How to: Improve Community Content Sharing (Suggestion Thread for 343i)

Games Other Halo
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READ FIRST: Before commenting please read through everything in this post.(if you are reading this 343i and are not going too, or are unable to make any of these improvements for whatever reason to Halo:Reach, then plz move this thread into the Halo 4 section.)

READ SECOND: Plz be sure to comment so as to not allow this thread to be swallowed by the same old garbage threads people post. If you really dont want to put any thought into a comment, at the very least you can say weather or not you agree or disagree with my suggestions.

\Suggestions to improve Organization and Sharing of Community Content/

updated 10/21/11

TAG

Tag - A keyword or term assigned to a File. This helps describe an item and allows it, along with similar files, to be found again by browsing or searching for that term or keyword.

Currently, files are able to be “tagged” with anything by anyone, regardless of accuracy. This is mainly the fault of the “like” system failing to include a “dislike” button which would result in a sort of checks and balances system.

*In order for Tag to be used to its optimal potential, These features should be added.

  1. Replace the “like” feature with Thumbs up/down, as seen on youtube videos and comments.
  2. Rather then allow an infinite selection of possible tags to be applied to files of limited diversity and possibilites, we should have certain “official” tags which can easily apply too, and effectively describe, over 95% of all content that has ever been uploaded.

Suggested Official Tag tree:

Map Variants
Aesthetic (Focus on Great detail, Can not support competetive Gameplay)
Location
Event
Object (person, vehicle, animal, tree, etc)
Other

Competitive (Designed to play built-in game-types in the Traditional manner)
(Tags would be every built in gametype variant)

Custom
Griffball (Uses the official Griffball game-type on a traditional map)
1 vs all (EX: duck-hunt, halo on halo, tetris, jenga, barrel roll, etc.)
Challenge (Try to make it to the end, Very difficult “race” maps included)
Puzzle
Other
…to be continued

Screenshots
Comedy
Art
Map Preview
Other

Films & Clips
Comedy
Fail
Weird
Action
Multi-kill
Other

…Along with these official tags however, people should still retain the ability to add custom tags to maps should the map be truly unique. With this however I would suggest adding a suggestion area for new official tags, because as time goes on their are bound to be new branches of content created, mimicked, and mass produced

Also I believe that in order to reduce the affects of occasional “troll” votes. We believe that the initial tags by the uploader should receive 10 automatic thumbs up, as well as the map remaining “unrated” until it receives at least 20 ratings. (Ratings are mentioned in “other Suggestions”)

Uploading Requirements

Currently, there is absolutely no requirement for uploading a file to your file-share.

I think that all files should have a certain set of requirements met before a file can be uploaded. those requirements are as follows (depending on type of file)…

  1. Input of Recommended player count EX: 1-4 players (puzzle map) 4-10 (Competitive map)

  2. Adding at least 1 official Tag

  3. Automatically linking the custom game-type (if one is required)

Other Suggestions

  1. Include a 5 star rating system for maps, screenshots, and videos

  2. Include the ability to Report False Tag abuse.

  3. At the End of every custom game, have a review screen come up that will allow you to almost everything ive mentioned so far such as, report tag abuse, vote on existing tags, add your own tags, 5 star rating, etc.

  4. Include a option to turn off review mode if they are annoyed by the screen at the end of the game or just dont want to use it.

  5. Add the following content filters:

Unrated Content (has yet to recieve 20 ratings)

Original Map (Has not been edited by second party. tired of finding slightly different versions of what is usually a better original map)

Supported Gametype X (So that i can download “Race” maps that actually support the “Race” gametype)

  1. Add the option, under file details, to View the fileshare that the file you are viewing is currently in, that way you can easily locate the partner files such as game-types.

  2. Make it so that simply viewing a screenshot does not count as a download for a file.

  3. Give us the ability to organize our masses of local content in a useful way. Such as sorting by supported gametype, or just allowing us to create our own categories that we can drop maps we think belong into.

…plz leave your suggestions, comments, or constructive criticisms below

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nice ideas i like the whole thumbs up and down system but with that i don’t see the need for the 5 star rating thing
personally i’d prefer the 5 star system thing
i like tht #6 at the end but i think as soon as you make a film clip, screenshot, etc. your gamertag automatically gets tagged in

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The thumbs up/down system is specifically for the tags only
the 5 star system is for the actual files.

#6 under “other Suggestions” is regarding the halo reach file browser only.
Normally when you view a files contents it give you these options…

Download file
Tag file
Recommend to friends

I want there to be a fourth option “View Fileshare”.
that way i dont have to go out of my way to get the appropriate gametype for every map i want to test with some friends.
(assuming they have the maps gametype in their fileshare, I would hope they would lol)

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Suggestion: Reporting
Allow the reporting of obscene or inappropriate content in-game. We can already do it via BNet, after all… Maybe we can finally make Most Downloaded trash-free.

