The Model Railroad analogy is interesting, being a avid Model Railroader I think it is also the last thing any developer should emulate, I have watched that hobby go from a hobby that even working class stiffs could participate in to a dying past time that is mostly enjoyed by the one percent of old middle aged to elderly rich dudes.; most of that was due to run away pricing and the monetizing of every aspect of the hobby.
One thing I learned at my time consulting with SOE was that fluff items bring in a metric <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> ton of capitol, it also throws down the gauntlet of: "try to beat us as a value" to the competition. I see wisdom in that especially considering the economic downturn. If Cryptic can market the correct fluff items and make use of the right synergies (like offering different animal companions after offering the Ranger class) they will do quite well I think.
No doubt you are right. But what does it bring to the game in terms of new gameplay experiences. A focus on new resource kits for the foundry authors will play into their imaginations for new stories. If these elements are money-makers, then they are worth development time to produce. But because they won't be moneymakers, they won't be very high on the development priority list.
You know, I could be worried about nothing. Maybe Crypic WILL release free new content and related resources on a regular basis. It just doesn't fit with their previous track record, that's all.
Please understand, I want to be wrong on this. But I am afraid that I will be proven right in the long run. But I will admit that we won't know until some time mid to late next year, after the game is out and we can see what sort of post-launch development practices they adopt. I'm a reasonable man...
I'm not really a John Galt,
but I play one on the forums...
:P
1. Can you increase the size of the aggro spheres?
2.Can you set monsters to use stealth?
3.Can you speed up monsters attacks and movement?
4. Can any level player character enter your adventure? And if they could, is your adventure set to the level of that player?
Thanks for answering our questions!!
1. Nope.
2. You can't alter the powers a monster has currently. However you can trigger them to spawn in when the player walks into a specific area or completes and objective.
3. This would still be considered altering monster powers, which is not allowed currently.
4. I believe the content scales to player level at this time.
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iamtruthseekerMember, Moonstars, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited August 2012
to stay on topic. This topic is foundry. Not Free to Play and profit. If people want to talk about the doom (oh why not, for nostalgia over the DDO forum's sake make that DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM) of the game and its demise and/or demoralization to the player-base, by all means, a new thread should be made on that.
But, for one time only, I'll list the actual data showing the health of the business and the interest of the player-base in this section.
Let's focus first on the profitability of said enterprise. But many people don't have a clue on MT, so let's start here.
Look, most people play a game and that game player's opinion of the game makes them think they understand the marketability of micro-transactions. Most people bluntly don't have a clue on this. SO I'm going with the Penny Arcane description of how it works. Not "for dummies" but understandable. Also, pay attention to the gouge-fest part the buy bandwidth part and the OK people playing it for free part. (Thanks Korea!) Oh yeah, never sell power and never ever ever split the community by selling maps or zones!
Of course, if "only fluff" or "money-focused" tactics are used, players will recoil from said game, and it will become stagnant and die. That's what happens right?
No.
Let's see how 2011 did (and part of 2012) observing just one article alone from PC Perspective
PC Gaming Alliance Announces Record PC Game Sales in 2011
Subject: General Tech | March 7, 2012 - 01:30 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: sales, record, pcga, PC, gaming
In two surprising bits of news, the PC gaming alliance is not only still alive and kicking, but their recent report indicates that the PC games industry saw record sales numbers in 2011. The consortium reported that worldwide PC game sales hit $18.6 billion last year, a year over year increased of 15%. The initial numbers definitely seem to suggest that PC gaming is nowhere near dead.
The PCGA states that the rise in sales is due to increases in the Chinese PC games market and the rise in popularity of Free-to-Play games like TF2, Star Trek: Online, League of Legends, and World of ******** (which has a free component), and many others. The integration of some of the most popular Free to Play games into Valve's Steam store certainly didn't hurt either!
Further, the release of several big hit titles including Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Saints Row: The Third, and Portal 2, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution (my pick for PC Per Game of the Year) all contributed to the record sales numbers on the PC. According to the article, Asian publisher Tencent launched League of Legends and is now bringing in 11 million players (though it's likely that not all of those players are active and/or spend money on the service) and will be surpassing Activision as the company making the most money off of PC games. Zynga, the company behind many of the annoying time sinks popular Facebook games, continued to rake in a boatload of money with 2011 revenue of $1.1 billion.
Not only did the PC gaming alliance report these positive numbers for 2011, but they predict that the PC games industry will continue to grow. As digital distribution systems catch on and broadband connections continue to improve and spread into new areas (though Verizon and AT&T aren't helping matters by stopping further roll outs of FIOS and Uverse), the PCGA predicts that the industry will grow to $25.5 billion, which would be a 37% rise in four years. If the growth rate continues in Asian markets and publishers continue to back down from DRM in favor of producing more titles that people want to buy, their predicted growth is certainly achievable. More information on the PCGA report can be found here along with the full press release here(PDF).
But I can hear the nay sayers tell me that some of these models are not this year or not truly only F2P or some yadda yadda.
So let's take a look at the League of Legends free to play no sub option.
A very small percentage of players buy anything from month to month. SO of course this company is near going under?
How much revenue does League of Legends generate, and how sustainable is its business model?
LoL is free to play, but charges money for "Riot Points" that can be used to buy new characters and skins.
Marcus Doran
Business Insider has their yearly revenue estimated at $25 Million for 2010 and the company has continued to have growth, so I wouldn't be surprised if it is well north of that number. http://www.businessinsider.com/d...
Riot's business model for League of Legends has actually been an incredible inspiration for others in the gaming community. Free-to-play or Freemium games have shown great success on a variety of platforms, including mobile gaming. The fact that Riot continues to release new, compelling champions, and accessories for purchase in-game, is a good sign that their revenue model is working well.
