Have a MMO ever successfully had a Dungeon Maker feature?

MMOExposed

Have a MMO ever successfully had a Dungeon Maker feature? If so, what did it do right and what did it do wrong?      

If not, whats can be done to make this a more popular feature in MMOs?

maskedweasel

City of Heroes let you make missions. It was pretty good, but I believe they had to temper any XP gain received so that players weren't just making XP farms. I think it's still available on the homecoming servers. 

AlBQuirky

Neverwinter and City of Heroes were what came to my mind. I couldn't tell you if they "successful" or not

Nanfoodle

Wow now has procedurally generated dungeons in the new expansion. It scales to the size of your team. But they are not player made. 

Wizardry

I don't think we are going to get much in way of freedom with games because devs want to control and monetize everything.If they give us the tools to build our own servers and create our own content then we won't need to buy their cheap ass crap anymore.

I did not like Neverwinter's offering at all,got bored of it after a couple times.

This is what gaming has done to me over the years,give me hints of excitement,better things to come then we just end up back at the cheap lazy  crap offerings they want to sell us.

My dream game is a combination of Minecraft/Atlas/FFXi and all three are doable since those games exist but sadly we get loot shooters with lights coming off loot or rpg's with levels and Ilevels or those dodge somersault swing dodge somersault swing rinse and repeat games,those Dark Souls type crappy games.

Like seriously I wish we could get ONE serious good developer to put together a complete game package.My dream game should not be a dream,we should have several of these already,we shouldn't be asking for just a "dungeon maker"we should get all the tools to make and manipulate a game the way we want.

I guess this is why I enjoy Atlas,i can use the mods i want to use and i can setup the server settings the way I want to do it so I end up with somewhat of a resemblance of a game I want to play.

Po_gg

My first thought was -as others said as well, I'm just a late arrival- what do you mean by "ever"?

Cryptic was pretty successful with it...

Both the Architect (CoH) and the Foundry (STO, Neverwinter) were amazing features. I'd say successful too, neither CoH's cancel (was Nc's fault), nor the cancellation of the Foundry (the total incompetence of Cryptic) had nothing to do with the feature itself, which was popular and fun.

cheyane

Architect missions in City of Heroes were fantastic player made missions with engrossing stories and well crafted ideas. You never experienced it obviously or you would not be asking this OP. A pity you did not as they were quite remarkable.

The only limiting factor was the different tiles that they employed because City of Heroes had limited tiles for missions in the game. Some players abused it and made experience monsters to level quickly.

There were two that jumps to my mind one was a set up in a hospital with a crazed killer and it was atmospherically quite chilling and the other was a holiday themed one I think Christmas or Haloween. Both were excellent stories and extremely well thought out passages and setting. 

Players voted on the best missions and the players who created them got rewards and it also enabled you to filter the ones you might want to try out when you used the missions selector in the architect building. I also think that it was a fantastic way to show player creativity.

I also tried this in Neverwinter too as someone else mentioned here.

iixviiiix

Why do you need a dungeon maker ?

Forgrimm

Everquest 2 has one, or had one maybe. Not sure if it's still around. https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeon_Maker_System

Scorchien

Vendetta Online also has one that the community really enjoys ..Phaser could pipe in further on that as i know he has made some good ones

Ungood

The problem you have with Dungeon Makers, is there are too many trolls that will make "Push button - get loot" style dungeons, so there is very little demand for players to invest in their crafting and creation.

I believe Cryptic after running a Dungeon Maker on CoH and Neverwinter, said that the volume of production of Good or high voted Dungeon content was not any better than what they could make on their own, and resulted in a huge amount of really bad creations that did nothing but take up server space, so much so, that it didn't add anything of real content value to the game itself for the work it took to maintain the system.

So there is that.

Trove had a dungeon making system but it was not only outside the game itself, it was more a system where you had to submit the dungeon layout to the developers, and they would decide if it was cool enough or not to put in the game.

learis1

It would be cool if it turned into something like super mario maker. The only "award" though would be the prestige of beating a dungeon with a low clear rate.

Scorchien

Ungood said:

The problem you have with Dungeon Makers, is there are too many trolls that will make "Push button - get loot" style dungeons, so there is very little demand for players to invest in their crafting and creation.

I believe Cryptic after running a Dungeon Maker on CoH and Neverwinter, said that the volume of production of Good or high voted Dungeon content was not any better than what they could make on their own, and resulted in a huge amount of really bad creations that did nothing but take up server space, so much so, that it didn't add anything of real content value to the game itself for the work it took to maintain the system.

So there is that.

Trove had a dungeon making system but it was not only outside the game itself, it was more a system where you had to submit the dungeon layout to the developers, and they would decide if it was cool enough or not to put in the game.

There really was no rewards to speak of in these systems .. Loot/ xp and coin also were next to nothing if anything at all, So that they could not be exploited ..Now very early on they did have some rewards .. that were exploited but honestly it was nothing to get excited about ir even warrant a 2nd run

     There was no ..."Push button - get loot"

Mendel

I believe that Ryzom was the first game with a player-made dungeon feature.  At one time, you had to upload the zone and have it approved.  That supposedly helped limit @Ungood's 'Push button, get loot' dungeons.  I don't know if the dungeon maker feature is still active, or how heavily it is used, if at all.  As I remember, the tools were pretty rudimentary.  Bare bones functionality was par for the course when games were taking chances with new features.

I'm from the days when the 'Push button, get loot' dungeons were called Monty Haul dungeons.

MMOExposed

iixviiiix said:

Why do you need a dungeon maker ?

For PvE MMOs, it has the potential for unlimited amount of content to play if the system is designed to give players tools for making dungeons, NPC placement and NPC skill trigger event controls, and The RP elements

 All while having a good filter and review system to weed out the good Dungeons from the bad, to be Published to the community for play.       

