Been away from this thread for a while (still awesome btw), and I've had some new thoughts on the workshop, but a couple of quick catch up points first, if you guys don't mind:
Feedback from Valve on every item is not practical. The workshop is great, but in a lot of ways it's extremely slow already and this would likely just slow it down more.
However, an occasional blog post highlighting something they like: design, execution, an item for a particularly neglected hero, whatever, would be great. Just a little insight into what gets approved and a little bit of the why.
I don't believe the workshop is about making artists better. It's about making money.
If you're looking to get feedback and improve as an artist, forums like this are where you should be looking, expecting constructive feedback from workshop comments is asking a bit much.
I really like the idea of randomized workshop submissions popping up in game to increase exposure, but more/faster options for general browsing on the website would be great as well
That said, here's some thoughts I've had recently.
Poly Budgets For the most part I feel like the poly budgets are reasonable and doable. A lot of the time it's a pain to make it fit, but in the end I end up realizing I haven't lost any quality and the piece is much more efficient as a result.
However, the poly budget is always based on what Valve has done for their default pieces. Makes sense, except on some slots they've done a very low poly item for a slot that fits their overall set design. However, custom sets might have different design ideas.
Case in point, Broodmother's 'head' slot. Valve chose to basically make a small ponytail for Broodmother's default head slot. So the budget is 250/150. Anybody that's made a LOD1 probably cringes just looking at that 150.
So if I wanted to, for example, give Broodmother some creepy hairdo that dangled over her face I just couldn't do it because the polys aren't there for that kind of silhouette change. The end result is you can only really end up doing some variation on what Valve already did. The workshop 'well' is going to dry up pretty quick if we're all just doing our own riff on what Valve has already done.
What I'm wondering, is if it would be possible to boost the poly budget for a particular slot for set submissions. Maybe you could pull polys from one slot and add them to another? Maybe the entire set has a budget and not a per item thing? Maybe you could just choose to boost the poly budget of a single slot only say 150-200%? Or maybe they could just let us blow the poly budget all together, submit it anyway, and take the risk that it just wouldn't be accepted.
Which relates to another topic:
Slots Some heroes and slots (it seems to be entirely dependent on which hero and which slot) vary between adding armor to a slot (a helmet to a head) or replacing the mesh with your own(Broodmother's abadomen). What if heroes could be broken up such that we had the option? So instead of just adding a helmet to a head, maybe our helmet could be the head. And maybe your budget while adding to a mesh could be 800, but if you were replacing the mesh it could be something like 1400 (however many polys you gained by replacing that part of the mesh). So in the case of the Broodmother example up top: I could choose to either do a 250 polygon ponytail for her or maybe a 1000 poly completely new head.
The heroes would have to be broken up a very specific way to allow this, but I feel like it would allow creators more options, get more cool stuff in game, and probably, end up with less triangles drawn on average. ...and lastly, sorry this is so long.
Base Textures I would love, love, love to be able to modify the heroes base textures. Within reason of course. I'm not talking about making Venomancer purple or anything like that. But it would be great if, for example, a helmet could make the hero's eyes glow. Or maybe a death themed set could give the hero a sickly pale face, or something like that. Again, it just allows for more possibilities for creators. Valve is already supplying us with those awesome highrez textures, so all we would need is an ability to upload modified ones that are tied to item slots.
Again, sorry this was so long, just some ideas that have been perculating for quite some time
What happens when you have two items equipped that want to edit the base texture?
The only way something like that would be possible is if you broke the heroes base texture into an indivudal slot. I imagine Tidehunter having a slot like this if they want to implement the orca tidehunter skin. The only problem is that these skins would clash with preexisitng cosmetics. Weaver, sandking, tide, leshrac all have cosmetics designed to fit in with the base texture. You start tweaking that and you'll wind up breaking all of these cosmetics.