The company currently faces some threats from competing products which are due for release soon. Blizzard announced a stand-alone DotA-style product at Blizzcon 2011 and Valve announced DotA2 back in Oct 2010. If anything, this reinforces the fact that Riot has a compelling product - major, successful game companies are looking to compete with them.
And for 2011, taken from Emergingmoney.com "Tencent announces $4.5 billion in 2011 revenue," a lot of the "value added service came from their owned Riot Games that make LoL
Most of Tencent?s income came from ?Internet value-added services,? which includes games, credited with $3.6 billion in revenue. $519 million came from mobile and telecommunications services, while $316 million came from online advertising.
But surely even with that amount, the powerhouses that are established will be the ones who only make money, so we still have to charge for content 'cause we'll never beat WoW, right?
According to this report, Riot Games, owned by Chinese parent company Tencent Holdings, generated more revenue on the PC than Activision Blizzard in 2011. While the numbers are still being tabulated, this means that for the first time in a long time Blizzard?s insanely popular MMO World of ******** might not make it to the #1 spot. I guess Blizzard can take solace in the fact that they started all of this. Riot Games? League of Legends was inspired by DOTA, which was made on Blizzard?s robust ******** 3 map editor almost ten years ago. Without that map editor, it isn?t a stretch to think that DOTA and LoL would never have existed.
This is interesting on many levels. First, WoW is subscription based with roughly ten million active users and League of Legends is free-to-play with optional aesthetic purchases, yet somehow Riot Games generates more revenue. Even more surprising, it appears as though these figures count for the companies as a whole. So while Activision Blizzard has WoW, Starcraft, and a bunch of other games, Riot pretty much just has League of Legends, yet they still farmed more gold.
This gives us some insight as to why Blizzard?s unannounced game ?Project Titan? is going use the free-to-play model. Players are paying more voluntarily with League of Legends than they are in WoW subscriptions, so why not join the party. If anyone has the capital and the resources to experiment with monetization, it?s Blizzard.
With success like this it is almost certain that more free-to-play games are in our future. This might hint at some trouble for Valve though, specifically regarding Dota 2, which looks as if it will not be free to play. Regardless, the free-to-play model is here to stay, and is most likely going to become one of the more popular ways to monetize a game in the 21st century.
Finally, going back to STO and that, "they only did starbases" argument, this is what the players have been asking for a long time, the "guild" housing! This is a HUGELY involved task taking a team quite some time, and it addresses the other side of this issue: player morale or satisfaction.
So, you want to bring up content, it's not simply missions, but activities. And trust me (as a STO player also) when I say starbases are quite a lot bigger than a "minigame" when you look at the merging of missions, guild player housing and the "minigame" DOFF missions into one integrated guild experience!
So please don't say that because it's fluff that makes money everybody must make fluff and nobody will focus on anything else, nothing will be made and the game will be stagnant, because that old thinking is TNG's 24 Century Ferengi in the 25th century.
And saying people who play the game and produce a free sustainable mission content with a foundry putting STO's to shame ATM will leave because we're not charging Foundry micro-transactions to buy stuff is very straw man without statistical proof otherwise on a AAA totally free to play game introduced format in the first place.
But it's not like I showed this data before in amazingly robust detail on the old forums that makes this above detailed data reply look as brief as a LOLcat phrase or anything....
Because this is an online game fully supporting a F2P setup. P2P setups often charge the "box cost" but are based on the monthly revenue threshhold number.
I'm not saying F2P games don't ever charge for the client, but as mentioned in another post, that mostly went out with buying a physical copy at a brick and mortar. This is a digital copy with no other merchandising or marketing for said box (artwork, special items, etc.) This and there isn't an elevated number needed for subscription thresholds makes the transaction of micro-purchases much more profitable by reducing such overhead costs.
Battlefield: Play 4 Free is the only game that contains 'pay to win' items - or items which supply paying players with an appreciable advantage over free players. All items in the other games are either purely cosmetic, or can be earned through in-game actions (i.e. You don't have to buy them).
It?€™s this 'pay to win' idea that gives microtransactions a bad name. When you force the hand of your players to buy something to stay competitive, while all the time yelling 'IT?€™S FREE, HONEST' at them, you can pull up a chair and watch your players walk away.
We went into this investigation expecting to be infuriated by every game we came across. We knew TF2 was fine in terms of playability, but thought the pay-to-win situation had become rife and that microtransactions were ruining everything they touched.
It turns out we were wrong. Everything outside of Battlefield is either cosmetic or available for free, which is the absolute right way to do it if you?€™re going to at all - the fact that nobody likes Battlefield is a testament to this.
As you can see from player reactions to microtransactions in World of ******** and EVE Online, though, even just cosmetic items will breed a bitter culture of haves and have-nots if you can?€™t reasonably get them for free in a game for which you?€™re already paying.
Developers also need to bear in mind that grinding for items often isn't healthy for a hobby based on escapism, but at the same time players also hope to be judged on their achievements in game, rather than their bank balance and how ready they are to deplete it.
On the other side, microtransactions have allowed Team Fortress 2, Realm of The Mad God, and League of Legends to be completely free without upsetting their communities. This is obviously a good thing, as these are all excellent games - and the more people playing them, the better.
The worry, however, is that with microtransactions seen as an increasingly viable option for developers to pursue, the market may become clogged with lesser titles rushing to capitalise on the free-to-play markets.
That's all folks, I'm done here with MT. Discuss this all you want, but please take it OUTSIDE the foundry thread here please and please make it its own thread...if after all this we still need to. Thank you.
That's all folks, I'm done here with MT. Discuss this all you want, but please take it OUTSIDE the foundry thread here please and please make it its own thread...if after all this we still need to. Thank you.
Very good research there, Truthseeker. I salute you.
