Player created content - Suggestion for the future of ESO

Gidorick

DISCLAIMER: this is pretty long.

I think one extremely important aspect of the Elder Scrolls experience is sorely missing from ESO: the player-creation community. Enabling the community of creators that both love The Elder Scrolls and ESO would be a HUGE boon to the longevity and appeal of ESO.

While I understand it is early in ESO’s life to be considering these types of additions and there ARE more pressing issues to consider, the below suggestions would be such a robust addition to the game I think the planning would need to begin now for a release a few years down the road.

Being an MMO, ESO cannot offer the types of creation systems that have been in past TES games. This is completely understandable. ESO can, however, offer the ability for players to offer content to other players . I would like to throw a few suggestions out there to highlight how ESO could embrace some community content creation.

First and foremost the player created content will need to exist alongside all the other content of ESO. It should include both leveled and level-locked quests so the Creator can determine what kind of experience they would like to create and the system should allow for solo and group quests. This system would require the release of a Community Creator Kit that could be a separate program from ESO and would be launched from the desktop Launcher so players that have no interest in being a Community Creator wouldn’t be bothered with Creator Kit while playing ESO.

Using existing locations:

All the locations around Tamriel that require a loading screen could be instanced specifically for community-created quests. This design would enable a Creator to use existing buildings, basements, dungeons, caves, and clearings to build their quests.

If a player has accepted multiple quests for a particular area the player could be greeted with a prompt.

Which quest would you like to continue?

• - Kill Glindar Jesterfoot (Guild)
• - Grandfather’s Folly (Community)
• - Revenge of the Dwemer (Community)
• - NONE

If the player selects none, they could be sent to the normal non-questing instance of the area. If they choose a Community Quest, the area is instanced to them for the duration of their stay.

Within these pre-defined spaces, Creators should be allowed to place NPCs, enemies, loot and should even be able to clutter up the place a bit with area-specific items (piles of rock, tables, desks, weapon racks, etc.) to personalize the space for their specific quest. Creators should be allowed to send the player to multiple locations in order to complete their quest. Ambitious Creators could send players clear across Tamriel to complete their quest.

Creating new locations:

A more robust option would be to allow Creators to create, from scratch, their own areas for their quests. However, there are only three types of areas that should be able to be created from scratch.

• Basements/Dungeons
• Caves/clearings
• Daedric Realms

Since buildings have a specific external shape, customization of building interiors should be limited to decorating the pre-defined building interiors as mentioned above. After-all, we wouldn’t want a “bigger-on-the-inside” situation on our hands.

After a Creator creates the spaces for their quest they should be able to attach the opening of their space to ANY static door, cave opening, basement hatch, etc. in the game; any place that requires a load screen that doesn’t lead into a building. This should include the multitude of entryways in the game that currently serve no function other than aesthetics and could include more doorways, cave entrances, and basement hatches. Each entrance could only allow that specific type of interior so we don’t have basements that lead directly to caves or caves that look like a wine cellar.

Daedric realms would require portals to travel to and from and since there are no set portal locations in the world the entrances to Daedric realms should be allowed to be anywhere within an already customized space being used for the Creator’s quest. In fact, any custom space should allow for entrances to other locations. A Creator could add a basement hatch to a predefined floorplan of a building interior that leads to a custom created basement that leads to a custom created cave, which leads to a pre-built dungeon that leads to a custom Daedric realm that exits into another static house whose exit spits the player out into a completely different city in which they started.

NPCs & Enemies:

Community Creators should be given a large library of pre-built NPCs to use in their quests as well as the ability to create their own NPCs from scratch using the character creator. The creator should be expanded with an outfitter to allow players to dress their NPCs in just about any combination of armor and clothes that can be found around Tamriel.

The NPC conversation trees, animation and movement paths should all be customizable by the Creator to give the Creator the ability to create quests as robust as those ZOS has in the main game.

Enemies should also be fully customizable, from generic creatures to fully customizable original characters with dialog and custom style.

The Creator should have a full set of tools at their disposable to create complex and interesting characters with which to populate their world.

Quest Types:

When creating the quest, the Creator could be given an option of the type of quest they are creating. These quest types could offer a variety of play that allows the Creators the freedom to create whatever types of experiences they can imagine.

• Narrative Quest: These quests focus on telling a story and can involve multiple locations and can span across Tamriel.
• Nefarious Quest: These are similar to Narrative quests but are darker in tone. They can include assassinations, espionage, heists, & kidnapping.
• Gauntlet Quest: These quests focus on running through an area quickly and effectively. These usually involve only one instanced area with leaderboards attached. Could include single player gauntlets all the way up to 12 player gauntlets and the leaderboards could be organized by the number of players in the group.
• Versus Quest: These quests pit players against one another with PVP active within the quest areas. They can involve multiple location instances and can take players clear across Tamriel. These quests can resemble a treasure hunt of sorts.
• Dungeon Delves: Single Dungeon quests that require 4 players to play and are balanced as such.
• Raids: Multi-area quests taking the form of a Raid, requiring 12 person groups.

How to find Community Quests:

The community created quests could be distributed in a variety of ways from bulletin boards in guild halls to asking bartenders if they’ve heard any good rumors. Quest could be organized by region, made for a specific faction, or a player could choose a quest that is clear across Tamriel. The different methods of quest delivery could be decided by the content of the quest and should correlate with the Quest type.

• Bartender: Narrative quests that begin within the Zone
• City Bulletin Boards: Narrative quests that begin outside of the zone but within the faction
• Traveling NPC Criers or merchants: Narrative quests that begin outside of the faction
• Homeless NPCs: Nefarious quests that begin within the Zone – requires coin to hear
• Black Quest board: Nefarious quests that begin outside of the faction
• Underground Gossip NPCs: Nefarious quests that begin outside of the zone but within the faction – requires coin to hear
• Undaunted in Bars: ALL Gauntlet quests – Zone/Faction/Tamriel is dependent on Undaunted Level
• Undaunted Outposts: ALL Versus quests – Zone/Faction/Tamriel is dependent on Undaunted Level
• Guild Bulletin Boards: Dungeon Delve & Raids of their respective guild.

The rewards for quests… aside from more gameplay, gold (which don't really need), generic items, crafting materials, and experience (which we REALLY don’t need), players could be rewarded items that are crafted by the Creator in game. These items should be able to be renamed by the Creator for greater customizability. Hopefully by this point players can dye weapons so Creators can offer perfectly unique items. This could lead to one creator crafting a full armor set and spreading the pieces among multiple quests.

There could also be a pool of items and trophies that are only available to Creators so there is an incentive for players to play community created quests. One thought would be Community designed motifs and items could be exclusively used as rewards in Community Quests… more on that later.

Community Creator Reputation & Quest Ratings:

As players complete a community quest, they should be able to submit a review for the community quests. The review score could be one of the ways the quests could be organized, along with date and by creator. Players should also be able to flag or favorite quests before they complete them.

These review scores could feed into a Community Creator Reputation and players should be able to favorite and follow specific community Creators so they can watch specifically for that creators levels.

Creators or levels that achieve a certain review score or reputation over a certain number of plays could be considered for a ZOS highlight or to be “canonized” by ZOS as an official Community Quest that would then be considered an official part of Elder Scrolls Lore (or as much as any other part of ESO is considered an official part of the Elder Scrolls).

This recognition by ZOS would encourage players to create lore-friendly quests so that the Community Quests maintain the aesthetic and tone of the rest of the game. Lore-Friendlyness could even be one of the metrics by which players could rate the Community Quests.

Community Motifs:

While I do not think it would be wise, to allow Creators to design armor from scratch to wear around ESO, I do think there is a mechanic that could be introduced that could allow for Community Creators to design Motifs for in-game use. There are throngs of artists that enjoy the Elder Scrolls and they have shown that they can produce beautiful and intricate armor if given the opportunity and I think ESO could support this type of creation.

Within the Community Creation Kit could be an outfitter that could allow players to export a “blank” template in a variety of formats to open in an external 3d modeling program. The same program would also have the ability to import those same formats of the Creator’s finished pieces. I do not think ZOS should put the effort into developing their own 3d modeling program for this Community Creator Kit; there are plenty of free/inexpensive tools out there that are perfectly serviceable.

Once the Creator finishes their armor, they should be able to upload their files to the Community Creator Kit to place their armor on a moving “mannequin” with selectable motions that could include walking, running, sprinting, attacking, on horseback and any “/” emote. This would allow Creators to test their armor pieces on a moving model to find any unforeseen clipping issues.

Once they have finished creating an entire Motif (including the three armor types and all weapon types) they can submit their Motif to be voted on by the community. Every motif submitted during a quarter should be available the following quarter to view and vote on as a whole set in 2D previews that would be similar to the icons that are seen when crafting. These icons should be presented in a book that will be available in each city at a station/table specifically set aside for this voting process.

Alternatively, ZOS could implement a the Community Motifs in a similar way that they have implemented the Dwemer Motifs with each piece of the Motif being independent and released in pages. If this were the way they were to handle community Motifs, there would need to be multiple books on the voter’s table to organize the submissions by item type.

Having the ability to submit designs for individual items in a motif would allow Creators who want to only create weapons, to only create weapons. There would, however, be the issue of how to appease Creators who want to create entire Motifs and not just individual pieces. The solution could be to offer both. Periodically, one full community Motif, one community weapon (or one of each type), and one community armor piece (or one of each type) could be selected to be released into the wild based on community voting.

Voting players should be able to browse the book and vote for their favorite motif and items. The top motifs and items (top 3/5/10/.. whatever) should then be reviewed by ZOS and the selected motif/item should then be inserted into the game as a Community Motif or Item. A motif or item that did not get chosen to be inserted into the game should be able to be resubmitted as is, or tweaked and resubmitted, at the Creators discretion.

The releases of the Motifs and Items types could be on different schedules so there could be more frequent releases of community creations. One suggestion could be that one Community item could be released each month (which could be a weapon or any piece of armor) and then one full Motif could be released every 3, 4, or 6 months.

The individual items could be released as actual wearable items that could be placed within the Community Creation Kit for use as a community quest rewards and the Motifs could only be available as quest rewards for Creators of a certain rating or reputation, keeping the motifs themselves rare.

This creation/voting system could be used to add any number of things to the game from Pets to Lore Books to Emotes to Costumes.

The key is that each community creation of this type needs to be approved by ZOS (or ultimately Bethesda) so that there is never anything that would go against the aesthetic or Lore of the game.

Why be a Community Creator?:

With all these tools, it would be quite a bit of work to be an active Community Creator. One might ask why a player would want to be a Creator. Why put in the extra effort?

There could be specific perks and incentives for Creators that have achieved certain milestones within ESO. While Creators should have access to a completely separate tool set in the Community Creation Kit for interacting with ESO, they could even be given access to a completely different skill tree and perks within ESO itself as players. Perhaps there are special motifs, mounts and pets that only Creators can access. There could even be a Community Creator Forum or an in-game Guild created by ZOS for those that achieve a particular status as a Creator. This could allow those Creators to build a rapport amongst themselves as well as with the developers.

This rapport could be a step toward ZOS initiating a program in which a limited number of trusted Creators could be given tool sets similar to those that were suggested in the ZOS Developer Event post, allowing a select few to be able to generate Daedric attacks on Tamriel in real-time. This would allow active Creators to create dynamic events for ESO players.

It would also be ideal for a Creator to be able to earn in-game time with their efforts so that an active and popular creator could actually end up not having to pay for their main monthly ESO subscription. This would be a powerful incentive, in addition to the fun and bragging rights, to try to be an effective Creator within ESO.