Think about orca tidehunter with the Dorsal Fin Cosmetic;
What I'm wondering, is if it would be possible to boost the poly budget for a particular slot for set submissions. Maybe you could pull polys from one slot and add them to another? Maybe the entire set has a budget and not a per item thing? Maybe you could just choose to boost the poly budget of a single slot only say 150-200%? Or maybe they could just let us blow the poly budget all together, submit it anyway, and take the risk that it just wouldn't be accepted.
Except average players gets item from drops, and almost never wears full sets right away. Any combination of items should fit the polylimit, and adding bunch of exceptions will only make the process harder. It will require creating more variations and will more likely increase the time it's needed to add the set ingame, not to mention we have some unfixed bugs with 2 LODs, it'll only get worse for adding more "stages".
Base Textures I would love, love, love to be able to modify the heroes base textures. Within reason of course.
Hats were also supposed to be "within reason", i'm terrified to think what you can do with custom base texture and how will it break mixing cosmetics even more.
I think Tiny is really the only one who might be limited to JUST skins
but no one has made any new ones for him in a while
That's because they discontinued putting them in I'm pretty sure. A month or so after Elemental Ice was released I submitted Arcane Infusion as one of my first items. A few weeks later my skin showed up in the test files which usually meant it was going in game in the next patch. Then they pulled it out with no notice or explanation just before the patch was released and I've never seen any hint of another Tiny skin going in since then.
I had some ideas for how Collections could be more useful that I figure I'll post.
Each upvote in a collection should automatically add an upvote to each item in the collection. When the user who voted went to the other pages they'd see they already upvoted it, so it couldn't be exploited with double votes.
or
Somewhere on the collection page beside each workshop item are the 3 buttons, upthumb, downthumb, favstar so that the user can place ratings on each piece without leaving the collection page.
yeah right now, when i show friends any sets i submit, there like "gahh i need to go to each link and like them each, that's kinda dumb" I think changes to the way sets work are probably forthcoming, at least i would hope so
"Workshop is definitely going in bad direction. People offering 1000 guaranteed votes in exchange of % share. Valve should definitely change the voting mechanics... Or soon there will not be much more % left for artists itself..."
It is true that for a % of the item sales someone gives you "free" votes? If no one made it already, I'm redirecting this directly to Valve right now.
Well, as far as I am concerned, this is still in the hands of the artist to decide wether or not he wants to go down that road. I just hope valve doesnt simply look on votes but rather decides based on item quality and style, if it fits and soforth.
I wont buy any votes. I think its the most ridiculous thing you can do as an artist.
Well, concernign the %, I dont care about the % I just want to see my idea ingame and I also want a selfmade version of it, I dont care about the money.
"Workshop is definitely going in bad direction. People offering 1000 guaranteed votes in exchange of % share. Valve should definitely change the voting mechanics... Or soon there will not be much more % left for artists itself..."
It is true that for a % of the item sales someone gives you "free" votes? If no one made it already, I'm redirecting this directly to Valve right now.
Yeah, i've had two guys already asking if i want some votes for the %. Good thing that's something like that is easy to spot.
In my opinion it all started when sets for pro players/teams/organizations started to appear on workshop. Than people with some kind of community backup saw this and thought that they also can get a cut in sales just for doing basically nothing. I actually doubt Valve can do anything about it, because its like a hydra, you will cut one head, two other will grow. Only possible way to deal with this is to don't feed the beast itself.
What really pissed me of was that typically I would start talk like this with "hey there I saw your work, I really like it, you know i am a part of that and that community blablabla maybe you would like to work with us, we would love to have extra founds for our dota 2 coverage and so on blabla" but they don't give a shit and say instead "give % i will get you votes". Damn its frustrating. And what even worse you never know when they changed from option 1 to option 2, so putting them to light would just hurt people working with them previously....
Well, concernign the %, I dont care about the % I just want to see my idea ingame and I also want a selfmade version of it, I dont care about the money.