I guess it comes down to individual preference as to what they will or will not spend their money on. I'll spend money on Foundry Mission slots, assuming that working with the Foundry proves to be my cup of tea. They will have a practical use, in my activities. So I won't mind parting with a little cash to make sure I can get my creative work out there to be bashed by the community...
Perhaps it would be best if I take a dose of my own medicine. When Cryptic was calking about their consideration for dropping featured episode mission development for STO, I challenged that they don't have to create new graphical elements from scratch for every single featured episode... that just having there be new playable content that reused what is already in the game would be better than no content at all. I even went so far as to point out that Foundry authors working on their spare time, using limited and buggy tools, and getting zero pay for their efforts are able to turn out content more content faster than Cryptic's developers working full-time using specialized tools while getting paid to do it.
Well... Perhaps this will be an opportunity for foundry authors to shine like never before. If indeed PWE-Cryptic focuses solely on what they monetize (fluff) and does not release new Foundry assets for a long time, it would be interesting to see just how creative we can get with just the ones the game launches with.
We may surprise ourselves.
So I won't be saying anything more negatively about this. The potential for awesome results is too great even with the prospect of only having access to base elements...
The truth is that Neverwinter is going to be a totally different animal from STO. Different audience. Different core expectations. I think that the Foundry and what it represents will be better received in NW than it has been in STO.
In STO so many people turn their nose up at the notion of playing content created by other players, saying that putting the tools in player hands is a sign of developer laziness. They have this idea that the developers cannot screw up, citing poor grammar and bad trek story writing. But they seem to forget that those very things were screamed at Cryptic early on, as many of Cryptics missions were said to be badly written, loaded with typos and bad grammar. The truth is that there are foundry missions that totally make Cryptic look like ammatures. Even Cryptic has acknowledged how creative Foundry authors can be. And yet these people refuse to even give ANY foundry missions a try, just because Cryptic didn't make them.
But here in a community permiated by D&D fans who have been steeped in content created by their peers for many years, it should feel like a very old, but very comfortable hat. We shall see what we are made of next year...
I'm not really a John Galt,
but I play one on the forums...
:P
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iamtruthseekerMember, Moonstars, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited August 2012
how do people get hired to develop games for the last ten to eleven years?
By honing their skills on level-making or mission making toolsets. If this game could revitalize the user game creation, it literally could spark better game developers in the future that we "professionally pay" to make our games.
But people assume professionals are better than amateurs, and forget skill does not equal availability or choice of joy versus professional job.
That written, if I start making missions on this Foundry and get to a point companies like Cryptic want to hire me, I'll listen
So here is a question. Can I interrupt dialogue with an action? Can I interrupt dialogue with a scripted action? What comes to mind is Mass Effect 2 when that one Krogan keeps ******** about how a human has no right going into that trial with Grunt and then you can choose to say "screw this" and headbutt him. I want that. Good grief do I want that.
You should perhaps make templates of these common question which keep coming up every one months or so and compile an answer and copy paste it every-time this happens
2. You can't alter the powers a monster has currently. However you can trigger them to spawn in when the player walks into a specific area or completes and objective.
3. This would still be considered altering monster powers, which is not allowed currently.
4. I believe the content scales to player level at this time.
Please consider "alter the pahwah!" even if not at launch, a feature which can perhaps be added later gradually to the foundry
@vangald yes I want to know too. Like if I choose yes, my character starts to do robotdance and if I change No, my player sighs... So in short would selecting dialogue options would branch to different results/actions?
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vindiconMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
So here is a question. Can I interrupt dialogue with an action? Can I interrupt dialogue with a scripted action? What comes to mind is Mass Effect 2 when that one Krogan keeps ******** about how a human has no right going into that trial with Grunt and then you can choose to say "screw this" and headbutt him. I want that. Good grief do I want that.
You can probably make a custom dialogue interruptable with an action. Sure, it most probably won't proproperly show on screen, -I dpoubt they'd have the necessary animation, and I don't know if you'd be able to use one anyway- but you could program a "slit throat" dialogue option at specific points. Now, I'd assume you could program an automatic NPC death as well, if said option is picked, but I guess we'll have to wait for the foundry to come till we can test this. But you sure can interrupt it with careful branching of the dialogues.
You can probably make a custom dialogue interruptable with an action. Sure, it most probably won't proproperly show on screen, -I dpoubt they'd have the necessary animation, and I don't know if you'd be able to use one anyway- but you could program a "slit throat" dialogue option at specific points. Now, I'd assume you could program an automatic NPC death as well, if said option is picked, but I guess we'll have to wait for the foundry to come till we can test this. But you sure can interrupt it with careful branching of the dialogues.
A lot of this could be handled with old fashioned if-then-else statements, my fear is the devs will think this is too complicated for Joe average, which I hope won't be the case.
A lot of this could be handled with old fashioned if-then-else statements, my fear is the devs will think this is too complicated for Joe average, which I hope won't be the case.
Except for one thing. We will not be allowed to write scripts like we could with the Aurora Neverwinter toolset. If it cannot be done direct in the editor, it cannot be done...
It should be noted that even with limitations, Foundry is very powerful. Some of the best Foundry missions in STO were achieved through creative use of what was allowes, so ways to fake the system out can be found. It's just a matter of fully understandig how each aspect works and how they can be made to work together.
For example, in the beginning, if a foundry author wanted to give the players a choice of how to interact with something, he couldn't just set up a branching menu of choices. any interactable object could only have ONE interaction to launch whatever conversation or sequence of events they wanted. So, rather than make that specific object interactable, they would put a small object for every interaction option they wanted into the map, sunk into the floor so the player could not see it, and set the text for the interaction to the option in question. It was a dirty solution, but it worked. That was before they added branching dialogue.
