The more a read about UGC the less excited I am :(

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When I first heard about UGC, I was so excited. But all this new talk about some review board is killing that excitement pretty fast. I want to be able to log in, create a mission, then post about it here on the forums and get other people to try it. Having to wait for some pannel to review the mission doesnt sound fun at all. If theres going to be a rating system and the ability to report bad missions, why isnt that enough?

[Archived Post]

When I first heard about UGC, I was so excited. But all this new talk about some review board is killing that excitement pretty fast. I want to be able to log in, create a mission, then post about it here on the forums and get other people to try it. Having to wait for some pannel to review the mission doesnt sound fun at all. If theres going to be a rating system and the ability to report bad missions, why isnt that enough?

Most likely simply put, because the rights holders want oversight. Thats pretty much what I expect the reasoning to be.

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Most likely simply put, because the rights holders want oversight. Thats pretty much what I expect the reasoning to be.

That doesnt really make sense, since we're talking about players here. How is it "oversight" is someone just gets all their friends to approve their mission regardless of whether it breaks some kind of rule or not?

[Archived Post]

When I first heard about UGC, I was so excited. But all this new talk about some review board is killing that excitement pretty fast. I want to be able to log in, create a mission, then post about it here on the forums and get other people to try it. Having to wait for some pannel to review the mission doesnt sound fun at all. If theres going to be a rating system and the ability to report bad missions, why isnt that enough?

The panel is composed of any and every player who wants to join and it's essential that UGC get rated/playtested, among other things to determine the reward.

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To add a counter argument to this. the tools we are getting are going to be powerful, and the fact is there are there to stop people who will make content that is inappropriate for some of our players. We had a discussion about this yesterday on the Red Shirt Army, and one of our guest host stated that not only does he play, but his kids play, and his father plays, and he doesn't want them to come across something that is inappropriate for their age.


Granted some of that stuff would be stopped by the rating system, but you still run a higher risk to getting something inappropriate with a rating system because it is easier to grief then the reviewer board. Plus after listening through the interview myself, it looks like there is going to be a system of check and balances. If something is flagged inappropriate, then it is sent to cryptic to check the mission. If the reviewer was lying then it seems that he would be punished, and the content released.

On the plus side it takes 4 or 5 random people to review the mission, and in truth you would really have to work hard to game the system to get bad content through, and even then cryptic could track which reviews let it through, and deal with it.

The problem with this is the fact that this game is kind of a family game, and there are people who will make bad content. If those people were not here then we would not have a problem, but that would happen only in a perfect world...

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The panel is composed of any and every player who wants to join and it's essential that UGC get rated/playtested, among other things to determine the reward.

I fear we have not see the last of the "battery" drop. :p

Who exactly determines rewards? and how will this affect multipart missions that are designed to have specific dropped items for completion of secondary and third parts of the same storyline?

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why dont we wait for it to hit tribble in a couple of weeks and then we can all tell exactly how it will work. there seams to be so much speculation and misinformation in just about every UGC thread that it might just be sensible to wait and see.

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Releasing something too fast could be a major issue - hence the review. Think of it less as a review board and more as free quality assurance testing for your mission.

I know my missions might be quite complex with their dialogue choices. It's great that I can get people to try and "break" my missions instead of buggy, broken missions giving everyone a bad taste in the collective mouth over UGC.

[Archived Post]

When I first heard about UGC, I was so excited. But all this new talk about some review board is killing that excitement pretty fast. I want to be able to log in, create a mission, then post about it here on the forums and get other people to try it. Having to wait for some pannel to review the mission doesnt sound fun at all. If theres going to be a rating system and the ability to report bad missions, why isnt that enough?

Do you want to have hundreds of bugged or useless missions in the game wasting your time? No, didn't think so. Also, Cryptic is liable for any and all content in their games, which means you aren't gonna have the ability to make anything you want and add it to the game.

A review board is neccessary. I know of no UGC program w/o one. PotBS has one, and the players are the commitee.

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Releasing something too fast could be a major issue - hence the review. Think of it less as a review board and more as free quality assurance testing for your mission.

I know my missions might be quite complex with their dialogue choices. It's great that I can get people to try and "break" my missions instead of buggy, broken missions giving everyone a bad taste in the collective mouth over UGC.

I hope to play all of your missions :D

Even though I'm not in favor of UGC missions.

