The Daily Grind: What do you consider "good" player-created content?

I'd look for a balance of rewards, challenge, and story... Probably with a focus on the latter of the three. I can't say I've ever experienced player-content in an MMO(other than some really cool houses in UO). I played a lot of player-made adventures in Neverwinter Nights though, and the ones with good stories are the only ones I really remember.

I think the key to making a system like this work is to have a rating system, and to provide as many sorting filters as possible -- most played, most finished, highest rated, most deaths, etc...

In a game like STO, I see story as the most important. Every mission runs off of some kind of story, and the most memorable missions are ones that have the best story attached to them.

I for one prefer missions with a great story to it. In the case of STO, these missions are almost always the ones which require the player to engage in as little combat as possible. I would love to be able to level a character from start to finish, in nothing but non-combat missions, but due to the nature of STO, a large majority of the content involves combat in one way or another.

Some of the best Star Trek episodes had little (if any) combat in it, and most involved some sort of mystery that needed to be investigated. I hope to see player created content in STO to be able to rival some of the episodes of canon Star Trek. With the existence of a rating system, one could hope some of the better episodes ends up high on the list, and I would also like it if Cryptic themselves actively playtested the player content, with the possibility of adding their own "Cryptic Recommended" label to select episodes.

I definitely think that the story is the most important part of the player created content I've seen. CoH's mission architect allows for some interesting and highly personalized content, which I tend to enjoy.

I will admit, however, it it's too light on experience, I don't want to run the missions. I level slow enough, as is.

It's all about experiencing new stories in User Generated Content. Star Trek Online is quite combat heavy as it is, so an influx of new story arcs is what this game needed.

The Foundry tools allow the STO players to create some fantastic story driven missions.

I've been creating and play testing missions using the STO Foundry in open and closed beta and I have been pleasantly suprised by what the players have come up with.

1) I look for content that is CONSISTENT IN DIFFICULTY with the rest of the game: no harder, no easier. If I wanted to play a harder game, I'd go play another game; if I wanted to play an easier game, I'd go play another game.

2) I look for content that is CAREFULLY CRAFTED. Clean up your grammar and typos. Make several passes over any artwork you create so that the seams don't show. Sloppiness just offends me on an almost religious level.

3) I look for content that MAKES ME CARE. Whether it's by showing me things I haven't seen before, or by introducing me to interesting characters, or by telling me an interesting story where I couldn't see every detail of it coming half an hour before it happened, or by manipulating my emotions in interesting ways, there needs to be something about the content that engages me, that prevents the boredom of it being just another couple of dozen NPCs to knock down.

I look for content that makes me laugh.

There are so many sitting duck targets in most games: NPCs that the community doesn't like, player generated memes, and other in-jokes that emerge in the player base. Official content probably can't deal with this stuff very nimbly. Player generated content can.

I look for entertainment. The last thing I want is an easy way to get loot or other rewards just because it is done up by some schmuck as a way to cheat the system. That's the first thing I ran into with CoX and I never tried again.

I look out for what suits my needs at any given time. Let's take CoH as a specific example:

If I'm in a story mood, I go play morality missions, Praetoria or trawl around in Mission Architect looking for 4 star, lengthy missions that have a paragraph containing proper English, a blurb that makes me curious to find out more, and preferably looks like the writer paid attention to staying consistent with CoH lore.

(Out of preference, I avoid things that are weird and immersion-breaking to me - catgirls, pop-culture references, stuff too pulpy or 4-color comics. I veer towards drama over humor, humor is extremely subjective and iffy.)

If I need tickets fast for salvage or recipes, then I'm going to look for *ahem* a one-off street hunt map. Preferably with /some/ attempt at putting complete sentences together and maintaining some immersion factor a la street hunting in Striga Island so that I don't wince every time I jump into a spawn and see triggered conversations of borken Engrish and l0lspe4k.

If I'm spoiling for a challenge, then by Thor, let's pick one of the random 4 star arcs with WARNING: CHALLENGE, AVS, EBS, CUSTOM ENEMIES scrawled all over it and see how well it's put together. Or I go play my own arc, which is balanced nicely to my exact preference of challenge and story.