I would like to add to the review tab comments. How many quests are published in a week? Would it not be possible to have a system for this tab where one on one off is the concept? I agree with karitr that a week is enough time to get five reviews. It would be nice if every quest that was 'newly' published had it's time there.
I have no idea how many quests get published in a week. But I would guess it is a lot more then you think. There has to be thousands of quests out there. And I would also guess the with the one on one off system a quest would not be on the for review tab long enough to get 5 reviews. I would guess that on some occasions a quest could be published one day and the next day it would be down far enough to be removed by the one on one off system. What if you have 100 new quests published in one day? Is that out of line? With 2 million players and only 1% of them doing foundry Quests that is 20,000 authors. Even take 1% of that and you have 2000 authors. Maybe someone from Cryptic could give us an ideas as to how many quests there are and how many new quests get publishes each day/week... Roughly...
7 days
It goes on the new tab
both should remove a quest from the review tab.
Not sure what you mean by this statement.
Also, I think quests should not be on two tabs. So featured quests should only ever be on the featured list, not the best list, this would avoid double list such as the top half now.
If a quest on the new tab makes it onto the best tab then it should no longer be on the new tab.
Now this I agree with. Only one problem, or question. What happens to the quest after it runs it's featured course?
would it be possible to link the plays and reviews of a featured quest to the original?
As an extra, there should be a warning for the quests about to be removed or at least once it has been removed.
Narayan
Sweet Water and Light Laughter Till Next We Meet.
Narayan
Here is our current and never-really-changing STO list of "top rated" foundry missions. The ones in yellow are stories. This list does not change much. If you consider that many of these stories are done by the same person, then... here I will count. In STO the number of story writers in our "best" are.... 18. Players can find the stories of 18 people in our "best" Fed list. It's far worse for Klingons. Like 90% of their lists are loot farms.
We also have a category that you guys don't have. It's called "Hot." 139 of 146 missions listed are exploits, loot farms and non-stories.
Alpha Flight (stickied spotlight)
Battleship Royal Rumble Avenging Resolution
This Far No Further
Admiral Bobo Goes to War
Admiral Bobo Goes to War (easy)
Fed Farm 102 ACD Star Trek Allegiance, part 3
In the Shadow of Midas
loot-o-matic 3000 Star Trek Allegiance Part 2
Battlegroup Chaos Rumble The Intrawarp Experiment
Repairing Utopia Planitia Emissary of the Pah-Wraith
Dark Alliance part 2
Iconian Connection No Prize for Second Contact
Radio Blast from the Past
Finding Lascaux
Quark the Farmer Star Trek Allegiance
Boff Grinder: Klingons
Grinder: Doom the Dominion
Grizz's Farmer No Prize for Second Contact II
Mirror Wars
Farm 101 ACD
Infected Ground Training
Happy Farmer
EC Farmer
Battleship 1 on 1 Another Man's Hell
Dark Alliance Part 1
Overture
Undine Ground Accolade
Romulan Ground Accolade Rising Phoenix
Captain's Table Rumble Finding Resolution
Mirror Wars, another part Ad Majorem
The Grinder: Orions
Energy Credits
Battleship Bashing One Too Many
Target Practice
One and Done Fed
Elachi Ground Accolade.
I think you may have missed something. The way I read it was that they are considering changing how this is done for the new and review tab. He was asking for ideas on how we think this should be done.
At no point have I seen it said that quests will be deleted from being playable. So long as you are subscribed or have the code you will still be able to play those quests.
I could be wrong though. That is just how I took it.
So we are back to thousands of author hawking their quests trying to get plays/noticed?
And I have not seen any real new ideas as to how this should change. It is the same... Get on the list for so long then get dropped off that list. Basically the same as it is now, with a few minor tweaks.
Narayan
PS. How many authors do you think there are making quests? and how many of those authors visit these forums?
Narayan
Sweet Water and Light Laughter Till Next We Meet.
Narayan
So we are back to thousands of author hawking their quests trying to get plays/noticed?
And I have not seen any real new ideas as to how this should change. It is the same... Get on the list for so long then get dropped off that list. Basically the same as it is now, with a few minor tweaks.
