one or two items to a boss than go kill him with friends. Voila, best-in-slot items made dirt easy. Due to this we need a system with restrictions to avoid such an outcome.
Loot
Fixed Items, Random drop
The developers create a loot table called UGC-Tier10. They have another called UGC-Tier9 and so on. These tables will have 30 or so items created specifically for the User Generated Content System.
If the player creates a Tier 10 instance, any boss that gets beaten will drop 2 or 3 random items from the UGC-Tier10 list. This potentially means that you can see the same drops multiple times in the same run as every boss uses the same loot table.
The room for exploitation should be small here, as the developers have designed the items and the bosses are fixed to dropping from a reasonable sized list so there is no guarantee any particular item will drop, a bit like a real raid. The downside to this is that there is even less control given to the player. With limiting the shape of the dungeon, the power of the bosses and now the loot. This isn't a User Generated Content system, it's just a 'customise a generic raid' tool.
Fixed Items, Chosen drops
The developers create the loot tables, UGC-Tier10 etc. However the players choose from this list what drops from each boss. In other words each boss has a smaller loot table populated by player choice from the larger loot table.
Without restrictions this has a large capacity for exploitation. If there are a pair of boots that the player really wants he can make a 4 or 5 boss dungeon and attach those boots to every bosses loot table, giving him 5 times the normal chance to get them. Even worse will be if a boss has a minimum of one item on his loot table. Guess what single item the player picked? Yup the boots and only the boots.
Player Driven Items... Sorta
In an ideal world we want to give control of the loot to the player. If they made a black dragon dungeon, we want them to create items and name them appropriately, Cloak of Dragon Scale, Dragon-Hide boots etc. It'll add to the experience. However as said before this has enormous potential for abuse, players will create items that are better than developer made items.
Therefore we need to limit the power of what they can create.
Now we have to be very careful with this, too many restrictions and nobody will bother, too few and it's exploitable.
World of Warcraft items are all given an ilevel, this is a representation of how powerful the item is. All stats and sockets have a points value, the developers build items until they reach the item 'budget'. So let us try this.
A Tier 10 item has ilevel 264. If a player chooses to create an ilevel 264 they'd have the following options.
Slot - Chest, Shoulders, Gloves etc.
Armour type, if appropriate - Cloth, Leather, Mail, Plate
Role - Strength Melee DPS, Agility Melee DPS, Caster DPS, Healer etc.
These are the basics that make up every item. By choosing one of these roles you're limited in what stats you can choose.
For example you don't put Spellpower on a Strength Melee DPS item, you put Strength, Crit, Haste, Expertise etc. Likewise you don't put Strength on a Healer item.
There are now two ways we can let the player create this item. Either we give them full control of the budget or we give them partial control.
Giving full control is a bad idea. Nobody likes Stamina (except tanks), Plate wearers are always complaining of the high Stamina on their items. So if a player is making a Plate item, it's not getting any Stamina. It's getting Strength, lots of Strength. In fact you might see nothing 'but' Strength on it. This is a problem.
A 500 Strength chest, with no other stats is unbalanced, a player wearing lots of these will complain of AOE damage killing them, and blame the devs for not 'balancing their ####ing raids', as we've all seen that the majority of players will never accept something as their fault, it's always somebody elses fault. If they die lots, it's the developers fault, not that the raids are designed for you having so much stamina. Or they'll say "If you didn't want me having a +500 strength chest, you shouldn't have let me create it, it's your fault. Fix your crappy game"
Oh and on top of that they'll be doing way more damage than the raid was balanced for too, so they'll complain of bosses being too easy as well. Extreme example yes, but likely to occur in real life.
As one solution I would suggest creating a baseline item and then letting players spend the excess points.
For example
http://www.wowhead.com/item=49968
This is a spellcaster weapon from Icecrown Citadel, it's called Frozen Bonespike. Its stats are:
(130.9 damage per second)
+67 Stamina
+67 Intellect
+59 Spirit
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 59
Equip: Increases spell power by 741.
Now, lets drop those stats a bit to give some points back to the player for customising.
