Once they have a character creater implemented, what do you all think about asking backers to build an NPC or two?
Not as an incentive (though it is definitely that,) but because then they save themselves a ton of time having to do it themselves. In a single night they could have a bank of several thousand NPCs to choose from for quests, townsfolk, bandits etc.
They could constrain us by giving us a random race to choose from and picking the "uniform." Then we can mess with the height, hair, face, and gender. Bam, instead of 2 or 3 of the same Thronefast guard copied and pasted around, you now have 30. Plus townsfolk to bring the cities to life, bandits of huge variance. Etc.
It shouldn't be too much dev work for them to implement and could potentially save them thousands of man hours. Even only creating 1 or 2 versions of each NPC would still take hundreds of hours considering how many races, factions, classes, etc there are.
Then they could spend that saved time on the monsters.
This wouldn't take away from any of the incentives (that I know of) because we'd only be messing with the purely physical characteristics. We wouldn't be naming them or deciding what factions look like or assigning them to quests, etc.
Theres a few things that usually keeps companies from sourcing out things to its player base.
1 Laws: Theres a lot of tape that gets in the way when it comes to "Volunteer" work that most companies even more so smaller ones would just tather avoid.
2 TTP: Developers have a term "Time to Penis" whenever it comes to giving its player base any type of tool to pay with, just let that sink in.
3 Filters: Same as above it would take just as much time to chekc all the submitted NPCs, you'll still either end up with a lot of samey looking NPCs or ones that were hit too many times with the ugly stick.
Gintoki88 said:Theres a few things that usually keeps companies from sourcing out things to its player base.
1 Laws: Theres a lot of tape that gets in the way when it comes to "Volunteer" work that most companies even more so smaller ones would just tather avoid.
2 TTP: Developers have a term "Time to Penis" whenever it comes to giving its player base any type of tool to pay with, just let that sink in.
3 Filters: Same as above it would take just as much time to chekc all the submitted NPCs, you'll still either end up with a lot of samey looking NPCs or ones that were hit too many times with the ugly stick.
1. Do you have any examples? And how is it any different than testing? Paid testers are a hugely important job in the gaming industry and us testing the game, even if only for a limited period of time, is that same work outsourced to backers in the same way I'm suggesting above.
2. It's a character creater, which we'll probably access through a web client, not SFM.
3. That's why I said a "bank of characters." When it's time to put the NPCs they can just select one from the large collection they now have and if they don't like the first or second one they grab, they can just grab another.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFl_3ktLNPYUeicLmhSvB1Q/videos
Fomer EQ developer, he started in Customer Service and moved up, a lot of the early videos talk about the player run GM services and the EQ2 player design store they had to eventually end.
I don't think creating a couple of NPCs is really comparable to the time investment of the old Guide Program (they still have Guides, they just aren't CS reps anymore) which was the primary issue that many Guides had as there were minimum time requirements.
This could even be wrapped up into testing. You need to test the character creator, too, right? So hey, come along, test the creator, here's an NPC to make. Make a weird one, now make a "normal" one.
If it's okay for us to be testing the game unpaid, and in fact paying them for the privilege, then making a couple of NPCs would fall into the same boat. I think you're overthinking this. It wouldn't be like designing the whole model from scratch. We'd have the model, we'd just be using the same character creator that we will get to use to customize our characters to create a bunch of NPCs.
@Byproducts
Gintoki88 is correct, not 'overthinking it'. Every State has it's own Worker Protection laws, as well as the Federal Govt. They exist to keep employers from 'persuading' employees to work for the Company without getting paid for it. Many of them could easily be applied to the kind of situation you are suggesting,
VR wouldn't even know about the particular structure of the laws in each fan's home State (or home country) until they found themselves in trouble over it. The US is such a litigious society that no amount of promises could guarantee that someone who "donated" their work to VR today wouldn't change their mind and sue them later if Pantheon became a huge success.
