Talking about opportunities:
From one point of view - you close those opps for the VFX artists, and u should know that it sounds like communism.
You do have equal opportunities finding people to join your team even here, on this forum.
On the other hand, that reddit post looks like a whine, because it's own our fault - we (all the workshop people hungry for dollars) raised the gap so high, that this custom additions looks not only natural for all new submissions, but even absolutely required. Just look at 2012th submissions and their quality. Looks like Darvin's Workshop Theory LAL.
So, even if I would agree with that whining post, I think it's too late to stop this stuff. IMHO.
I think that a really good artist realizes the original idea, and will not use such methods in order to increase the flow of votes. It's no secret that the poor quality items get votes just because have the "originality" particles. sad to see how the game turns into anal carnival.
I think it should be separated. For example, I create a set for Dazzle with no animations or particle effects. Any other contributor can create animations or particle effects for my set as gems. These gems could be used on different sets. You get % of sale for selling gems. You can still make your own gem for your set and that gem should work with other sets.
Gems could have a rule list to only work with certain animation/particle combination to avoid making the game look like a mess of particle effects.
These will be rare/mythical gems. Arcana/Legendary gems can't be removed or used on other items.
@downlimit
But that happens anyways, artists want to 1-up another artist mainly because the better their set is, the longer they get money. The longer a set is in the market, the lesser the value it becomes thus creating an incentive to go all out on a character (particles...for now).
I think our biggest problem is that these things will become nearly mandatory on the new item sets. It's going to become an arms race between workshop creators, where the first person to get custom animations approved for a new hero makes a crap-ton of money and all other creators get screwed over.
-taken from part of a post in reddit
This is because consumers want more for their money! They are the ones who say, we don't like set a because set b has custom particles, why doesn't set a have particles. つ ◕_◕ ༽つ GIFF FX
But in all truth, everybody(consumers not the artists) is expecting more from sets/items like loading screens, maybe turnaround, spell icons, particles. Thus making small projects bigger and big projects a giant project.
Well as far as I am observing workshop there are plenty of sets with custom particles that don't have many votes at all. Ofc there are sets with particles and huge amount of positive votes but they would have those votes even with no particles.
Well tools are out there. So we should learn them eventually
I think that a really good artist realizes the original idea, and will not use such methods in order to increase the flow of votes. It's no secret that the poor quality items get votes just because have the "originality" particles. sad to see how the game turns into anal carnival.
aren't we hypocrites now? you're forcing stuff ingame through leagues/tourneys and u complain about people raising the quality of their items with particles?
Why? Everyone can try to make custom particles, you just didn't try. Custom particles it's a good thing.
About this pic, No one will not accept something like this. Valve will not add shitty model with a good custom particles, everything should be great. Particles just a bonus to set/item
I honestly don't mind the use of custom fx.
It might up the public interest of a particular set, but a bad set with fx is still a bad set.
It's more of a cherry on top rather than part of the cake.
For me, as long as the fx don't completely f-up the gameplay/visuals then I'm all for it.
I honestly don't mind the use of custom fx.
It might up the public interest of a particular set, but a bad set with fx is still a bad set.
It's more of a cherry on top rather than part of the cake.
For me, as long as the fx don't completely f-up the gameplay/visuals then I'm all for it.
Yup, I agree. As long as the effects are an 'extra' to already good items I don't see a problem. Specially if they are submitted as a separate thing on the workshop, so Valve can just add a set and ignore the particles if necessary.
Well of course I'm biased on this matter - given that particle effects are pretty much everything I create - but I wouldn't make that big of a deal out of the whole matter.
I think that a really good artist realizes the original idea, and will not use such methods in order to increase the flow of votes. It's no secret that the poor quality items get votes just because have the "originality" particles. sad to see how the game turns into anal carnival.
Particles are a pretty new thing in the workshop so of course sets or items with shitty particle effects will recieve a lot of upvotes. That's partially due to the fact that they are still considered original and partially due to the fact that people can't really tell the difference between shitty and good effects yet. The same happened with models - just look at what kind of items got upvoted (and added to the store) when the Dota 2 Workshop opened. The quality will increase with time as people learn to tell the difference.
edit: Oh, and I just remembered - if you need proof that people still can't judge particles (let alone their quality) properly, just take a look at this year's DotaCinema april's fools submission I created the particles for. Read the older comments, check the rating of the video and you'll see that even though this submission was an obvious joke (submitted at april the 1st...) a lot of people thought we were serious with it.
