Spiral Knights - An argument for Steam Workshop Submissions

An argument for Steam Workshop Submissions

8 replies [Last post]

Sun, 05/08/2016 - 07:39

Thndr

This thread is about the suggestion for having workshop submission much like Team Fortress 2 does for cosmetic items and other content.

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While being able to hot-swap cosmetics locally would be a nice feature, the main purpose of the suggestion is to find popular user content, and participate with the playerbase to bring these as official included content while providing the creators appropriate compensation much like how TF2 does it.

Spiral Knights was one of the first games to be on the Steam Trading system, integrating the player account item database with the steam userpage. While more and more games are starting to use this, it still is largely unused other than by steam for their first party stuff.

Team Fortress 2 has become a model of success for Valve and they expanded that sort of model onto Counter Strike: Global Offense and DotA-2, not only using the Steam Trading system, but also providing new content from the players that love the game and community.

What I believe is going back to the cutting edge Steam much like your direction early on would make it so that:

1) Player involvement is increased
- Increases Playtime, which increases likelyhood to spend money
- Increases outside player opinion, which can draw in new players
- Increases current player opinion, provides incentive to create unique and popular content

2) Content is expanded
- Increases playtime
- Draws back in old players
- Draws back in new players

3) Player spending is increased
- Due to the steam trade system, players will be able to sell cosmetics and boxes and a % goes to the game owners
- Due to the increased playtime, players might want to spend the $ to speed things up.
- If the game makes more money, you can fund more content.

Valve has a good model going for their free to play games, and Spiral Knights was on track to do just that. Lets get it back on that track as it fills a niche no other MMO really does, and deserves more content and more players

Content types:

1) Items
- Weapons, shields, armors
2) Cosmetics
- Stuff that goes on that. Auras, ears, wings, tails.
- Map decoration. bushes, lanterns, etc.
3) Maps *advanced, requires appropriate editor*
- Make mapsections and submit them into the workshop. *Provides more play-variety*
4) Monsters? *Most effort as they have to be animated and programmed and etc, unless reskins*
- Reskins? Original Submissions?

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I know that it's going to be a few months of transitioning from Sega/Three Rings over to Grey Havens, but I do hope that you increase player involvement in making the game succeed and last as long as possible. I have kept this game installed for years even though I only check out the game once a few months.

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Fellow players, old and new. If you have any opinions on this please comment as well. I do hope you wish for Spiral Knights to not only survive, but succeed as much as it did when it came out.

Sun, 05/08/2016 - 08:49

Vohtarak-Forum

as I say every time (or someone else does it for me)

Steam only restricts content for other users and will only aggravate them, suggest something that everyone can use

Sun, 05/08/2016 - 09:57

Thndr

No reason to not use Steam tools - It's not divisive

The game already has in-game trading and currency conversion to do the same things the Steam marketplace does with being able to purchase things with money//flowing money into the game. So the economic flow part is already established. But you are right and I should have included that aspect in the OP to make sure there was no misunderstanding, as in-game player trading will also increase.

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Using Steam Workshop as a submission hub does not restrict any content in itself, but just an already established avenue for content submission.
Content itself that is released would be packaged with game updates, as per the case is with TF2, DOTA2, and CS:GO community updates. Since it's also a PvP MMO, Workshop content itself doesn't have to be imported into the local game to play as it could potentially upset the balances. (Mods are already against ToS)

Since it's an already established service that is proven to work, alongside the fact that Spiral Knights already has supported Steam Trading for a while, it is a logical first step towards providing content submission. It would not make any sense purposefully to avoid using tools that already exist within the game since the game already has more than just basic Steamworks integration.

For non-steam, the quickest way they could do that is via a Sub-forum where the players host the files themselves, but that also requires more work on their party to find the more popular submissions (which unfortunately costs money). The Steam Workshop itself lets people rate the items found on it, and Steam accounts are free to everyone. Since the Workshop would be Steam Side, it wouldn't require any account linking.

In the end, both areas of the community would be able submit content, and to use it you would not have to link your Steam account to your Spiral Knights (As I know the way Three Rings set it up was rather clunky and now I have 2 SK.com accounts).

