Poll: What are your overall feelings on user-made content?

[remnant_phoenix]

So I realized the other day that I'm pretty indifferent towards the idea of user-made content.

Skyrim mods, user-made levels in Little Big Planet, and some of the crazy stuff that gets made in Minecraft sound really cool to me...in theory. Games that allow users the tools to create their own stuff are definitely a good thing.

But then when I actually sit down with modding tools to make my own user-made content, I find I'd rather play something someone else made. Also, when I play through someone's user-made content I generally find myself preferring the game content that the original developers made. A few months ago when Skyrim was all people would talk about, anytime the subject of "mods" came up I became completely disengaged.

So...yeah, I'm happy that user-made stuff exists, but I'm not very interested in it personally.

Let's discuss.

 

[zombieshark6666]

I guess I would like it if I were addicted to a game and needed just something more. Otherwise, I'm not interested.

 

[Otaku World Order]

The strangest thing I've noticed about user made content is that one of the staples, custom maps for multiplayer in an FPS, seems to have disappeared. Maybe it still exists on PCs, but consoles seem to have dropped the idea altogether (If I recall, the port of Far Cry on the 360 came with a map creation tool).

I know a large part of the reason this has been dropped is 'cause EA and Activision make a lot of money on map packs, but couldn't they give us something?

 

[C F]

The strangest thing I've noticed about user made content is that one of the staples, custom maps for multiplayer in an FPS, seems to have disappeared. Maybe it still exists on PCs, but consoles seem to have dropped the idea altogether (If I recall, the port of Far Cry on the 360 came with a map creation tool).

I know a large part of the reason this has been dropped is 'cause EA and Activision make a lot of money on map packs, but couldn't they give us something?

One of the reasons why I like Halo so much is that they introduced the Forge. Originally it was just used for moving guns, spawn points, and objectives around, but Foundry and Sandbox maps get a bit more comprehensive, providing you with a more-or-less blank slate and the objects required to make your own map layout. Come Halo: Reach, players were brought the Forge World on-disk. While it still doesn't utilize the complete set of tools I'd prefer, you can definitely get creative with it. It's one of the reasons I like the later Halo games so much.

Oddly enough, I don't prefer much user-made content beyond that. The amateur-quality of some mods generally put me off. I'm not saying there aren't any good ones out there; there most certainly are. I just don't bother most of the time.

 

[Otaku World Order]

One of the reasons why I like Halo so much is that they introduced the Forge. Originally it was just used for moving guns, spawn points, and objectives around, but Foundry and Sandbox maps get a bit more comprehensive, providing you with a more-or-less blank slate and the objects required to make your own map layout. Come Halo: Reach, players were brought the Forge World on-disk. While it still doesn't utilize the complete set of tools I'd prefer, you can definitely get creative with it. It's one of the reasons I like the later Halo games so much.

Oddly enough, I don't prefer much user-made content beyond that. The amateur-quality of some mods generally put me off. I'm not saying there aren't any good ones out there; there most certainly are. I just don't bother most of the time.

That's an interesting feature. I don't play Halo, so I didn't know about that. I did hear that the PC version of Halo 2 came with a full array of creation tools, but I don't know how much came out of that.

Of course with all user mad content, you're going to have to sift through to find the good stuff. Still, having level creation tools might have saved a few games. Like that FPS Shadowrun game.

 

[hazabaza1]

When it's done well it's cool.
It's just a shame everyone focuses on making massive tits on the all the women rather than something cool to have. Fucking tits.

 

[C F]

That's an interesting feature. I don't play Halo, so I didn't know about that. I did hear that the PC version of Halo 2 came with a full array of creation tools, but I don't know how much came out of that.

Of course with all user mad[e] content, you're going to have to sift through to find the good stuff. Still, having level creation tools might have saved a few games. Like that FPS Shadowrun game.

Forge debuted on the console exclusive Halo 3. Step back a generation, and you'll find Halo 2 for the Xbox had no such tool, sadly.

Sturgeon's law makes that second part a given. But Halo 3 had a thing called Bungie Favorites where you could check out some screenshots, maps and game variants that Bungie employees like. Reach goes a bit further and comes with a menu browser where you can search for maps via keywords and sort the results by Most Downloaded or Top Favorited to see what others liked. Not that I ever use it, because most of the time I just make my own stuff anyway. I have reverse-engineered other people's maps to learn a couple tricks, though.

I've never played Shadowrun, but I'll take your word for it. Level creators are awesome tools. Halo happens to be a good shooter that doesn't need saving, and as such, the Forge just makes it all the sweeter.
But I digress.

 

[Otaku World Order]

I've never played Shadowrun, but I'll take your word for it. Level creators are awesome tools. Halo happens to be a good shooter that doesn't need saving, and as such, the Forge just makes it all the sweeter.
But I digress.