Would this Impact ZOS’ content releases?:

While these systems would be a complex addition to ESO They could be added with little to no impact on the current game or future updates while offering players a literally limitless amount of gameplay. These Community quests wouldn’t have an impact on the ZOS created content and the content available in the Community Creation Kit could lag behind the official ZOS releases.

New environmental pallets and styles that are released by ZOS for a new zone could remain unavailable to Community Content Creators for a period of time so as to not muddy the waters or take attention away from the ZOS creation. New Zones could also be unavailable to Creators as settings for their quests for a certain period of time to give players time to play through the official ZOS content before community content becomes available.

The most dramatic way the Community Quests would differ from the ZOS releases is that the Community Quests wouldn’t have voice-overs, and I think that’s acceptable. Giving players the ability to record their own voiceovers, while feasible, would likely pale in comparison to the ZOS voiceovers… but hey, if the option to record voice WAS included, that would be cool. I’m sure we would get some top quality work from some of the Creators. Or they COULD use those janky computer voices from Beta… that’s just a joke. Heheh.

Licensure:

Lastly… To “keep out the riff-raff” these Community Creator Kits could be offered for a free 30 day trial, in which no content could be submitted for release, followed by the requirement of a Community Creator License for a small charge ($5?) on top of the $15 monthly subscription. This would help to create an exclusive and dedicated community and would weed out players that aren’t serious about content creation and would further focus the Community Creator’s efforts. This additional $5 charge wouldn’t be able to be discounted through the above suggestion that Community Creators be able to earn ESO time, so an active community Creator that earns all their time would still be paying the $5 charge.

What would this accomplish?

Aside from opening up ESO to a universe of stories, the release of a Community Creator Kit and the ability to set quests clear across Tamriel would give players a reason to revisit areas they have already completely cleared out of content. There could literally be and endless supply of gameplay and quests for ESO subscribers. Guilds would create guild specific trials as initiation rites, RP-ers would create story quests, friends would create quests much in the way a DM would create a campaign for their friends to play through, and there would be new, unforeseen game-experiences that would be created by the community that would benefit the longevity of ESO as an MMO.

I truly believe a Community Creation Kit would be a leap in the right direction for ESO and offer the Elder Scrolls community some of the creative freedom they have come to expect from and Elder Scrolls game as well making ESO a more attractive MMO to players both subscribed and non-subscribed. Players would no longer be looking for “more things to do” in ESO and the pressure would be taken off of ZOS to push new content out the door so they can focus on polishing the content they do release and improving the game systems and immersion systems (such as underwater swimming and ships).

One of the benefits of the above concept is it could be rolled out over multiple releases. The different Quest Types could be released separately, the motif creation could be a separate release, and even separately launched program, from the quest creation, even the ability to use pre-existing locations could be released before the ability for Creators to build locations from scratch.

With the above design players who never want to see or play or even be bothered with Community Created Quests or Content can pretty much ignore its existence. They wouldn’t ever have to open the tools, accept the quests or participate in the content. Those that wanted to partake in the Community Quests would find themselves with a near limitless supply of quests at their fingertips.

Thoughts?

NOTE: If you like this idea, comment and keep this visible on the first page! Thanks!

aecburky02_ESO

Although, "I Agree" sounds like a Lazy response to this post, I can't say anything better than what was posted here. ESO fans, in large part I would guess, are role players or once were role players and ESO is a suitable substitute. The ability for the community to share in creation is a sure way to increase the life of a title you care about (or you would not be reading this), and from my experience when the community is given the ability to create.. they do AMAZING things.

Gidorick

aecburky02_ESO wrote: »

from my experience when the community is given the ability to create.. they do AMAZING things.

THIS is why I really feel this sort of player created content is needed in ESO. This MMO will survive without these features but WITH these features it would thrive!

Bloodystab

I want access to 3d models viewer & animations its all i really need + free time hehe

Vikestart

I really don't like the thought of player created content. There's no quality assurance for things like staying true to the lore, etc.

This is a healthy game that continues to receive massive updates on a pretty decent schedule, so I don't feel a need for it either.

However, that's just my opinion. YMMW

Edit: That being said, I've seen this kind of thing made as an addon in other MMOs, so it might be possible to make something like this as an interface addon, so ZOS wouldn't have to spend resources on making it. It'd be more limited ofc, but still.

Misa

maybe limit it a bit more to player/guild dungeons, I think it'd fit well with a guild housing/city feature

Gidorick

Vikestart wrote: »

I really don't like the thought of player created content. There's no quality assurance for things like staying true to the lore, etc.

This is a healthy game that continues to receive massive updates on a pretty decent schedule, so I don't feel a need for it either.

However, that's just my opinion. YMMW

Edit: That being said, I've seen this kind of thing made as an addon in other MMOs, so it might be possible to make something like this as an interface addon, so ZOS wouldn't have to spend resources on making it. It'd be more limited ofc, but still.

I agree, the whole lore thing might be an issue, that's why I suggested:

"Creators or levels that achieve a certain review score or reputation over a certain number of plays could be considered for a ZOS highlight or to be “canonized” by ZOS as an official Community Quest that would then be considered an official part of Elder Scrolls Lore (or as much as any other part of ESO is considered an official part of the Elder Scrolls).

This recognition by ZOS would encourage players to create lore-friendly quests so that the Community Quests maintain the aesthetic and tone of the rest of the game. Lore-Friendlyness could even be one of the metrics by which players could rate the Community Quests."

ZOS would always have the final say but having their story added to the official ESO lore would be a HUGE incentive to the type that would take the time to make these quests.

Of course, Bethesda's unwillingness to budge on the lore appropriateness of quests may be the exact reason this sort of functionality will never exist.

Bloodfang

Player created dungeons could work well though. It doesn't have to do anything with story or whatever, just a friendly competition about who is able to create the best looking dungeon with some interesting mechanics. I'm thinking more of a really big delves, something like Public Dungeons (group).

They shouldn't be scattered all around Tamriel, more like instanced, with an interface showing the most upvoted player-made dungeons. Also option to search on your own + random pick.
Such a thing could really thrive in an MMO.

Gidorick

Despair9 wrote: »

Player created dungeons could work well though. It doesn't have to do anything with story or whatever, just a friendly competition about who is able to create the best looking dungeon with some interesting mechanics. I'm thinking more of a really big delves, something like Public Dungeons (group).

They shouldn't be scattered all around Tamriel, more like instanced, with an interface showing the most upvoted player-made dungeons. Also option to search on your own + random pick.
Such a thing could really thrive in an MMO.

I considered the idea of linking the system to wayshrines. Where you would access "community dungeons" through a menu. I think that would work fine but also think it's important to have them associated with an actual location to encourage revising Zones. It could be like the Harborage, where we can recall right outside of community dungeons. Maybe plop a merchant nearby for good measure.

HeroOfNone

This is well thought out and offers a pretty clear path for community content. A few additional suggestions

Dungeon and home editor - Using pre-generated housing is good, but making your own is what every creative player dreams of. I think this could be done with a rudimentary editor that allows the placement of various models, dungeon sections, and more. Most community creations can be located inside oblivion realms, giving easy rabbit holes into content while cleverly designed dungeons and homes could exist in world at various locked door or by adding in new entrances.

Animation creations - much more benign to motifs would be letting folks introduce their own animations to be voted on and passed from pts to thensure main server. There is a risk of some vulgar ones getting through, however with ZOS reviewing them and this being a mature rated game there honestly shouldn't be a problem.

Randomized or factioned player quests - this is to help with the immersion breaking fact that everyone goes through the same story and side mission quests. This makes sense with the level progression and the amount of work it would take to make the multiple quests. Using the system suggested though, there would be an abundance of quests yo be given out randomly or as part of a specific alignment. In turn, this would give players a chance to effect changes in their story lines based on what they do. Killed off an NPC that gave a different quest? Didn't let that bad guy escape to cause more trouble? Other quests can spring up and take their place of quests that would have been there in a different timeline.

get paid/rewarded for your work - not so much with money, but with having your subscription few reduced, get more gold, snd more loot mailed the more players use and give your content high ratings. This should encourage folks to make more interesting content.

writs and job orders - why not include some job requests from various npcs snd include delivery to them? You can make writ quests to make swords, staves, food, etc. And deliver it to npcs on battle missions, research or folks in town. This could give inspiration and maybe a few different rewards.

A few issues though, as it's one I kept getting stuck on when trying to figure out how custom content could be handled.

Copyright - this is a common issue for content generated by a community base, that they will make stuff that could be seen as some one else's work. I think if they copy the EULA of other games like Neverwinter and second life, where a lot of content cross over into that realm ESO should be fine however.

Lore and immersion - with player generated content your probably going to deal with a lot of egos and a lot of trolls trying to make quests that will either make themselves to be the first king of nor or some guy talking about how he lost a contact lense and needs you to help him find it. A solid review system should help weed out the trolls, but the lore team may need to work double time checking if something is cannon.

grinding and exploiting - this was one of the biggest issues in neverwinter's system, where npcs and quests would be made specifically for low level grinding. This included things like putting high level mobs in areas the could be easily aoed down or killed on and exploit. This could be counter acted by giving no reward tI'll the end of the wuest, testing by ZOS QA teams, and by offering better reward for ZOS approved quest lines.

The flood of entries - there will be a lot of submitted entries for this, and a lot of it could be crap. I think showing them all off on the pts server is fine, but on the main server there should be a level of quality to the content. Testing done by PTS folks, a ZOS QA member, and s minimum ranking may be necessary.

I do like the ideas though, please keep it up!

Heishi

I'd say no to player created content. For ever one diamond in the rough you find, there's bound to be 100 slopped out crap ones.

Then you get all the exploiting ones with insanely high respawn or large number of enemies for grinders.

The number of glitches and bugs would just be through the roof compared to the company controlled content which is already bad enough.

You'll get funny people that have phallic dungeons and what not.

Someone would have to moderate all of this taking away from budget that could be used towards something more useful.

Of course there's the lore breaking issue that's bound to occur

I could list reasons for days why this is a terrible idea, have you looked at the mods? There are some good ones out there for sure, but on the whole. Eh.

HeroOfNone

Heishi wrote: »

I'd say no to player created content. For ever one diamond in the rough you find, there's bound to be 100 slopped out crap ones.

Then you get all the exploiting ones with insanely high respawn or large number of enemies for grinders.

The number of glitches and bugs would just be through the roof compared to the company controlled content which is already bad enough.

You'll get funny people that have phallic dungeons and what not.

Someone would have to moderate all of this taking away from budget that could be used towards something more useful.

Of course there's the lore breaking issue that's bound to occur

I could list reasons for days why this is a terrible idea, have you looked at the mods? There are some good ones out there for sure, but on the whole. Eh.

I'm having a bit of trouble seeing if you're disagreeing with the content review by peer review and ZOS staff in the post and replies, or if you simply skipped it over when you saw the title and are giving a stock answer. There was even review of ways to mitigate it by only giving quest rewards and keeping it on PTS till it was reviewed.

=\

WraithAzraiel

This idea would actually solve a LOT of problems.

A) It could prove to be a carrot on a stick while we wait for official content.

It'll finally shut the mouths of all the whiny "solo" players

3) It'll allow the Roleplayers more flexibility and creativity

Q) If managed correctly, it could infinitely expand on the game's replay-ability. It would/could be a more enjoyable alternative to Cadwell's Silver/Gold.