Truth is that if you make bad items they will not get accepted despite number of votes. If you make good items you don't need any help in getting them accepted.
Truth is that the % buy in is a way for bad items to make it into the game. If Valve applies the same quality requirements to all items the same, sponsored or not, the problem stops (for the most part).
So took the time finally to read through this thread and I'm glad I did/ (glad) its around. Really informing stuff all around. Great thoughts everyone and thanks for sharing!
As far as the workshop layout is concerned, its minor but there should be a set amount of entries on each page. There are options for 9/18/30 per page, and this may or may not put you on the top page for favorites. If it's going to be an organized system, there should be minimal external variables.
I think the idea of the netflix scroll could be really cool, but it would have to be organized perfectly. In the same way I don't want to see the same movie in 4 different genre's of netflix, I'd probably go mad if I saw the same set in 3 scrolls, or worse the same 7 items of a set in 3 scrolls, yikes.
The second awesome thing was heleneks thumbsup/down rating system while waiting for a match. Super quick, super easy, really sweet. It might mess with the views, but maybe that could be tied to a "recently added" system, and once you hit X views you aren't recent, so you would get removed and put in popular. Hell maybe it could even speed up queues. "Y votes gets you a faster queue", or whatever.
As far as the comments from steam users, I think that it all comes with the territory. I wouldn't expect them to give a greentooth critique, nor would I want them to, however when they say " I like Z because." or " G should be changed because it isn't going with lore" That's worth taking into consideration. When I see some major flames on an item, it sucks the first time, but I imagine they mad so its just sorta is what it is. Anything is better then youtube, hah.
I do wish there was some communication from valve, but I don't know what that is. Asking devs to take time from their work schedule to comment on items doesn't seem plausible, nor does hiring a lowly intern to sift through the millions, and millions of the workshops entries. I suppose it feels like waiting for lightning right now, and I wish there was a way to tell if it was going to happen. I don't think it would be fair to pin it on views, votes, or favorites because those could be skewed by views/% deals that were previously mentioned. I think an automated survey might be equally as tough to accomplish as well, it would take a lot of man hours on valves end to fill them out. The sheer amount of content that recently flooded the store comes to mind when I think about how rough it would be to fill out a "rate this on a 1-5" survey for each item This doesn't mean that silence is acceptable, it just is an oddly frustrating problem.
On sponsored items. I think they are okay fundamentally. I think the current execution of the plan is poor. I think that the creators of sponsored content should have some kind of proven track record in the Dota2 workshop, and this might help eliminate any of the less then average content. I also think that these pieces deserve their own workshop area, and shouldn't mingle with the normal content. If they are commissioned by a group, they are being made with a different intent, and therefore should be in a different place, atleast that's what I think.
Just my 2 cents. Lets keep these ideas flowing, this is a great thread!
I suppose I'll quote what I wrote before. I'd also add that during our feedback session with the team they were pretty adamant that we email them more of our feedback and concerns. If you want to link them this thread or write your own thoughts I'd suggest you email Robin; he led our feedback session. robin@valvesoftware.com
I guess you should to ping robin to join this feedback session to easiest communication with us. So we will more know what's wrong from steam workshop and we can know what's robin's clue for future workshop
Two ideas that can be implemented in the workshop.
1: Vote cap- when an item reaches x amount of votes. Its moved to another section with items that have the x+ votes.
2: Removing the logos!! Under the marketing material the requirements is says that an artist/author cannot put a logo. Why can't this be implemented in the workshop submissions too? Why are third parties and teams unaffected by these rules and gain a whole bunch of upvotes for items that clearly do not fit ingame, taking space in the front pages?
Successful marketing artwork will:
Highlight the interesting attributes of the featured items
Accurately represent the item model content
Contain the hero/item content on a separate layer from the background image
Not crop key portions of the hero or featured items (if the composition requires cropping, please include an un-cropped version of the artwork on a separate layer)
Not contain a border treatment Not contain an artist/author signature or logo
Be a minimum size of 664x362 pixels
Be submitted as a PSD
Two ideas that can be implemented in the workshop.