I'm not sure about interrupting a character's dialogue. It's not going to be spoken dialogue. We won't be able to attach audio files to our modules. You'll have to read what the characters are saying. If you don't want to, just pick your response option. But I'd be careful doing that. Sometimes what seems like a good choice could have bad results if you don't pay attention to the context defined by what the NPC is saying.
I'm not really a John Galt,
but I play one on the forums...
:P
Except for one thing. We will not be allowed to write scripts like we could with the Aurora Neverwinter toolset. If it cannot be done direct in the editor, it cannot be done...
.
You could easily create a widget that handles the if then else state simple enter the action for each via a drop down and boom script like functions with no script writing.
Except for one thing. We will not be allowed to write scripts like we could with the Aurora Neverwinter toolset. If it cannot be done direct in the editor, it cannot be done...
It can be done, it absolutely can be done.
The question is whether Cryptic will put the effort into designing a failsafe system.
In fact one of their recent videos Craig went all out saying we'll be given every tool that Cryptic Devs have and I doubt they could release a cookie cutter game and not realize there's just not enough power. Scripts half as powerful as the Aurora Engine will be more than capable for players to truly make great content.
Scripting can cause problems and could/should require a high level DM account before gaining access to it but there's absolutely no reason that scripting "can't" be done.
vindiconMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited August 2012
Scripting can definitely be done. The issue here is that, this being an MMO, things have to be limited as much as possible to avoid potential abuse. Now, I have no programming experience whatsoever, but I can safely assume that it would be much easier to find an exploit in the system if open scripting was allowed, rather than the tight system they have in place.
Still, from what I've seen from Foundry footage, what we've got is enough. We can do branching dialogue paths, we have the whole asset library of the game in our disposal, and we can do things like event triggers. Apart for confirming how much we are allowed to do in terms of animations, I don't think that there is anything we really need that is not gonna be included. We can't use custom models or sound files, but then again this means that mods can be used without having to actually go and download files - just a script that tells the game what assets to use in what way + quest text. Saves you from the trouble of waiting for ages to download a mod, then unpack it, then download again from another source because that rar file was corrupted, and then going hunting into the override files to find out what exactly is interfering with the mod you just installed and bugs out the game. And ofc saves Cryptic from having to hunt down copyright infringements, exploits and nude mods.
We have a rating and vetting system for this kind of thing. When you publish a quest, it will not be available to the public until it is approved by players who have signed up to be a Foundry reviewer. By becoming a reviewer, you gain the privilege to approve a new quest listing, but you also have to accept that you might run into some bad content. Even if a quest passes the review stage, it has a general star rating system, so the cream will rise to the top.
A solution to one of the many problems surrounding UGC?
What percentage of users do you expect to take part in the review process??
You have stated that the reviewer is not expected to pass or fail UGC based on quality concerns, but is not everything an issue of quality?
Why should a reviewer not be allowed to simply state "I do not like this quest" and move on to the next one. Would I be banned from the review pool if I failed a quest because I felt that the quest needed to be failed?
If the set of users involved in the review process is large enough, allowing a quality metric into the process might work. Personally I feel that a rotating pool of reviewers drawn from the pool of all users is the way to go. The rewards for reviewing would have to be quite large of course. Approving a quest listing is not a privilege, it is a RIGHT. Approval takes time though, and time is money friend...
So the question becomes how to get random users to spend a portion of their precious gaming time running through content that will most likely be terrible?? I do not have a complete answer here, but rewards based on time spent actually running the quests and then rewards based on whether or not the individual reviewers pass or fail decisions match those of the crowds would probably be a good starting point. For instance, if you are part of the review group that passes a game that goes on to become 5 star you should be rewarded, I do not think you should be discredited for failing a game that later becomes 5 star though. Because perhaps you had failed that game simply due to your concerns about "QUALITY".
I am also interested in collaboration, will a creator be able to share editable creations with other users?? Perhaps this function would need to be used during the review process, again this would only be useful if the reviewer pool was large enough. But this could be very useful for someone who enjoys a quest and would like to expand on it, here is where the problem of authorship comes in...
You have stated that the reviewer is not expected to pass or fail UGC based on quality concerns, but is not everything an issue of quality?...
They will "fail" content if it does not meet EULA or is an attempt to exploit the game. that has been made clear.
EDIT: Also from the choice of strong words by you I just have to say, take it easy dude, its just a game.
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iamtruthseekerMember, Moonstars, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited August 2012
In regards to attacking by interrupting dialogue, if it could be done (and I'm sure we'll find a way beyond the "limitations,") I hereby request it be called the "Enough Talk" response.
They will "fail" content if it does not meet EULA or is an attempt to exploit the game. that has been made clear.
EDIT: Also from the choice of strong words by you I just have to say, take it easy dude, its just a game.
All words are mutable.
For example, what is meant by exploit the game?? Would a quest that some feel does not fit into the general theme of the overarching setting be seen as exploititive? But getting to the root of the problem, why would the devs allow UGC to exploit the game?
Either way, If I choose to play the Foundry I will be failing others creations based on my own internal quality metric, I suggest others do the same.
For example, what is meant by exploit the game?? Would a quest that some feel does not fit into the general theme of the overarching setting be seen as exploititive? But getting to the root of the problem, why would the devs allow UGC to exploit the game?
Either way, If I choose to play the Foundry I will be failing others creations based on my own internal quality metric, I suggest others do the same.
It is a well defined process. e.g. you can report any post you find is not in accordance with T&C of these forums. But you have to have a very valid reason. Also you won't have final say but the decision can be repealed to officials. If they find you have wrongly 'failed' the quest even when it follows EULA, they will ask you to answer. Just like you will have to answer here if you report a post wrongly (also it will destroy your credibility). As simple as that.
This kind of process is followed in a lot of places (committes, universities, public forums, government agencies etc.). There is nothing fickle about it.