I think that is the idea. There are too many quests to show them all, so the new, the best and the featured are the ones that are going to be there. How they get there is the question.
Narayan
PS. How many authors do you think there are making quests? and how many of those authors visit these forums? No idea, which is why I asked the question first, to point out that problem.
I have no idea how many quests get published in a week. But I would guess it is a lot more then you think. There has to be thousands of quests out there. And I would also guess the with the one on one off system a quest would not be on the for review tab long enough to get 5 reviews. I would guess that on some occasions a quest could be published one day and the next day it would be down far enough to be removed by the one on one off system. What if you have 100 new quests published in one day? Is that out of line? With 2 million players and only 1% of them doing foundry Quests that is 20,000 authors. Even take 1% of that and you have 2000 authors. Maybe someone from Cryptic could give us an ideas as to how many quests there are and how many new quests get publishes each day/week... Roughly... I think you are right, it was just an idea because I have no idea of the numbers.
Not sure what you mean by this statement. I mean that if a quest get on the new tab it leaves the review tab. If a quest is still on the review tab after 7 days it is removed.
Now this I agree with. Only one problem, or question. What happens to the quest after it runs it's featured course? If it's not good enough to be on the best tab it is removed from the list like all the others.
I think Karitr had a good point with a database of quests on the web site. In case you didn't sub or forgot the handle/code.
Narayan
That will probably look a mess. I'm so bad at forums.
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dheffernanMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 216Arc User
edited September 2013
N days since the quest was played or accessed by its creator. If no one has touched it in (e.g.) 90 days I think it's safe to say no one will miss it if it goes away.
@Venture-1@Venture from City of Heroes if you remember that far back. Yes, *that* Venture. Yes, I probably trashed your MA arc. For me it was Tuesday.
Karitr: I got minimal plays (like one play per day between three quests) unless I actively solicited plays constantly. Which meant another handful of plays.
I don't have the energy to develop good missions AND constantly pimp them.
I think all these measures are going to be inadequate without some form of cross linking/predictive suggestion.
I can understand that minimal plays are disappointing, but your quests would be in no danger of being 'inactive' with any of the suggestions I have seen here. How to get more plays is a conundrum; I really empathise with the reluctance to self-promote, I am not a great self-promoter, though have no problem championing others *shrug*
With the catalogue in its previous state, it was possible to publish a quest and have no chance of getting on any list. If a system to remove 'abandoned' quests was implemented, although it is possible your quests wouldn't get on a list, it would be less likely to happen.
I also think authors have to be realistic about the longevity of their quests and how many plays they should be achieving. It is easy to look at a 'Featured' and have a skewed view of what to expect. But to counter the suggestion that Cryptic are only looking after a small percentage of authors, it should be said that it is quests that the players have picked up and ran with that end up being featured, not the other way around. Word of mouth is powerful and 'quality will out' in most cases.
Anyway, I am waffling on and have gone off-topic. I wish your quests were online so I could at least try and search for them if they weren't visible. Same with naransingh's quest(s).
That will probably look a mess. I'm so bad at forums.
It looked very good.
As I understand it... Once you get your 5 reviews you are taken off the For Review list and put on the new list.
The only problem I have with the database suggestion is that very few will actually use it. IMHO. And it will take a lot of work to put together and maintain. I mean every time a quest is published and/or withdrawn the database would have to change. Even if you did it once a week to cut down on maintenance, you would have someone complaining that there were errors. Either their quest wasn't put on the list soon enough or that a quest was on the list and they couldn't find it in game. etc...
And if I am right about the work to do the database, Karitr, it would not be worth it for the few extra plays some quests would get.
Narayan
Sweet Water and Light Laughter Till Next We Meet.
Narayan
And it will take a lot of work to put together and maintain. I mean every time a quest is published and/or withdrawn the database would have to change.
Absolutely not. It'd be extremely trivial to implement -- and if it isn't they should fire their database developers.
I could also see it being something (probably a SPL [SQL database] script) that gets run automatically at 4am Monday mornings or something similar.