1: Vote cap- when an item reaches x amount of votes. Its moved to another section with items that have the x+ votes.
2: Removing the logos!! Under the marketing material the requirements is says that an artist/author cannot put a logo. Why can't this be implemented in the workshop submissions too? Why are third parties and teams unaffected by these rules and gain a whole bunch of upvotes for items that clearly do not fit ingame, taking space in the front pages?
1. Well I guess it's a good solution to the items that sometimes are left in the dark. On the other side it might get some kind of "elitism" in the workshop, the vote system is also broken.
2. Well the only purpose to make a 3th party is to put the team's logo (also having faster acceptance/higher chances to go in I guess). I purposed before to make a separated section for this kind of items, so the indies can keep up.
Two ideas that can be implemented in the workshop.
1: Vote cap- when an item reaches x amount of votes. Its moved to another section with items that have the x+ votes.
I'm not really a big fan of that. People might mainly browse through the higher section because nobody likes to scroll through a lot of low-quality items to pick out the gems if there was a system already doing that for you.
I fear the result could be that the already successful contributers who got a lot of followers could more easily push their items into the higher section while newcomers will have it a lot harder to get the attention they need for success.
No matter what will be done it will always be unfair for as long as artists will allow it. Officially or under different accounts organizations will be able to influence votes displaying hotlinks to specific items in workshop on their sites/blogs etc.
To be honest I saw how much followers are worth in workshop. Many artist, uploaded their work during workshop bug, having almost 2000 followers and their items were having no more than 100 visitors and even less votes. If anyone wants attention there are sites like reddit for example, actually no one can beat that amount of users, and its free to post there and everyone can do it. However yeah, that work itself will be judged and you will get ton of upvotes or downvotes, that's double-edged blade however only in such way its fair.
I fear the result could be that the already successful contributers who got a lot of followers could more easily push their items into the higher section while newcomers will have it a lot harder to get the attention they need for success.
To be honest I saw how much followers are worth in workshop. Many artist, uploaded their work during workshop bug, having almost 2000 followers and their items were having no more than 100 visitors and even less votes.
Yeah, followers do jack shit in D2 workshop. If only following would show the items in the activity tab or something like that, that would've been great addition.
Opinions? Kinda wanna post the uncensored version. :shifty:
Um don't do it? Its basically giving 2-5% of blind votes. Meaning, the followers will upvote/downvote it because of the person instead of item quality.
Well I'm gonna assume what the guy is offering is against the user agreement for the workshop so yes definitely post the uncensored version and report him as well.
Well I'm gonna assume what the guy is offering is against the user agreement for the workshop so yes definitely post the uncensored version and report him as well.
I'd rather find that in the user agreement rather then assume. It's smarter to make sure something like this isn't aloud before going around 'blacklisting' people publicly for doing it. I'm simply posting what I've found and making it an open discussion.
Fair enough. Though I feel like its some kind of scam, he doesn't even introduce himself as a representative of some organization/site/youtube channel.
I'd rather find that in the user agreement rather then assume. It's smarter to make sure something like this isn't aloud before going around 'blacklisting' people publicly for doing it. I'm simply posting what I've found and making it an open discussion.
6. USER GENERATED CONTENT of the Steam Subscriber Agreement does not have anything that would say this is wrong from a legal standpoint.
I feel like this is basically the trading "sharks" trying to step out of their weird money making playground, hoping to break into the more directly profitable workshop side of things. What's funny is that they basically think that Valve is stupid enough to not notice that kind of stuff...
Now I am not exactly sure how such sharing would work anyways - is it even possible to give a cut to a another steam member ... just like that ? Especially considering the whole process that workshop creators have to go through (imputing bank account info, and so on). Do these people expect that Valve finance is not going to notice that something is fishy ? Or do they expect workshop contributors to just ... send them money by mail regularly, over the course of the item life in the workshop ?