Fish) If enacted properly, it could provide enjoyment to every type of player. Raiders can design their own mini-raids. PvP'ers can have little scenario-based matches in quest form. Dungeoneer can have their dungeons, unsullied by the ridiculousness that is scaling or the Undaunted shennanigans. Solo'ers can have their Skyrowblivion 12 The Wreckoning and stop whining on the forums about how they get no content when there's 19 zones of solo-able content and 2 zones of group.


If done right, this is a terribly beneficial idea.

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌ @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ @ZOS_JasonLeavey‌ @ZOS_PaulSage‌

Give this a read

Gidorick

Thanks @WraithAzraiel‌ ! That's what I was thinking too. There would be things like... guilds that create monthly quests for their members or initiation quests.

While I do agree with @Heishi‌ that there is the possibility of abuse I think there could be ways to decrease the likeliness.

Many of the possible issues could be mitigated through capping systems. Caps on possible experience & gold earned from each player quest would prevent grinding exploits. Maybe each creator is given X number of gold and XP per month to use (100K xp / 10,000 gold) with each of their levels capped at a much lower level (20k xp / 2000 gold)

Lore friendliness could be managed through a strict system where content could be reported for many things, including Blatant Disregard of Lore. Get reported enough and the content would be removed. The creator would be given the reason it was removed and could submit an appeal to have the level reviewed by ZOS. Have too many quests removed due to reporting, the publishing capability will be revoked for a month. Have your publishing revoked more than 3 times in 1 year, your creator's license is suspended for 6 months. A strict system like that would quickly weed out those who wouldn't take the system seriously.

Could THAT system be abused? Sure, but I think those of us here respect ESO and TES enough to be adults about it. This is why a subscription is important to maintain. Those playing ESO have a certain respect for the game that a f2p/b2p community would not.

I like the idea by @heroofnoneb14_ESO of the PTS being used as a sort of proving grounds for a creator, ensuring only the best of the best gets published in the main server and then from there the best of THOSE are considered by ZOS for canonization. I'd think maybe a 1 month lag would be good. Each month the top 20% quests are removed from the PTS and are placed in the main server for play. Sounds good!

Thanks for all the awesome feedback everyone!

Heishi

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

show previous quotes

Heishi wrote: »

I'd say no to player created content. For ever one diamond in the rough you find, there's bound to be 100 slopped out crap ones.

Then you get all the exploiting ones with insanely high respawn or large number of enemies for grinders.

The number of glitches and bugs would just be through the roof compared to the company controlled content which is already bad enough.

You'll get funny people that have phallic dungeons and what not.

Someone would have to moderate all of this taking away from budget that could be used towards something more useful.

Of course there's the lore breaking issue that's bound to occur

I could list reasons for days why this is a terrible idea, have you looked at the mods? There are some good ones out there for sure, but on the whole. Eh.

I'm having a bit of trouble seeing if you're disagreeing with the content review by peer review and ZOS staff in the post and replies, or if you simply skipped it over when you saw the title and are giving a stock answer. There was even review of ways to mitigate it by only giving quest rewards and keeping it on PTS till it was reviewed.

=\

I read the summarizing section (the first 4 paragraphs)I was also trying to summarize my general feelings about Player created content rather than going into each section, I had to get to work and such. But now I have a bit more time.

I think one extremely important aspect of the Elder Scrolls experience is sorely missing from ESO: the player-creation community. Enabling the community of creators that both love The Elder Scrolls and ESO would be a HUGE boon to the longevity and appeal of ESO.

While I understand it is early in ESO’s life to be considering these types of additions and there ARE more pressing issues to consider, the below suggestions would be such a robust addition to the game I think the planning would need to begin now for a release a few years down the road.

Being an MMO, ESO cannot offer the types of creation systems that have been in past TES games. This is completely understandable. ESO can, however, offer the ability for players to offer content to other players . I would like to throw a few suggestions out there to highlight how ESO could embrace some community content creation.

First and foremost the player created content will need to exist alongside all the other content of ESO. It should include both leveled and level-locked quests so the Creator can determine what kind of experience they would like to create and the system should allow for solo and group quests. This system would require the release of a Community Creator Kit that could be a separate program from ESO and would be launched from the desktop Launcher so players that have no interest in being a Community Creator wouldn’t be bothered with Creator Kit while playing ESO.

This is predominantly what I was responding to before so I won't rehash it.

Using existing locations:

All the locations around Tamriel that require a loading screen could be instanced specifically for community-created quests. This design would enable a Creator to use existing buildings, basements, dungeons, caves, and clearings to build their quests.

If a player has accepted multiple quests for a particular area the player could be greeted with a prompt.

Which quest would you like to continue?
- Kill Glindar Jesterfoot (Guild)
- Grandfather’s Folly (Community)
- Revenge of the Dwemer (Community)
- NONE
If the player selects none, they could be sent to the normal non-questing instance of the area. If they choose a Community Quest, the area is instanced to them for the duration of their stay.

Within these pre-defined spaces, Creators should be allowed to place NPCs, enemies, loot and should even be able to clutter up the place a bit with area-specific items (piles of rock, tables, desks, weapon racks, etc.) to personalize the space for their specific quest. Creators should be allowed to send the player to multiple locations in order to complete their quest. Ambitious Creators could send players clear across Tamriel to complete their quest.

The first paragraph here, what I gather is you're saying that you want everything indoors to be available as a template. You also in the first part wanted this as a separate program. Removing outdoors which just throwing a random number we'll say is 2/3 of the content for the game. The Zenimax online folder for me is 36.4GB and I don't have PTS, a third of that is 12.1Gb. We'll call this new program about that size since you'll need to have a test run environment and such.

For the middle bit there, you want every time we go in somewhere, we have to be stopped and asked if we want to go to one of hundreds of random player content or at worst scroll through all this to get to none, at best have a quick escape and still have to stop every time and have to escape out of this. I don't know about you, but when I'm questing I hit a LOT of load screens and really don't want to be stopped to ask "Are you sure" every time. It's irritating enough with the changes where they added this to mail and I have to finger dance everytime I go through it.

The last paragraph here, once we go into these areas, the creator can "send us clear across Tamriel" to do these quest. Every time we hit a load screen again do we get to go through reselect or continue again? All the space between they can "clutter up the place a bit" or a lot... Also if you're sending people clear across Tamriel, are we including outdoors too pushing it up to a full 36.4Gb program?

Creating new locations:

A more robust option would be to allow Creators to create, from scratch, their own areas for their quests. However, there are only three types of areas that should be able to be created from scratch.
Basements/Dungeons
Caves/clearings
Daedric Realms
Since buildings have a specific external shape, customization of building interiors should be limited to decorating the pre-defined building interiors as mentioned above. After-all, we wouldn’t want a “bigger-on-the-inside” situation on our hands.

After a Creator creates the spaces for their quest they should be able to attach the opening of their space to ANY static door, cave opening, basement hatch, etc. in the game; any place that requires a load screen that doesn’t lead into a building. This should include the multitude of entryways in the game that currently serve no function other than aesthetics and could include more doorways, cave entrances, and basement hatches. Each entrance could only allow that specific type of interior so we don’t have basements that lead directly to caves or caves that look like a wine cellar.

Daedric realms would require portals to travel to and from and since there are no set portal locations in the world the entrances to Daedric realms should be allowed to be anywhere within an already customized space being used for the Creator’s quest. In fact, any custom space should allow for entrances to other locations. A Creator could add a basement hatch to a predefined floorplan of a building interior that leads to a custom created basement that leads to a custom created cave, which leads to a pre-built dungeon that leads to a custom Daedric realm that exits into another static house whose exit spits the player out into a completely different city in which they started.

So for the first paragraph here, you're saying we should be able to create locations, since we're talking about being as big on the outside as it is on the inside, I presume these are popping up in the regular game world, what would probably amount to tens if not hundreds of thousands of places where people make their own player created housing, RP locations, or any number of things.

Which let me pause here for a second, where exactly do you suppose all of these will be stored. Is this going to be some P2P hosting, are they getting stored on Zenimax's already clearly taxed server. Everytime you go to one of these are you having to wait for it to download? What about the huge sending us across Tamriel quest, I suspect those would be quite large.

The second paragraph confuses me a bit. So now, we're not allowed to put these player created things on any door which leads to a building, but it has to have a load screen. This pretty much narrows it down to delves, public dungeon doors, group dungeon doors, the very rare cities like Haven doors and maybe portals if we're considering those. It looks like also we want to add in doors inside of buildings but that have a load screen on them. Then further down we come to using the doors and such which don't lead anywhere, but those don't have load screens. Also this would prohibit the devs from actually adding future content to these static doors unless they completely move or get rid of things attached to it.

Speaking of portals, we come to the last paragraph. I'm not exactly sure cause I don't have an exact count, but I would say there are more portals in the game than doors with load screens that doesn't lead into buildings. Basically we're turning the ESO into Furcadia. >.> Moving on

NPCs & Enemies:

Community Creators should be given a large library of pre-built NPCs to use in their quests as well as the ability to create their own NPCs from scratch using the character creator. The creator should be expanded with an outfitter to allow players to dress their NPCs in just about any combination of armor and clothes that can be found around Tamriel.

The NPC conversation trees, animation and movement paths should all be customizable by the Creator to give the Creator the ability to create quests as robust as those ZOS has in the main game.

Enemies should also be fully customizable, from generic creatures to fully customizable original characters with dialog and custom style.

The Creator should have a full set of tools at their disposable to create complex and interesting characters with which to populate their world.

Compared to the rest of the abomination, I don't have a lot of complaints here. Using prebuilt parts of NPCs and such you can't really mess it up except dialog and lore. Enemies I don't think should be "Fully customizable". I don't need to fight an army of Molag Bals. I also don't need Molag Bal welcoming me to Happy Funland.

Quest Types:

When creating the quest, the Creator could be given an option of the type of quest they are creating. These quest types could offer a variety of play that allows the Creators the freedom to create whatever types of experiences they can imagine.
Narrative Quest: These quests focus on telling a story and can involve multiple locations and can span across Tamriel.
Nefarious Quest: These are similar to Narrative quests but are darker in tone. They can include assassinations, espionage, heists, & kidnapping.
Gauntlet Quest: These quests focus on running through an area quickly and effectively. These usually involve only one instanced area with leaderboards attached. Could include single player gauntlets all the way up to 12 player gauntlets and the leaderboards could be organized by the number of players in the group.
Versus Quest: These quests pit players against one another with PVP active within the quest areas. They can involve multiple location instances and can take players clear across Tamriel. These quests can resemble a treasure hunt of sorts.
Dungeon Delves: Single Dungeon quests that require 4 players to play and are balanced as such.
Raids: Multi-area quests taking the form of a Raid, requiring 12 person groups.

Not much on this. Were such a thing allowed, having these quests categorized would at least add some semblance of order to the chaos of player created content.

How to find Community Quests:

The community created quests could be distributed in a variety of ways from bulletin boards in guild halls to asking bartenders if they’ve heard any good rumors. Quest could be organized by region, made for a specific faction, or a player could choose a quest that is clear across Tamriel. The different methods of quest delivery could be decided by the content of the quest and should correlate with the Quest type.
Bartender: Narrative quests that begin within the Zone
City Bulletin Boards: Narrative quests that begin outside of the zone but within the faction
Traveling NPC Criers or merchants: Narrative quests that begin outside of the faction
Homeless NPCs: Nefarious quests that begin within the Zone – requires coin to hear
Black Quest board: Nefarious quests that begin outside of the faction
Underground Gossip NPCs: Nefarious quests that begin outside of the zone but within the faction – requires coin to hear
Undaunted in Bars: ALL Gauntlet quests – Zone/Faction/Tamriel is dependent on Undaunted Level
Undaunted Outposts: ALL Versus quests – Zone/Faction/Tamriel is dependent on Undaunted Level
Guild Bulletin Boards: Dungeon Delve & Raids of their respective guild.
The rewards for quests… aside from more gameplay, gold (which don't really need), generic items, crafting materials, and experience (which we REALLY don’t need), players could be rewarded items that are crafted by the Creator in game. These items should be able to be renamed by the Creator for greater customizability. Hopefully by this point players can dye weapons so Creators can offer perfectly unique items. This could lead to one creator crafting a full armor set and spreading the pieces among multiple quests.