Talking about opportunities:
From one point of view - you close those opps for the VFX artists, and u should know that it sounds like communism.
You do have equal opportunities finding people to join your team even here, on this forum.
Pretty much this. I can't submit my creations as a standalone work with any chance of success and neither can animators (proven by a lot of amazing kinetic gems submitted by Andrew Helenek), as opposed to modellers. Apparently Valve is willing to accept custom particles and animations, so if we are really talking about "equal opportunities" the animators and particle creators should have a realistic chance to submit their work as standalone items, as Nemozini suggested.
I don't think banning particle effects would solve anything. It would just block a lot of potential for innovative concepts (using particles as a means to enhance the model beyond its base mesh). The recent trend to add effects is nothing but a symptom of the increasing quality of the submissions. Same happened with loading screens which suddenly became a standard as well.
Custom effects are nice and all, but it shouldn't take over the initial cosmetic. Therefor it should be subtle and not over power the set. I'm sucker for ribbon vfx but nice and small vfx can look good.
Custom effects are nice and all, but it shouldn't take over the initial cosmetic. Therefor it should be subtle and not over power the set. I'm sucker for ribbon vfx but nice and small vfx can look good.
I think that the particles should enhance the item rather than being a defining factor of the item.
@Automedic: I don't think that April Fool's joke proves anything. It's too well made and the idea is quite damn amusing. I would vote for it (even if just for the lolz ).
I my opinion as long as it looks good it's ok.
Besides, soon the workshop will be saturated with items with particle effects, so it will become a more common thing, and hopefully people will start to differentiate the good from the bad.
I see no problem with people submitting particle effects on their weapons, it's something extra for those who are willing to put in the work and will undoubtedly get them more votes. However, I think the original point of the reddit post was that not every item ACCEPTED has custom particle effects as this diminishes the more rare quality items where I think particles would be more suited and I wholeheartedly agree with this. Particle effects should be on items that Valve deem special rather than every run of the mill single.
@Automedic: I don't think that April Fool's joke proves anything. It's too well made and the idea is quite damn amusing. I would vote for it (even if just for the lolz ).
I my opinion as long as it looks good it's ok.
Besides, soon the workshop will be saturated with items with particle effects, so it will become a more common thing, and hopefully people will start to differentiate the good from the bad.
Oh I wasn't referring to the upvotes. I guess 100% of those upvotes were from people who got the joke.
I was rather referring to the guys who did not get the joke and were inclined to take an effect that was this horrendously bad serious. It takes quite a lot of goodwill to consider something like this a real submission. People who were better at estimating the quality of the effect (breaking with the the colour scheme in the most sacrilegious way, a rushed out effect that is mostly just recolouring) realized that something this ugly could not possibly be a serious submission.
One way to look at it would be to compare particle effects to the use of the glow channel of a texture. Artists are conscious of how to use the channel properly in non-breaking ways, and use it sparingly. However special particles and effects are a bit different, because there is not much documentation out there and this alone makes it "special" (for now !)
Now I am not saying that particles should be an easy thing to add. (particle FX work is, indeed, a very specific area of game art - one that I personally cannot wait to get into !!). Maybe we are just in a transitional phase, with knowledge slowly spreading ?
At the end of the day I think (hope) that the community will be smart enough about this and not push for every set to look like a glowing christmas tree
Which brings me to the next point - not every particle effects needs to be a glowing mana spell... That makes me wonder why Valve decided to go for all out magic looking items for the Immortals. There are many different ways to use particles to enhance a model , and I kindof wish they would have shown examples of that instead.
I am worried about the overuse of custom effects for spells tho. Adapting the look of a spell to reflect the theme of a set does sound great .... but re-doing a spell entirely does seem game-breaking to me, and that's a concern. For instance I do think that the glowing Fissure spell on the EG Earth Shaker set is problematic.
I think that ability icons are non-issue, as they do not affect gameplay in the slightest and are totally optional (and rather quick to do anyway).
I'm in the same boat as Automedic, but I agree effects can somewhat be hazardous to the existing ecosystem. Making particles for dota 2 is pretty fun, for me it's been a nice way to alternate from doing env art all day at my normal job. Creating particles for dota 2 for the most part is the wild west of dota 2 modding. In some ways I'd like to think that's the reason most people feel polarized by custom particle effects. There's no way to regulate what a particle artist makes, but as nikey pointed out valve isn't going to accept rainbow colored swords anytime soon.