Suggestion: Download Fix
Make it so that you must select “Download” to increase a file’s download count. Right now, even just viewing a screenshot counts as a DL.

Suggestion: File Browser usability enhancements
Add smart links between searches. For example, if I search for a file author name, allow me to easily jump to their actual File Share (and vice versa). If I hit “X” to view the details of some content I’m looking at, allow me to easily jump to a author/File Share search for the author of the file.

Automatically tagging files with their name, or allowing searches by file name, would also be useful. Allowing searches by base gametype / gametype category (“ASSAULT”, …, “SLAYER”, …, “INSANE”, “ALL OTHERS”) could also be useful.

These would make it faster and easier to find more content by an author whose work someone happens to like.

Suggestion: File Browser optimization with respect to Local Files
The File Browser is slow, laggy, and less efficient than my years-old iPod despite the 360 having a considerably larger amount of RAM… There are a number of ways this could potentially be fixed.

(For example, Reach could use a more optimized local file database, and keep that in RAM at all times, like iPods do. That may sound costly, but it isn’t – my iPod has a database of over 440 content items, but that database isn’t even 900KB. The Xbox 360 has 512MB RAM; I’m sure Reach could still run were one single megabyte to be devoted specifically to the File Browser. If a database format can be designed with comparable efficiency to that of an iPod – and I’m sure the brains at 343 can manage such a task – then this change could fix nearly all of the issues with the File Browser.)

This change would allow people to download and make use of more custom content, which in turn would encourage more liberal downloading. The way things are now, people have to be extremely careful and discriminating in choosing whether to download content because of the extreme performance costs of having large amounts of content.

Suggestion: Allow tagging and searching of Local Files
This ties in with the above suggestion. If the Browser is able to handle more files and if we are more easily able to find specific files within our local files, then people will be able to download and use larger amounts of content more easily.

A minor example: I could just start downloading huge amounts of good racetracks and tagging them “racetrack”… And then if I’m hosting a Custom or something, and everyone’s like, “Hey, do you have any good race maps?” – BAM! Search, pick, play.

In other words, you can download a huge amount of games to have at your disposal whenever you feel like playing them, without having to remember what’s named what and what was Forged on which map and so on. You could create a library of Custom Games that is, for all practical purposes, endless.

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  1. I agree With the Suggestion Reporting, however i would like to know, what exactly can you already report files for on bungie.net. iv’e tried looking everywhere there but i can not find the criteria for reporting a file. i accidently reported a file once because i assumed there would be a pop-up asking me if i was sure i wanted to do this and would then provide a description or something.

  2. I guess some people might appreciate the download fix, but honestly, ive never understood the point of downloading pictures to begin with. Once ive seen them i would be glad to give them a rating, but i see no reason to saving them if ive already seen them before.

  3. i thnk i already have all those suggestions regarding “file browser usability enhancements”. except rather then searching for lets say Infection Gametypes. I thought it would make more since to be able to search for maps that are compatible with said gametypes. There must be a compatibility list somewhere saved in the map data already, i would think, because the game tells you if a map is compatible or not without you even having to start the game to find out.

  4. Im not completely sure on all the deatails you were describing about ram and laggy filebrowser. but if you are reffering to how it doesnt show the files tags until after you hover over each file for like 5 seconds, then yeah, they should definitley make it so i can easily skip down without having to wait for the tags to load.

  5. Local file tagging, yeah something like this would be definitely useful. as it is now you can, like i do, go through and rename every race map, for example, and add a specific Symbol or word to the beginning of every race map. that way when you are looking at your local files they are all grouped together.
    This can take a looooooong time though.

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> There must be a compatibility list somewhere saved in the map data already, i would think, because the game tells you if a map is compatible or not without you even having to start the game to find out.

Actually, it scans through the map variant data when you load it into the lobby. In some cases, it also checks the map itself (i.e. Race ensuring that the necessary vehicles exist in a map’s Forge palette).

> 4. Im not completely sure on all the deatails you were describing about ram and laggy filebrowser. but if you are reffering to how it doesnt show the files tags until after you hover over each file for like 5 seconds, then yeah, they should definitley make it so i can easily skip down without having to wait for the tags to load.

That’s part of it. There’s also the huge loading time on the menu itself when you have a lot of files.

> 5. Local file tagging, yeah something like this would be definitely useful. as it is now you can, like i do, go through and rename every race map, for example, and add a specific Symbol or word to the beginning of every race map. that way when you are looking at your local files they are all grouped together.
> This can take a looooooong time though.

Yeah, I’d assumed that they’d let us tag local files when they first announced the file tagging system.

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thx for the info.
its not to important if that option is included anyway, as long as they give us the “tag tree” i suggested (or something similar) because then people can just tag the map with all supported gametypes anyway.