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But, say for example, I make a mission, and I really don't care if anyone else sees it, I just want a few certain people to see it so we can play through it together. Would I be able to do that without waiting through the review board?

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From my understanding, there is no ugc council. If there is, it consists of all of us.

1. A UGC author makes a mission.
2. That mission does not get put in the game.
3. The author promotes his/her mission using the forums or starbase UGC blog and wiki
4. People find out about it, search for it, play it, and rate it.
5. IF it receives a high player rating, then Cryptic MAY decide to review and include it in the game.

Did I miss some kind of announcement?

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I wish Cryptic would release some kind of official FAQ. That would put to rest alot of this speculation.

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But, say for example, I make a mission, and I really don't care if anyone else sees it, I just want a few certain people to see it so we can play through it together. Would I be able to do that without waiting through the review board?

From what I heard on the interview... you can share missions, and resources between friends... so you could make a mission, send it to them, they can play it, and even edit it.

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From what I heard on the interview... you can share missions, and resources between friends... so you could make a mission, send it to them, they can play it, and even edit it.

Ok, in that case, I am fine with whatever. I dont really want to play anyone elses, and I dont care if they play mine, so the council doesn't really effect me. :D

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Releasing something too fast could be a major issue - hence the review. Think of it less as a review board and more as free quality assurance testing for your mission.

I know my missions might be quite complex with their dialogue choices. It's great that I can get people to try and "break" my missions instead of buggy, broken missions giving everyone a bad taste in the collective mouth over UGC.

Ditto. I'd like to have an editing process happen before anything went live. You never know what unique damage you can do with "if then else" until you try.

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From my understanding, there is no ugc council. If there is, it consists of all of us.

1. A UGC author makes a mission.
2. That mission does not get put in the game.
3. The author promotes his/her mission using the forums or starbase UGC blog and wiki
4. People find out about it, search for it, play it, and rate it.
5. IF it receives a high player rating, then Cryptic MAY decide to review and include it in the game.

Did I miss some kind of announcement?

it depends on your definition of 'in the game'

as i understand it

every single user generated mission is available in game to play by anybody else (probably though a central UGC contact) but only the really good ones who get great reviews will get added to official contact lists like admiral quinn or j'mpok.

those missions will still be clearly marked as UGC missions

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I wish Cryptic would release some kind of official FAQ. That would put to rest alot of this speculation.

and they did! the Nagus strikes again...

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In answer to the question about reviews, we intend to always allow you as the author to share your published content with friends, regardless of whether it's been reviewed. I believe that searching for the mission specifically by author or by name will return the complete list, indicating which ones have not been reviewed.

We aim to make the publishing and sharing process as easy as possible between friends; our main concern with this system is to keep inappropriate and broken content from being advertised to players unless they actively opt in to review.

[Archived Post]

In answer to the question about reviews, we intend to always allow you as the author to share your published content with friends, regardless of whether it's been reviewed. I believe that searching for the mission specifically by author or by name will return the complete list, indicating which ones have not been reviewed.

We aim to make the publishing and sharing process as easy as possible between friends; our main concern with this system is to keep inappropriate and broken content from being advertised to players unless they actively opt in to review.

Any chance we can write some missions to be only available to specific people we share them with? Like an "Authorized User List" or something like that?

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I SHALL PREDICT THE FUTURE..........drum roll


the review system will not work....well

but over time with some head scratching they will come up with something that will.


.....all new concept stuff is like that....you put it out, doesn't work
tweek it, still no workie....adjust more..ect........then after much growing pains...it works.


So I would not be too concerned

give it a fair shot....it won't work..they will start the adjust process...its all good

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Any chance we can write some missions to be only available to specific people we share them with? Like an "Authorized User List" or something like that?

That is not something we are planning on implementing at this time.

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Considering that there will be thousands of UGC missions, there is no need to have an Authorized User List. Most missions will have a few people play it and thats it. Most people don't make missions that are Dev's Choice, Hall of Fame, or whatever ranking there is for the best and/or most popular missions out there.

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Considering that there will be thousands of UGC missions, there is no need to have an Authorized User List. Most missions will have a few people play it and thats it. Most people don't make missions that are Dev's Choice, Hall of Fame, or whatever ranking there is for the best and/or most popular missions out there.