There could also be a pool of items and trophies that are only available to Creators so there is an incentive for players to play community created quests. One thought would be Community designed motifs and items could be exclusively used as rewards in Community Quests… more on that later.

Here it is, the biggest problem buried within the seemingly benign. Most of this is just more organizational stuff basically turning ESO into Little Big Planet. The turd in the punch bowl is this and I'll requote for posterity.

The rewards for quests… aside from more gameplay, gold (which don't really need), generic items, crafting materials, and experience (which we REALLY don’t need), players could be rewarded items that are crafted by the Creator in game. These items should be able to be renamed by the Creator for greater customizability. Hopefully by this point players can dye weapons so Creators can offer perfectly unique items. This could lead to one creator crafting a full armor set and spreading the pieces among multiple quests.

There could also be a pool of items and trophies that are only available to Creators so there is an incentive for players to play community created quests. One thought would be Community designed motifs and items could be exclusively used as rewards in Community Quests… more on that later.

This, exactly this. It creates the single biggest problem among all the other stuff. Player created items, armor sets, and setting quest rewards. Have you even read some of the crazy on the forums, or played games like LBP where this is a thing. Kill one fox in a maze, get 20,000 gold and this nice Wrath of Godly Smiting armor set for VR14(or lv 50 for champ system) which which has 1k armor, 1k spell resist, boost all regen to soft cap, max crit stat, and for good measure had a 20% chance to disintegrate enemies for 1k dmg. We'll throw in 2mil xp too since we know it's really hard to get those VR levels, or Champion Points rather.

Alternatively ZOS could put limits on it and try to balance things be we see how well that has worked out.

And seriously player created Motifs, not only is all this crazy crap going to be floating about, but we can make it and distribute it? Not to mention are we making some style stones for this only available in the one quest? Do we just wind up with hundreds of these motifs? I just.. there are not words enough for the crap storm this would cause.

Community Creator Reputation & Quest Ratings:

As players complete a community quest, they should be able to submit a review for the community quests. The review score could be one of the ways the quests could be organized, along with date and by creator. Players should also be able to flag or favorite quests before they complete them.

These review scores could feed into a Community Creator Reputation and players should be able to favorite and follow specific community Creators so they can watch specifically for that creators levels.

Creators or levels that achieve a certain review score or reputation over a certain number of plays could be considered for a ZOS highlight or to be “canonized” by ZOS as an official Community Quest that would then be considered an official part of Elder Scrolls Lore (or as much as any other part of ESO is considered an official part of the Elder Scrolls).

This recognition by ZOS would encourage players to create lore-friendly quests so that the Community Quests maintain the aesthetic and tone of the rest of the game. Lore-Friendlyness could even be one of the metrics by which players could rate the Community Quests.

Ah and we come to your defense of this. The creme de'la creme that is going to salvage this whole mess. A rating system. Those are never rigged or have problems.

Here we are back at Little Big Planet. Players complete their hard work on a quest, submit it out to the wild for people to judge. Ah but a caveat that sets an MMO apart, the guilds. Say you happen to steal xp from a guild master the runs three guilds with 500 people each and sets them to low vote your creations. Let's say a guild full of vampire/werewolf hunters decides they're gonna go low vote every quest with a vampire/werewolf theme. But that never happens, just like guilds never camped vampire/werewolf spawns to control who gets bites at a premium price (20k for a vamp bite anyone?)

So everyone up votes a phallic dungeon because it's funny, meanwhile a serious dungeon that is hard and sticks to lore gets downvoted because "it's to hard".

This also has no bearing on moderating content. Maybe JoeEveryman's content gets the lowest ratings allowed, but he doesn't care. He's not aiming to be top creator, he just wants to make his Molag Bal introduced Happy Funland.

Just because something "encourages" players does not mean in any shape, form, or fashion mean they will oblige this. ESO is designed to "encourage" players to play together, to spread crafting out among multiple characters, do quest instead of grinding, ect. But guess how well that encouragement is working. Let's magnify that on a grand scale to player crafted stuff.

Community Motifs:

I'm feel I already covers this. But I'll use this section to just to point to Skyrim Mods:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/searchresults/?src_cat=54

Look at it, 3k+ Armor mods. Want to take a guess at how many are ridiculous, lore breaking, or... lack armor. There are some good armor mods, I won't deny that. But I don't need Cyrodiil looking like a scene from Baywatch, or XXX parties in town. The number one most endorsed is "Immersive Armors" Which is excellent. The second most endorsed "Killer Keos Skimpy CBBE V2-V3 Armor Replacer". Third "Arise - Chapter 1 - The Black Sacrament ". Fourth "Remodeled Armor CBBEv3M". Fifth "TERA Armors Collection for Skyrim - Male and UNP female"

I'm not complaining about these mods, they're fantastic and fine, great options for a single player game. Very well done mods all of those. But they still are what they are.

Again in this section we also go back to the voting. There's two ways voting could go. A)Straight voting on the best content which doesn't stop terrible things from being brought into the game or B)Content has to be tried and voted to exceed a certain degree of rating by a certain number of people to even enter the game leading to ballot stuffing and having to wait exceedingly long wait if at all for your content to make it in.

I'm skipping the "why be a creator"

Would this Impact ZOS’ content releases?:

While these systems would be a complex addition to ESO They could be added with little to no impact on the current game or future updates while offering players a literally limitless amount of gameplay. These Community quests wouldn’t have an impact on the ZOS created content and the content available in the Community Creation Kit could lag behind the official ZOS releases.

New environmental pallets and styles that are released by ZOS for a new zone could remain unavailable to Community Content Creators for a period of time so as to not muddy the waters or take attention away from the ZOS creation. New Zones could also be unavailable to Creators as settings for their quests for a certain period of time to give players time to play through the official ZOS content before community content becomes available.

The most dramatic way the Community Quests would differ from the ZOS releases is that the Community Quests wouldn’t have voice-overs, and I think that’s acceptable. Giving players the ability to record their own voiceovers, while feasible, would likely pale in comparison to the ZOS voiceovers… but hey, if the option to record voice WAS included, that would be cool. I’m sure we would get some top quality work from some of the Creators. Or they COULD use those janky computer voices from Beta… that’s just a joke. Heheh.

Here's a good one. Let's start with "They could be added with little to no impact on the current game..." Really, little to no impact even though every load screen would make you choose if you want to participate. Not to mention all the currently static doors and such which would suddenly be a bunch of random player created stuff. No impact on ZOS created content except the extensively increased work moderating all of it, not being able to expand on current areas, and other such things.

It's ok though, when they create new content/zones we'll hold it off for a period of time so players can play the official content first, except all the numerous people who join the game after said point.

Oh this one, record your own voiceovers, there's no way that could go wrong. Bad voiceovers can sometimes break content worse than no voiceover it all.

Licensure:

Lastly… To “keep out the riff-raff” these Community Creator Kits could be offered for a free 30 day trial, in which no content could be submitted for release, followed by the requirement of a Community Creator License for a small charge ($5?) on top of the $15 monthly subscription. This would help to create an exclusive and dedicated community and would weed out players that aren’t serious about content creation and would further focus the Community Creator’s efforts. This additional $5 charge wouldn’t be able to be discounted through the above suggestion that Community Creators be able to earn ESO time, so an active community Creator that earns all their time would still be paying the $5 charge.

Now not only do we have a mess, but we get to pay extra for it too. Those bots and gold farmers at launch were clearly deterred by the monthly subscription. I can tell you for a fact $5 extra would not create an exclusive and dedicated community. Have you seen the videos where people were standing in line for day 1 ps4 then took it outside to smash it in front of people waiting in line?

With the above design players who never want to see or play or even be bothered with Community Created Quests or Content can pretty much ignore its existence. They wouldn’t ever have to open the tools, accept the quests or participate in the content. Those that wanted to partake in the Community Quests would find themselves with a near limitless supply of quests at their fingertips.

I won't go over the whole last section but wanted to pull out this little piece. Players who never want to play or even be bothered with its existence can pretty much ignore it. Between players having to select whether or not to do one of these quest at every load screen, player created items and motifs everywhere, and so on I don't see how players could not be bothered by it.

One way it wouldn't interfere with other people's gameplay is if it was set to another server, and not PTS where official content needs to be tested. Or if all player created items were locked into these player created quest and never left into the regular game. In either case at that point you're pretty much talking about having a game within a game. It makes no sense and would be a huge drain on ZOS resources to make, maintain, and fix.

WraithAzraiel

Heishi wrote: »

words and more words

It's a rough idea, but it's a good idea. I'm sure someone with more knowledge and experience in coding and streamlining game content can take this idea and run with it.

Gidorick

Yay! A pick a-apart! I love these. Ok! Let’s get right to it!

Heishi wrote: »

The Zenimax online folder for me is 36.4GB and I don't have PTS, a third of that is 12.1Gb. We'll call this new program about that size since you'll need to have a test run environment and such.

Yea, it would be a resource hog for the end user. That’s why I suggest it be a separate program that will be optional for players. Much like the PTS is now.

• ”Gidorick” wrote:

  This system would require the release of a Community Creator Kit that could be a separate program from ESO and would be launched from the desktop Launcher so players that have no interest in being a Community Creator wouldn’t be bothered with Creator Kit while playing ESO.

Heishi wrote: »

the middle bit there, you want every time we go in somewhere, we have to be stopped and asked if we want to go to one of hundreds of random player content or at worst scroll through all this to get to none

You misunderstand the concept when I said:

• ”Gidorick” wrote:

  If a player has accepted multiple quests for a particular area the player could be greeted with a prompt.

I meant that the list would contain ONLY the quests that are in the player’s journal. Ones they have accepted from the various “community quest-vendors” outlined in the “How to find Community Quests” section.

If a player decides to fill their journal up with hundreds of community quests then I guess they would have that issue… If they only chose one quest that is through one door, they would only ever see that quest selection screen once. To prevent a player from overloading themselves, maybe there could be a limit to how many community quests one can accept at a time? I think that would be a good idea!

Heishi wrote: »

Every time we hit a load screen again do we get to go through reselect or continue again? All the space between they can "clutter up the place a bit" or a lot... Also if you're sending people clear across Tamriel, are we including outdoors too pushing it up to a full 36.4Gb program?

Not quite what I was envisioning. More like the following:

A player accepts a quest called “Nercrodancer’s Waltz” that begins with the decaying body of a woman and the freshly slain bodies of a few townfolk in a house in the city of Mournhold in Deshaan. You find a key while in that house that belongs to a crypt in Shadowfen. While in that crypt they find a book that can only be translated by a hermit that lives in a cave in Betnikh. The hermit speaks of a Necromancer that that lives in S’ren-ja in Reaper’s March. You go find that Necromancer in a dungeon and you kill him, ending the community quest.

In this example there are 4 locations that would be involved in the quest.