Ideally sometime in the future "valve time", Valve will officially support particles in the workshop. There's a part of me that hopes they don't though. As I previously mentioned there's no way to arbitrarily limit a particle system. There are all kinds of different case scenarios where you need to spawn more sprite sheets, or you require more particle children/parents in a system.
Particles also require a greater deal of knowledge behind how sprites are handled in a forward/deferred rendered game. You have things like: overdraw, fillrate, refraction, animation rate effecting fillrate, etc. There's some documentation on the Valve Dev wiki on these topics, but like all valve documentation it's vague. To be more precise, the difficulty behind controlling those aspects worries me that valve will take a, easy-mode approach to authoring particle effects.
I'm not worried that anyone could then dabble in particles, just that the creativity is heavily limited as a result. In terms of documentation, there's a ton of new stuff in the particle editors they need to catch up on and write down on the Valve wiki. By volvo standards that's gonna take at least roughly two years to complete.
This is what I contributed to the reddit thread:
- -
My worry is that, if given the ability to do custom particles, people will start shoe-horning it into every single item, and if Valve starts approving that type of behavior, all of a sudden not only do we have a visually noisy game, but particles and effects no longer have any significant meaning, nor are they special anymore.
IMO They should stay special, and be reserved for Valve made items and Pro player sets/items.
- -
I will also add that custom particles are still not 'officially' supported or accepted via the importer, nor is there documentation of proper use. I wonder just how many of the particles submitted are complete performance hogs, or just don't fit the style of the game (if that matters anymore..).
tl;dr: turning something that should be special into the norm, cluttering the visuals, and no official documentation or even tutorials by those 'in the know' greatly limits a large number of other contributors, at least for the time being.
EDIT: I think I need to clarify that there is a difference between ambient particles and spell particles. Spell particles I think should be fine if they are still recognizable as the original spell. Ambient (always-on) particles are the ones I'm worried about getting out of hand. I still think they should be reserved for special-case sets only though. It's a tough one. (as a player, I LOVE EM)
IMO They should stay special, and be reserved for Valve made items and Pro player sets/items.
@bounch I don't really agree on one main point
Pro players/teams shouldn't get special treatment. If anything.
Valve should just tell certain people that they can make a certain particle set/item.
The reason why I said no pro items, is because pro items would get in anyways with their lenient rules revenue is just support the team and gain more reputation with the dota community.
Would it be a better incentive to work with a team and make nice stuff with lenient rules thus causing chaos in the workshop? Or would it be better to have a workshop "rewards system" to artists that contribute very good items. This would make special items much more valuable. And this can go even farther than that. By making it a special deal of the patch and discontinuing the particle after the patch ends.
tl;dr: turning something that should be special into the norm, cluttering the visuals, and no official documentation or even tutorials by those 'in the know' greatly limits a large number of other contributors, at least for the time being.
I second bounch on p.much everything. He summed up my feels exactly. Supply and demand those diamonds to dust.
@bounch I don't really agree on one main point
Pro players/teams shouldn't get special treatment. If anything. Valve should just tell certain people that they can make a certain particle set/item.
Would it be a better incentive to work with a team and make nice stuff with lenient rules thus causing chaos in the workshop? Or would it be better to have a workshop "rewards system" to artists that contribute very good items. This would make special items much more valuable. And this can go even farther than that. By making it a special deal of the patch and discontinuing the particle after the patch ends.
no offense, but this is ALREADY the one of the biggest problems the workshop faces. Giving special treatment, even more? Why would you want to encourage that? by giving special treatment to those that are already doing "better" than others might sound nice on paper, but will only create a further divide among artists. There should be no special treatment for anyone, but that feels like a pipe dream since people will always have certain biases.
what would be 'better' is for Valve to actually be present, talk to their artist community (not just two or three of us..), and release some guidelines and/or rules so everyone isn't constantly shooting in the dark.
Yes, but what would be better. Giving special treatment to pro teams (which already get the basically free items ingame) or the people who make the items themselves. Pro teams has one thing, while artists have another thing. As for the special treatment for artists, I'm not saying that only a few artists can make particle items, I'm saying that Valve should just tell certain artists that since they've contributed a lot over a period of time. Why not get a one time particle item thing.
If pro players get something, artists should get something too, to even out the "treatment". Why should pro players be allowed to break everything while artists have to stick to the rules. Give the pro's leniency while the artists (that have "proven" themselves) be allowed to do a limited number special items. This would make items more special. I am not saying that once somebody gets the permission do to special particle item, then the item gets in automatically or that the person can keep submitting particle items. I'm saying that every couple items, a particle item is "allowed".
