I have the idea of the millenia, its not gonna be an easy one I admit, work will be required (Both player and developer) as everything in life but please bear with me as I will explain everything about it and how is it gonna be a feature that will give players a ton of new content and hours of fun.

 

THE IDEA:

 

By reading the title you already get where this is heading. The point is to create a game system that gives players the tools to build and script quest scenarios. I will elaborate onto how would this work PATIENCE!!

DEVELOPMENT:

 

If you are not familiar/interested/patient with game development programing and logics to a point you can't even understand what T7 tries to tell you, please skip this part unless you want your head to explode. I WARNED YOU.

SWTOR has a huge headstart for this idea to work. The Stronghold system, tons of decorations and personnel for them, lots of new companions and that recent Rishi stronghold that allows players to set up custom PVP warzone games.

Implementing this idea is half work now.

The point is to build a prescripted "WHEN/DO" programming system players can get access to at their strongholds which allows them to script their stronghold and decorations.

Ever tried Project Spark/RPG Maker scripting system? If not please take a look at these videos of how it IS possible to build a scripting system that even people non familiar with scripting language can understand (With the required patience of course)

 

How this is taken into SWTOR? Well its obvious. Lets say you are programming that sexy Human Bounty Hunter (Female) I just love so much. And you want to make a quest where she must fight your players.

She would need a database page where you must set some data into her like giving her an internal name, a display name, a team, an aggro setting (if it would spawn as a green/yellow/red character) stats like the HP ammount, useable skills (Devs you can make avalible some skill presets from already ingame characters for easier use)

After that you could script her like:

WHEN: [PLAYER CHARACTER (Checks if the triggerer is a Player...)] > [ENTERS RANGE (Performs a check if the actor is now in a predefined range)] > [OF (Just "of"...)] > [ME (Meaning the range of the Human Bounty Hunter (Female) we are programing)]

DO: [ME] > [bECOME ENEMY (Becomes a red character)] > [OF] > [PLAYER CHARACTER (Every actor that is a player character.)]

This script will make her become red as soon as a player gets into its range and aggro at them. With more script labels you could make her aggro at a specific player if that player is set to be into another team on the database.

She could be scripted to follow you and make her an ally (NOT ACTUAL COMPANION) like on the recent stories where a non companion NPC asists you.

 

Like the Rishi stronghold it would require a terminal players have to click in order to run the scripted adventure so they dont spawn on a stronghold with a lot of red NPCs or griffing stuff like that (That terminal could even become a free decoration so players can set a start point on their strongholds for their quests)

 

Quests doesn't need to be all tank and spank quests, creative people could program thier furniture to hide some some secret jedi tome and have players try to find it checking your rooms for clues at messages displayed when you pass your mouse over a decoration.

They could even script their poor Jollo to SAY a clue in a message on the Chatbox.

 

You could script a conversation (scripted conversations would be KOTOR styled for obvious reasons, bassically no voices are present since this conversation is made by you [Maybe devs could add some already ingame voice sounds that could be triggered so its not entirely mute] also cuz KOTOR conversations allow for more than 3 choices.) with a Sith you have to have him RP a master willing to teach your players the secrets of the dark side.

 

The possibilities are insanely infinite.

 

THE PROS:

• Always new playable content to enjoy with friends and guildmates.
  
• RP'ers will be Hyped to take their sessions to the next level.
  
• Player created quests would keep people entertained till new official content.
  
• Will encourage people to buy more decorations.
  
• This will most likely incentivate fellow players to come back.
  
• Would be an awsome feature to make contests for.
  
• Will be an awsome feature that will give more use to strongholds.
  
• Still a better option than letting your playerbase hanging for months repeating the same story quests and content over and over again until the next 1 hour lasting story expansion is released.
  
• Content creators would most certainly love to feature their own created scenarios as well as their community favorites in their channels and social media providing more quality content for them as well as more advertising for the game.
  

 

THE CONS:

• As stated before this is a huge feature and will require work from both the devs who need to develop it and the players who will need to script their adventures (altough some people like me do have a lot of fun building this kind of things) But nothing comes without some effort, right?
  
• While they do will be able to play other people's creations. People lacking patience and logic wont be able to program anything.
  

FAQ:

• Wont people abuse this to grind experience and credits?
  -This is intended to be an RP enjoyment feature only and NOT a cheating feature, NO REWARDS OF ANY KIND should be allowed to be scripted to avoid this, maybe the devs can make some achievements that unlock some titles after you play/develop a lot of quests, but thats it.
   
