Player Run Dungeons
So the other day I was trying to show a friend some stuff about Pantheon and I directed him to the “The Pantheon Difference” page and I noticed something I had not seen before (been a while since I been on that page). Down on the bottom under Future Features I see the words “Player-run dungeons and regions”. Now I can make a stab at what a player run region might be connected to PC towns or villages or possible guild towns. The part that stuck out and I have not really seen anywhere is the idea that one of the main “Future Features” of Pantheon is player run dungeons.
The first thing that comes to my mind is a dungeon that is created by a player. Now I been trying to chant “even if it did not work before maybe it will work this time” whenever I read something I hated in others game but I must bring up EQ2. EQ2 did a player created dungeon system and it works as a sort of in game dungeon building mini game that you start with basic dungeon parts and find new parts in the world or bought it in the Cash Shop. You built your dungeon which you would save and others could load and run with monster avatars (and possibly real characters at one point). You would gain experience but never any loot.
Soon you found people would have more fun trolling people with impossible hard dungeons that would have a room with 20 mobs in it after you spent twenty minutes slogging from the start. And even the people that really tried to make good dungeons failed because you felt almost no reason to run them. They felt bland with little flavor options available due to no scrips or even the ability to change the names of your placed mobs. I can’t imagine the resources that EQ2 spent on building this project but after about a week no one I knew did them anymore. I remember going back years after they had been in and trying a new one and it was still so boring.
Now I could be possibly completely wrong on what “Player-run dungeons” means and I really hope I am because nothing breaks a games immersion then playing around in an editor for the game you are currently playing.
Interesting find there, thanks for pointing it out.
On Wii mario maker, you actually have a lot of people who DONT troll and try to make entertaining content for their peers. A vote system may help.
In DND you have plenty of honest/capable dungeon masters, so I'm not terribly worried about people being jerks or boring about the regions/dungeons they run.
EQ2 did have a voting system but even the highest voted dungeons felt very boring. The fault of it was squarely on the fact it tried to let you be creative with too few tools. It was literally connect some halls/rooms and drop mobs down and add some housing items like torches or boxes; that’s it. Now if you are going into like a neverwinter editor system I’m sure the community could make some great things but that’s A. Expensive, B. Takes a huge amount of development power, and C. Takes focus away from the dev created content.
Xonth said:EQ2 did have a voting system but even the highest voted dungeons felt very boring. The fault of it was squarely on the fact it tried to let you be creative with too few tools. It was literally connect some halls/rooms and drop mobs down and add some housing items like torches or boxes; that’s it. Now if you are going into like a neverwinter editor system I’m sure the community could make some great things but that’s A. Expensive, B. Takes a huge amount of development power, and C. Takes focus away from the dev created content.
fair enough point, Good dungeon masters do require atleast something to work with.
EQ2 came out a long time ago though, mayhap VR has some better plans if they are mentioning it in secret places. Probably gonna need some confirmations as to how exactly it will work so we can critique it-otherwise there's arguments for both bad player made games/dungeons/regions and good ones.
Hopefully this can be monitored and controlled. They did this with Neverwinter and it became the best way to level because you could simply fill areas with mobs and basically constantly grind for the same xp on easier mobs. Too early to speculate on most things in pantheon right now
They have player made dungeons in Neverwinter Nights. It works well, the dungeons are rated by the players, and anyone making "impossibly hard dungeons" to troll people rapidly lose their ability to make dungeons at all.
I really, really enjoy that system. I made lots of dungeons. I spent more time making dungeons than playing the game. :p Cause, with due respect, I did not find the game itself fun because it's not a social game despite being multiplayer. For me, it was just another RPG except with other people running around in it. I did group a few times, but it was always, "voice chat plz". (It's also pay to win, which I detest)
But I digress... if they ARE going to allow us to make dungeons, it will be my only caveat to "I hate instancing", lol. I felt like a lot of the player made dungeons in NWN were better than the actual dungeons.
Amris said:They have player made dungeons in Neverwinter Nights. It works well, the dungeons are rated by the players, and anyone making "impossibly hard dungeons" to troll people rapidly lose their ability to make dungeons at all.
I really, really enjoy that system. I made lots of dungeons. I spent more time making dungeons than playing the game. :p Cause, with due respect, I did not find the game itself fun because it's not a social game despite being multiplayer. For me, it was just another RPG except with other people running around in it. I did group a few times, but it was always, "voice chat plz". (It's also pay to win, which I detest)
But I digress... if they ARE going to allow us to make dungeons, it will be my only caveat to "I hate instancing", lol. I felt like a lot of the player made dungeons in NWN were better than the actual dungeons.
Something like the foundry would be pretty cool, I really enjoyed using that to make content.
I have a lot of concerns about player-created content. But I won't go into that quite yet. Because at the same time, I think the phrase "player-run dungeons" is interesting and may not necessarily mean "player-created." So because, as Kilsin said, we know almost nothing about this, I will reserve actual judgment till later. Just color me skeptical in the meantime.