Example of how this could help. Lets take Guildwars2 for example.  It has PvE content droughts.  Now add this Dungeon/Raid maker tool and a review/publish system .      
       
Creative players can make fancy Dungeons and Raids instance maps, with NPC placement with control over when the NPC trigger what in combat and the timers for the fights. Players can choose if they want to make a 5 man dungeon or a strike mission or a raid dungeon.  The creator can decorate the dungeon to look unique and create interesting set up. Now imagine many players making these and submitting them to the developers for approval in quality  to add developer determined rewards to these. This would be an unlimited number of content that its mind-blowing.  But players need the proper tools and a system that can do this.

MMOExposed

Ungood said:

The problem you have with Dungeon Makers, is there are too many trolls that will make "Push button - get loot" style dungeons, so there is very little demand for players to invest in their crafting and creation.

I believe Cryptic after running a Dungeon Maker on CoH and Neverwinter, said that the volume of production of Good or high voted Dungeon content was not any better than what they could make on their own, and resulted in a huge amount of really bad creations that did nothing but take up server space, so much so, that it didn't add anything of real content value to the game itself for the work it took to maintain the system.

So there is that.

Trove had a dungeon making system but it was not only outside the game itself, it was more a system where you had to submit the dungeon layout to the developers, and they would decide if it was cool enough or not to put in the game.

thats why a review and publish system is needed for such a feature.  And yes the amount of quality may match what developers can do. But what if you developers of a MMO with large content droughts? Those few quality player made Dungeons sound better than absolutely nothing right?

Ungood

MMOExposed said:

Ungood said:

The problem you have with Dungeon Makers, is there are too many trolls that will make "Push button - get loot" style dungeons, so there is very little demand for players to invest in their crafting and creation.

I believe Cryptic after running a Dungeon Maker on CoH and Neverwinter, said that the volume of production of Good or high voted Dungeon content was not any better than what they could make on their own, and resulted in a huge amount of really bad creations that did nothing but take up server space, so much so, that it didn't add anything of real content value to the game itself for the work it took to maintain the system.

So there is that.

Trove had a dungeon making system but it was not only outside the game itself, it was more a system where you had to submit the dungeon layout to the developers, and they would decide if it was cool enough or not to put in the game.

thats why a review and publish system is needed for such a feature.  And yes the amount of quality may match what developers can do. But what if you developers of a MMO with large content droughts? Those few quality player made Dungeons sound better than absolutely nothing right?

According to Cryptic, "Meh.. not really" (paraphrased) 

The reality is, simply put, the most creative/best dungeon makers were not very prolific, and were VERY few and far between.

But, it sounds good on paper, and Cryptic thought the same thing you did.. I mean.. free content, made by players. Seems too good a plan to be true, and it was, which is why they don't do it anymore.

Because, while I am not sure the official sanitized reasons they put up that no doubt were designed not to hurt anyone's feelings, The end result was, It needed a lot of control factors to keep things clean and neat, and long story short, as it stood, at least according to Cryptic, it was a wash in cost effective for them to just use that same Dev time to professionally make the content themselves.

Here is a decent article on the subject.

iixviiiix

MMOExposed said:

iixviiiix said:

Why do you need a dungeon maker ?

For PvE MMOs, it has the potential for unlimited amount of content to play if the system is designed to give players tools for making dungeons, NPC placement and NPC skill trigger event controls, and The RP elements

 All while having a good filter and review system to weed out the good Dungeons from the bad, to be Published to the community for play.       

Example of how this could help. Lets take Guildwars2 for example.  It has PvE content droughts.  Now add this Dungeon/Raid maker tool and a review/publish system .      
       
Creative players can make fancy Dungeons and Raids instance maps, with NPC placement with control over when the NPC trigger what in combat and the timers for the fights. Players can choose if they want to make a 5 man dungeon or a strike mission or a raid dungeon.  The creator can decorate the dungeon to look unique and create interesting set up. Now imagine many players making these and submitting them to the developers for approval in quality  to add developer determined rewards to these. This would be an unlimited number of content that its mind-blowing.  But players need the proper tools and a system that can do this.

Well , main reason why most maker failled . Too complex , and don't know why they even need it .

instead of dungeon maker , i think it's better to make farm maker .

for example

You plant a seed that will grow into loots box on an open field , and monster will come to protect the seed from you and other player .

No trick no trap , just killing .

Po_gg

iixviiiix said:

Well , main reason why most maker failled . Too complex , and don't know why they even need it .

instead of dungeon maker , i think it's better to make farm maker .

for example

You plant a seed that will grow into loots box on an open field , and monster will come to protect the seed from you and other player .

No trick no trap , just killing .

Because it's boring and games have more than enough combat already?

There were such kill/xp farm creations in Architect and Foundry, but were fast rooted out by Cryptic (and Paragon in CoH's case after the break-up), since the main goal was creativity and content creation.

I'd debate on complex, in my experience they were more than enough user-friendly, while remaining really flexible editors. I believe my first short project in Neverwinter was completed under an hour (sure I've had the experience from STO and just wanted to check the new features they promoted with Neverwinter's version)

STO fared better in creativity than Neverwinter (probably the playerbase difference), had a ton of amazing stories within the Foundry, a group of players have made a whole season once...

I really like Cryptic, but that was a shameful year in their track record: axing the Foundry, Mod16 in Neverwinter, removing the sub from CO...

(not to mention the announcement of making an action game from Magic, with only a slight hint left in it for cards)

ringdany

Neverwinter Nights 2002 and its successor both had the DM Toolset and this let you build you own dungeons. There's thousands of them publicly available from creators all over the world. Very many great dungeons and mods. Many of them were the foundation for team pvp that we have today in mmos.