Anyways - I think this should either be reported, or simply ignored.
Opinions? Kinda wanna post the uncensored version. :shifty:
Heh that's the same guy... Easy to know because of his trade ban and this avatar that most people should recognize on the spot if they are somewhat into dota. Guy never had PR lessons for sure...
Opinions? Kinda wanna post the uncensored version. :shifty:
Well why don't u?
As soon as ppl can smell money, they will do everything to get a split.
As told by most ppl, I don't even know why ppl would do this, yes Valve looks if the community is ineterested, but there are a lot of items added with votes under 100.
If your item stands out and looks great u will get the votes anyway. Like a shit item will get ingame if it got 10.000 votes, and they all say plz add, this is awesome....
Me and Slime have concocted something to paste to this guy if he adds you. Unfortunately I declined his invite before I could share it with him.
"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my donger go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will fill you. With nuts."
Opinions? Kinda wanna post the uncensored version. :shifty:
The question is, from where these certain "1000" upvotes come from? I don't mind with publicity if they have a site or a blog, youtube channel or whatever, it's a way to show your work, reddit does the same thing (of course without sharing %).
However if this guy just give you certain 1000 upvotes with 1000 ghost accounts or something like this, well this is bad.
1. create a bot that is able to create steamaccs.
2. let the bot create 1000 steamaccs.
3. add the ability to the bot to log into one acc and do a vote
4. let the bot log into each acc and vote.
i have no clue about the it part.. but i guess its simple..
However if this guy just give you certain 1000 upvotes with 1000 ghost accounts or something like this, well this is bad.
Chinese gold farming comes to mind...
It's weird/suspicions/unruly that its a guarantee 1k. I'd benefit of the doubt if it was like around a certain number because of a fanbase, but if it's spot on 1k every time.. interesting things are a muck.
Opinions? Kinda wanna post the uncensored version. :shifty:
Just a not rly popular "pro" (actually trash) player that wants easy money for doing nothing...I hope u'll not "work" (if it can be called so) with him.
1. create a bot that is able to create steamaccs.
2. let the bot create 1000 steamaccs.
3. add the ability to the bot to log into one acc and do a vote
4. let the bot log into each acc and vote.
i have no clue about the it part.. but i guess its simple..
you dont have to create a bot, just horde 100 asians into a big factory building with computers and force them to vote on shit, its done with facebook likes so why not steam workshop items. thats business mate.
note: instead of asians it could also be arabs, russians, australians, europeans, americans - u get the point, only scots wouldnt do it, they drink whiskey and kick asses.
the 100 chinese(arabs,..) are just more expensive. the bot has just some initial time till he is created- and then he can do everything automatic for free. since he only need to create the 1000 steamaccs one time and then later reuse the acc-pool over and over again. but after all... why would coop anyone with such a person? i mean if ur items are good, they will get into game no matter if u have 1000 votes more or not. and if ur items are bad the 1000 votes are also useless.
Neither. These dealers don't determine if people like or care about your work. You could be unhappy (or neutral) that people are sending these messages at all, but you shouldn't let other people affect you too much. Just keep learning, improving, and gaining confidence in your own work.
I have received the same message. It surprised me actually.... because I had seen this account added to some already in the workshop. Assumed a legit connection... perhaps not.
Replies
- Feedback from Valve on every item is not practical. The workshop is great, but in a lot of ways it's extremely slow already and this would likely just slow it down more.
- However, an occasional blog post highlighting something they like: design, execution, an item for a particularly neglected hero, whatever, would be great. Just a little insight into what gets approved and a little bit of the why.
- I don't believe the workshop is about making artists better. It's about making money.
- If you're looking to get feedback and improve as an artist, forums like this are where you should be looking, expecting constructive feedback from workshop comments is asking a bit much.