In Guild Wars 2, they had these difficult jumping/platformer puzzles that when you reached the end you could loot from a daily chest and/or got an achievement. They took place inside the PvP zone and along the way, there were spots where players could control traps in order to damage and knock players off the platforms forcing them to start over.
Perhaps something like this is what they mean by player controlled dungeons -- players making it more difficult for other raids to complete the dungeon by controlling traps and releasing more enemies?
Bazgrim said:I have a lot of concerns about player-created content. But I won't go into that quite yet. Because at the same time, I think the phrase "player-run dungeons" is interesting and may not necessarily mean "player-created." So because, as Kilsin said, we know almost nothing about this, I will reserve actual judgment till later. Just color me skeptical in the meantime.
Right there with you on this one Beef, however the thought of taking control of a Dungeon as a Player/Guild does bring up additional interesting thoughts. I'm curious to see what VR does with this and a few other features down the road. After they let me into Pre-alpha of course :).
Should make it some sort of pvp dungeon. Making a dungeon or participating in a dungeon automatically participates you in combat with other players so that you can't just raid these dungeons but never worry about defending your spoils. In order to create dungeons that are just not beatable, the goal should be to deter the enemies from completing as long as possible. Now what kind of loot you say? Not sure, don't think people would be happy losing anything and everything. So would have to be scrticly something related to this.
The funny thing is ... when I mentioned to my wife that "Player Run Dungeons" had popped up on The Pantheon Difference page, her initial reaction was that it would be nothing more than real players creating groups and running dungeons, contrary to the Dungeon Finder epidemic that plagues WoW. It's pretty sad to think that something so primitive could be perceived as a game defining feature, but alas, that's the current landscape of the MMO genre.
Random thoughts.
Mods- People charge for Mods, people pay for Mods- I think Bethesda has a business model that brokers the player made mods? (include creation pack in disc, player creates mod, bethersda checks mod, player sells mod, bethesda puts mod for sale, bethesda pays player creator). Personally I dont pay for mods, I play the game as intended by the creators- perhaps a bit steve jobs and a closed system on this as opposed ot the windows create-your-own-pc and plug in a different video card to the motherboard.
Computer coders creator people want jobs in good MMO's (skipping ahead to the future and this creator in a job interview "oh yes, I created dungron X" Intervewier logs into game and plays dungeon X as part of interview process, interviewer LOVES dungeon and keeps character in game , hires creator)
VR provides creator pack to the unwashed masses for those who like the palette. Some create dungeons and want to show off to VR, VR will only look at player created dungeons if the player can show X credentials (resume?) or proficiency this is to weed out the masses creating colorful mushrooms. Player with credentials and proficiency creates. VR tests.
VR likes. Legal creates new thing in MMO world- the small contract.VR buys player created dungeon, player agrees to liscensing agreements. VR pays player- player dungeon is released in next expansion. Devs think this is a great gig when players create the expansions! and they can concentrate on the Meta-game of playing the players and Lore and all that stuff. Like a franchise- we'll take your thing provided the VR name is on it you pay for liscence (financing is available) VR pays residuals or however that works- percentage of subscription base?. VR owns proprietary rights for 3 years after which player can put it on resume.
*edited- took out opinions over something I know nothing about*
I have seen player created dungeons before..played too many online games over the years, can't remember which one it was. It was fun, but some ended up being glitchy or not well thought out. I'll leave this up to the Devs, I don't have a problem with it for the most part. :)
100% against player generated content of any kind, unless its submitted through the filter of VR. Any unfiltered content that goes into game can be catastrophic to immersion and balance.
I’m not against player created content in general but normally I only go down that path when I’m reaching the end of a games interest to me. It’s like a magic trick, once you see under the hood and learn all the behind the scene things it can permanently ruin the illusion/immersion I had for it before.
This raises major red flags for me, and I really hope PRF is not considering user created dungeons. User created content seems to be mutually exclusive with unique, meaningful, lore-coherent content throughout Terminus. User created content that enables progression or loot gathering raises obvious problems with trivializing progression or loot acquisition. User created content seems like it must mean instancing or instance like zones. None of this makes any sense, nor does it seem consistent with the game tenets. So I'd be shocked if there were user created dungeons in PRF.
For what it's worth, VR team, I found out about this specific post through friends still playing EQ. The post was described as a post in which VR suggested there would be user created dungeons in Pantheon. The responses this comment received from an audience of 50+ guildmates were uniformly and strongly negative. I came to the board specifically to read the post, and it looks like there's very little real info on this from VR. So I'll withhold judgment. But if you can confirm that you're not considering user created content, but rather some mechanism for asserting control over VR-created zones (like directing NPCs within the dungeon) that would set my and others' minds at ease.
Dhampir said:I actually do NOT want a system like this...
I hate the idea of player created dungeons. The only acceptable version of this is if a player works with the dev team to create a permanent dungeon. Otherwise we've entered the idea of instanced dungeons and NO THANKS.
Echoing this. But we will have to see what they have in mind before getting the pitchforks.