I wasn't concerned with actual "mission" missions, but more in the means of works in progress. For example, if I or my fleeties are working on something where I (or we) publish something for some select others to see and critique and tweak until we're ready to actually publish it, I wouldn't want someone doing a search of my creations and see my "unready" stuff that I wanted only a few others to see.

Also, it seems apparent that the workaround in players and fleets creating their own ship interiors and fleet starbases would be to create one of these maps as a "mission" and share it amongst their fleet members. It may not be an actual social instance because you'd have to be grouped up on the same team to be in the same instance (and even then, only 5 on an instance map) but it seems the closest we'll be able to get for a while. And in that case, we may not actually want to share our designs with absolutely everyone in the game that can do a player search for authored maps.

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Yea......Im naturally put off by UGC to begin with not for the good aspects of it, but the abuse factor involved.

And considering those factors we may just have to wait and see how Cryptic approaches this in both testing (if there is any) and the final product.

Considering also that this game is played by more adults then children, the oversight thingy doesn't bug me this much. last thing i want to do is fight a bunch of tellerites with afros dressed as orion women.

And with the afore mentioned dynamic that is planned with teaming and sharing of the like, I think you may find people having to wait in line for the really good missions that are created just to play them.

Guarentee'd if I create anything and take it to publish.......it will be a real mind bender.

Again we'll just have to wait and see. I'm sure Cryptic wouldn't make the same mistakes as other games have when it comes to handing the players the keys to creativity. We'll just have to trust them on that.

hate it or love it......I am very curious on how it will work and can't wait to see it in action.

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I was kind of hoping this tool would allow players to distribute missions to other players at their decision. It would have been a great tool to give focus to roleplayers and get them out of "tavern RP." Seeing as it now has to go through a review board I'm not sure how this will turn out.

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I was kind of hoping this tool would allow players to distribute missions to other players at their decision. It would have been a great tool to give focus to roleplayers and get them out of "tavern RP." Seeing as it now has to go through a review board I'm not sure how this will turn out.

In answer to the question about reviews, we intend to always allow you as the author to share your published content with friends, regardless of whether it's been reviewed. I believe that searching for the mission specifically by author or by name will return the complete list, indicating which ones have not been reviewed.

We aim to make the publishing and sharing process as easy as possible between friends; our main concern with this system is to keep inappropriate and broken content from being advertised to players unless they actively opt in to review.

You will be able to share your missions with your friends. Whether they mean the actual people on your friends list or just random people you're soliciting your mission to, I'm not sure (although I think limiting it to your friends list may be the better option). In addition, apparently people can just do a search for the author and see everything they've done, whether it's been reviewed or not.

EDIT: Just in case you missed in in the quote above, you can also do a search for the mission by name to find it. The "review board" can be totally bypassed. The only thing reviewed missions get is the ability to show up first without being searched for.

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The panel is composed of any and every player who wants to join and it's essential that UGC get rated/playtested, among other things to determine the reward.

Yes, correct me if I'm wrong here (because I admit I'm a bit hazy on the details) but there are essentially two groups of players in this regard: those who volunteer to play through a UGC mission the moment the author says it's ready, and those who choose to wait until said mission has been officially flagged as ready by the first group. We could also say the latter group is a group that has asked not to participate in beta-testing UGC missions.

If that's correct, I don't see the problem. Am I missing something?

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You will be able to share your missions with your friends. Whether they mean the actual people on your friends list or just random people you're soliciting your mission to, I'm not sure (although I think limiting it to your friends list may be the better option). In addition, apparently people can just do a search for the author and see everything they've done, whether it's been reviewed or not.

EDIT: Just in case you missed in in the quote above, you can also do a search for the mission by name to find it. The "review board" can be totally bypassed. The only thing reviewed missions get is the ability to show up first without being searched for.

Ahhh okay, I see now. Thank you. :)

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I was kind of hoping this tool would allow players to distribute missions to other players at their decision. It would have been a great tool to give focus to roleplayers and get them out of "tavern RP." Seeing as it now has to go through a review board I'm not sure how this will turn out.

You will be able to share your missions with anyone, you just won't be able to stop some people from playing it, that would be exclusion, which would be bad. That's where you get into so-called elite subgroups and entitlement. ("Only the *cool* people get to play *my* missions." as an example.)

Anyway, what you're talking about seem to be more like private RP instances and not missions anyway. :)