There are bunch of bases in this game that are not as good as they should be. I won't get into which ones or why here, but I doubt many out there would disagree with my opening statement. Many games out there have invited community created content and made contests out of it. From map making in RTS to entire arenas in FPS and so on. Would it be at all possible to put the tools out there? Let us players have at it and see if we can come up with good base designs. If for example somebody thinks the Starship Troopers base that is The Stronghold (and I said I wasn't going to name one, well I'm a liar) could be a lot better with certain modifications, give us the tools to make that happen, and if we can get, say 20 people to vouch for it then it gets some time on the test server. Then the community could talk about it, and by that I mean take the poor ambitious fool who put himself and his work out there and rip him a new one because that's how these things work. Who knows, maybe through it all we get some better content. Is this a good idea, or am I asking for something that's not realistically doable?
Considering all the buildings are alike, it is very obvious they have a big box with templates lying about - makes sense from an efficiency standpoint, even though not for variation -, should be easy enough to give a map creator kit to interested players.
As far as I'm aware the map tools aren't incredibly easy for players to use. But let's imagine they were for a while, how would you use this system? You don't want to just ram any old base anywhere. You need to give players access to a base/area and let them do their thing. Then you have to look over every design, figure out their intent and battleflow, check for sneaky murder-area's that the designer has created for himself (say a hidden teleporter to an inaccessible but advantageous bunker), check for potential accidents like holes in the terrain or unintentional dead ends etc. For each. And every. Single. Base idea. Then you have to select one of all those and let players loose on it and monitor it's effects, how it is received and if players might find unintended easymode strategies. Perhaps a different setup could work: - First you select an area or base that is lacking anyway. - ask players for design options. Things like secondary objectives, walls/no walls, teleporters etc. - select one option, then tell players to design a base with those design criteria. This makes it possible to cut down on the amount of the designs send in. -test the one you like the most. Although I think its "easier" to ask players for drawn designs of an area with drawn arrows for battleflow and objectives, then select one to build by the devs themselves.
I remember they had a contest to rename one of the bases on Hossin. The best name was Vanu lubrification depot, but as you may have noticed by now the team had other ideas. I do feel players should be able to present ideas of bases, cosmetics, weapons, etc. That's why these forums exist! Do I trust the devs or even fellow players to decide which designs/suggestions are best for the game...prolly not.
If somebody used this system to hide advantages for themselves they would be found during testing, because people are thorough like that. Certainly the person who tried to use a system like this to effectively cheat would lose all credibility, and the 20 people who vouched would be under a microscope. Given they would likely be from the same outfit as the player who tried to sneak a cheat in (because that would be the easiest way to find supporters) this player would then massively lose standing in the outfit, and possibly be out of it. This would be on the same level as conclusive proof of cheating by a member of a more prominent skillfit. Even if somehow they hid their personal advantage well enough to not get discovered, it would certainly get discovered when they tried to use it live. Basically, I think you're getting scared of a non-issue here.
I could design some bases along the lines that many people here would cheer for because that would be "good". But I know they would create ultra-farmable area's. It would be an "accident". After all it's a popular idea right? Who knew it could get so much out of hand... Ofcourse the people sending in the idea's could easily use character names of non-main characters. Letting them farm to their hearts content. After all they were one of the people who reported it (after some people reported it already so you could milk it) and you are just a pillar of the community helping out testing things thoroughly right? Now off leveling another character far enough to allow sending in some loopholed designs...
It was more like demigan said, perhaps a HESH or A2G main designing an infantry bases with "accidental" open areas or whatever.
I hear what you're saying, I see the hazard, but I think I've put enough safety mechanisms in place to address it. -20 people have to put their reputation on the line. Not to say that the thing is flawless on first draft, but that it is a sincere effort. -it goes to test server before it goes live. Just because somebody IVI mains doesn't mean they don't know how to play hesh or atg, and given that the test material has a real chance of getting added to the game they are very motivated to test for flaws. -even if a flawed product does end up going live, which wouldn't start being a problem just because of community created content, it could be patched later. An example of fixing after the fact would what Wrel did with TI Alloys before he closed it. He added extra wall segments so the hesh meanies would stop "trolling" the IVI exclusive players by using equipment for its intended purpose. He fixed it so well that IVIs never wanted to leave TI Alloys. My point is that the launch version of a base is not cast in stone. My other point is that flawed content wouldn't *start* being a problem because of community created content.
I appreciate your enthusiasm. But you seem to forget there's entire outfits who's reputation is trolling - and they're quite proud of that. I highly doubt that people who abuse such cheesy mechanics really care about their reputation in a good way. This is quite evident how each time there's a discussion about addressing a2g or the likes, these players immediately stomp on everyone, threating the devs to pull their memberships and attacking any member of the community simply stating reality. It's like they all collectively have a stroke at the mere thought of someone taking away their no skill low risk infinite reward farming machines, and then make up whatever exorbitant excuses why their playstyles are totally balanced, everyone else is simply whining cuz they suck and in fact they should be buffed, not nerfed. They are the most toxic people of the community, all united towards the same goal. Their main purpose in the game is to farm salt, and because they can't do so through skill, they pick up whatever broken mechanics are in the game and defend them to the death. Make no mistake, they all know it's broken. But they can't even fathom what they would do had they needed to really on skill to farm salt. And with more and more reasonable players leaving, we're left with more and more of this type of player. So unfortunately, I think it's very possible that such outfits or like-minded people carry out these designs in favor of their playstyles, and with enough backing the devs wouldn't want to do much about it. There's very few players I would trust to design bases with little/no bias, and that number shrinks every month. Dude there's a billion bugs, features, etc that were going to be "patched later". Let me know when the temporary Hossin bases or the temporary lattice system get patched. Fair enough. I'm sure it would reduce the dev workload by a bit and the bases would probably be better than the ones dev are making anyways (based on esamir bases at least).
Maybe it's easier to base the reputation on time invested. A newby doesn't have business designing bases yet. Fresh idea's are great and all but having an understanding of infantry, vehicles, aircraft and faction capabilities is an important part of making a base. So if a player has invested X hours into the game (which could ve days or weeks of in-game playtime) they can submit their base idea's. This reduces the chance that they'll put their character on the line, even if they did it would take another X hours to be able to create another base design. A design that has to be good enough to be picked so that requires a pretty big time investment as well. It still requires fully accessible and useable map tools with enough tutorials for players to use it.
CAD have unfortunately a very steep learning curve (I am not talking about drawing a cube, I can do that as well) and tend to be expensive. Licensing them to third parties could be difficult if not impossible. I would not be surprised to have PS2 bases built with a variety of additional tools (some hand-made as well, so protected by IP) to speed up the building process: interiors, random elements, placement on the surface, aging, optimization steps to reduce the poly count, adding properties to have players moving on and inside them (anybody remembers the shattered warpgate and pass-through floors?) ... The idea is good. But difficult to implement. They have problems even validating a simple thing such as camo, much less a fully fledged base.
I think that the OP isn't asking for an asset creator, but rather give players access to existing buildings and assets to alter existing bases.
As Lego bricks you mean? That could work then, players would only need something ultra basic to snapping building blocks together.
And that would kinda limit the creativity. We'd basically be seeing the same bases just rearranged differently, nothing actually new or interesting.
