Lessons from Mission Architect

An interesting and lengthy article by Eric on Elder Game (cited by BoingBoing, via Ginny) on the experience of CoX and user-generated content. Bottom line — Paragon ought to have known this was going to have problems, from past times when it’s been tried.

When designers would bring up this feature (and yes, it’s been brought up on every game I’ve worked on), the veteran designers would tell them, “That’s going to backfire tremendously. People will exploit it to make the easiest possible missions, and you won’t like the results.” This is always countered by some variety of “you can’t possibly know that for sure!” But actually, working on a live team teaches that lesson very quickly. From AC2, I learned:

  • Players subconsciously calculate the cost-to-benefit ratio of content when deciding if it’s fun. For most MMO players, more reward = more fun. (This is a bitch of a lesson to learn, too. “My custom-scripted quest was so incredibly cool! Why aren’t players doing the quest? Well, yes, the reward was a little sub-par, but so what? You’re telling me they aren’t playing it because of THAT? Players can’t be THAT shallow!” Ha ha, newb.)
  • Players aren’t objective reviewers. If you ask them to grade content, they will grade more rewarding content higher than other content even if it isn’t as good by other metrics (like plot, writing, annoyance factor, or originality).
  • Many players spend incredible amounts of time finding ways to min-max the system so they can get more power for less effort. That’s part of the fun for many players. So there are tens of thousands of people actively looking for mistakes, loopholes, and gray areas in your game. All the time.

“Yes yes,” the other designers would say, “those lessons from the live team are interesting, but that isn’t exactly the same situation as user-created content, is it? Nobody can say for sure if user-created quests are problematic.” Maybe, just maybe, users could be convinced to grade content fairly. Maybe they would discover how fun it is to run really well-plotted quests instead of just trying to level up as fast as possible. Maybe players can change their stripes. Nope. MMORPG players are as predictable as the sunrise.

As the article continues, as soon as Mission Architect came out, people were coming up with min-maxed systems. The Devs have since come out to try to stop it, by punishing “cheaty” content — but then the issue becomes defining that. (In many ways it’s like managing a forum or mailing list and define what type of content violates the terms of conduct and what doesn’t.)

The Devs have decided not to define what is cheaty and what is not, causing a “chilling effect” by deliberately not creating clear guidelines beyond the vague “Disregard for the risk and/or time to reward ratio.”

This is startlingly unhelpful to people trying to figure out how to make ban-safe, but fun, content. To keep this fiasco from chilling the buzz, they need to publish guidelines about what is and isn’t “fair”, or better yet, code this fairness into their tools. As I write this, pick-up groups are running user-generated quests consisting of nothing but max-level boss monsters, so that doesn’t seem to be “unfair”… of course, since there’s no guidelines, who knows if those quests are about to get banned? Since deletion only happens after an “abusive” quest is reported to customer service, it could just be a matter of time before any quest you play gets banned and your hard work gets reversed. Worse yet, since the rules are secret and enforced by numerous people, it is very likely that they will be enforced semi-arbitrarily, and will tend to become more aggressive over time.

Worse, it’s not clear that the enforcement itself will clear, either. What lessons will actually be learned, how clear will the feedback be, etc. And how clearly will it be reported? “I had a friend of a friend who got banned …”

More importantly, the author says, this won’t resolve the problem, because players will always design content to maximize gain at minimized risk. Unless the tools lock that down intrinsically, there will be distortions of the risk/time : reward ratio, and the Devs will be unhappy. Throwing internal staff at the problem to review all content is hardly cost-effective (nor useful for players). And, of course, the more attention they have to pay to this, the greater the opportunity costs for other content.

In the end, it may (sadly) turn out that Mission Architect is as big a white elephant (and real estate eyesore) as the Arenas — used by a small population, but a tribute to how what people say they want (and how the Devs decide is best to give it to them) don’t always work out as planned … especially if lessons of the past are ignored.

6 thoughts on “Lessons from Mission Architect”

  1. That’s an interesting article.

    Just last night I was in the mood to do some good AE missions, so I looked into the content that had multiple 5-star ratings. Silly me! Farms and some of the crappiest arcs I’ve ever seen in my life were the result. How does this stuff get 5 stars? Friends/SG mates and multiple accounts, most likely.

    I have encountered good arcs. Almost anything by @Hertz is going to be good. “Sea City” was a terrific arc that had zero plays in the two-weeks of its published existence before I found it.

    You know, that might be the key. Favoriting architects whose work you like so their new stuff pops up for you when it’s available.

    People sometimes suggest on the forums that all rewards should be removed from MA. Or maybe just leave the Inf’ but give nothing else. That’d be an excellent way to make sure very few people ever use it.

  2. I found the Dev’s Choice awards were pretty good, the couple I’ve done. Once I have mine run through one more group, I’ll be publishing it non-DRAFT, too. 🙂

    I agree, the audience ranking is pretty poor. I’d avoid 1s and 2s, probably, but anything higher is a mixed bag.

    (For the record, I didn’t rank any farm mish I ran over a 3.)

    I’ll make a note of your reference here, thanks.

  3. I like that.

    Yeah, I need to play with the MA stuff more. I’ve been still running “normal” content, and want to get a better feel for it.

  4. Just an FYI- the Repeat Offenders folks have been marking their mishes with 7662 so you can find them in the search just by entering 7662 in the search field.

    Check out my Paragon City Emergency Broadcasting System arc, but you’ll need a team because it has GMs in the first mish! =)

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