It's a difficult situation, for sure. Right now it seems like they want Pro player sets to be more special, which is honestly hard to disagree with. It would be cool if everyone was able to (maybe one every quarter can have particle), but again I am worried about over saturation, as well as the fact that a very, very few amount of people know the process right now and none have shared it publicly (who can blame them! high demand, hehe) as of yet, but perhaps soon. Particles are indeed super cool.
I think that even if particle effects were "granted" to some artists and not others (which I think would be a rather dangerous thing to if not handled properly, as it would likely create a bad atmosphere within the workshop community), or to pro players items only, that won't prevent any known or unknown workshop artist from making a badass set with custom and appropriate particles, submit it, and get it accepted. That's the whole beauty of the system really, and that's why things like the "other" category is here in the first place : this is our chance to think outside the box and be creative.
Sometimes we tend to think of all kinds of unwritten rules and exceptions, but at the end of the day I like to think that quality and originality matter above all else. (maybe I am just being too naive tho !)
In my humble opinion ALL item creators should have the freedom and creative license to create anything they can or want.
Fans should have the freedom to decide on what they feel should be included by voting.
And Valve should have the freedom to choose from any submission they feel they want in their game.
I feel that in most cases people are upset because they dont currently have the knowledge or ability to create these things themselves. You cannot punish the people who have worked hard to figure the systems out with little to no support. They invested the time and they deserve to benefit from their work. (should valve decide that's the direction they want for their game)
This is more a case of protecting self interests then "protecting the game".
All that being said I submit to the workshop all the time and I could not create a particle array that functioned in game if my life depended on it.
Custom fx are g'damn amazing, they change a character so much and change your enjoyment of the game, you get something so new and different out of it, and it really does feel like you have something special. Especially these new immortals.
As a player I'd rather see it stay that way and not have every set big baller blinging,and valve controlling what top tier items go out.
Also having it in house means you get a surprise when it does come out. No warning, just BOOM awesomeness.
Theres just a lot of magic in it, I dont wanna see get lost.
As a potential workshop artist, yeah open it up, that's bank to be made.
As a keen dota player, don't do it.
Im pretty sure if valve just split effects from items and made them their own thing you can attach to characters this would fix this noobery going on right now. Also making a decent tutorial and guideline for fx artists would be useful. So people cant break the colour schemes of heroes of break the look of their spells. As this could get really out of control over time. Seriously though they need to release some better tools. Its such a pain currently to create an effect from scratch.
Anyway yeah breaking FX off of items and instead making them their own thing would be great. Set makers wouldn't be stuck having to give their income over to fx artists just to tack on random little things and fx artist could work solo. As iv seen people not wanting to change their earth shaker club because of the effect. Even though they like another club more. No doubt its annoying for solo modelers.
God I wish they would make the effects more accessible. Was so easy to copy paste effects round and change colours and reactions but starting from scratch... Good luck.
Replies
From one point of view - you close those opps for the VFX artists, and u should know that it sounds like communism.
You do have equal opportunities finding people to join your team even here, on this forum.
On the other hand, that reddit post looks like a whine, because it's own our fault - we (all the workshop people hungry for dollars) raised the gap so high, that this custom additions looks not only natural for all new submissions, but even absolutely required. Just look at 2012th submissions and their quality. Looks like Darvin's Workshop Theory LAL.
So, even if I would agree with that whining post, I think it's too late to stop this stuff. IMHO.
Gems could have a rule list to only work with certain animation/particle combination to avoid making the game look like a mess of particle effects.
These will be rare/mythical gems. Arcana/Legendary gems can't be removed or used on other items.
But that happens anyways, artists want to 1-up another artist mainly because the better their set is, the longer they get money. The longer a set is in the market, the lesser the value it becomes thus creating an incentive to go all out on a character (particles...for now).
-taken from part of a post in reddit
This is because consumers want more for their money! They are the ones who say, we don't like set a because set b has custom particles, why doesn't set a have particles. つ ◕_◕ ༽つ GIFF FX
But in all truth, everybody(consumers not the artists) is expecting more from sets/items like loading screens, maybe turnaround, spell icons, particles. Thus making small projects bigger and big projects a giant project.
Well tools are out there. So we should learn them eventually
aren't we hypocrites now? you're forcing stuff ingame through leagues/tourneys and u complain about people raising the quality of their items with particles?