(130.9 damage per second)
+47 Stamina
+47 Intellect
+39 Spirit
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 29
Equip: Increases spell power by 641.
I took off about 200 stats in total. Different stats are worth different amount of points, and I would assume the more of a stat that exists the higher the cost to add more. What could we do with this?
For starters lets get that spellpower back up. Add on 100 spellpower for 100 points.
(130.9 damage per second)
+47 Stamina
+47 Intellect
+39 Spirit
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 29
Equip: Increases spell power by 741.
This puts it back on par with a normal 264 caster weapon, at least in spellpower terms.
Lets give it a Yellow socket with a socket bonus of +5 spellpower for 40 points
(130.9 damage per second)
+47 Stamina
+47 Intellect
+39 Spirit
Yellow Socket
Socket bonus +5 spellpower
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 29
Equip: Increases spell power by 641.
It's important to keep in mind that we just bought both the socket 'and' the spellpower socket bonus, even if the player chooses not to take the socket bonus it has to come out of the budget anyway. 40 points is also more than the maximum of 12 spellpower, 10 haste, 5 spellpower (socket) that the player could get (total of 27 vs 40), I'm adding the extra cost on because of the choice it's giving the player. They can socket whatever they need there, that variation comes with a price.
We have 60 points left. What shall we do? Add a new stat!
(130.9 damage per second)
+47 Stamina
+47 Intellect
+39 Spirit
Yellow Socket
Socket bonus +5 spellpower
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 29
Equip: Increases spell power by 641.
Equip: Improves haste rating by 40
Deduct 20 points to add in another stat, use 40 points to get the Haste to 40.
And voila, we just created a new item with some very nice stats. Now I confess even this system isn't perfect. You may notice that I didn't add more Stamina to that weapon so I've actually gained 20 extra points for damage over what the weapon used to be. Sockets on a weapon are also usually restricted for Heroic versions, but you get the idea.
You could solve this by locking base stats such as Stamina, Intellect etc. Which is less control to the player but better balance.
... Or we could wait until Cataclysm and use Blizzard's 'reforging' system to do this for us.
Exploits
I mentioned some exploits, but there's more that aren't bound to a particular system.
Templates
You know templates? Like a pre-made something or other with some gaps for you to fill in? If WoW had UGC it would be mere weeks before templates hit the net. These would be files (a .ugc or something) of premade dungeons or raids that are much easier than their developer made counterparts that provide items better than the developer made raids.
The template itself will consist of the dungeon and bosses and nothing else, perhaps it will include loot tables for each class of the best items that can be made with the system. It will be up to the player to attach the relevant items to the bosses then go fight them.
This is not fun. This has just turned the UGC from an amazing tool that can provide stories and new experiences and challenges into a loot grinding machine. Open Template, choose Warlock table, Save. Open WoW, get Guildies, run Warlock dungeon until your eyes bleed. Close WoW, Open Template, choose Paladin table, Save. Open WoW, get Guildies, run Paladin dungeon until your eyes bleed.
Boring boring boring. This removes the fun from the system and removes the fun from real raids as you'll already have better gear.
Theorycrafters
You guys rock. In your free time you do crazy calculations and formulas to find what is the best talent spec, what the best stats are and what is the best gear. It's amazing what you do and you deserve kudos for doing it.
But if WoW introduced UGC you'd play a big role in killing it.
You see you can't help yourselves but calculate what's the best. The player base can't help themselves but chase after the best. So you will calculate the best set of items that the UGC can make and compare those to the developer made raids. You will then create a list for every class of the best items in-game using the dev raids and UGC raids and then publish it online.
Players will read this and go after those items ignoring all others, they will openly mock any UGC that doesn't drop from the 'best list'. They will use template raids to get the best UGC items then complain about the drop rate of dev raids as the templates spoiled them with easy drops.
Raid Locks
To stop a group from killing the first boss of a raid, leaving, going back in and killing him again, Raid IDs exist. These are pretty much a 'Save State' for WoW. They last until the following Wednesday where they're deleted. This allows a group to continue where they left off later in the week.
