Hoping to get Reviews for my First Quest :)

skratchx

Hey guys,
Just finished up my new quest and I'm hoping to get some feedback and reviews.

ID: NW-DD6B5L9RI
Title: The Missing Children
Description: The children of Protector's Enclave have gone missing, and you have been recruited by Guard Frinko to find out what happened. Gather clues from people around the town,and help get to the bottom of the disappearances.

Hope to hear some feedback soon,
Appreciate you taking your time
Skratch

skratchx

Bump ^ Will return the favor for anyone who can review it please

jkpark

Will take a look when I finish work. *points to signature* Feel free to do the same.

jkpark

Just had a play through of your quest. The quest in itself was fine, an interesting premise. Nothing was explained though, and the last couple of quest sections were unclear. You named the last boss for example, but the quest text didn't say to actually kill him. Although, this is obvious once you reach him. If you add a stage on the end where we have to return to the guard and he can explain just who this warlock is, we'd finish feeling more satisfied with the resolution. What happened to the kids, as well? Were they turned into zombies, are they hidden elsewhere?

The dialogue is well written, though. The run around the city is a bit long for those who don't have mounts maybe, or those with short attention spans, but I actually liked exploring a little bit.

The combat needs some tweaking. I'm not sure if you intended this for solo play or for 2+. I think a low damage dealer, or those who don't have companions would find doing this quest quite tough. Personally, I play rogue and have a healing companion. My poor healer went down like a bag of spuds when that large group of zombies was pulled and I had to end up kiting them about popping pots from time to time. This wasn't unenjoyable, yet I do feel for those less fortunate. :P

It is extremely short as well. Adding the extra stage will help with that.

Overall, I had fun playing it, which is really the bulk of the challenge. Not a bad start to your quest creation at all.

zoustyx

I have to agree with jkpark, when I got to the fog ridden place I got no explanation of what was going with all the undead. I can only assume that all those undead were previously the children, right? However, the beginning dialog was great. You should have put some more in the undead place.

tilt42

Played it, reviewed it. Here's some more information than what's written in the review: (and to sum up the review, I wrote that it has a good beginning but it feels like the author suddenly lost interest just when things were about to get interesting and simply slapped in a ridiculous amount of zombies, calling it a day)

"The Man with the Blue Scar", "Beyond the Fog", and so on isn't a quest goal. The same goes for the other goals in the quest. Tell the player what to do! This also goes for area transitions. These aren't chapter names, they are actions. I mean, "The Grim News?" I'm not telling anyone any news, and why is that listed on the teleporter anyway?

In related news, get rid of the "-ing" at the end of your verbs in the quest log. It's not "Searching for clues", it's "Search for clues". The game is telling the player what to do, not describing the current events. Same with stuff like "Investigating the Cove". "Investigate the Cove"!

The white fog in the cove looks weird against the skybox. Consider alternate ways of making this look good.

The quest starts with a plot, then forgets all about it the second you enter the cove. There is no explanation, no resolution, no cohesion. It feels utterly random.

As for those zombies... ah, where to begin. They were probably really fun to fight with your level 10 test character in the Foundry, am I right? Well, let me tell you, they were NOT fun to fight with a level 37 character. Zombie Rotters are DANGEROUS at high levels (they hit like sledgehammers), and you've stacked like 6-8 groups of them right on top of each other. NEVER EVER do this! No stacking! Ever! Not until you get used to the game's balance all the way into the high levels anyway. Stacking requires experience and careful consideration. This fight cost me some very valuable healing potions, and I had to kite like I was some kind of rogue (I'm a guardian fighter. My shields were gone within a second if I tried blocking).

As for a something that is less important and harder to change, I'd take an additional look at your dialogue. When writing it, try to say it out loud as if you were the character speaking. If it doesn't sound right, rewrite it. To quote the infamous line Harrison Ford said to George Lucas during the filming of Star Wars: "George, you can write this ****, but you sure as hell can't say it." You need to believe in your characters enough to imagine them standing before you. Stare at their character models for a few minutes if it helps. Ideally you're not supposed to give them words to say. They're going to talk through you. If you think I've planned out my dialogue trees in advance when I'm writing my quests, you'd be wrong. I let the NPCs speak freely through my mind, and I'm typically just as surprised at what they've got to say as anyone else. This is a good clue that you've developed them well. Still, this is a minor point in a game like Neverwinter and can be relatively safely ignored. It's just something to consider if you want to give it that little extra "boost".

Having gotten all the negatives out of the way, I think you did a really good job with the atmosphere once you got to the cove. It feels really alien, and there's a lot you can do with this if you just rework this section of the quest. You've got something with potential here, but it's far from ready for the limelight. The concept of finding missing children also resonates with people, so this is a good choice of theme.

Let me know if you give this a do-over, and I'll give it another look.