What you are free to do however is to "RATE" it. You can always rate it as 1, but just your opinion will not matter, but the opinion of all players who play and rate it.
Also, I would expect reviewing etc. to be voluntary work, just as creating the content (is actually much more time consuming) is.
A solution to one of the many problems surrounding UGC?
What percentage of users do you expect to take part in the review process??
You have stated that the reviewer is not expected to pass or fail UGC based on quality concerns, but is not everything an issue of quality?
I think you're a bit confused. Let me try to clarify.
When a quest is published, it gets put into a pool of quests awaiting 5 separate reviews. These reviews come from normal players that have signed up to be a Foundry reviewer, and each review includes a star rating (1-5 stars) and a comment box for a more detailed written review.
Once the quest is reviewed 5 times and is not found to have violated the EULA, it gets put into the general pool of quests that are visible to the public. At this point, anybody can play this quest, and when they complete it they are prompted to review the quest and give it a star rating and written review. This happens for ALL players, even those who have not signed up as a reviewer.
The star rating allows us to list highly rated quests and campaigns in very visible areas, like the job board/Foundry catalog. The cream rises to the top, the cruft sinks to the bottom, and the exploits are weeded out before the public sees them. It's not an airtight system, but it has worked quite well for us in the past.
As for the percentage of signed-up reviewers, we have never had a problem finding a healthy population of players who are willing to be the very first to see new Foundry content and discover the diamonds in the rough.
I am also interested in collaboration, will a creator be able to share editable creations with other users?? Perhaps this function would need to be used during the review process, again this would only be useful if the reviewer pool was large enough. But this could be very useful for someone who enjoys a quest and would like to expand on it, here is where the problem of authorship comes in...
We have discussed internally a whole system for author collaboration and sharing Foundry assets between authors, but nothing is concrete enough to discuss yet.
In the foundry, when you are creating a quest, or mission, you have access to a lot of things. If you drop a mob in a room you have made, you can decide how hard that mob is. Weak mobs are good for leading along.. the drops from these weak mobs will be the same as if cryptic had made the quest. In the STO foundry, there are creations such as, a zoo a guy made for his three year old kid to go play in.. that is a pretty cool dad if you ask me.. lol.. so this is just one of the many uses. The people that use the foundry for the most part really like to take their time and make the content awesome, because so many are doing it.. standing out requires some effort. As for exploiting it, i dont see how. the monsters wont drop epic loots if they arent epic kills.. the chest wont drop awesome stuff unless the quest took some time, and effort to complete.. the reward is dictated by the difficulty.
This is based on my personal experiences in the foundry, and then seeing what the new foundry can do.. competition alone will make it work.
The star rating allows us to list highly rated quests and campaigns in very visible areas, like the job board/Foundry catalog. The cream rises to the top, the cruft sinks to the bottom, and the exploits are weeded out before the public sees them. It's not an airtight system, but it has worked quite well for us in the past.
I wish that were true. But all you have to do is sort by "hottest" in STO's foundry and all of the exploits show up as the first results. They have not been "weeded out", and are apparently the most played missions to be at the top of the "hottest" search.
I wish that were true. But all you have to do is sort by "hottest" in STO's foundry and all of the exploits show up as the first results. They have not been "weeded out", and are apparently the most played missions to be at the top of the "hottest" search.
Then if you see an exploit module, report it.
There will never be a perfect solution to this sort of thing. We are being handed an honor system type of regulation of user generated content. It may not get rid of every example of exploit produced, but it will weed out a lot of them. If it was not in place, imagine how many exploit modules would be live.
One thing that I would insist upon is if the author makes any changes to the module after it passes review, then its rating needs to reset and it needs to go through the process again. This will prevent people from posting a legitimate, but basic, quest, getting it approved, and then turning it into an exploit while retaining a good rating.
Another thing would be an Ignore Foundry Author option. That way if you find an author who posted an exploit, you can fix it so you'll never see his work again.
I'm not really a John Galt,
but I play one on the forums...
:P
I wish that were true. But all you have to do is sort by "hottest" in STO's foundry and all of the exploits show up as the first results. They have not been "weeded out", and are apparently the most played missions to be at the top of the "hottest" search.
That is because there isn't five different people checking them, like there will be in Neverwinter, they won't catch everything but I'll bet it will cut down on it and if the Foundry is supper popular Cryptic can expand that number I'm sure.
There will never be a perfect solution to this sort of thing. We are being handed an honor system type of regulation of user generated content. It may not get rid of every example of exploit produced, but it will weed out a lot of them. If it was not in place, imagine how many exploit modules would be live.
One thing that I would insist upon is if the author makes any changes to the module after it passes review, then its rating needs to reset and it needs to go through the process again. This will prevent people from posting a legitimate, but basic, quest, getting it approved, and then turning it into an exploit while retaining a good rating.
Another thing would be an Ignore Foundry Author option. That way if you find an author who posted an exploit, you can fix it so you'll never see his work again.
i do not agree, as when i am making a mission, i publish it so i can play it with someone that plays with me and i get advice. which is nice. if it got reset every single time i make an update, that would be a serious pain the backside
a more simplified approach might be to flag it if it gets enough reports, but then, this is also exploitable. a flag gets attention, and that is what the guy making the quest wants, so yea, there is no perfect approach that occurs to me right now...
Oh, these missions have been reported. These same ones have been around for a very long time and no action has been taken against them. And just so you understand what I'm talking about, STO has a daily mission called "Investigate Officer Reports" where you have to complete 3 foundry missions and then get a reward. These exploit missions which I'm talking about only involve clicking on a console(aka 1 "interact with object" objective, in foundry terminology), and then the mission is over. So all you do is stand in 1 spot and click the console once and it completes all 3 missions in approximately 1 second. Again, these same missions have been around "forever", have been reported, and nothing has been done.