We'll want to do the same for this system otherwise the easy exploit is to run the same User made dungeon repeatedly until everyone in the group gets the items they wanted. But how do you identify a dungeon?
You can't Lock 'all' UGC dungeons or people who're trying to test theirs will get screwed over as they can only test once a week. Find a fatal flaw in boss one and that's you finished.
But you can't lock them individually either. Or all a player needs to do is add another wave of trash, change the loot table or rename it and it's a shiny new raid. The system won't be able to tell the difference.
Conclusion
This system will not work in WoW. At all. WoW is so heavily oriented around gear and items that any attempt to create a User Generated Content System will just be creating an easy loot system. WoW players run things for loot. That is what the majority do. If you create a UGC system with loot lower than the equivalent developer dungeon, nobody will use it. Or they'll run it and complain about crap loot and never run it again. On the other hand you make the loot equal or better and it becomes more farmed content for guilds to gear up quicker, thus even more time players feel 'forced' to play, something Blizzard are trying to remove.
Neither is fun, neither is the point.
The point is for players to create new experiences for other players. To shape their own stories and share them with the community.
I do not believe WoW is the kind of game that could implement something like this and have it work. I suppose this is a good part of the reason why an MMO which does implement it will be the WoW-killer. For it will have created a system allowing near endless content that doesn't consume developer time. Some very popular games started as Mods, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, DoTA. So the power of User Generated isn't to be ignored.
In my opinion a game that uses a User Generated Content System cannot be about gaining levels or winning loot, at least not to the degree WoW is, it must be based around experiences and stories.
Yeah I just wrote two massive walls of text, did pictures, calculations and came up with theories, problems and solutions, just to ultimately admit it won't ever work. I love Game Design :)
Well after rooms and bad guys, what comes next? Why else would a WoW player play through a dungeon? The loot. The shinies. The purples. The epixxxx.
So let's look at possible loot mechanics for this UGC system for WoW.
When you beat a boss, he drops some random shiny items from a pre-determined list. In the case of the developer made bosses, these items are balanced around a point system called ilevels, higher ilevels = more stats. We want to try and implement something similar to that for this system, there's quite a few ways we could go about this.
If you let the players create their own items and build the loot tables, which in an ideal world would be fantastic, they will deliberately make unbalanced loot tables that heavily favour their class, possibly being better than developer raid drops, then they assign that one or two items to a boss than go kill him with friends. Voila, best-in-slot items made dirt easy. Due to this we need a system with restrictions to avoid such an outcome.
Loot
Fixed Items, Random drop
The developers create a loot table called UGC-Tier10. They have another called UGC-Tier9 and so on. These tables will have 30 or so items created specifically for the User Generated Content System.
If the player creates a Tier 10 instance, any boss that gets beaten will drop 2 or 3 random items from the UGC-Tier10 list. This potentially means that you can see the same drops multiple times in the same run as every boss uses the same loot table.
The room for exploitation should be small here, as the developers have designed the items and the bosses are fixed to dropping from a reasonable sized list so there is no guarantee any particular item will drop, a bit like a real raid. The downside to this is that there is even less control given to the player. With limiting the shape of the dungeon, the power of the bosses and now the loot. This isn't a User Generated Content system, it's just a 'customise a generic raid' tool.
Fixed Items, Chosen drops
The developers create the loot tables, UGC-Tier10 etc. However the players choose from this list what drops from each boss. In other words each boss has a smaller loot table populated by player choice from the larger loot table.
Without restrictions this has a large capacity for exploitation. If there are a pair of boots that the player really wants he can make a 4 or 5 boss dungeon and attach those boots to every bosses loot table, giving him 5 times the normal chance to get them. Even worse will be if a boss has a minimum of one item on his loot table. Guess what single item the player picked? Yup the boots and only the boots.
Player Driven Items... Sorta
In an ideal world we want to give control of the loot to the player. If they made a black dragon dungeon, we want them to create items and name them appropriately, Cloak of Dragon Scale, Dragon-Hide boots etc. It'll add to the experience. However as said before this has enormous potential for abuse, players will create items that are better than developer made items.