About this pic, No one will not accept something like this. Valve will not add shitty model with a good custom particles, everything should be great. Particles just a bonus to set/item
It might up the public interest of a particular set, but a bad set with fx is still a bad set.
It's more of a cherry on top rather than part of the cake.
For me, as long as the fx don't completely f-up the gameplay/visuals then I'm all for it.
Yup, I agree. As long as the effects are an 'extra' to already good items I don't see a problem. Specially if they are submitted as a separate thing on the workshop, so Valve can just add a set and ignore the particles if necessary.
Particles are a pretty new thing in the workshop so of course sets or items with shitty particle effects will recieve a lot of upvotes. That's partially due to the fact that they are still considered original and partially due to the fact that people can't really tell the difference between shitty and good effects yet. The same happened with models - just look at what kind of items got upvoted (and added to the store) when the Dota 2 Workshop opened. The quality will increase with time as people learn to tell the difference.
edit: Oh, and I just remembered - if you need proof that people still can't judge particles (let alone their quality) properly, just take a look at this year's DotaCinema april's fools submission I created the particles for. Read the older comments, check the rating of the video and you'll see that even though this submission was an obvious joke (submitted at april the 1st...) a lot of people thought we were serious with it.
[ame="
Pretty much this. I can't submit my creations as a standalone work with any chance of success and neither can animators (proven by a lot of amazing kinetic gems submitted by Andrew Helenek), as opposed to modellers. Apparently Valve is willing to accept custom particles and animations, so if we are really talking about "equal opportunities" the animators and particle creators should have a realistic chance to submit their work as standalone items, as Nemozini suggested.
I don't think banning particle effects would solve anything. It would just block a lot of potential for innovative concepts (using particles as a means to enhance the model beyond its base mesh). The recent trend to add effects is nothing but a symptom of the increasing quality of the submissions. Same happened with loading screens which suddenly became a standard as well.
I think that the particles should enhance the item rather than being a defining factor of the item.
I my opinion as long as it looks good it's ok.
Besides, soon the workshop will be saturated with items with particle effects, so it will become a more common thing, and hopefully people will start to differentiate the good from the bad.
Oh I wasn't referring to the upvotes. I guess 100% of those upvotes were from people who got the joke.
I was rather referring to the guys who did not get the joke and were inclined to take an effect that was this horrendously bad serious. It takes quite a lot of goodwill to consider something like this a real submission. People who were better at estimating the quality of the effect (breaking with the the colour scheme in the most sacrilegious way, a rushed out effect that is mostly just recolouring) realized that something this ugly could not possibly be a serious submission.
Now I am not saying that particles should be an easy thing to add. (particle FX work is, indeed, a very specific area of game art - one that I personally cannot wait to get into !!). Maybe we are just in a transitional phase, with knowledge slowly spreading ?
At the end of the day I think (hope) that the community will be smart enough about this and not push for every set to look like a glowing christmas tree
Which brings me to the next point - not every particle effects needs to be a glowing mana spell... That makes me wonder why Valve decided to go for all out magic looking items for the Immortals. There are many different ways to use particles to enhance a model , and I kindof wish they would have shown examples of that instead.
I am worried about the overuse of custom effects for spells tho. Adapting the look of a spell to reflect the theme of a set does sound great .... but re-doing a spell entirely does seem game-breaking to me, and that's a concern. For instance I do think that the glowing Fissure spell on the EG Earth Shaker set is problematic.
I think that ability icons are non-issue, as they do not affect gameplay in the slightest and are totally optional (and rather quick to do anyway).
Ideally sometime in the future "valve time", Valve will officially support particles in the workshop. There's a part of me that hopes they don't though. As I previously mentioned there's no way to arbitrarily limit a particle system. There are all kinds of different case scenarios where you need to spawn more sprite sheets, or you require more particle children/parents in a system.
Particles also require a greater deal of knowledge behind how sprites are handled in a forward/deferred rendered game. You have things like: overdraw, fillrate, refraction, animation rate effecting fillrate, etc. There's some documentation on the Valve Dev wiki on these topics, but like all valve documentation it's vague. To be more precise, the difficulty behind controlling those aspects worries me that valve will take a, easy-mode approach to authoring particle effects.
I'm not worried that anyone could then dabble in particles, just that the creativity is heavily limited as a result. In terms of documentation, there's a ton of new stuff in the particle editors they need to catch up on and write down on the Valve wiki. By volvo standards that's gonna take at least roughly two years to complete.