And if I am right about the work to do the database, Karitr, it would not be worth it for the few extra plays some quests would get.
Narayan
I wasn't suggesting a database for the benefit of the authors Narayan :eek:
And I dispute this assertion
The only problem I have with the database suggestion is that very few will actually use it
1. When the recent contest was held, the amount of plays the authors received were a direct result of a sticky in this forum and an item in the 'News' page.
2. When the patch 10 days ago broke published quests, many players not only came to these forums, they were capable of searching out authors' quest threads and posting to them to inform or complain.
Absolutely not. It'd be extremely trivial to implement -- and if it isn't they should fire their database developers.
I could also see it being something (probably a SPL [SQL database] script) that gets run automatically at 4am Monday mornings or something similar.
I'm wondering how powerful the Gateway is. It handles game updates in real time; it would be great if it could handle something as large as the Foundry database without seizing up.
1. When the recent contest was held, the amount of plays the authors received were a direct result of a sticky in this forum and an item in the 'News' page.
I would like to kindly dispute the sentiment behind this statement. In the past two years, I've grown to firmly believe (as a STO author) that Shatner himself could tweet about my mission, and it wouldn't matter, since the UI works against me. We've spent 2 years doing everything that we can outside of the game to get plays. We've begged on forums. We've pleaded on twitter. We've made YouTube trailers. We've reviewed and promoted missions with 6 different podcasts. We've even tried to make a wiki for Foundry missions, which was pointless.
You can't rely on something outside of the game. No amount of self-promotion, begging, PR on a Cryptic website, or pleading in the forums even comes close to a friendly UI that helps a player explore what is out there. This is why most of us have eventually given up. Nothing at all is a substitute to a friendly UI that helps players know what is out there. You could spend months outside of the game doing everything that you can to generate plays. All you really needed to see results is a button that allows players to browse and see what is out there. "Hmm... I've played these 50, what are the top 100? What are the top 200? Maybe I'll see what's on page 5 of the results? What's really new, and not simply auto-republished?"
Players of both of our games cannot find the answers to those questions inside the game. It's baffling as to why. No amount of forum groveling or even a blog post by Cryptic that promotes a mission can counter the craptastic-ness of a badly designed and implemented UI.
Just imagine how frustrating google would be if worked like the Foundry UI.
Everything outside of the game is tribal knowledge, and this company seems to endorse tribal knowledge, especially regarding the Foundry.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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celantraMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Silverstars, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 465
edited September 2013
I think the fundamental problem is the system itself and the imposed dead zone. So lets look at the process for a minute.
A new quest is published and goes to the review list. Thank god this tab is searchable and the restriction upon Author Name and Title searches has been removed.
Upon receiving 5 reviews it is moved to the new tab and sits there for a predetermined period of time. The next hurdle is to get 20 plays and a minimum play time of 20 minutes to become daily eligible. At some point based upon currently unknown criteria by me, your quest is removed from the new tab.
Unless you have gotten your quests adjusted rating high enough to transfer to the best list, your quest drops into the phantom zone that not even kryptonions can escape. Unless of course you are General Zod. This is the fundamental problem.
What visibility is there for quests in the phantom zone. At that point authors are relegated to whatever interest they can garner via web promotion, live streams, guild members, barking their quests in zone chat, or taking off all their clothes and running through the streets of Protectors Enclave to get some attention.
There needs to be some in game mechanism to promote a quest to be seen when it is at this state. A paged list, a randomized round robin list, something that makes it easy for a player to just go in and select a quest they may not have ever seen before. Right now people go to the best list, the new list, even the review list because it is easy to go down the list of quests and pick one that appeals to them. There is no such ability for the quest that is not "New" and not "Best." The biggest issue being that some of the best content is buried and never seen, never given the opportunity to get the adjusted rating to move it to the best category.