Mon, 05/09/2016 - 03:56

Vohtarak-Forum

maybe I should have been even more clear

It restricts the content (in this case the ability to make it) to steam users only, and I'm really not putting in the energy for this when you can easily just find another one of the 20+ threads which this is a copy of

Edit; same applies, if you need to make a steam account to use it, its still steam only, no matter how much you claim its not

Sun, 05/08/2016 - 16:35

Thndr

Please stop being so dismissive without reading.

You were not clear, but I got the gist of your concern.
I addressed that part with my reply stating how it would not be Steam only for submissions if done properly.

As said Steam is one of many tools they have, and at the moment it's a tool that's already setup to handle submissions to minimize cost of building a whole submission sorting and process on their end. Using the Steam Workshop to curate community submissions on one community doesn't limit the ability for the other community to submit via a submission process for that end as well.

If you wish to see a game that does use the workshop (for mods) while not being restricted to Steam Only with their own modding forum and community websites: Torchlight 2.
This game had modding (which is not what I am suggesting, I am suggestion content submission through workshop) that was both enabled through Steam via Workshop downloads, as well as through it's own website and community websites.

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I hope this addresses your concern. If not please clarify.

Sun, 05/08/2016 - 22:54

Imorri

@OP/Thndr

Good stuff, I would love to see this happen for the game. Oh yeah, by the way, some people are just against change no matter what. It's kind of silly in my opinion, but I see it all the time it seems like.

Mon, 05/09/2016 - 03:34

Fehzor

My take on this is that if we argue that it restricts it to Steam users the alternative is even less feasible, and has an even worse chance of coming about.

Three Rings and therefore Grey Havens tend to go overboard when it comes to things. Players said the UI could use a few features? Entirely new UI from scratch. Players suggest 2* gunner class armor so that nubs can get it? Half the armor in the game is now gunner class armor. Shard bombs vaguely not how you want them? Redo the entire shard bomb line into 6 variants. Players getting too many items? Double the crafting costs. Not enough shinning fire crystals + too many radiant fire crystals? Replace all radiant fire crystals with shinning fire crystals.

The approach they're going to think of is what you'd probably think of when first imagining adding a level editor to the game: A casual feature that anyone can use, similar to Super Mario Maker but for Spiral Knights with bells and whistles and unlockable features and whoops that's too big we can't make that within the next ten years. What we need however is just SOMEONE doing SOMETHING on the game content-wise, and if you can find any basic way to open up the level editor it's good enough because right now we're looking at one level every other year being added. So yea. Just throw it on Steam and let just the Steam community edit that and if you're really offput by launching Steam to submit levels you can just not make levels.

Mon, 05/09/2016 - 03:58

Vohtarak-Forum

its really not that difficult

We essentially have it with guild halls already, just add floors/enemy spawns/boxes/etc to a design mode type editor

Mon, 05/09/2016 - 08:00

Thndr

That editor isn't sufficient and not even close

The current ingame editor for guild halls is nowhere near the same thing as a level editor like the developers use. While your solution appears "simple", it's not. I understand the sentiment of keeping the functions online only to foster online playtime and social interaction, but that sort of restriction also makes it so people /have/ to be online to create levels.

While they could expand it, providing SDK level tools for closer file/chunk editing (since the game is made of chunks) would be smoother for them to transition over, while allowing more content. Using an existing but really restricted guild-hall editor would force them to re-code that entire portion of the game and it would be clunky and restrictive on what players could do.

While yes it would be nice to be able to submit levels right through the Three Rings system, that's an option that costs a lot more money which I suspect Grey Havens doesn't have to throw around. Not only does it cost money to develop it code-wise, it also costs money for the servers and hosting they need to host that kind of content.

Of course chunks and levels would probably be the easiest and cheapest they could take submissions for depending on the level format, submissions for models and decals wouldn't be feasible without even more storage space and a way to browse. Thankfully the Steam Workshop could solve all of these issues for player-involvement and content submission while costing minimal due to the system already being setup.

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You may think it's not difficult and it doesn't seem like it when you look at the situation, but providing tools for the player is actually more difficult than it seems and especially if the solution is hacking together something "adequate". It would be quicker, easier, and overall better featured for both developers and users if the tools themselves were separate from the game.

No sense in spending time/money recreating the tools ingame (and troubleshooting all the bugs) if they can just polish/release the tools they use themselves (which already should have a minor amount of bugs to begin with)

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An argument for Steam Workshop Submissions