City Of Heroes - Mission Editor

[xyzzysqrl]

So City of Heroes/Villains recently had a Thing where they're allowing players to make their own missions using, basically, the developer level editing suite. This is of course MASSIVELY popular and largely used for cheating your way to OMG MAX LEVUL in record time. So... having worked myself into a superhero frenzy by reading lots of news about Champions Online, I decided to have a look at what they've got on there.

Basically, 8/10ths of it is crap, 1/10th of it is good, and 1/10th of it is really awesome.

The thing is... the thing is. That anyone who CAN publish something WILL publish it. That's fine! So you get a lot of half-assed unimaginative missions. That's -also- fine. I'm fine with wading through bland or actively bad stuff to have fun. (Hell, even some of the bad ones are fun.) The problem is that there are a lot of "farm" style missions, where you just run around trying to collect experience and badges, and there's a lot of badly-balanced missions where you just plain die a lot, and... so on.

Still, it is, at least, amusing. It's just that ... I guess what I'm thinking is that game development tools should be in the hands of GAME DEVELOPERS. As it is, we have a wonderful system full of user created content by the users, for the users, and all I want to actually play is the stuff the developers have actively reviewed and tested as part of the Dev's Choice system, stuff that could be in the game anyway except that it happened to have a guest writer from the player community.

I dunno. On one hand, I can't genuinely say I want these tools kept out of the hands of the public, because awesome stuff can come from ANYwhere, unexpectedly. On the other hand, I really like the comfort of knowing that what I'm choosing to spend some time on had a quality control process involved. And I feel bad saying that, because I'M ON FUCKING LIVEJOURNAL. Nobody is reviewing ME for quality. What right do I have to come down as the Arbiter of All Taste?

I don't know. Therefore, have a screenshot of my "screwing around" character, The World's Best Ninja, fixing Registry Hacks in a giant computer system using a shotgun.

Comments

[relee.livejournal.com]

That's the big thing with user-generated content that people have been going on about the last few years. Most users create absolute crap. The good levels are usually made by actual game developers who are doing it for fun, or prospective developers trying to impress companies.

I think that the fact CoX has a Developer's Choice system is pretty good, since people who don't want to wade through the crap don't have to, and good content from the users can be elevated. ^.^

I guess there is a problem when people up-vote farming missions though. I hear they're going to 'fix' farming missions, I dunno if that means they're going to remove the bombs or what. I doubt they're going to reset everybody's exp.

I made a silly for-fun mission, but it could have turned into a really interesting mission arc if I had put a day or three into it. I might do that, if I get the job I'm applying for tomorow.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

They should have given you XP for test missions.

Then you wouldn't have to publish your half-finished crap to get tickets for the debugging process and/or skip debugging entirely because you don't want to do something that doesn't give XP.

OTOH, having a 'virtual do gooder' badge for my MA-only character is amusing.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

I've three arcs under @johnni that are pretty short, and relatively well tested even if they need some story tweaking.

I was... sadly, VERY disappointed to find that Uber-farms were the development style of choice. My third mission "The Bad Writers' Conference" was a reaction to that.

[xyzzysqrl]

On Call was -fun-. I liked it.
The "WU" arc... doesn't seem to actually start, for some reason. That may be some glitch on my end. I'm not sure.
The Bad Writer's Conference... was just too bitter to be fun for me. I had to duck out mid-mission and quit.

[kiruppert.livejournal.com]

*Stamps Gordy's forehead with a Seal of Approval*