  
• The NPC I need for the adventure of my dreams is not a personnel decoration in game!
  -While allowing people to create customs and port them into game as decorations is a most likely impossible task than not only would counter the PRO of encouraging people to get more personnel and decorations. Maybe devs could allow us to override the default armor of the Personnel (the way companions and the outfit designer works) so you can dress your personnels as anything you need. And it will boost the sales of CM Armor sets and collection unlocks.
  

 

That said, I will continue to update and keep shaping this thread. Thanks for patiently reading up to this point before throwing stones.

Edited May 14, 2019 by Saito_Hiraga
Added to the thread

Like STO foundry? I approve, great idea!

Besides the RP value it would also be a nice way to wait for more Dev stuff content, actually have those companion interactions we all wanted to have, the possibilities for this on SWTOR are endless.

Cool! Edited June 22, 2022 by xordevoreaux

Like STO foundry? I approve, great idea!

Besides the RP value it would also be a nice way to wait for more Dev stuff content, actually have those companion interactions we all wanted to have, the possibilities for this on SWTOR are endless.

 

Foundry popped into my head as soon as I read the ‘idea’ section, too

 

And all Foundry is, is a very limited and stripped down version of the exact same tools the STO developers use, with a big pile of prefabs for building custom maps, and a way to access the player-made areas/missions in-game.

CoX had the Architect, which allowed players to create their own mission instances. EQ2 has a quest builder as well.

 

To be honest, I don't think BW could pull something like this off if they wanted to.

That would be FANTASTIC

 

 

Edited January 15, 2019 by BenduKundalini

I think the Missions should offer rewards. Just set up a credit bank for it. As long as there are still credits in the bank, people completing the Mission keep getting rewarded. It's up to the Mission's creator to keep the bank full. That way, it's not really farming, because the credits were already earned.

 

I'd also like to see a way to link Missions in a chain.

 

This would open up some interesting Mission designs, such as lengthy scavenger hunts that reward the bank full of credits to the first person who completes the series of challenges.

 

Even a single Mission with Item rewards drawn from a bank could be fun. You could do a super easy Mission (such as just talking to the NPC) that rewards an item, but is not a repeatable mission, in order to give everyone who visits a Life Day gift.

Edited January 17, 2019 by Xina_LA

Foundry popped into my head as soon as I read the ‘idea’ section, too

 

And all Foundry is, is a very limited and stripped down version of the exact same tools the STO developers use, with a big pile of prefabs for building custom maps, and a way to access the player-made areas/missions in-game.

 

I think we all thought 'Oooh Foundry' reading the idea section. In some ways I like the idea since I've played through some really well done player mades in both STO and Neverwinter, but for each good one I've been in, there's been about 2 or 3 that turned out to be someone's really messed up fetish thing. So, while I think it's a good idea to free up content demands on the devs to be able to work on stuff like bugs along with new content, it will need some sort of policing. I also like the idea of being able to donate to the content creator in either credits or cartel coins if you really liked the mission they made.

 

I'm not a fan of the suggestion of the content creator needing to provide the rewards. I'm not sure how Foundrys handle this sort of thing, but requiring the content creator to provide the rewards means they're going to be the one stuck grinding for rewards especially if they make a mission that becomes very popular. I don't really see a problem with someone farming missions if that's how they want to spend all thier time in game. It's not all that different from farming a flashpoint or ops.

 

I do feel there's ample enough creative people playing the game who could come up with some excellent ideas, but I'm also thinking of the practical aspect. Considering how much of the code here's held together by spit and wishful thinking, would it be able to handle a Foundry without breaking something else? How would voiced dialog be handled, or cutscenes?

 

There's some potential here but it would need some heavy discussion and testing to be made feasible.

I have no idea how Foundry handles loot or mission rewards, I’ve never actually tried using it. A good option would be limiting the types of mission rewards, and have XP/credits be automatically calculated based on the number/types of enemies encountered.

 

Like, say mission rewards might be limited to decorations or toys, with the value determined by a calculation based on the size of the map, the number of enemies, the number and length of conversations (toss in the number of ‘player response’ points in those conversations for good measure). The bigger/longer/more involved the mission, the more and better the decorations it gives out.

Edited January 18, 2019 by VelvetSanity

I planned this to be an RP tool that would keep players entertained with community created content, so I really didn't meant to give away rewards to players for doing this cuz people will most surely exploit this by creating easy beatable content for people to grind credits or experience.

Even if the rewards are only credits and XP calculated by the player kill count, time invested, etc. It would be really easy for exploiters to just build an automated system where you may leave your character afk for hours in a position that beats the AFK checker, kills tons of enemies that mad spawn at you and then just come back after a couple hours to just click a terminal or something to finish quest and get rewarded from doing literally nothing.

Take GTA Online's creator mode as an example, its mostly just money machines rockstar had to deal with just because they allowed for players to earn cash for playing player created modes.