• The house in Mournhold
• The crypt in Shadowfen
• The cave in Betnikh
• The dungeon in Reaper’s March

Unless the player accepted a bunch of community quests, they would be given the following choices when entering those 4 locations, and only when entering them in the order that they would be activated during the quest line.

Which quest would you like to continue?

• Nercrodancer’s Waltz
• None

If they had no community quest, they would never see the quest selection screen. Furthermore, the “outside world” would never be part of the quest. The quests take place in those 4 locations. Traveling between them would just be the regular game world.

Heishi wrote: »

So for the first paragraph here, you're saying we should be able to create locations, since we're talking about being as big on the outside as it is on the inside, I presume these are popping up in the regular game world, what would probably amount to tens if not hundreds of thousands of places where people make their own player created housing, RP locations, or any number of things.

Which let me pause here for a second, where exactly do you suppose all of these will be stored. Is this going to be some P2P hosting, are they getting stored on Zenimax's already clearly taxed server. Everytime you go to one of these are you having to wait for it to download? What about the huge sending us across Tamriel quest, I suspect those would be quite large.

I kind of feel that goes in the category of “well… that’s why we pay them, so they can build and house the systems needed to run this game.” I realize there would need to be some things worked out but I’m not providing network diagrams here… I’m providing concepts that could be worked toward.

I would assume we would download the areas as they are needed. Download… play through… then have that memory wiped. I always just thought we didn’t have every single dungeon and house in Tamriel stored on our computers and that the loading screens were downloading assets… but then again, I didn’t design the program so I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes.

Again… just a concept, not a schematic.

Heishi wrote: »

The second paragraph confuses me a bit. So now, we're not allowed to put these player created things on any door which leads to a building, but it has to have a load screen. This pretty much narrows it down to delves, public dungeon doors, group dungeon doors, the very rare cities like Haven doors and maybe portals if we're considering those. It looks like also we want to add in doors inside of buildings but that have a load screen on them. Then further down we come to using the doors and such which don't lead anywhere, but those don't have load screens. Also this would prohibit the devs from actually adding future content to these static doors unless they completely move or get rid of things attached to it.

Having community quests attached to doors/hatches/cave entrances wouldn’t prohibit future use in any way shape or form? If the player by CHANCE has a community quest AND an official developer quest, they would simply have to choose which one they wanted at the quest selection pop-up. Again, if a player never accepts any community quests, they will never see this pop-up. It ONLY appears if there is a community quest attached to that door/hatch/etc that is currently in the players journal.

As for the doors and such that don’t lead anywhere, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! I see those things all over the place! It would add a load screen between the two areas but I don’t see that as a problem. There are already dungeons that have deeper sections in them that require load screens, so it falls within the current design of the game.

Heishi wrote: »

Speaking of portals, we come to the last paragraph. I'm not exactly sure cause I don't have an exact count, but I would say there are more portals in the game than doors with load screens that doesn't lead into buildings. Basically we're turning the ESO into Furcadia.

Portals, in my concept, would be “place-able doors” in a quest's customized area. I don’t think quests should be able to be attached to portals that already exist in the game, since portals aren’t static and can be opened and closed at the whim of the portal caster.

Heishi wrote: »

Compared to the rest of the abomination, I don't have a lot of complaints here. Using prebuilt parts of NPCs and such you can't really mess it up except dialog and lore. Enemies I don't think should be "Fully customizable". I don't need to fight an army of Molag Bals. I also don't need Molag Bal welcoming me to Happy Funland.

Lol. Fair point! I would think there might be SOME enemies that aren’t included in the kit. By customizable I was thinking more along the lines of changing their color, size, wardrobe in the cases of some enemies, level, stats, what they drop when slain, etc. Again, all this is stemming from what I already see in game.

Heishi wrote: »

Most of this is just more organizational stuff basically turning ESO into Little Big Planet.

Not so much… having certain community quest types only available from certain vendors would be a step AWAY from Little Big Planet’s mass of levels all thrown together in a huge pot.

Heishi wrote: »

Player created items, armor sets, and setting quest rewards. Have you even read some of the crazy on the forums, or played games like LBP where this is a thing. Kill one fox in a maze, get 20,000 gold and this nice Wrath of Godly Smiting armor set for VR14(or lv 50 for champ system) which which has 1k armor, 1k spell resist, boost all regen to soft cap, max crit stat, and for good measure had a 20% chance to disintegrate enemies for 1k dmg. We'll throw in 2mil xp too since we know it's really hard to get those VR levels, or Champion Points rather.

I sort of addressed this in the post directly above yours:

• Gidorick wrote:

  Many of the possible issues could be mitigated through capping systems. Caps on possible experience & gold earned from each player quest would prevent grinding exploits. Maybe each creator is given X number of gold and XP per month to use (100K xp / 10,000 gold) with each of their levels capped at a much lower level (20k xp / 2000 gold)

There would have to be some work toward making sure this player-created item system isn’t abused. I think the idea of the player having to create their items for their quests in-game with their own resources would prevent some issues of creators giving massively overpowered items to anyone who accepts their quest. We wouldn't want a quest that requires the player to open the chest in the empty house to yield massive rewards... This would have to be prevented somehow, you are completely right.

Side note: I’ve played those levels in LBP where you literally sit there while the level plays itself and you collect 10 trophies. Those ARE garbage.

If I were to try to spit-ball an idea it would be something like:

The mobs within an area are given a score based on their difficulty. That score is tallied by how many mobs there are. That tallied total gives a difficulty rating for the level. That difficulty rating determines the max level reward (both item and gold perhaps) that the Creator is allowed to bestow upon the player. A completely empty quest would allow one, and only one, reward to be given to the player…. Used Bait. Heheh.

Heishi wrote: »

And seriously player created Motifs, not only is all this crazy crap going to be floating about, but we can make it and distribute it? Not to mention are we making some style stones for this only available in the one quest? Do we just wind up with hundreds of these motifs? I just.. there are not words enough for the crap storm this would cause.

At this point I just assume you didn’t see the “… more on that later.” part.

Heishi wrote: »

So everyone up votes a phallic dungeon because it's funny, meanwhile a serious dungeon that is hard and sticks to lore gets downvoted because "it's to hard".

What can I say… I’m an idealist… I have more faith in the ESO community that that… HOWEVER I also addressed this in the post right before yours.

• ”Gidorick” wrote:

  I like the idea by @heroofnoneb14_ESO of the PTS being used as a sort of proving grounds for a creator, ensuring only the best of the best gets published in the main server and then from there the best of THOSE are considered by ZOS for canonization. I'd think maybe a 1 month lag would be good. Each month the top 20% quests are removed from the PTS and are placed in the main server for play. Sounds good!

The phallic dungeon would more than likely be reported… and would be nixed if this suggestion was implemented (again, from the post directly before yours)

• ”Gidorick” wrote:

  Lore friendliness could be managed through a strict system where content could be reported for many things, including Blatant Disregard of Lore. Get reported enough and the content would be removed. The creator would be given the reason it was removed and could submit an appeal to have the level reviewed by ZOS. Have too many quests removed due to reporting, the publishing capability will be revoked for a month. Have your publishing revoked more than 3 times in 1 year, your creator's license is suspended for 6 months. A strict system like that would quickly weed out those who wouldn't take the system seriously.

Again… COULD this be abused? Of course it could, but we’re all adults (or we should be…in theory) and I really have more faith in the ESO community than that.

Additionally, my Licensure suggestion would get rid of a LOT of people who would just want to play around and create junk. They wouldn’t want to have to PAY to be able to spend time to makes things that get taken down and they sure wouldn’t submit an appeal to argue the removal of phallic content. If they did… their license could be revoked.

Maybe an additional concept to the revocation would be that Creators that have had their licenses revoked cannot vote on community creations within the game, thereby preventing "revenge-down-voting".

Heishi wrote: »

Just because something "encourages" players does not mean in any shape, form, or fashion mean they will oblige this. ESO is designed to "encourage" players to play together, to spread crafting out among multiple characters, do quest instead of grinding, ect. But guess how well that encouragement is working. Let's magnify that on a grand scale to player crafted stuff.

I think I’ve covered the ways this can be mitigated pretty well. There would be NO way to have every single thing created be of the quality or caliber that some would put out. There WOULD be junk… but the rating system would put those items to the bottom of the pile.

Heishi wrote: »

Look at it, 3k+ Armor mods. Want to take a guess at how many are ridiculous, lore breaking, or... lack armor.

And Skyrim has been out HOW long? I feel my voting suggestion would more than cover this issue…

• Gidorick wrote:

  Every motif submitted during a quarter should be available the following quarter to view and vote on as a whole set in 2D previews that would be similar to the icons that are seen when crafting. These icons should be presented in a book that will be available in each city at a station/table specifically set aside for this voting process. …
  
  The top motifs and items (top 3/5/10/.. whatever) should then be reviewed by ZOS and the selected motif/item should then be inserted into the game as a Community Motif or Item. A motif or item that did not get chosen to be inserted into the game should be able to be resubmitted as is, or tweaked and resubmitted, at the Creators discretion.
  
  The releases of the Motifs and Items types could be on different schedules so there could be more frequent releases of community creations. One suggestion could be that one Community item could be released each month (which could be a weapon or any piece of armor) and then one full Motif could be released every 3, 4, or 6 months.

With this suggestion, one community item per month PLUS a full motif once every 3 months would be a total of 72 community created items per year…. If the Motif was once every 6 months, it would be 42 community items per year. Not exactly enough to be a deluge of content.

Oh and of course ZOS would ALWAYS have the last say on what gets released. If ZOS doesn’t like what’s in the top 10, they could look at the next 20. It’s their discretion. Understanding that ZOS would have the last say in items and motifs get published in game is vitally important to understanding that this would not lead to bikini armor.

Heishi wrote: »

I'm skipping the "why be a creator"

Yea… that part was pretty solid the way it is. Hehe… [/sarcasm]

Heishi wrote: »

little to no impact even though every load screen would make you choose if you want to participate.

I’ll quote myself from earlier in this post.

• Gidorick wrote:

  If a player decides to fill their journal up with hundreds of community quests then I guess they would have that issue… If they only chose one quest that is through one door, they would only ever see that quest selection screen once.

Heishi wrote: »

No impact on ZOS created content except the extensively increased work moderating all of it, not being able to expand on current areas, and other such things.

This has been covered previously as well.

Heishi wrote: »

Oh this one, record your own voiceovers, there's no way that could go wrong. Bad voiceovers can sometimes break content worse than no voiceover it all.

uhm… I said NOT having voice overs was perfectly acceptable but acknowledged that the technology for this is there. Personally… I think it would be too much low quality work to be worth the inclusion. We are in agreement here. I was just saying it COULD be done.

Heishi wrote: »

Now not only do we have a mess, but we get to pay extra for it too. Those bots and gold farmers at launch were clearly deterred by the monthly subscription. I can tell you for a fact $5 extra would not create an exclusive and dedicated community. Have you seen the videos where people were standing in line for day 1 ps4 then took it outside to smash it in front of people waiting in line?

Maybe not… but it would be a LOT better than if there were no fees to use the Community Creation Kit at all. The License would be a fence to the system that would discourage people who just wanted to make junk. With the previous suggestion of having quests removed and revocation of licenses I think there would be enough trouble for those that aren’t serious about this to create a pretty solid community… but again, I kind of have an idealistic view of this community.

Heishi wrote: »

Between players having to select whether or not to do one of these quest at every load screen, player created items and motifs everywhere, and so on I don't see how players could not be bothered by it.