Just checked, and the "hottest" mission in the entire foundry in STO is one of the console click exploits, and it has 27 pages of comments, with the oldest being on 1/1/12. So assuming it was commented on the first day it was published, that means it has been there for almost 9 months. Oh, and the rating is 3.69 out of 5 stars.
Oh, these missions have been reported. These same ones have been around for a very long time and no action has been taken against them. And just so you understand what I'm talking about, STO has a daily mission called "Investigate Officer Reports" where you have to complete 3 foundry missions and then get a reward. These exploit missions which I'm talking about only involve clicking on a console(aka 1 "interact with object" objective, in foundry terminology), and then the mission is over. So all you do is stand in 1 spot and click the console once and it completes all 3 missions in approximately 1 second. Again, these same missions have been around "forever", have been reported, and nothing has been done.
Yes there is. STO's foundry has the same 5 person review system that NW will.
Sorry to say, that's not an exploit. It does not bypass the codes or use trainers, etc. The flagging is for Terms of use violation and unless somebody makes a character that looks like Shatner's Kirk, it's not going to be flagged. A better example of a grey area is there's a mission that causes you to float. If it allowed to somehow to keep floating when you moved after the "mission" ended, then it would be a violation.
Exceptionally easy sure, but not illegal in game rules. Respectfully, you might want to stop reporting it, as many people will use this mod for the dailies and make a stink if it were removed or simply replace it. Heck, even *I* use the console one sometimes.
Comments
No doubt you are right. But what does it bring to the game in terms of new gameplay experiences. A focus on new resource kits for the foundry authors will play into their imaginations for new stories. If these elements are money-makers, then they are worth development time to produce. But because they won't be moneymakers, they won't be very high on the development priority list.
You know, I could be worried about nothing. Maybe Crypic WILL release free new content and related resources on a regular basis. It just doesn't fit with their previous track record, that's all.
Please understand, I want to be wrong on this. But I am afraid that I will be proven right in the long run. But I will admit that we won't know until some time mid to late next year, after the game is out and we can see what sort of post-launch development practices they adopt. I'm a reasonable man...
but I play one on the forums...
:P
1. Nope.
2. You can't alter the powers a monster has currently. However you can trigger them to spawn in when the player walks into a specific area or completes and objective.
3. This would still be considered altering monster powers, which is not allowed currently.
4. I believe the content scales to player level at this time.
But, for one time only, I'll list the actual data showing the health of the business and the interest of the player-base in this section.
Let's focus first on the profitability of said enterprise. But many people don't have a clue on MT, so let's start here.
Look, most people play a game and that game player's opinion of the game makes them think they understand the marketability of micro-transactions. Most people bluntly don't have a clue on this. SO I'm going with the Penny Arcane description of how it works. Not "for dummies" but understandable. Also, pay attention to the gouge-fest part the buy bandwidth part and the OK people playing it for free part. (Thanks Korea!) Oh yeah, never sell power and never ever ever split the community by selling maps or zones!
Of course, if "only fluff" or "money-focused" tactics are used, players will recoil from said game, and it will become stagnant and die. That's what happens right?
No.
Let's see how 2011 did (and part of 2012) observing just one article alone from PC Perspective
But I can hear the nay sayers tell me that some of these models are not this year or not truly only F2P or some yadda yadda.
So let's take a look at the League of Legends free to play no sub option.
A very small percentage of players buy anything from month to month. SO of course this company is near going under?
Think again.
From Quora:
And for 2011, taken from Emergingmoney.com "Tencent announces $4.5 billion in 2011 revenue," a lot of the "value added service came from their owned Riot Games that make LoL
But surely even with that amount, the powerhouses that are established will be the ones who only make money, so we still have to charge for content 'cause we'll never beat WoW, right?
Ummm,
"WoW Killer? Might Not be Another MMO Report Says
Finally, going back to STO and that, "they only did starbases" argument, this is what the players have been asking for a long time, the "guild" housing! This is a HUGELY involved task taking a team quite some time, and it addresses the other side of this issue: player morale or satisfaction.
So, you want to bring up content, it's not simply missions, but activities. And trust me (as a STO player also) when I say starbases are quite a lot bigger than a "minigame" when you look at the merging of missions, guild player housing and the "minigame" DOFF missions into one integrated guild experience!
So please don't say that because it's fluff that makes money everybody must make fluff and nobody will focus on anything else, nothing will be made and the game will be stagnant, because that old thinking is TNG's 24 Century Ferengi in the 25th century.
And saying people who play the game and produce a free sustainable mission content with a foundry putting STO's to shame ATM will leave because we're not charging Foundry micro-transactions to buy stuff is very straw man without statistical proof otherwise on a AAA totally free to play game introduced format in the first place.
But it's not like I showed this data before in amazingly robust detail on the old forums that makes this above detailed data reply look as brief as a LOLcat phrase or anything....
Oh yes he did!
That's all folks, I'm done here with MT. Discuss this all you want, but please take it OUTSIDE the foundry thread here please and please make it its own thread...if after all this we still need to. Thank you.
Very good research there, Truthseeker. I salute you.
I guess it comes down to individual preference as to what they will or will not spend their money on. I'll spend money on Foundry Mission slots, assuming that working with the Foundry proves to be my cup of tea. They will have a practical use, in my activities. So I won't mind parting with a little cash to make sure I can get my creative work out there to be bashed by the community...
Perhaps it would be best if I take a dose of my own medicine. When Cryptic was calking about their consideration for dropping featured episode mission development for STO, I challenged that they don't have to create new graphical elements from scratch for every single featured episode... that just having there be new playable content that reused what is already in the game would be better than no content at all. I even went so far as to point out that Foundry authors working on their spare time, using limited and buggy tools, and getting zero pay for their efforts are able to turn out content more content faster than Cryptic's developers working full-time using specialized tools while getting paid to do it.