Don't misunderstand me I think that removing quests that can be considered clutter is one possible solution to the problem, but really the problem is not that easily solved. I would think that at best this may result in a 10-20% reduction to the quest catalog. The real problem is how do you provide visibility to quests in the phantom zone. The catalog of foundry content is huge, last commented at around 260,000 quests in some news story I read. As there are about a hundred quests total across the new, best and review tabs how do we expose the other 259,900 to the player base in a easy to navigate manner that doesn't require pre-knowledge of the Quest ID, Author, or subject matter.
There is an intermediate category between best and new. In STO, it is called "Hot." It represents the missions that are getting plays, regardless of rating and regardless of newness. However, it's basically a who's who of popular exploits and loot farms that get repeated daily, even though most are slapped together nonsense designed simply to grant lootz. But, it is interesting that you guys don't have some kind of intermediate category that lists what is getting plays, verses a stable and unchanging "best." You probably don't have it, simply because it's easier for them to remove it than deal with exploits and loot grinders.
When the recent contest was held, the amount of plays the authors received were a direct result of a sticky in this forum and an item in the 'News' page.
Yep. Due to the contest promotion I got my lone 1-star vote from the general public, and my five or six 4-5 star votes from fellow authors/forum readers. It is extremely hard seeing the nice trees in the forest of tangled overgrowth and loot farms. Hopefully, over time, this tag/review system will help weed things out, but without even an authors seedling to the tags... I'm not holding my breath. Thankfully, I have so much fun "playing" in the Foundry, I don't really give a rats behind if I get lots of plays. But, at least a few, especially a few with constructive ideas and suggestions is definitely a cherry on top.
Yep. Due to the contest promotion I got my lone 1-star vote from the general public, and my five or six 4-5 star votes from fellow authors/forum readers. It is extremely hard seeing the nice trees in the forest of tangled overgrowth and loot farms. Hopefully, over time, this tag/review system will help weed things out, but without even an authors seedling to the tags... I'm not holding my breath. Thankfully, I have so much fun "playing" in the Foundry, I don't really give a rats behind if I get lots of plays. But, at least a few, especially a few with constructive ideas and suggestions is definitely a cherry on top.
To be fair though, well over half my plays were on the first day and other than the winner I think most were like this. Yours could not be finished that day, I tried them all.
I do however think more could have been done in game for that and maybe future competitions.
Another small thing that would really help plays:-
The subscription tab is a mess. I have many authors that I like the work of. If I could look at my sub page and have a list of authors instead of quests. Possibly with a little symbol to allow me to know if they have updated or released something, that would be great. I could then click the author and get a list of all there quest.
It would even be nice if the number of subscribers could be some how presented. People would then see how popular authors are. A good representation on if they are good or not.
Another thing that would generate plays is instead of the foundry daily or as well. Why not have a little AD for each one done? say 250. It would be no different than professions quests that give AD. It goes without saying that only daily quests should count and pay out only once per day/week for each player. If someone played four 15 min quests (min) that's still only 1000 per hour at best. Not the quickest way to make AD.
I wasn't suggesting a database for the benefit of the authors Narayan :eek:
And I dispute this assertion
1. When the recent contest was held, the amount of plays the authors received were a direct result of a sticky in this forum and an item in the 'News' page.
2. When the patch 10 days ago broke published quests, many players not only came to these forums, they were capable of searching out authors' quest threads and posting to them to inform or complain.
I'm wondering how powerful the Gateway is. It handles game updates in real time; it would be great if it could handle something as large as the Foundry database without seizing up.
To each his own. If this forum is used as much as you seem to think then it is unique. I say this because in every MMO I have played the forums are used by a very small percentage of the player base. Just look at these forums... I have never seem more then 40 viewers on the Foundry forum at one time. It is usually around 10-15. The General forum is usually any where from 5 to 10 times the Foundry forum viewers. As I type this there are a less then 250 viewers on the whole forum. Granted it id early morning where I am at. But even if you multiply it 10 times, you still only have 2500 viewers. Out of, what we are told by Cryptic, 2 million users. a very small percentage. Which is what I was saying... The vast majority of players do not use these forums. Edit to add: There needs to be more in game ways to find and promote UGC quests.
Narayan
Sweet Water and Light Laughter Till Next We Meet.