Therefore we need to limit the power of what they can create.
Now we have to be very careful with this, too many restrictions and nobody will bother, too few and it's exploitable.
World of Warcraft items are all given an ilevel, this is a representation of how powerful the item is. All stats and sockets have a points value, the developers build items until they reach the item 'budget'. So let us try this.
A Tier 10 item has ilevel 264. If a player chooses to create an ilevel 264 they'd have the following options.
Slot - Chest, Shoulders, Gloves etc.
Armour type, if appropriate - Cloth, Leather, Mail, Plate
Role - Strength Melee DPS, Agility Melee DPS, Caster DPS, Healer etc.
These are the basics that make up every item. By choosing one of these roles you're limited in what stats you can choose.
For example you don't put Spellpower on a Strength Melee DPS item, you put Strength, Crit, Haste, Expertise etc. Likewise you don't put Strength on a Healer item.
There are now two ways we can let the player create this item. Either we give them full control of the budget or we give them partial control.
Giving full control is a bad idea. Nobody likes Stamina (except tanks), Plate wearers are always complaining of the high Stamina on their items. So if a player is making a Plate item, it's not getting any Stamina. It's getting Strength, lots of Strength. In fact you might see nothing 'but' Strength on it. This is a problem.
A 500 Strength chest, with no other stats is unbalanced, a player wearing lots of these will complain of AOE damage killing them, and blame the devs for not 'balancing their ####ing raids', as we've all seen that the majority of players will never accept something as their fault, it's always somebody elses fault. If they die lots, it's the developers fault, not that the raids are designed for you having so much stamina. Or they'll say "If you didn't want me having a +500 strength chest, you shouldn't have let me create it, it's your fault. Fix your crappy game"
Oh and on top of that they'll be doing way more damage than the raid was balanced for too, so they'll complain of bosses being too easy as well. Extreme example yes, but likely to occur in real life.
As one solution I would suggest creating a baseline item and then letting players spend the excess points.
For example
http://www.wowhead.com/item=49968
This is a spellcaster weapon from Icecrown Citadel, it's called Frozen Bonespike. Its stats are:
(130.9 damage per second)
+67 Stamina
+67 Intellect
+59 Spirit
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 59
Equip: Increases spell power by 741.
Now, lets drop those stats a bit to give some points back to the player for customising.
(130.9 damage per second)
+47 Stamina
+47 Intellect
+39 Spirit
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 29
Equip: Increases spell power by 641.
I took off about 200 stats in total. Different stats are worth different amount of points, and I would assume the more of a stat that exists the higher the cost to add more. What could we do with this?
For starters lets get that spellpower back up. Add on 100 spellpower for 100 points.
(130.9 damage per second)
+47 Stamina
+47 Intellect
+39 Spirit
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 29
Equip: Increases spell power by 741.
This puts it back on par with a normal 264 caster weapon, at least in spellpower terms.
Lets give it a Yellow socket with a socket bonus of +5 spellpower for 40 points
(130.9 damage per second)
+47 Stamina
+47 Intellect
+39 Spirit
Yellow Socket
Socket bonus +5 spellpower
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 29
Equip: Increases spell power by 641.
It's important to keep in mind that we just bought both the socket 'and' the spellpower socket bonus, even if the player chooses not to take the socket bonus it has to come out of the budget anyway. 40 points is also more than the maximum of 12 spellpower, 10 haste, 5 spellpower (socket) that the player could get (total of 27 vs 40), I'm adding the extra cost on because of the choice it's giving the player. They can socket whatever they need there, that variation comes with a price.
We have 60 points left. What shall we do? Add a new stat!
(130.9 damage per second)
+47 Stamina
+47 Intellect
+39 Spirit
Yellow Socket
Socket bonus +5 spellpower
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 29
Equip: Increases spell power by 641.
Equip: Improves haste rating by 40
Deduct 20 points to add in another stat, use 40 points to get the Haste to 40.