Well... Perhaps this will be an opportunity for foundry authors to shine like never before. If indeed PWE-Cryptic focuses solely on what they monetize (fluff) and does not release new Foundry assets for a long time, it would be interesting to see just how creative we can get with just the ones the game launches with.
We may surprise ourselves.
So I won't be saying anything more negatively about this. The potential for awesome results is too great even with the prospect of only having access to base elements...
The truth is that Neverwinter is going to be a totally different animal from STO. Different audience. Different core expectations. I think that the Foundry and what it represents will be better received in NW than it has been in STO.
In STO so many people turn their nose up at the notion of playing content created by other players, saying that putting the tools in player hands is a sign of developer laziness. They have this idea that the developers cannot screw up, citing poor grammar and bad trek story writing. But they seem to forget that those very things were screamed at Cryptic early on, as many of Cryptics missions were said to be badly written, loaded with typos and bad grammar. The truth is that there are foundry missions that totally make Cryptic look like ammatures. Even Cryptic has acknowledged how creative Foundry authors can be. And yet these people refuse to even give ANY foundry missions a try, just because Cryptic didn't make them.
But here in a community permiated by D&D fans who have been steeped in content created by their peers for many years, it should feel like a very old, but very comfortable hat. We shall see what we are made of next year...
but I play one on the forums...
:P
By honing their skills on level-making or mission making toolsets. If this game could revitalize the user game creation, it literally could spark better game developers in the future that we "professionally pay" to make our games.
But people assume professionals are better than amateurs, and forget skill does not equal availability or choice of joy versus professional job.
That written, if I start making missions on this Foundry and get to a point companies like Cryptic want to hire me, I'll listen
You should perhaps make templates of these common question which keep coming up every one months or so and compile an answer and copy paste it every-time this happens
Please consider "alter the pahwah!" even if not at launch, a feature which can perhaps be added later gradually to the foundry
@vangald yes I want to know too. Like if I choose yes, my character starts to do robotdance and if I change No, my player sighs... So in short would selecting dialogue options would branch to different results/actions?
You can probably make a custom dialogue interruptable with an action. Sure, it most probably won't proproperly show on screen, -I dpoubt they'd have the necessary animation, and I don't know if you'd be able to use one anyway- but you could program a "slit throat" dialogue option at specific points. Now, I'd assume you could program an automatic NPC death as well, if said option is picked, but I guess we'll have to wait for the foundry to come till we can test this. But you sure can interrupt it with careful branching of the dialogues.
A lot of this could be handled with old fashioned if-then-else statements, my fear is the devs will think this is too complicated for Joe average, which I hope won't be the case.
Except for one thing. We will not be allowed to write scripts like we could with the Aurora Neverwinter toolset. If it cannot be done direct in the editor, it cannot be done...
It should be noted that even with limitations, Foundry is very powerful. Some of the best Foundry missions in STO were achieved through creative use of what was allowes, so ways to fake the system out can be found. It's just a matter of fully understandig how each aspect works and how they can be made to work together.
For example, in the beginning, if a foundry author wanted to give the players a choice of how to interact with something, he couldn't just set up a branching menu of choices. any interactable object could only have ONE interaction to launch whatever conversation or sequence of events they wanted. So, rather than make that specific object interactable, they would put a small object for every interaction option they wanted into the map, sunk into the floor so the player could not see it, and set the text for the interaction to the option in question. It was a dirty solution, but it worked. That was before they added branching dialogue.
I'm not sure about interrupting a character's dialogue. It's not going to be spoken dialogue. We won't be able to attach audio files to our modules. You'll have to read what the characters are saying. If you don't want to, just pick your response option. But I'd be careful doing that. Sometimes what seems like a good choice could have bad results if you don't pay attention to the context defined by what the NPC is saying.
but I play one on the forums...
:P
You could easily create a widget that handles the if then else state simple enter the action for each via a drop down and boom script like functions with no script writing.
It can be done, it absolutely can be done.
The question is whether Cryptic will put the effort into designing a failsafe system.
In fact one of their recent videos Craig went all out saying we'll be given every tool that Cryptic Devs have and I doubt they could release a cookie cutter game and not realize there's just not enough power. Scripts half as powerful as the Aurora Engine will be more than capable for players to truly make great content.
Scripting can cause problems and could/should require a high level DM account before gaining access to it but there's absolutely no reason that scripting "can't" be done.
Still, from what I've seen from Foundry footage, what we've got is enough. We can do branching dialogue paths, we have the whole asset library of the game in our disposal, and we can do things like event triggers. Apart for confirming how much we are allowed to do in terms of animations, I don't think that there is anything we really need that is not gonna be included. We can't use custom models or sound files, but then again this means that mods can be used without having to actually go and download files - just a script that tells the game what assets to use in what way + quest text. Saves you from the trouble of waiting for ages to download a mod, then unpack it, then download again from another source because that rar file was corrupted, and then going hunting into the override files to find out what exactly is interfering with the mod you just installed and bugs out the game. And ofc saves Cryptic from having to hunt down copyright infringements, exploits and nude mods.
A solution to one of the many problems surrounding UGC?
What percentage of users do you expect to take part in the review process??
You have stated that the reviewer is not expected to pass or fail UGC based on quality concerns, but is not everything an issue of quality?
Why should a reviewer not be allowed to simply state "I do not like this quest" and move on to the next one. Would I be banned from the review pool if I failed a quest because I felt that the quest needed to be failed?
If the set of users involved in the review process is large enough, allowing a quality metric into the process might work. Personally I feel that a rotating pool of reviewers drawn from the pool of all users is the way to go. The rewards for reviewing would have to be quite large of course. Approving a quest listing is not a privilege, it is a RIGHT. Approval takes time though, and time is money friend...