First part has been answered many times at this point… and as for the motifs… it would just be different armor and a few voting kiosks in each city. Not what I would call intrusive. About as intrusive as crafting stations are to those that don’t wish to craft I guess… We just disagree on this point I guess.

Heishi wrote: »

One way it wouldn't interfere with other people's gameplay is if it was set to another server, and not PTS where official content needs to be tested. Or if all player created items were locked into these player created quest and never left into the regular game. In either case at that point you're pretty much talking about having a game within a game. It makes no sense and would be a huge drain on ZOS resources to make, maintain, and fix.

I 100% do not think the community creations should be segregated from the main game. It should be within the main game, integrated into the experience.

Thank you for taking the time to look over and give these details so much thought. I had fun responding to your concerns and I hope I was able to clarify some of the concepts for you! I really did enjoy the pick-apart!

I just really feel Community Content really would provide ESO with a sustainable future… and with there being a VERY strong history of community creation and support over the last few iterations of the TES franchise I’m sure ESO players would be treated to a bevy of top quality content and I think more players would flock to and stay subscribed to ESO.

WhiskyBob

"Power to the people" doesnt apply to online gaming. The more tools you give the players the more exploits you will get.

Gidorick

I'm going to use the pick-apart method here! There are so many good ideas!

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

Dungeon and home editor - Using pre-generated housing is good, but making your own is what every creative player dreams of. I think this could be done with a rudimentary editor that allows the placement of various models, dungeon sections, and more. Most community creations can be located inside oblivion realms, giving easy rabbit holes into content while cleverly designed dungeons and homes could exist in world at various locked door or by adding in new entrances.

I didn't want to come right out an say it but I would love it if Creators of a certain reputation were given the ability to create their own Daedric realm! The size could be limited at first but larger areas in which to "play" could be earned. They all wouldn't have to be like ColdHarbour either. Remember the Shivering Isles in Oblivion? That place was beautiful! Just imagining what the community could do makes me smile.

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

Animation creations - much more benign to motifs would be letting folks introduce their own animations to be voted on and passed from pts to thensure main server. There is a risk of some vulgar ones getting through, however with ZOS reviewing them and this being a mature rated game there honestly shouldn't be a problem.

I would love this. ZOS could create a sort of emote studio within the Community Creation Kit and they could be voted on much like the motifs would be... at most, release one a month. That would be great!

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

Randomized or factioned player quests - this is to help with the immersion breaking fact that everyone goes through the same story and side mission quests. This makes sense with the level progression and the amount of work it would take to make the multiple quests. Using the system suggested though, there would be an abundance of quests yo be given out randomly or as part of a specific alignment. In turn, this would give players a chance to effect changes in their story lines based on what they do. Killed off an NPC that gave a different quest? Didn't let that bad guy escape to cause more trouble? Other quests can spring up and take their place of quests that would have been there in a different timeline.

I need some clarification for this idea. Do you mean player could opt to have Community Quests randomly added to their journal? Maybe depending on the faction they are located in? That would be interesting. Maybe through a hireling. "I heard about this quest"...

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

get paid/rewarded for your work - not so much with money, but with having your subscription few reduced, get more gold, snd more loot mailed the more players use and give your content high ratings. This should encourage folks to make more interesting content.

I did suggest this in the main post, the most renowned creators should be able to earn time off their subscription, but NOT off their License to Create... that should always cost.

• Gidorick wrote:

  It would also be ideal for a Creator to be able to earn in-game time with their efforts so that an active and popular creator could actually end up not having to pay for their main monthly ESO subscription. This would be a powerful incentive, in addition to the fun and bragging rights, to try to be an effective Creator within ESO.

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

writs and job orders - why not include some job requests from various npcs snd include delivery to them? You can make writ quests to make swords, staves, food, etc. And deliver it to npcs on battle missions, research or folks in town. This could give inspiration and maybe a few different rewards.

Having a "Community Writ" section of the writ board!?!?! BRILLIANT! This would be amazing and an added level of depth to the types of quests available to the community!

I absolutely love these ideas! Thank you for submitting them!

One of the things I love about this whole concept is that it could be released in increments! This whole Community Creation Kit could be built up in pieces.

While, yes, there would be some junk out there I think it would be worth it to have the massive amount of content a system like this would provide to the community.

Gidorick

WhiskyBob wrote: »

"Power to the people" doesnt apply to online gaming. The more tools you give the players the more exploits you will get.

Everquest Next is going to be a disaster then! lol.

miahq

Honestly that's what keeps elder scrolls games alive for so long, it's certainly what keeps skyrim one of the top played games on steam so long after it's release. That's something they're going to have to figure out if they really want to keep the attention of elder scrolls fans as well, otherwise it just devolves into more of a generic MMO with an elder scrolls skin. And that seems largely pointless if you really want to capitalize on the build in audience the franchise comes with.

Just allowing people to submit reskins and the like would be nice. Even if you wanted to keep it lore friendly, it wouldn't be too hard to find a system where approved ones could be sold in game for gold with a donation page like you see on the dev pages at steam.

Even if they don't want to bring it in completely, they still need to be paying attention to why those mods are so popular. They create a far more immersive, vivid and alive environment with a wide diversity of quests and content for players that keeps the map from becoming stale. Right now eso is widely underperforming in that regard, especially in cyrodiil, but it's true for the whole map honestly.

I've high hopes for some of the content they're releasing, like the justice system and future spell making, but if all of the big content updates are just more generic MMO dungeon crawls and farming for rare mats or drops, without fleshing out the existing world and making it more interesting and immersive, then they've failed in my book. All they will have created in the end is an elder scrolls themed WoW clone and that is never going to work. Games just need to stop trying to be like WoW, but for some reason that one game has basically decided what all MMOs have to be. That's just absurd.

If they want to keep their intended audience, they need to make it more like elder scrolls and try to be innovative (truly innovative, so far a lot of their big ideas and changes are just lifted straight from other MMOs, with little change other than an ES skin), instead of just sticking to the same tired model for MMOs.

Heishi

Glad you enjoyed it. The in-depth discussion of of the topic is great. Truthfully I hate doing pick-a-parts as it's a very tedious way to cover material. Only reason I really did is because you were right in that I only expressed my opinion based on the first few paragraphs and didn't read the long break down.

In order to make sure I gave it a fair shake, I figured going a bit at a time I could read it and cover my opinion on each part. Reading your pick-a-part of the pick-a-part was great and did clarify something but it wasn't quite enough to persuade me. Major kudos on taking the time to put the name with each quote. Admittedly as I got about halfway into the post I started rushing a bit.

Random note, note sure if you're curious, in a word doc the last pick-a-part is 10 pages long (3,457 words).

There were a couple points I wanted to go over again.

Using a separate program for for the creation kit would be a good idea, but you also want it to include virtually every texture, 3-D model, ect from the game. The way the MMO works is pretty much all of the content is stored on your PC. The servers basically shoot out all the directions telling the program what to do with all the content.

This is more of a modern convention so that less load screens are needed. I don't know if you're run into this, but if you get disconnected from the internet a certain way, you can run the whole map and beyond. Enemies won't spawn, events won't trigger like health and such but all the textures are there. One of this events being the devouring fishies but that's a whole different story.

The way the ESO folder is, There are 8 audio files it looks like 4 of which are about 1.6Gb each. Probably 1 music, 1 voice over, 1 sound effects, and one that is an additional voice or music. There are 216 data files in a folder called depot, probably all your textures and models. This depot folder makes up 30Gb of it.

There MAY be a way to have a program reuse these like Skyrim's creation kit but I can't imagine it. Skyrim you could overwrite files and change/manipulate them. You can't really do that with an MMO, but those files would have to be made available some how and the simplest way is to bundle them with the program.

A lot of the problem here comes in with the stuff like pulling files into a 3-D editor and making armor sets and such. You have to be able to pull it out of the packed file to edit it. Skyrim has all the files already out and accessible.

A bit of the misconception I think got cleared up about the implementation. So what I gather is through some implementation you will go and select from all the player created quests and add the ones you want to your journal then be directed to that spot with a waypoint like normal quest but upon reaching spot be asked if you want X quest or the normal area. I'm imagining something like an expanded version of the new Undaunted stuff. I could see that being fairly unobtrusive, but would lead a big pot of a bunch of quests to search through even broken up by zone.

As far as the storing it goes, downloading it when you want it then wiping it when you're done could work theoretically. However if you wanted to revisit a place you would have to redownload. There's also the question of how big are these files. GW1 when they had some of the patches, you'd have to redownload each area you went into and it could be a bother at times, especially if the download was big. Certain things like the Playstation Network's home thing let you download areas in the background while you continued to do stuff. Maybe download when you accept the quest then delete it when you finish the quest which you turn in outside of the place or something.

I might come back and comment on more, but like I said I don't like doing a pick-a-part, it doesn't have a natural conversation flow to it.

Gidorick

Yea, I noticed the length too. Lots of words! The original post is also. I’m sure there are a lot of TLDN’s.

Couldn’t the Community Creation Kit utilize the same assets as ESO? If all the textures and such are on our PC then all that would have to be downloaded by the end user to visit custom spaces would be the coordinates for the assets to be placed. Coordinates take up much less area than a fully textured model.

One thing I don’t think would be reasonable to suggest would be custom textures. This is one aspect of TES Creation Kit that I do not think should be included in the ESO Community Creation Kit. Both the custom areas and the custom motifs should use the in-game textures. Allowing custom textures would ruin the aesthetics of the game and would ruin the experience. All textures need to come from ZOS. I really don’t think there’s any question about that.

Memory, bandwidth, and lore is also why I suggest the custom motifs be submitted via 2D icon (much like they are in crafting) and placed in a book for voting. While the whole model would be submitted to ZOS (and sit in some sort of in-box I presume), the only thing the end user would access during voting would be the little 2D icons. ZOS would have to include the motif and armor releases in a patch so everyone can download the 3D models that are chosen for release. These considerations is also why I suggest there being a release cycle. 1st quarter motifs are created and submitted. Those motifs are voted on during the 2nd quarter. Then they are released in the 3rd quarter.

You are right that this would eventually lead to a big pot of quests but I personally don’t think that’s a bad thing. The quests would have statistics associated with them such as number of plays, average rating, time to complete, etc. and players could search for quests by their desired criteria and jaunt off on their new adventure! Of course, in my suggestion, there would be the canonized quests that ZOS accepts into official ESO lore. I’d imagine that pot would be pretty small so players who wanted to only play the best of the best would only ever bother with those. The key to not making it a Little Big Planet style pot-o-poo is to have organizational tools. LBP had search functions and If you only play the 5 star levels… You’re in for some good times.

I like the idea of having a background download for quests. Then they would be in a pending queue and wouldn’t be available to select in your journal as primary quest until the download is complete. That may work but I would argue that the community quest download would have to be given the LOWEST priority so if you’re doing something else in the game that requires a good deal of bandwidth your experience isn’t hindered by the community quest download.
I really don’t expect ZOS to take what I wrote and say “By George! This is what must be done! Exactly this and only this!” What I hope is they see this post and it gets their gears turning about the benefits of this type of system. I realize this is a pie over Masser type of idea but it really is one that I think would put ESO in a league of its own.

HeroOfNone

Heishi wrote: »

Glad you enjoyed it. The in-depth discussion of of the topic is great. Truthfully I hate doing pick-a-parts as it's a very tedious way to cover material. Only reason I really did is because you were right in that I only expressed my opinion based on the first few paragraphs and didn't read the long break down.