 

Giving away rewards on this sort of system would trigger a lot of cheating that BW would prefer to avoid, best option to do that is not to give rewards at all and keep this as a tool to create actual enjoyable content and not just buchs of farming devices BW would need to track down every day.

There has to be rewards of some sort otherwise as much as new content can be seen as a reward of some sort, people are going to want something more whether it's a decoration or a batch of vendorable greys. If someone's going to spend time grinding player created content for achievements/credits...etc... I say let them since while it's not how I'd play the game, it's how they want to play the game. If they're going to go the bots route, then ban them for exploiting like every other game does with the ones who bot exploit for credit selling.

One thing to keep in mind is that player-created missions will have to be instanced, so certain limitations can be placed, such as no respawning of enemies.

Hmm. I thought no respawning on enemies was the only option since anything Foundry I've played never had respawns happen.

Hmm. I thought no respawning on enemies was the only option since anything Foundry I've played never had respawns happen.

 

Not "respawn" exactly. Problem is if they code a "SPAWN" machine. Trust me, if you allow for rewards players will exploit it right away and the feature instead of becoming the source of awsome and creative player adventures will become a massive bunch of grinding machines Maybe what Xina said could be used, if rewards should be granted it should be from the creator's wallet or inventory.

Thread Updated

Thread Updated

It's a really nifty idea. Many people used the Starcraft game engine to make custom missions that were amazing. Some of them involved thinking out of the box in ways I hadn't imagined, like Zerg Football. That could work well here, too.

 

My only concern is that most of the uses that I think are best for RP involve adding text to the game so the NPCs can have conversations. For example:

 

* A guild stronghold can have an NPC that gives you an introduction to the guild. If it can detect if you're a member or not, it could answer questions about the guild for non-members, while talking about guild events and rules to members.

* NPCs in a stronghold could give updates on an ongoing RP plot, tell jokes, advertise upcoming social events, and so forth.

 

Unfortunately, that means letting people type whatever text they want. It will take approximately 0.35 seconds for someone to come up with an eRP bot or hate-spewing bigot that gets SWTOR sued the moment a child chats with it.

 

I'm not nearly as excited about the idea of programming NPCs to fight, building my stronghold into a kind of dungeon. I would be interested enough if they create NPCs that are always enemies, which we can place on the map. No programming, just proximity-triggered mobs.

It's a really nifty idea. Many people used the Starcraft game engine to make custom missions that were amazing. Some of them involved thinking out of the box in ways I hadn't imagined, like Zerg Football. That could work well here, too.

 

My only concern is that most of the uses that I think are best for RP involve adding text to the game so the NPCs can have conversations. For example:

 

* A guild stronghold can have an NPC that gives you an introduction to the guild. If it can detect if you're a member or not, it could answer questions about the guild for non-members, while talking about guild events and rules to members.

* NPCs in a stronghold could give updates on an ongoing RP plot, tell jokes, advertise upcoming social events, and so forth.

 

Unfortunately, that means letting people type whatever text they want. It will take approximately 0.35 seconds for someone to come up with an eRP bot or hate-spewing bigot that gets SWTOR sued the moment a child chats with it.

 

I'm not nearly as excited about the idea of programming NPCs to fight, building my stronghold into a kind of dungeon. I would be interested enough if they create NPCs that are always enemies, which we can place on the map. No programming, just proximity-triggered mobs.

 

Crystal generation is exactly what profanity filters exist for. And still there's ERP, as well as namecallings, swears and child innappropiate content on general chats from time to time, its no different what someone types on a bot to say than to what it is saying it by themselves on a chat.

Its simply solved by disallowing the use of certain words and variations in the text input the same way they censor the game chat.

I love this idea.

 

But it also got my memory banks a-whirring. I've no doubt people will correct me if I'm wrong, but I *think* SWG (spoken in hushed tones) had RP tools, where you could order up assets in the game to create your own stories for your friends/guild?

 

I seem to remember meeting someone who'd ordered some murderbots to put around their guild house, only to find that the bots were too hard for their friends and they were all effectively locked out of their own compound because the bots just killed them when they got anywhere near it. I've always hoped this story was true because it made me laugh like anything at the time (and since tbh.)

 

So yes, I'd love extensive RP tools for players.

 

+1

 

Edit: P.S - I'm not sure rewards *are* a requirement. So many people tell their own stories through RP in this game, just for it's own sake, I don't see why this would be any different, the reward being the system itself and playing it. But - and I'm just running flags up poles here - why not make them time / session based? So, if you have used the system for so many hours/days, the group will get access to more/better RP assets they can use next time?

 

I do love this idea.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Jazulfi

Great idea, I loved it!