So the question becomes how to get random users to spend a portion of their precious gaming time running through content that will most likely be terrible?? I do not have a complete answer here, but rewards based on time spent actually running the quests and then rewards based on whether or not the individual reviewers pass or fail decisions match those of the crowds would probably be a good starting point. For instance, if you are part of the review group that passes a game that goes on to become 5 star you should be rewarded, I do not think you should be discredited for failing a game that later becomes 5 star though. Because perhaps you had failed that game simply due to your concerns about "QUALITY".
I am also interested in collaboration, will a creator be able to share editable creations with other users?? Perhaps this function would need to be used during the review process, again this would only be useful if the reviewer pool was large enough. But this could be very useful for someone who enjoys a quest and would like to expand on it, here is where the problem of authorship comes in...
The Foundry is the GAME.
They will "fail" content if it does not meet EULA or is an attempt to exploit the game. that has been made clear.
EDIT: Also from the choice of strong words by you I just have to say, take it easy dude, its just a game.
All words are mutable.
For example, what is meant by exploit the game?? Would a quest that some feel does not fit into the general theme of the overarching setting be seen as exploititive? But getting to the root of the problem, why would the devs allow UGC to exploit the game?
Either way, If I choose to play the Foundry I will be failing others creations based on my own internal quality metric, I suggest others do the same.
It is a well defined process. e.g. you can report any post you find is not in accordance with T&C of these forums. But you have to have a very valid reason. Also you won't have final say but the decision can be repealed to officials. If they find you have wrongly 'failed' the quest even when it follows EULA, they will ask you to answer. Just like you will have to answer here if you report a post wrongly (also it will destroy your credibility). As simple as that.
This kind of process is followed in a lot of places (committes, universities, public forums, government agencies etc.). There is nothing fickle about it.
What you are free to do however is to "RATE" it. You can always rate it as 1, but just your opinion will not matter, but the opinion of all players who play and rate it.
Also, I would expect reviewing etc. to be voluntary work, just as creating the content (is actually much more time consuming) is.
I think you're a bit confused. Let me try to clarify.
When a quest is published, it gets put into a pool of quests awaiting 5 separate reviews. These reviews come from normal players that have signed up to be a Foundry reviewer, and each review includes a star rating (1-5 stars) and a comment box for a more detailed written review.
Once the quest is reviewed 5 times and is not found to have violated the EULA, it gets put into the general pool of quests that are visible to the public. At this point, anybody can play this quest, and when they complete it they are prompted to review the quest and give it a star rating and written review. This happens for ALL players, even those who have not signed up as a reviewer.
The star rating allows us to list highly rated quests and campaigns in very visible areas, like the job board/Foundry catalog. The cream rises to the top, the cruft sinks to the bottom, and the exploits are weeded out before the public sees them. It's not an airtight system, but it has worked quite well for us in the past.
As for the percentage of signed-up reviewers, we have never had a problem finding a healthy population of players who are willing to be the very first to see new Foundry content and discover the diamonds in the rough.
We have discussed internally a whole system for author collaboration and sharing Foundry assets between authors, but nothing is concrete enough to discuss yet.
This is based on my personal experiences in the foundry, and then seeing what the new foundry can do.. competition alone will make it work.
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
I wish that were true. But all you have to do is sort by "hottest" in STO's foundry and all of the exploits show up as the first results. They have not been "weeded out", and are apparently the most played missions to be at the top of the "hottest" search.
Then if you see an exploit module, report it.
There will never be a perfect solution to this sort of thing. We are being handed an honor system type of regulation of user generated content. It may not get rid of every example of exploit produced, but it will weed out a lot of them. If it was not in place, imagine how many exploit modules would be live.
One thing that I would insist upon is if the author makes any changes to the module after it passes review, then its rating needs to reset and it needs to go through the process again. This will prevent people from posting a legitimate, but basic, quest, getting it approved, and then turning it into an exploit while retaining a good rating.
Another thing would be an Ignore Foundry Author option. That way if you find an author who posted an exploit, you can fix it so you'll never see his work again.
but I play one on the forums...
:P
That is because there isn't five different people checking them, like there will be in Neverwinter, they won't catch everything but I'll bet it will cut down on it and if the Foundry is supper popular Cryptic can expand that number I'm sure.
i do not agree, as when i am making a mission, i publish it so i can play it with someone that plays with me and i get advice. which is nice. if it got reset every single time i make an update, that would be a serious pain the backside
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
Himmelville - Are you easily frightened?
Click Here
On one side of the mountain, there were bones...
Oh, these missions have been reported. These same ones have been around for a very long time and no action has been taken against them. And just so you understand what I'm talking about, STO has a daily mission called "Investigate Officer Reports" where you have to complete 3 foundry missions and then get a reward. These exploit missions which I'm talking about only involve clicking on a console(aka 1 "interact with object" objective, in foundry terminology), and then the mission is over. So all you do is stand in 1 spot and click the console once and it completes all 3 missions in approximately 1 second. Again, these same missions have been around "forever", have been reported, and nothing has been done.
Yes there is. STO's foundry has the same 5 person review system that NW will.
Really?
I did not know that...I have been playing since beta and never seen anything mentioned about it.
Really? It was discussed in detail before the foundry went live in STO:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=185900
Sorry to say, that's not an exploit. It does not bypass the codes or use trainers, etc. The flagging is for Terms of use violation and unless somebody makes a character that looks like Shatner's Kirk, it's not going to be flagged. A better example of a grey area is there's a mission that causes you to float. If it allowed to somehow to keep floating when you moved after the "mission" ended, then it would be a violation.
Exceptionally easy sure, but not illegal in game rules. Respectfully, you might want to stop reporting it, as many people will use this mod for the dailies and make a stink if it were removed or simply replace it. Heck, even *I* use the console one sometimes.