Jothany said:@Byproducts
Gintoki88 is correct, not 'overthinking it'. Every State has it's own Worker Protection laws, as well as the Federal Govt. They exist to keep employers from 'persuading' employees to work for the Company without getting paid for it. Many of them could easily be applied to the kind of situation you are suggesting,
VR wouldn't even know about the particular structure of the laws in each fan's home State (or home country) until they found themselves in trouble over it. The US is such a litigious society that no amount of promises could guarantee that someone who "donated" their work to VR today wouldn't change their mind and sue them later if Pantheon became a huge success.
If this were nearly as bad as the two of you say, we wouldn't be able to test. Period. Testers are donating their time and their work in the same way you're saying is a huge problem. It's fun and they want to do it, but it's still their time and effort being put into the game without pay. This will extend to the character creator.
Neither of you have suggested a reason for why testing the character creator and creating NPCs is substantially different from testing other systems in the game.
Byproducts said: Neither of you have suggested a reason for why testing the character creator and creating NPCs is substantially different from testing other systems in the game.
*sigh*
The discussion is not about testing the game or some 'character creator, it's about non-employees creating Intellectual Property for VR without getting paid for it.
The reason THAT is not feasible is
A: it would require them to invest funds in creating the business structure - and finding the staff - to do this, with no particular guarantee that they will get anything useful out of it at all, or that whatever they do get will be so much cheaper than having their own employees do it that it justified the costs of setting up the new system.
B: Despite your disbelief, there is a small but non-zero possibility that someone could sue them for recompense later for something donated today. Also a small but non-zero possibility that some govt. regulatory agency could come after them for using unpaid labor.
I'm sorry you don't LIKE this answer. Unfortunately, that doesn't make the answer wrong.
Jothany said:
I'm sorry you don't LIKE this answer. Unfortunately, that doesn't make the answer wrong.
*sigh*
If you make an object within a game using assets from that game, it doesn't make it your intelectual property and you have no claim over it.
Additionally, it's pretty easy to come up with an agreement stating that. I know because I've signed a couple of them during my few years in journalism.
In fact, you have also signed one, it's part of the terms of service under "User Content." Granted, the language only applies to this website, but I'm sure you'd need to sign a nearly identical one if you've tested anything in the game in order for them to control videos, recordings and screenshots of the game when they eventually lift the NDA.
Further, there's no need to find staff to do something they're already going to do: make a character creator. It's an MMO, there's going to be some character customization on startup. It's already something they are going to be making.
I think maybe you're mistaking me? Maybe you didn't read what I wrote earlier? I'm not suggesting they make some elaborate NPC creator, or give us access to a bunch of their assets... I'm talking about the same tool that will be in game at launch for everyone to create their playable character. We will test this at one point, that's a fact. I'm essentially just saying they use those tests as an opportunity to also save our creations for future use.
However, you are right about one thing, condescending attitude not withstanding. In the US there is nothing stopping anyone from suing anybody at any time for any reason. Even if VR covers their butts as I've described above, someone could still bring a lawsuit against them.
Examples of my suggestion in action (I knew I remembered it from somewhere but didn't remember where until this morning):
The Wii & Wii-U hubworlds actual user's Miis as the background crowd.
Monster Hunter World using your cats in the hunting parties & world of other players who have your guild card.
stonetothebone85 said: If it's just a character creator then the could just as easily hit a random button which would take one second not sure that would save thousands of hours. It would also put creative control in outside hands. Also testing is different than creating. I understand you want to be more involved but doesn't seem feasible for a plethora of reasons.
It WOULD depend on the complexity of the character creator. If it's just faces, eye, hair & skin color, and hair styles then they don't even need a guy to hit a button over and over again. Someone could write a quick script and generate a model for every possible combination in an afternoon. If that's the case, throw my suggestion out the window (though it would still be fun community engagement and positive PR and all "Creative Control" would still be in their hands because they made the faces and hair styles so nothing we pick can be outside of their intended aesthetic.)
However, I was kind of going on the assumption that there would be sliders? But now I don't remember where I heard that from and friend just told me they were fairly vague about the character creator when asked. :shrug:
Games like ARK (and the show Monster Factory) definitely prove how ridiculous people can get when they have sliders, but you don't have to make them that crazy. Lots of games had very limited sliders.
Maybe I should have first posted a discussion on what you think the character creator should be like... and THEN snuck in my suggestion.