 

With an RP Quest Stor the game would certainly gain more longevity and make players more active. The awards for logging could even be linked to them, or the player could receive a special award.

 

Bioware needs to implement something similar urgently, because now that E.A is no longer the only company in SW hands, another company can create another SW MMO and compete directly with SWTOR. On Steam SWTOR had an average of 250k simultaneous players, being part of the top 100, now there are not even 100k players, sad that, but blame for the lack of content ...

Edited March 25, 2021 by Lord_Arawn

There is so much content... but they keep putting systems in place, asking us to do specific things each day and week. I don't mean planetary dailies, I mean the upcoming rewards system. They say it'll only take 30-60 minutes each day, plus another 60-90 minutes once a week to unlock rewards. I don't play more than 8 hours a week, so it wouldn't leave time for anything else.

 

Dailies you can progress whenever you want, but the login and activity rewards systems have tracks that reset if you don't peg the meter to get to the Big Reward, so I find it very restrictive.

 

I'd much rather be building mini-quests in my strongholds and sharing them with friends. At least that's something I could do at my own pace!

Edited March 26, 2021 by Xina_LA

There is so much content... but they keep putting systems in place, asking us to do specific things each day and week. I don't mean planetary dailies, I mean the upcoming rewards system. They say it'll only take 30-60 minutes each day, plus another 60-90 minutes once a week to unlock rewards. I don't play more than 8 hours a week, so it wouldn't leave time for anything else.

 

Dailies you can progress whenever you want, but the login and activity rewards systems have tracks that reset if you don't peg the meter to get to the Big Reward, so I find it very restrictive.

 

I'd much rather be building mini-quests in my strongholds and sharing them with friends. At least that's something I could do at my own pace!

 

I would definitely play them I still support the idea of having more sandbox options in this game.

Here to remind this is still something that would give more live to the galaxy and more stuff to keep players engaged in the wait for more content.

By reading the title you already get where this is heading. The point is to create a game system that gives players the tools to build and script quest scenarios.

 

I really like this idea! I love the idea of scripting a quest where your male character must romance 10 male NPCs in a gay bar on Mek Sha so yes, or go gay-bar hopping across ten planets, so yes! Let's make this a thing!

 

Oh, but wait. I just thought: such a quest might get reported because some people might not agree with its content, and then Bioware would be forced to hire quest scenario police to make sure the ESRB rating doesn't go total AO for such player-made quests, and um, yeah when there's so many other places new employees would be better utilized, like content and bug fixes.

 

I take it all back. Bad idea.

Edited June 22, 2022 by xordevoreaux

I really like this idea! I love the idea of scripting a quest where your male character must romance 10 male NPCs in a gay bar on Mek Sha so yes, or go gay-bar hopping across ten planets, so yes! Let's make this a thing!

 

Oh, but wait. I just thought: such a quest might get reported because some people might not agree with its content, and then Bioware would be forced to hire quest scenario police to make sure the ESRB rating doesn't go total AO for such player-made quests, and um, yeah when there's so many other places new employees would be better utilized, like content and bug fixes.

 

I take it all back. Bad idea.

 

This game set on a galaxy where racism, war, cruelty, slavery and skimpy sexy aliens pole dancing in the cantinas are featured everywhere and conversations that can end in sexual innuendo remains pretty "T for Teens" if you ask me. Also let me remind you SWTOR already has an ERP community going around the "kids" you sarcastically "defend" and people scamming, dealing with real money and talking about adult topics on general chat every often. Has the game gone into legal issues for this? no, has the ESRB adjusted the rating? do you recall that little line that states: "Online interactions ARE NOT rated by the ESRB?".

 

These "Players will use it for sexual stuff. Bad idea" arguments are a retarded excuse to not get ACTUAL CONTENT into game because this is ALSO considered content for the game and in greater quantity than what we are getting 1 or 2 times a year. Of course there will be people who will TRY to build retarded stuff like that, the same way there's already people doing it right now. But you prettend to obscure the huge ammount of actual serious content creators and the quality content they could deliver to the game with just a bunch of dudes who are too lazy to even finish scripting a quest like the one you are "too worried" about. Take fortnite for example. Its a teen game with the same ESRB rating as SWTOR played mostly by kids and they do have scripting tools for content creators who deliver tons of game modes for people and I don't see them having an issue with them being all hot lads uploading sexual themed islands. What about roblox? Scripters got tons of liberty in that platform and I don't see it overrun with sexual content, I see it overun by people playing shooting games, dressings games, survival games.

You have to be braindead to make a mess out of something so insignificant, specially since I doubt you actually care about the game getting content with such sarcastic opinions.

Edited June 22, 2022 by Saito_Hiraga