In order to make sure I gave it a fair shake, I figured going a bit at a time I could read it and cover my opinion on each part. Reading your pick-a-part of the pick-a-part was great and did clarify something but it wasn't quite enough to persuade me. Major kudos on taking the time to put the name with each quote. Admittedly as I got about halfway into the post I started rushing a bit.

Random note, note sure if you're curious, in a word doc the last pick-a-part is 10 pages long (3,457 words).

There were a couple points I wanted to go over again.

Using a separate program for for the creation kit would be a good idea, but you also want it to include virtually every texture, 3-D model, ect from the game. The way the MMO works is pretty much all of the content is stored on your PC. The servers basically shoot out all the directions telling the program what to do with all the content.

This is more of a modern convention so that less load screens are needed. I don't know if you're run into this, but if you get disconnected from the internet a certain way, you can run the whole map and beyond. Enemies won't spawn, events won't trigger like health and such but all the textures are there. One of this events being the devouring fishies but that's a whole different story.

The way the ESO folder is, There are 8 audio files it looks like 4 of which are about 1.6Gb each. Probably 1 music, 1 voice over, 1 sound effects, and one that is an additional voice or music. There are 216 data files in a folder called depot, probably all your textures and models. This depot folder makes up 30Gb of it.

There MAY be a way to have a program reuse these like Skyrim's creation kit but I can't imagine it. Skyrim you could overwrite files and change/manipulate them. You can't really do that with an MMO, but those files would have to be made available some how and the simplest way is to bundle them with the program.

A lot of the problem here comes in with the stuff like pulling files into a 3-D editor and making armor sets and such. You have to be able to pull it out of the packed file to edit it. Skyrim has all the files already out and accessible.

A bit of the misconception I think got cleared up about the implementation. So what I gather is through some implementation you will go and select from all the player created quests and add the ones you want to your journal then be directed to that spot with a waypoint like normal quest but upon reaching spot be asked if you want X quest or the normal area. I'm imagining something like an expanded version of the new Undaunted stuff. I could see that being fairly unobtrusive, but would lead a big pot of a bunch of quests to search through even broken up by zone.

As far as the storing it goes, downloading it when you want it then wiping it when you're done could work theoretically. However if you wanted to revisit a place you would have to redownload. There's also the question of how big are these files. GW1 when they had some of the patches, you'd have to redownload each area you went into and it could be a bother at times, especially if the download was big. Certain things like the Playstation Network's home thing let you download areas in the background while you continued to do stuff. Maybe download when you accept the quest then delete it when you finish the quest which you turn in outside of the place or something.

I might come back and comment on more, but like I said I don't like doing a pick-a-part, it doesn't have a natural conversation flow to it.

@Heishi
Thank you for taking the time to go over the topic in a bit more detail. I defer to gidorick for the detailed response, however I don't think we'really looking at a HUGE increase in size with allowing custom community quests, areas, etc. As long as we're using the existing library of items. A limited number of motifs and animations shouldn't be bad either, assuming we're not looking at 50 shades of dwemer. The biggest cause for a lot of skyrim, oblivion, and Morrowind mods were the custom textures, models, etc. included instead of using what was already there.

If we have something like a house room made, or a dungeon sections made, interconnected like a wooden train track, you can get a lot of variations .

Something else I think a few of us would like to make are more complex puzzles, which could be a bit more interesting with the community base.


@Gidorick‌
I was think more if you were a member of the thieves guild in one town you could get one set of quests, but the guards faction might get another. Or as you say, when visitin daggerfall you could find a quest for your faction. If you chose to let someone live as well maybe you could get more quests as well, but choose to let them die and others might open up. This would give your actions more value in game, but not totally cutting you out of quests. Maybe you could go down a darker path instead of the noble one. Maybe be a bit more greedy which precludes you from certain quests because the town hates you. With player created quests, the advantage of more quests and a variety of ideas helps foster branching story lines

Heishi

Leaving aside my thoughts that it would be a bad idea, were this to be implemented I think using some like what is found in an old gamecube game TimeSplitters would be a good way to go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XJbfZaXtvs
Note it's almost a 20min video, but only the first 4min are actually relevant, the rest is spent demoing the created level.

Basically, you have a mapmaker where you select a tileset. From that you have a certain number of room shapes you can use but within the rooms can place items, enemies, lights, ect. clutter is more or less auto generated to as to not be overdone. Kinda like LBP did, each piece had a certain value which subtracted from a pool of points when applied to the map. You could look at it in 2-D or 3-D.

Most of the player controlled parts are pretty basic and a lot of it is generated by the game but as you can see if you go to the demoing part of the video, it helps keep everything clean and uniform looking.

Certain things like NPCs, dialog, ect would have to be added in. I would suggest the game also automatically generate the reward based on factors such as map size, number of enemies, ect.

Also don't specifically think these should be attached to the world. If this hypothetical thing came to be, I would suggest one portal in say the capital city. This would lead to a realm of oblivion which maybe housed quests by starting location. (IE: A portal for Deshaan quest, a portal for Reapers March quest, a portal for Coldharbour quest ect). The player would have to have visited these locations to unlock the portal there. This way someone from Dominion starting out couldn't just jump to a Glenumbra quest.

This would also serve to keep from having to litter the PTS with it or create another server. I think a way to keep everything fresh and quality, rather than a wait list to get into the game, I think say.. the bottom 20% lowest rated quest would be dumped each month. I don't suspect there would be a need to keep them from resubmitting. Things like psuedo-player housing, generic short term RP locations, and such could be wiped away each month keeping this from building up into a mess, especially if the creator leaves the game or whatever or puts the quest up for an RP and forgets to take it down.

Just wanted to throw a couple suggestions in there since my previous posts were all about why this couldn't work and/or would be a bad idea.

Skullemainia

Gidorick wrote: »

DISCLAIMER: this is pretty long.

I think one extremely important aspect of the Elder Scrolls experience is sorely missing from ESO: the player-creation community. Enabling the community of creators that both love The Elder Scrolls and ESO would be a HUGE boon to the longevity and appeal of ESO.

While I understand it is early in ESO’s life to be considering these types of additions and there ARE more pressing issues to consider, the below suggestions would be such a robust addition to the game I think the planning would need to begin now for a release a few years down the road.

Being an MMO, ESO cannot offer the types of creation systems that have been in past TES games. This is completely understandable. ESO can, however, offer the ability for players to offer content to other players . I would like to throw a few suggestions out there to highlight how ESO could embrace some community content creation.

First and foremost the player created content will need to exist alongside all the other content of ESO. It should include both leveled and level-locked quests so the Creator can determine what kind of experience they would like to create and the system should allow for solo and group quests. This system would require the release of a Community Creator Kit that could be a separate program from ESO and would be launched from the desktop Launcher so players that have no interest in being a Community Creator wouldn’t be bothered with Creator Kit while playing ESO.

Using existing locations:

All the locations around Tamriel that require a loading screen could be instanced specifically for community-created quests. This design would enable a Creator to use existing buildings, basements, dungeons, caves, and clearings to build their quests.

If a player has accepted multiple quests for a particular area the player could be greeted with a prompt.

Which quest would you like to continue?

• - Kill Glindar Jesterfoot (Guild)
• - Grandfather’s Folly (Community)
• - Revenge of the Dwemer (Community)
• - NONE

If the player selects none, they could be sent to the normal non-questing instance of the area. If they choose a Community Quest, the area is instanced to them for the duration of their stay.

Within these pre-defined spaces, Creators should be allowed to place NPCs, enemies, loot and should even be able to clutter up the place a bit with area-specific items (piles of rock, tables, desks, weapon racks, etc.) to personalize the space for their specific quest. Creators should be allowed to send the player to multiple locations in order to complete their quest. Ambitious Creators could send players clear across Tamriel to complete their quest.

Creating new locations:

A more robust option would be to allow Creators to create, from scratch, their own areas for their quests. However, there are only three types of areas that should be able to be created from scratch.

• Basements/Dungeons
• Caves/clearings
• Daedric Realms

Since buildings have a specific external shape, customization of building interiors should be limited to decorating the pre-defined building interiors as mentioned above. After-all, we wouldn’t want a “bigger-on-the-inside” situation on our hands.

After a Creator creates the spaces for their quest they should be able to attach the opening of their space to ANY static door, cave opening, basement hatch, etc. in the game; any place that requires a load screen that doesn’t lead into a building. This should include the multitude of entryways in the game that currently serve no function other than aesthetics and could include more doorways, cave entrances, and basement hatches. Each entrance could only allow that specific type of interior so we don’t have basements that lead directly to caves or caves that look like a wine cellar.

Daedric realms would require portals to travel to and from and since there are no set portal locations in the world the entrances to Daedric realms should be allowed to be anywhere within an already customized space being used for the Creator’s quest. In fact, any custom space should allow for entrances to other locations. A Creator could add a basement hatch to a predefined floorplan of a building interior that leads to a custom created basement that leads to a custom created cave, which leads to a pre-built dungeon that leads to a custom Daedric realm that exits into another static house whose exit spits the player out into a completely different city in which they started.

NPCs & Enemies:

Community Creators should be given a large library of pre-built NPCs to use in their quests as well as the ability to create their own NPCs from scratch using the character creator. The creator should be expanded with an outfitter to allow players to dress their NPCs in just about any combination of armor and clothes that can be found around Tamriel.

The NPC conversation trees, animation and movement paths should all be customizable by the Creator to give the Creator the ability to create quests as robust as those ZOS has in the main game.

Enemies should also be fully customizable, from generic creatures to fully customizable original characters with dialog and custom style.

The Creator should have a full set of tools at their disposable to create complex and interesting characters with which to populate their world.

Quest Types:

When creating the quest, the Creator could be given an option of the type of quest they are creating. These quest types could offer a variety of play that allows the Creators the freedom to create whatever types of experiences they can imagine.

• Narrative Quest: These quests focus on telling a story and can involve multiple locations and can span across Tamriel.
• Nefarious Quest: These are similar to Narrative quests but are darker in tone. They can include assassinations, espionage, heists, & kidnapping.
• Gauntlet Quest: These quests focus on running through an area quickly and effectively. These usually involve only one instanced area with leaderboards attached. Could include single player gauntlets all the way up to 12 player gauntlets and the leaderboards could be organized by the number of players in the group.
• Versus Quest: These quests pit players against one another with PVP active within the quest areas. They can involve multiple location instances and can take players clear across Tamriel. These quests can resemble a treasure hunt of sorts.
• Dungeon Delves: Single Dungeon quests that require 4 players to play and are balanced as such.
• Raids: Multi-area quests taking the form of a Raid, requiring 12 person groups.

How to find Community Quests:

The community created quests could be distributed in a variety of ways from bulletin boards in guild halls to asking bartenders if they’ve heard any good rumors. Quest could be organized by region, made for a specific faction, or a player could choose a quest that is clear across Tamriel. The different methods of quest delivery could be decided by the content of the quest and should correlate with the Quest type.

• Bartender: Narrative quests that begin within the Zone
• City Bulletin Boards: Narrative quests that begin outside of the zone but within the faction
• Traveling NPC Criers or merchants: Narrative quests that begin outside of the faction
• Homeless NPCs: Nefarious quests that begin within the Zone – requires coin to hear
• Black Quest board: Nefarious quests that begin outside of the faction
• Underground Gossip NPCs: Nefarious quests that begin outside of the zone but within the faction – requires coin to hear
• Undaunted in Bars: ALL Gauntlet quests – Zone/Faction/Tamriel is dependent on Undaunted Level
• Undaunted Outposts: ALL Versus quests – Zone/Faction/Tamriel is dependent on Undaunted Level
• Guild Bulletin Boards: Dungeon Delve & Raids of their respective guild.