- -
My worry is that, if given the ability to do custom particles, people will start shoe-horning it into every single item, and if Valve starts approving that type of behavior, all of a sudden not only do we have a visually noisy game, but particles and effects no longer have any significant meaning, nor are they special anymore.
IMO They should stay special, and be reserved for Valve made items and Pro player sets/items.
- -
I will also add that custom particles are still not 'officially' supported or accepted via the importer, nor is there documentation of proper use. I wonder just how many of the particles submitted are complete performance hogs, or just don't fit the style of the game (if that matters anymore..).
tl;dr: turning something that should be special into the norm, cluttering the visuals, and no official documentation or even tutorials by those 'in the know' greatly limits a large number of other contributors, at least for the time being.
EDIT: I think I need to clarify that there is a difference between ambient particles and spell particles. Spell particles I think should be fine if they are still recognizable as the original spell. Ambient (always-on) particles are the ones I'm worried about getting out of hand. I still think they should be reserved for special-case sets only though. It's a tough one. (as a player, I LOVE EM)
Pro players/teams shouldn't get special treatment. If anything.
Valve should just tell certain people that they can make a certain particle set/item.
The reason why I said no pro items, is because pro items would get in anyways with their lenient rules revenue is just support the team and gain more reputation with the dota community.
Would it be a better incentive to work with a team and make nice stuff with lenient rules thus causing chaos in the workshop? Or would it be better to have a workshop "rewards system" to artists that contribute very good items. This would make special items much more valuable. And this can go even farther than that. By making it a special deal of the patch and discontinuing the particle after the patch ends.
I second bounch on p.much everything. He summed up my feels exactly. Supply and demand those diamonds to dust.
My 2 cents.
no offense, but this is ALREADY the one of the biggest problems the workshop faces. Giving special treatment, even more? Why would you want to encourage that? by giving special treatment to those that are already doing "better" than others might sound nice on paper, but will only create a further divide among artists. There should be no special treatment for anyone, but that feels like a pipe dream since people will always have certain biases.
what would be 'better' is for Valve to actually be present, talk to their artist community (not just two or three of us..), and release some guidelines and/or rules so everyone isn't constantly shooting in the dark.
If pro players get something, artists should get something too, to even out the "treatment". Why should pro players be allowed to break everything while artists have to stick to the rules. Give the pro's leniency while the artists (that have "proven" themselves) be allowed to do a limited number special items. This would make items more special. I am not saying that once somebody gets the permission do to special particle item, then the item gets in automatically or that the person can keep submitting particle items. I'm saying that every couple items, a particle item is "allowed".
It's a difficult situation, for sure. Right now it seems like they want Pro player sets to be more special, which is honestly hard to disagree with. It would be cool if everyone was able to (maybe one every quarter can have particle), but again I am worried about over saturation, as well as the fact that a very, very few amount of people know the process right now and none have shared it publicly (who can blame them! high demand, hehe) as of yet, but perhaps soon. Particles are indeed super cool.
Sometimes we tend to think of all kinds of unwritten rules and exceptions, but at the end of the day I like to think that quality and originality matter above all else. (maybe I am just being too naive tho !)
Fans should have the freedom to decide on what they feel should be included by voting.
And Valve should have the freedom to choose from any submission they feel they want in their game.
I feel that in most cases people are upset because they dont currently have the knowledge or ability to create these things themselves. You cannot punish the people who have worked hard to figure the systems out with little to no support. They invested the time and they deserve to benefit from their work. (should valve decide that's the direction they want for their game)
This is more a case of protecting self interests then "protecting the game".
All that being said I submit to the workshop all the time and I could not create a particle array that functioned in game if my life depended on it.
As a player I'd rather see it stay that way and not have every set big baller blinging,and valve controlling what top tier items go out.
Also having it in house means you get a surprise when it does come out. No warning, just BOOM awesomeness.
Theres just a lot of magic in it, I dont wanna see get lost.
As a potential workshop artist, yeah open it up, that's bank to be made.
As a keen dota player, don't do it.
my 2c
Anyway yeah breaking FX off of items and instead making them their own thing would be great. Set makers wouldn't be stuck having to give their income over to fx artists just to tack on random little things and fx artist could work solo. As iv seen people not wanting to change their earth shaker club because of the effect. Even though they like another club more. No doubt its annoying for solo modelers.
God I wish they would make the effects more accessible. Was so easy to copy paste effects round and change colours and reactions but starting from scratch... Good luck.