And voila, we just created a new item with some very nice stats. Now I confess even this system isn't perfect. You may notice that I didn't add more Stamina to that weapon so I've actually gained 20 extra points for damage over what the weapon used to be. Sockets on a weapon are also usually restricted for Heroic versions, but you get the idea.
You could solve this by locking base stats such as Stamina, Intellect etc. Which is less control to the player but better balance.
... Or we could wait until Cataclysm and use Blizzard's 'reforging' system to do this for us.
Exploits
I mentioned some exploits, but there's more that aren't bound to a particular system.
Templates
You know templates? Like a pre-made something or other with some gaps for you to fill in? If WoW had UGC it would be mere weeks before templates hit the net. These would be files (a .ugc or something) of premade dungeons or raids that are much easier than their developer made counterparts that provide items better than the developer made raids.
The template itself will consist of the dungeon and bosses and nothing else, perhaps it will include loot tables for each class of the best items that can be made with the system. It will be up to the player to attach the relevant items to the bosses then go fight them.
This is not fun. This has just turned the UGC from an amazing tool that can provide stories and new experiences and challenges into a loot grinding machine. Open Template, choose Warlock table, Save. Open WoW, get Guildies, run Warlock dungeon until your eyes bleed. Close WoW, Open Template, choose Paladin table, Save. Open WoW, get Guildies, run Paladin dungeon until your eyes bleed.
Boring boring boring. This removes the fun from the system and removes the fun from real raids as you'll already have better gear.
Theorycrafters
You guys rock. In your free time you do crazy calculations and formulas to find what is the best talent spec, what the best stats are and what is the best gear. It's amazing what you do and you deserve kudos for doing it.
But if WoW introduced UGC you'd play a big role in killing it.
You see you can't help yourselves but calculate what's the best. The player base can't help themselves but chase after the best. So you will calculate the best set of items that the UGC can make and compare those to the developer made raids. You will then create a list for every class of the best items in-game using the dev raids and UGC raids and then publish it online.
Players will read this and go after those items ignoring all others, they will openly mock any UGC that doesn't drop from the 'best list'. They will use template raids to get the best UGC items then complain about the drop rate of dev raids as the templates spoiled them with easy drops.
Raid Locks
To stop a group from killing the first boss of a raid, leaving, going back in and killing him again, Raid IDs exist. These are pretty much a 'Save State' for WoW. They last until the following Wednesday where they're deleted. This allows a group to continue where they left off later in the week.
We'll want to do the same for this system otherwise the easy exploit is to run the same User made dungeon repeatedly until everyone in the group gets the items they wanted. But how do you identify a dungeon?
You can't Lock 'all' UGC dungeons or people who're trying to test theirs will get screwed over as they can only test once a week. Find a fatal flaw in boss one and that's you finished.
But you can't lock them individually either. Or all a player needs to do is add another wave of trash, change the loot table or rename it and it's a shiny new raid. The system won't be able to tell the difference.
Conclusion
This system will not work in WoW. At all. WoW is so heavily oriented around gear and items that any attempt to create a User Generated Content System will just be creating an easy loot system. WoW players run things for loot. That is what the majority do. If you create a UGC system with loot lower than the equivalent developer dungeon, nobody will use it. Or they'll run it and complain about crap loot and never run it again. On the other hand you make the loot equal or better and it becomes more farmed content for guilds to gear up quicker, thus even more time players feel 'forced' to play, something Blizzard are trying to remove.
Neither is fun, neither is the point.
The point is for players to create new experiences for other players. To shape their own stories and share them with the community.
I do not believe WoW is the kind of game that could implement something like this and have it work. I suppose this is a good part of the reason why an MMO which does implement it will be the WoW-killer. For it will have created a system allowing near endless content that doesn't consume developer time. Some very popular games started as Mods, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, DoTA. So the power of User Generated isn't to be ignored.
In my opinion a game that uses a User Generated Content System cannot be about gaining levels or winning loot, at least not to the degree WoW is, it must be based around experiences and stories.
Yeah I just wrote two massive walls of text, did pictures, calculations and came up with theories, problems and solutions, just to ultimately admit it won't ever work. I love Game Design :)