- I really like the idea of randomized workshop submissions popping up in game to increase exposure, but more/faster options for general browsing on the website would be great as well
That said, here's some thoughts I've had recently.Poly Budgets
For the most part I feel like the poly budgets are reasonable and doable. A lot of the time it's a pain to make it fit, but in the end I end up realizing I haven't lost any quality and the piece is much more efficient as a result.
However, the poly budget is always based on what Valve has done for their default pieces. Makes sense, except on some slots they've done a very low poly item for a slot that fits their overall set design. However, custom sets might have different design ideas.
Case in point, Broodmother's 'head' slot. Valve chose to basically make a small ponytail for Broodmother's default head slot. So the budget is 250/150. Anybody that's made a LOD1 probably cringes just looking at that 150.
So if I wanted to, for example, give Broodmother some creepy hairdo that dangled over her face I just couldn't do it because the polys aren't there for that kind of silhouette change. The end result is you can only really end up doing some variation on what Valve already did. The workshop 'well' is going to dry up pretty quick if we're all just doing our own riff on what Valve has already done.
What I'm wondering, is if it would be possible to boost the poly budget for a particular slot for set submissions. Maybe you could pull polys from one slot and add them to another? Maybe the entire set has a budget and not a per item thing? Maybe you could just choose to boost the poly budget of a single slot only say 150-200%? Or maybe they could just let us blow the poly budget all together, submit it anyway, and take the risk that it just wouldn't be accepted.
Which relates to another topic:
Slots
Some heroes and slots (it seems to be entirely dependent on which hero and which slot) vary between adding armor to a slot (a helmet to a head) or replacing the mesh with your own(Broodmother's abadomen). What if heroes could be broken up such that we had the option? So instead of just adding a helmet to a head, maybe our helmet could be the head. And maybe your budget while adding to a mesh could be 800, but if you were replacing the mesh it could be something like 1400 (however many polys you gained by replacing that part of the mesh). So in the case of the Broodmother example up top: I could choose to either do a 250 polygon ponytail for her or maybe a 1000 poly completely new head.
The heroes would have to be broken up a very specific way to allow this, but I feel like it would allow creators more options, get more cool stuff in game, and probably, end up with less triangles drawn on average.
...and lastly, sorry this is so long.
Base Textures
I would love, love, love to be able to modify the heroes base textures. Within reason of course. I'm not talking about making Venomancer purple or anything like that. But it would be great if, for example, a helmet could make the hero's eyes glow. Or maybe a death themed set could give the hero a sickly pale face, or something like that. Again, it just allows for more possibilities for creators. Valve is already supplying us with those awesome highrez textures, so all we would need is an ability to upload modified ones that are tied to item slots.
Again, sorry this was so long, just some ideas that have been perculating for quite some time
The only way something like that would be possible is if you broke the heroes base texture into an indivudal slot. I imagine Tidehunter having a slot like this if they want to implement the orca tidehunter skin. The only problem is that these skins would clash with preexisitng cosmetics. Weaver, sandking, tide, leshrac all have cosmetics designed to fit in with the base texture. You start tweaking that and you'll wind up breaking all of these cosmetics.
Think about orca tidehunter with the Dorsal Fin Cosmetic;
Something like that while awesome, could never work, which is also why we probably haven't seen Orca Tidehunter yet. But if you're clever you can fake it. Red Mist Reaper's Tattoos is a perfect example of that.
But maybe it could be limited to fully equipped sets? Like a bonus effect if you equip every piece.
That is a good point though
Hats were also supposed to be "within reason", i'm terrified to think what you can do with custom base texture and how will it break mixing cosmetics even more.
but no one has made any new ones for him in a while
That's because they discontinued putting them in I'm pretty sure. A month or so after Elemental Ice was released I submitted Arcane Infusion as one of my first items. A few weeks later my skin showed up in the test files which usually meant it was going in game in the next patch. Then they pulled it out with no notice or explanation just before the patch was released and I've never seen any hint of another Tiny skin going in since then.