The original Shadowrun was an RPG, so a lot of people were confused when it turned up on the 360 and PC as a multiplayer FPS. There was no single player campaign just bot matches and multiplayer.

The thing is it did include quite a bit of customization. You played as one of four races (human, elf, troll and dwarf) and you started out with a certain amount of credits to buy magic, tech and weapon options. Where it hit the wall was that it only contained the standard three match types (deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag) and a handful of maps. I can't help but think that if the game had really run with it's customization it would have lasted longer.

Then again, it got shut down in less then a year, so maybe not.

 

[kyogen]

I like the option to make and play user-made content. Much of it isn't worth the bother, but when it's good, it can be really good.

For example, Germany got TES IV Oblivion late, poorly localized, and very buggy, but a group of fans created the total conversion Nehrim, which is fantastic. The world map was re-imagined, the landscapes were hand-built, and the story is actually focused enough to be compelling. They even got 50+ professional voice actors and a sound studio to donate their time in order to fully voice the thing.

 

[veloper]

Most of the time I just cannot bring myself to examine all the dross before getting to the rare gems hiding in the custom pile. Even the recommended mods are not better in most cases.

Unofficial patches is what I get the most from (after I pickup an older game for the first time), replacements mods and levels, not so much.

So for most games I stick with the official content, then I get bored with it after a while and leave it altogether for a different game.

 

[Wolfram23]

Gotta love it. The only problem I have is that, like anything, there is a lot of crap and stupid mods that you need to sort through to find the gems. But those gems really make it worthwhile.

Doing the modding myself is something that I'm interested in, but after fooling around in the Creation Kit for a while... I think I'll just leave it for other people. I don't really have the motivation to do something worthwhile.

Although I did enjoy making some maps back in Time Splitters 2. I had this awesome zombie survival level... good times.

 

[Twilight_guy]

It's a good idea, but unfortunately 90% of everything is hit and there are so many bad levels or mods people make. I support letting people have the tools to try their hands at game design in a controlled way (Minecraft is the best example of that) but inevitably usually only a small potion have the chops for it and that's discouraging.

 

[Zhukov]

You know that saying, "90% of everything is crap"?

Yeah, well, with user generated content it's more like 99%. Fact is, most "users" don't have the skill to produce decent content.

Sure, there's good stuff out there, but damn if you don't have to sift through a ton of shit to find it.

 

[SoranMBane]

As long as the user-generated content isn't the sole purpose of the game, I'm fine with it. Mods for games like Half-Life and Skyrim, player-made maps for multiplayer games, the custom stories in Amnesia; these are all great, and the best part is that you don't strictly need them to enjoy the game. What I don't like is games that sell themselves entirely on user-generated content, like LittleBigPlanet. The game is still decent, but it feels more like a resource-gathering challenge than an actual game that can stand up on its own. The user-generated content in a game should serve to make the original game richer, not the other way around.

 

[Aerosteam]

The only games I've played with user-generated content is probably Spore, Halo 3/Reach... that's about it.

Spore has probably got the largest pile of shitty user-made stuff, only certain people actually take care of making their stuff instead of 'doing it for the lolz'. Also there's to many penis-monsters. Just sayin'.

As for Halo 3, there's the occasional cool map, but it's almost always a glitch of some sort or the developers didn't mean to make it possible to make a map like that.

And for Reach, way, way too many 'credits glitch' maps, the most downloaded list is littered with them as well 'sexy 18+' maps. Most of the proper maps being made are just for Infection or race aswell.

 

[DazZ.]

I adore it. It's not hard to find a load of really good stuff with the way it's all organised into websites that can get upvoted and whatnot. I don't tend to wade through crap and just play things that are recommended to me.

New classes/pets/level sections for Torchlight.
The immense amount of new Left 4 Dead maps, some of which actually innovate and do some sections really creatively.
Old games getting patches to give better compatibility with newer hardware/resolutions is a brilliant thing.
The UI mods for TF2 or general hat changes for hats you don't like (goodbye Gibus).

Then there's the fact TF2 wouldn't even exist without user made content, making it something I just can't in any way dislike.

 

[azurine]

Sometimes it's good, sometimes, not so good. It varies depending on the situation.

 

[BENZOOKA]

I generally don't like it.

As I see it, 95 % of it is crap, and the rest brings either a little bit or a considerable amount of additional enjoyable content.

Some positives:
Elasto Mania custom maps from ten or more years ago
One or two UT2004 mods
Some Skyrim mods that sound good. Even some of those bring problems and break immersion, even though I'm really picky.

It's not there to begin with so it 95 % of the time doesn't belong there.

 

[Fappy]

When it's done well it's cool.
It's just a shame everyone focuses on making massive tits on the all the women rather than something cool to have. Fucking tits.

For a really long time DragonAgeNexus' mod with the most endorsements was the "Better Sex Scene" mod. Some people. >.>