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Managing Player-Created Content In City of Heroes
Superhero MMO City of Heroes recently went live with its 14th expansion (release notes), one of the main features of which is the Mission Architect, a system to allow players to create their own quest content and then submit it to be implemented into the game. Now, Joe Morrissey of the City of Heroes team has written an article about how they plan to manage the content that players create. "You have to decide how draconian you want to be. The more hardcore you are, the fewer people who will see inappropriate content, but you expose yourself to potential grief voting. Grief voting is when a player flags perfectly acceptable content as inappropriate just because it's fun. If it only takes a single vote to eliminate content from the game, clicking that button is going to be the game for a lot of players. You don't want perfectly good content getting pulled because someone's a jerk."
Grief voting is when a player flags perfectly acceptable content as inappropriate just because it's fun. If it only takes a single vote to eliminate content from the game, clicking that button is going to be the game for a lot of players. You don't want perfectly good content getting pulled because someone's a jerk.
Sounds like they could use some meta-moderating.
The biggest problem isn't language or subject inappropriate content, it's farming missions.
The devs of CoX are fucking idiots, to be blunt: they've repeatedly shown an inability to predict what simple game and chaos theory tells anyone with a lick of common sense what will happen when you create an exploitable system: it will be exploited.
The system was pushed live with so many opportunities to minimize risk and maximize reward that overnight it's become a better method to power level than anything prior in the game.
What's hilarious about the CoX devs is when there's what they deem an "exploit", their reaction is slow, and inevitably the worst possible response one could possibly imagine. One that winds up not only not solving the intended problem, but pissing off people who are just trying to enjoy the game.
For an example, do some reading in the forums about the hot mess that is the CoX PvP system. They pulled some SOE SWG type fuckery on that, and instead of the zones and arenas becoming more populated as was intended, all the zones became a ghost town, and the PVP community on Test almost all cancelled their accounts.
What the CoX devs fail to grasp is that people will do what they enjoy with their game, and if you make it too hard for them, they'll cancel their accounts.
Some people like to powerlevel through the game. Yes, some of them will get bored once they realize there's no endgame, but the majority of people who prefer this pace will stay if you keep giving them new opportunities to advance their power.
They got the Invention system sort of right, but it exacerbated the farming issue severalfold.
Anyway, it'll be hilarious and sad to see what they do as a response to the Mission Architect exploitation for XP/rewards.
I used to love the game. I still enjoy playing with my friends sometimes, but if the devs keep alienating everyone, there'll be nobody left.
Well, if a clever creator hides his "inappropriate" content (whatever this may be) somehow, one out of a thousand reviewers might only find it, but now ponder what will happen if that one reviewer blows it out of proportion on a blog, "look what CoH deems appropriate for young children".
I leave the rest to your imagination.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.