Each upvote in a collection should automatically add an upvote to each item in the collection. When the user who voted went to the other pages they'd see they already upvoted it, so it couldn't be exploited with double votes.
or
Somewhere on the collection page beside each workshop item are the 3 buttons, upthumb, downthumb, favstar so that the user can place ratings on each piece without leaving the collection page.
"Workshop is definitely going in bad direction. People offering 1000 guaranteed votes in exchange of % share. Valve should definitely change the voting mechanics... Or soon there will not be much more % left for artists itself..."
It is true that for a % of the item sales someone gives you "free" votes? If no one made it already, I'm redirecting this directly to Valve right now.
I wont buy any votes. I think its the most ridiculous thing you can do as an artist.
What really pissed me of was that typically I would start talk like this with "hey there I saw your work, I really like it, you know i am a part of that and that community blablabla maybe you would like to work with us, we would love to have extra founds for our dota 2 coverage and so on blabla" but they don't give a shit and say instead "give % i will get you votes". Damn its frustrating. And what even worse you never know when they changed from option 1 to option 2, so putting them to light would just hurt people working with them previously....
Truth is that if you make bad items they will not get accepted despite number of votes. If you make good items you don't need any help in getting them accepted.
As far as the workshop layout is concerned, its minor but there should be a set amount of entries on each page. There are options for 9/18/30 per page, and this may or may not put you on the top page for favorites. If it's going to be an organized system, there should be minimal external variables.
I think the idea of the netflix scroll could be really cool, but it would have to be organized perfectly. In the same way I don't want to see the same movie in 4 different genre's of netflix, I'd probably go mad if I saw the same set in 3 scrolls, or worse the same 7 items of a set in 3 scrolls, yikes.
The second awesome thing was heleneks thumbsup/down rating system while waiting for a match. Super quick, super easy, really sweet. It might mess with the views, but maybe that could be tied to a "recently added" system, and once you hit X views you aren't recent, so you would get removed and put in popular. Hell maybe it could even speed up queues. "Y votes gets you a faster queue", or whatever.
As far as the comments from steam users, I think that it all comes with the territory. I wouldn't expect them to give a greentooth critique, nor would I want them to, however when they say " I like Z because." or " G should be changed because it isn't going with lore" That's worth taking into consideration. When I see some major flames on an item, it sucks the first time, but I imagine they mad so its just sorta is what it is. Anything is better then youtube, hah.
I do wish there was some communication from valve, but I don't know what that is. Asking devs to take time from their work schedule to comment on items doesn't seem plausible, nor does hiring a lowly intern to sift through the millions, and millions of the workshops entries. I suppose it feels like waiting for lightning right now, and I wish there was a way to tell if it was going to happen. I don't think it would be fair to pin it on views, votes, or favorites because those could be skewed by views/% deals that were previously mentioned. I think an automated survey might be equally as tough to accomplish as well, it would take a lot of man hours on valves end to fill them out. The sheer amount of content that recently flooded the store comes to mind when I think about how rough it would be to fill out a "rate this on a 1-5" survey for each item
On sponsored items. I think they are okay fundamentally. I think the current execution of the plan is poor. I think that the creators of sponsored content should have some kind of proven track record in the Dota2 workshop, and this might help eliminate any of the less then average content. I also think that these pieces deserve their own workshop area, and shouldn't mingle with the normal content. If they are commissioned by a group, they are being made with a different intent, and therefore should be in a different place, atleast that's what I think.
Just my 2 cents. Lets keep these ideas flowing, this is a great thread!
1: Vote cap- when an item reaches x amount of votes. Its moved to another section with items that have the x+ votes.
2: Removing the logos!! Under the marketing material the requirements is says that an artist/author cannot put a logo. Why can't this be implemented in the workshop submissions too? Why are third parties and teams unaffected by these rules and gain a whole bunch of upvotes for items that clearly do not fit ingame, taking space in the front pages?
