Regarding Activity in Foundry

ggpaladin

Hi all,

I am pretty new to NW but mostly joined to create maps on the foundry cause I love the concept. I had spent quite a while creating a campaign with quests (still in the works) but I recently had been told 'the foundry is pretty much dead now'. Not sure how true it is but that was upsetting as I had a lot of interesting ideas and quests in mind. I do hope someone can clarify this as I am debating continuing the campaign. Also, is there any way to get my campaign out there so more people could try it out? I would totally appreciate the feedback. Thank you all )

valcontar73

Well, first of all, you need to publish your quest at the Foundry-Quest-Database, do a nice post, with screenshots and tell a little about the storyline of your foundry.

Specify the short code: NW-XXXXXXX, title and author.Is the only way to find it.

Then maybe someplayers will take a look at that.

I've got a bit tired after publishing 16 Foundries, so don't give up.

The foundry is not dead, the game is dying slowly.

ggpaladin

@valcontar73 Wow, I'll give it a go. Thank you for the recommendation. Got a huge map in the works. Lol not sure if players will be a fan of 30-60 mins of an interesting quest :P.

But I will do as you say and hopefully it gets some plays.

torontodave

Let me sing you a song of the Foundry!

... actually, nah.

Aim for 15-20 minute quests. anything longer and you'll invariably get the one-star "too long!" reviews.

beckylunatic

You can do your long story, but figure out a way to break it up into chapters. Many of my favorite quests are presented as a series.

One thing that has kept me from completing long quests is that I can expect my Foundry playthrough time to be easily twice as long as the average listed (because I read and look at everything and poke around in the corners). With authors not experienced enough to build in a map waypoint, I've actually given up on a quest because I couldn't finish it in a session and had no way to get back into their quest, and didn't have the heart to restart it.

iandarksword

Generally the current player base looks at a 30 minute quest as "long." Many in-game quests take 15-20 minutes or less so players are conditioned to have an attention span of about that time frame. In times past, your quest had to be in excess of 15 minutes to qualify for a Daily Foundry AD reward, since that reward has been eliminated, there hasn't been as many longer quests. So your best bet for attracting plays may be to split your story across 2-3 quests, linking them in a short campaign.

markhawkman

The same is true in STO. Long missions generally suck, whether foundry or official.

sn0wst0rmz

yup, my first and only foundry is really long. Won me the 'judge's choice' award for the first foundry contest, but definitely too long. I've thought, and began to shorten it about twenty times now and gave up because nobody would actually ever play it. Maybe a few, but not enough to justify the time required. They've already made the death blow to the foundry. It's just simply worthless at this point. No rewards for playing = nobody plays. They use the excuse of 'botters' for everything. Like a simple CAPTCHA wouldn't fix that problem.... I just don't believe them anymore. I simply don't believe that they can't make the interactive command require some type of CAPTCHA to eliminate the botters. Even a reflexive combat style CAPTCHA could be implemented rather easily to the interactive command... example to follow:

I go to click on a Skill Node (it shows me 'f' to interact), CAPTCHA routine is called that this point which places that big red circle under the node (which alerts me to incoming damage)... I jump out of the big red circle to avoid being lit on fire (which burns you until you 'stop drop and roll' by which is done by the use of 1 of 5 different interactive keys displayed on screen randomly. One chance only to pick the right one or the skill node is consumed.

If they made a hundred different little reflexive CAPTCHA's for the 'interact' button feature.... the botting of such things would become completely unprofitable. Especially invoking.

Instead of wasting so much time trying to limit the rewards of this game, simply solving the problem directly would be a much more intelligent approach. CAPTCHA's work.

The sad truth is, physicists laugh when people talk about Artificial Intelligence. They can't even get a robot to turn the wheel on a pipe. They had a contest to make a robot for just that, in conjunction with the nuclear disaster site (Fukushima, Japan). They failed. The botting programs are not that advanced.

I see all this 'blah, blah, blah' as nothing more than an excuse for incompetence.

markhawkman

Well, Mimicking discussed captcha-type minigames for use in anti-botting in the live stream he did, so if they get that hooked up maybe...

kangkeok

They could make it so u get token for playing foundry which could be exchange for bounded foundry exclusive item. Maybe bounded costume or bounded coal ward or maybe mount? or they can shift the SCA reward here but make it bounded ofcourse.