The rewards for quests… aside from more gameplay, gold (which don't really need), generic items, crafting materials, and experience (which we REALLY don’t need), players could be rewarded items that are crafted by the Creator in game. These items should be able to be renamed by the Creator for greater customizability. Hopefully by this point players can dye weapons so Creators can offer perfectly unique items. This could lead to one creator crafting a full armor set and spreading the pieces among multiple quests.

There could also be a pool of items and trophies that are only available to Creators so there is an incentive for players to play community created quests. One thought would be Community designed motifs and items could be exclusively used as rewards in Community Quests… more on that later.

Community Creator Reputation & Quest Ratings:

As players complete a community quest, they should be able to submit a review for the community quests. The review score could be one of the ways the quests could be organized, along with date and by creator. Players should also be able to flag or favorite quests before they complete them.

These review scores could feed into a Community Creator Reputation and players should be able to favorite and follow specific community Creators so they can watch specifically for that creators levels.

Creators or levels that achieve a certain review score or reputation over a certain number of plays could be considered for a ZOS highlight or to be “canonized” by ZOS as an official Community Quest that would then be considered an official part of Elder Scrolls Lore (or as much as any other part of ESO is considered an official part of the Elder Scrolls).

This recognition by ZOS would encourage players to create lore-friendly quests so that the Community Quests maintain the aesthetic and tone of the rest of the game. Lore-Friendlyness could even be one of the metrics by which players could rate the Community Quests.

Community Motifs:

While I do not think it would be wise, to allow Creators to design armor from scratch to wear around ESO, I do think there is a mechanic that could be introduced that could allow for Community Creators to design Motifs for in-game use. There are throngs of artists that enjoy the Elder Scrolls and they have shown that they can produce beautiful and intricate armor if given the opportunity and I think ESO could support this type of creation.

Within the Community Creation Kit could be an outfitter that could allow players to export a “blank” template in a variety of formats to open in an external 3d modeling program. The same program would also have the ability to import those same formats of the Creator’s finished pieces. I do not think ZOS should put the effort into developing their own 3d modeling program for this Community Creator Kit; there are plenty of free/inexpensive tools out there that are perfectly serviceable.

Once the Creator finishes their armor, they should be able to upload their files to the Community Creator Kit to place their armor on a moving “mannequin” with selectable motions that could include walking, running, sprinting, attacking, on horseback and any “/” emote. This would allow Creators to test their armor pieces on a moving model to find any unforeseen clipping issues.

Once they have finished creating an entire Motif (including the three armor types and all weapon types) they can submit their Motif to be voted on by the community. Every motif submitted during a quarter should be available the following quarter to view and vote on as a whole set in 2D previews that would be similar to the icons that are seen when crafting. These icons should be presented in a book that will be available in each city at a station/table specifically set aside for this voting process.

Alternatively, ZOS could implement a the Community Motifs in a similar way that they have implemented the Dwemer Motifs with each piece of the Motif being independent and released in pages. If this were the way they were to handle community Motifs, there would need to be multiple books on the voter’s table to organize the submissions by item type.

Having the ability to submit designs for individual items in a motif would allow Creators who want to only create weapons, to only create weapons. There would, however, be the issue of how to appease Creators who want to create entire Motifs and not just individual pieces. The solution could be to offer both. Periodically, one full community Motif, one community weapon (or one of each type), and one community armor piece (or one of each type) could be selected to be released into the wild based on community voting.

Voting players should be able to browse the book and vote for their favorite motif and items. The top motifs and items (top 3/5/10/.. whatever) should then be reviewed by ZOS and the selected motif/item should then be inserted into the game as a Community Motif or Item. A motif or item that did not get chosen to be inserted into the game should be able to be resubmitted as is, or tweaked and resubmitted, at the Creators discretion.

The releases of the Motifs and Items types could be on different schedules so there could be more frequent releases of community creations. One suggestion could be that one Community item could be released each month (which could be a weapon or any piece of armor) and then one full Motif could be released every 3, 4, or 6 months.

The individual items could be released as actual wearable items that could be placed within the Community Creation Kit for use as a community quest rewards and the Motifs could only be available as quest rewards for Creators of a certain rating or reputation, keeping the motifs themselves rare.

This creation/voting system could be used to add any number of things to the game from Pets to Lore Books to Emotes to Costumes.

The key is that each community creation of this type needs to be approved by ZOS (or ultimately Bethesda) so that there is never anything that would go against the aesthetic or Lore of the game.

Why be a Community Creator?:

With all these tools, it would be quite a bit of work to be an active Community Creator. One might ask why a player would want to be a Creator. Why put in the extra effort?

There could be specific perks and incentives for Creators that have achieved certain milestones within ESO. While Creators should have access to a completely separate tool set in the Community Creation Kit for interacting with ESO, they could even be given access to a completely different skill tree and perks within ESO itself as players. Perhaps there are special motifs, mounts and pets that only Creators can access. There could even be a Community Creator Forum or an in-game Guild created by ZOS for those that achieve a particular status as a Creator. This could allow those Creators to build a rapport amongst themselves as well as with the developers.

This rapport could be a step toward ZOS initiating a program in which a limited number of trusted Creators could be given tool sets similar to those that were suggested in the ZOS Developer Event post, allowing a select few to be able to generate Daedric attacks on Tamriel in real-time. This would allow active Creators to create dynamic events for ESO players.

It would also be ideal for a Creator to be able to earn in-game time with their efforts so that an active and popular creator could actually end up not having to pay for their main monthly ESO subscription. This would be a powerful incentive, in addition to the fun and bragging rights, to try to be an effective Creator within ESO.

Would this Impact ZOS’ content releases?:

While these systems would be a complex addition to ESO They could be added with little to no impact on the current game or future updates while offering players a literally limitless amount of gameplay. These Community quests wouldn’t have an impact on the ZOS created content and the content available in the Community Creation Kit could lag behind the official ZOS releases.

New environmental pallets and styles that are released by ZOS for a new zone could remain unavailable to Community Content Creators for a period of time so as to not muddy the waters or take attention away from the ZOS creation. New Zones could also be unavailable to Creators as settings for their quests for a certain period of time to give players time to play through the official ZOS content before community content becomes available.

The most dramatic way the Community Quests would differ from the ZOS releases is that the Community Quests wouldn’t have voice-overs, and I think that’s acceptable. Giving players the ability to record their own voiceovers, while feasible, would likely pale in comparison to the ZOS voiceovers… but hey, if the option to record voice WAS included, that would be cool. I’m sure we would get some top quality work from some of the Creators. Or they COULD use those janky computer voices from Beta… that’s just a joke. Heheh.

Licensure:

Lastly… To “keep out the riff-raff” these Community Creator Kits could be offered for a free 30 day trial, in which no content could be submitted for release, followed by the requirement of a Community Creator License for a small charge ($5?) on top of the $15 monthly subscription. This would help to create an exclusive and dedicated community and would weed out players that aren’t serious about content creation and would further focus the Community Creator’s efforts. This additional $5 charge wouldn’t be able to be discounted through the above suggestion that Community Creators be able to earn ESO time, so an active community Creator that earns all their time would still be paying the $5 charge.

What would this accomplish?

Aside from opening up ESO to a universe of stories, the release of a Community Creator Kit and the ability to set quests clear across Tamriel would give players a reason to revisit areas they have already completely cleared out of content. There could literally be and endless supply of gameplay and quests for ESO subscribers. Guilds would create guild specific trials as initiation rites, RP-ers would create story quests, friends would create quests much in the way a DM would create a campaign for their friends to play through, and there would be new, unforeseen game-experiences that would be created by the community that would benefit the longevity of ESO as an MMO.

I truly believe a Community Creation Kit would be a leap in the right direction for ESO and offer the Elder Scrolls community some of the creative freedom they have come to expect from and Elder Scrolls game as well making ESO a more attractive MMO to players both subscribed and non-subscribed. Players would no longer be looking for “more things to do” in ESO and the pressure would be taken off of ZOS to push new content out the door so they can focus on polishing the content they do release and improving the game systems and immersion systems (such as underwater swimming and ships).

One of the benefits of the above concept is it could be rolled out over multiple releases. The different Quest Types could be released separately, the motif creation could be a separate release, and even separately launched program, from the quest creation, even the ability to use pre-existing locations could be released before the ability for Creators to build locations from scratch.

With the above design players who never want to see or play or even be bothered with Community Created Quests or Content can pretty much ignore its existence. They wouldn’t ever have to open the tools, accept the quests or participate in the content. Those that wanted to partake in the Community Quests would find themselves with a near limitless supply of quests at their fingertips.

Thoughts?

NOTE: If you like this idea, comment and keep this visible on the first page! Thanks!

woaw, how long did it take to type this? but I think it's a great idea

alainjbrennanb16_ESO

it would be a good idea to have player content or mods like all elder scrolls game, but and this is a big but, the content would need to through zos checked double checked and triple checked to see if anything other than extra content is there. you might say bull but it is very easy to hide bots, spyware or trojans inside software that looks like something else, if it passed the checks then by all means it should go in and give the game a life of its own

miahq

Yeah, this would be more difficult for anything but re-skins, which would be pretty basic. But, I think stuff like that you could do by simply having a submissions page. If they're approved, players could buy the re-skins in certain npc shops in a few cities for gold (which would both give some gold to the people creating them and help fill out some of the cities).

The bigger problem is the game is too theme park for a lot of this, which I admit... is bizarre for an elder scrolls game. Those two things don't really go together. But it seems like they've little idea of changing their minds on that direction any time soon.

HeroOfNone

alainjbrennanb16_ESO wrote: »

it would be a good idea to have player content or mods like all elder scrolls game, but and this is a big but, the content would need to through zos checked double checked and triple checked to see if anything other than extra content is there. you might say bull but it is very easy to hide bots, spyware or trojans inside software that looks like something else, if it passed the checks then by all means it should go in and give the game a life of its own

if we're looking for full blown mod submission like in prior ES titles that would be true, however if we're opening only a small opening with a controlled content manager I think we're pretty good. I see this being a lot harder to slip in some malicious code than something like standard LUA interface modding.

Gidorick

heroofnoneb14_ESO wrote: »

@Gidorick‌
I was think more if you were a member of the thieves guild in one town you could get one set of quests, but the guards faction might get another. Or as you say, when visitin daggerfall you could find a quest for your faction. If you chose to let someone live as well maybe you could get more quests as well, but choose to let them die and others might open up. This would give your actions more value in game, but not totally cutting you out of quests. Maybe you could go down a darker path instead of the noble one. Maybe be a bit more greedy which precludes you from certain quests because the town hates you. With player created quests, the advantage of more quests and a variety of ideas helps foster branching story lines

The ability for quests to give additional quests would be great! I think there would be some creators that would end up making epic stories that would rival anything ZOS could come up with. Creators could create characters that would span across multiple of their quests. What people are able and willing to make is pretty amazing.

Gidorick

Skullemainia wrote: »

woaw, how long did it take to type this? but I think it's a great idea

LOL. Thanks. Yea... I worked on it on and off for about 2 moths. I wasn't even planning on putting it up on the forums yet but I saw some talk about the future of ESO and thought it might be a good time to put it up.

It's a suggestion I truly believe in, even if it's not as robust as this suggestion, I think giving the community the tools to makes quests for ourselves would be more beneficial to the future of ESO than almost any content update they might release.