1. Well I guess it's a good solution to the items that sometimes are left in the dark. On the other side it might get some kind of "elitism" in the workshop, the vote system is also broken.
2. Well the only purpose to make a 3th party is to put the team's logo (also having faster acceptance/higher chances to go in I guess). I purposed before to make a separated section for this kind of items, so the indies can keep up.
I'm not really a big fan of that. People might mainly browse through the higher section because nobody likes to scroll through a lot of low-quality items to pick out the gems if there was a system already doing that for you.
I fear the result could be that the already successful contributers who got a lot of followers could more easily push their items into the higher section while newcomers will have it a lot harder to get the attention they need for success.
To be honest I saw how much followers are worth in workshop. Many artist, uploaded their work during workshop bug, having almost 2000 followers and their items were having no more than 100 visitors and even less votes. If anyone wants attention there are sites like reddit for example, actually no one can beat that amount of users, and its free to post there and everyone can do it. However yeah, that work itself will be judged and you will get ton of upvotes or downvotes, that's double-edged blade however only in such way its fair.
Opinions? Kinda wanna post the uncensored version. :shifty:
Um don't do it? Its basically giving 2-5% of blind votes. Meaning, the followers will upvote/downvote it because of the person instead of item quality.
I'd rather find that in the user agreement rather then assume. It's smarter to make sure something like this isn't aloud before going around 'blacklisting' people publicly for doing it. I'm simply posting what I've found and making it an open discussion.
6. USER GENERATED CONTENT of the Steam Subscriber Agreement does not have anything that would say this is wrong from a legal standpoint.
http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
Maybe this will prompt a new agreement in the near future
we are uncovering the workshop mafia :poly122:
Now I am not exactly sure how such sharing would work anyways - is it even possible to give a cut to a another steam member ... just like that ? Especially considering the whole process that workshop creators have to go through (imputing bank account info, and so on). Do these people expect that Valve finance is not going to notice that something is fishy ? Or do they expect workshop contributors to just ... send them money by mail regularly, over the course of the item life in the workshop ?
Anyways - I think this should either be reported, or simply ignored.
Heh that's the same guy... Easy to know because of his trade ban and this avatar that most people should recognize on the spot if they are somewhat into dota. Guy never had PR lessons for sure...
Well why don't u?
As soon as ppl can smell money, they will do everything to get a split.
As told by most ppl, I don't even know why ppl would do this, yes Valve looks if the community is ineterested, but there are a lot of items added with votes under 100.
If your item stands out and looks great u will get the votes anyway. Like a shit item will get ingame if it got 10.000 votes, and they all say plz add, this is awesome....
"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my donger go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will fill you. With nuts."
Very similar wording right here (at the beginning)
The question is, from where these certain "1000" upvotes come from? I don't mind with publicity if they have a site or a blog, youtube channel or whatever, it's a way to show your work, reddit does the same thing (of course without sharing %).
However if this guy just give you certain 1000 upvotes with 1000 ghost accounts or something like this, well this is bad.
2. let the bot create 1000 steamaccs.
3. add the ability to the bot to log into one acc and do a vote
4. let the bot log into each acc and vote.
i have no clue about the it part.. but i guess its simple..
Chinese gold farming comes to mind...
It's weird/suspicions/unruly that its a guarantee 1k. I'd benefit of the doubt if it was like around a certain number because of a fanbase, but if it's spot on 1k every time.. interesting things are a muck.
you dont have to create a bot, just horde 100 asians into a big factory building with computers and force them to vote on shit, its done with facebook likes so why not steam workshop items. thats business mate.
note: instead of asians it could also be arabs, russians, australians, europeans, americans - u get the point, only scots wouldnt do it, they drink whiskey and kick asses.
http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1vhkx9/dota2_update_spotted_1712013/cesbmiz