I made a post about a workshop in Suggestions. I make part of my living form designing for games I did not make. Planetside2 being the most recent. As an artist who would participate heavily for something like this, I understand its about GW and what they have established. Now the Standard is there, we as a community can pump allot of good work into that. If there was a place we could submit directly to GW, and GW would either decline or approve. (fully completed, in game models). While this takes timeto "curate", the money your saving on not paying salaries is extensive. Not to mention the competition takes hold and the quality ratchets through the roof. My challenge is, the community can do a better job on unique items than a traditional game team (due to diversity), but the dev team (GW) has to be willing to suffer through the noobs and crappy submissions. Valve, and SOE think its worth it. And it has changed my life. I would hope one of my favorite universes ever will also step up to the "community workshop" plate.
But that assumes they will let people design anything they want. A purity seal is just a purity seal, but you can make 5,000 different variations that all look okay. Why fight against the community on that? Bolters are the same. You can set down standards, then have the community vote in the best submissions. As Gabe Newell said "We can't compete with our own customers, so we stopped trying". You would be amazed at what the community can produce that's high quality and quantity.
When you have a thousand fans contributing to "filling out" the universe of a franchise, it's more work done in a short time than a team of a hundred developers can do in a couple of years and at minimum cost. If anything like is said above, they could reach a compromise, for instance everything made must have some credible lore behind it before it can be approved, be it official cannon or added fan cannon so long as it is cannon. Cannon being things like: This Bolter was made by Forgeworld <insert> and is a <insert> Patten Bolter etc etc or something like that. Adhere to established lore, such as no deviation from established technologies, or anything added or "new" added by fans is "rediscovered" by the Mechanicus etc.
Didn't they like say something about being able to form groups and have your own spaceship once? One might be able to make a relic for this group which would consist of a standard weapon (mastercrafted of course) with some slight deviations maybe extra runes and more glowy with more soulstones for Eldar and them give it some fancy new name (Wrath of Khaine etc.) Maybe with some changeable backstory...
Given the lore of the world there are only a few races this would work for. Many of them only use ancient items and would never create new designs. I think the world is easily already rich enough and with what already exists plus what BI will add I think we will have plenty of options. The time to craft software to allow players to contribute designs and the logistics of managing them to make sure they are not lore breaking I think outweighs any potential labor benefit they might bring. As a bit of a lore nut, player names will break immersion enough, crazy lore breaking designs and weapons will shatter it for many.
Not to mention the strain on the game's engine it would have. Imagine having 300 unique SM's fighting at once! Cool, yet unrealistic.
It wouldn't? It's not hard to make unique items that mesh with the world and have people vote for what gets included. These are actually for 3d printing (so only have super basic textures) but I made bolters with a built in auspex: So I could submit the bolter design, and it would go through a review process where players could vote on it. If it receives enough votes, the developers are notified and they can review it. If everything checks out, it's added to the game. Obviously you could view it the same way you are here and say "yeah that's cool" or "boo, that sucks".
I'd rather not have the drama or pressure on the dev team in situations where players vote for an item and like it but they are forced to deny it because it would break the lore heavily. For such an old IP it already has tons if fantastic weapon etc. designs that they can use, I really doubt we will get to the point where community designs are needed for an extremely long time if ever. I would much rather them put thier resources in other places than seeing up and cursing such a system. Quality over quantity as well.