Narayan
I think the fundamental problem is the system itself and the imposed dead zone. So lets look at the process for a minute.
A new quest is published and goes to the review list. Thank god this tab is searchable and the restriction upon Author Name and Title searches has been removed.
Upon receiving 5 reviews it is moved to the new tab and sits there for a predetermined period of time. The next hurdle is to get 20 plays and a minimum play time of 20 minutes to become daily eligible. At some point based upon currently unknown criteria by me, your quest is removed from the new tab.
Unless you have gotten your quests adjusted rating high enough to transfer to the best list, your quest drops into the phantom zone that not even kryptonions can escape. Unless of course you are General Zod. This is the fundamental problem.
What visibility is there for quests in the phantom zone. At that point authors are relegated to whatever interest they can garner via web promotion, live streams, guild members, barking their quests in zone chat, or taking off all their clothes and running through the streets of Protectors Enclave to get some attention.
There needs to be some in game mechanism to promote a quest to be seen when it is at this state. A paged list, a randomized round robin list, something that makes it easy for a player to just go in and select a quest they may not have ever seen before. Right now people go to the best list, the new list, even the review list because it is easy to go down the list of quests and pick one that appeals to them. There is no such ability for the quest that is not "New" and not "Best." The biggest issue being that some of the best content is buried and never seen, never given the opportunity to get the adjusted rating to move it to the best category.
Don't misunderstand me I think that removing quests that can be considered clutter is one possible solution to the problem, but really the problem is not that easily solved. I would think that at best this may result in a 10-20% reduction to the quest catalog. The real problem is how do you provide visibility to quests in the phantom zone. The catalog of foundry content is huge, last commented at around 260,000 quests in some news story I read. As there are about a hundred quests total across the new, best and review tabs how do we expose the other 259,900 to the player base in a easy to navigate manner that doesn't require pre-knowledge of the Quest ID, Author, or subject matter.
I could not agree more Celantra. I also think that it would help, new authors especially, if Cryptic would actually install the links at the bottom of the first page of the foundry. You know the links at the bottom for tutorials, Wiki pages, etc... Now they just go to a page that states it is a future thing. That would give new authors some guidance and help.
Narayan
Sweet Water and Light Laughter Till Next We Meet.
Narayan
Yep. Due to the contest promotion I got my lone 1-star vote from the general public, and my five or six 4-5 star votes from fellow authors/forum readers. It is extremely hard seeing the nice trees in the forest of tangled overgrowth and loot farms. Hopefully, over time, this tag/review system will help weed things out, but without even an authors seedling to the tags... I'm not holding my breath. Thankfully, I have so much fun "playing" in the Foundry, I don't really give a rats behind if I get lots of plays. But, at least a few, especially a few with constructive ideas and suggestions is definitely a cherry on top.
You have no idea how many plays you actually had as your quest was broken to the point it was unable to be completed. It was on my third attempt that I actually got to the review box - I persisted with it, but you can't blame players for not going back a second or third time as I did. Your quest wasn't the only broken one; there were 2 others that I was unable to complete on my first attempt.
Anyway, jaspor kept a log of plays during the end of the week and posted it on the contest thread. I shan't dig it out, but you have seen it yourself...you know that some went from 0-100+ and the winner from 0-1000+ in the week of the contest.
To each his own. If this forum is used as much as you seem to think then it is unique.
It doesn't need the majority of the player-base to use the forums. It only needs some of them. These players then go back to their friends and recommend quests, or post them in their guild forums. Of course the author has to initially make a quest that players want to talk about, but word of mouth is powerful.
There needs to be some in game mechanism to promote a quest to be seen when it is at this state. A paged list, a randomized round robin list, something that makes it easy for a player to just go in and select a quest they may not have ever seen before
It's called the Quick Search field
Seriously, the results being returned are a "round robin list", even if not completely random (player uses a search word/phrase which needs to be in your title or overview). I know authors may think players won't use it, but it is the only option players have when first presented with the new style catalogue, so I have confidence in it as a tool; far more than I do the advanced search options with the plethora of tags. There is a reason for Google being the most popular search engine after all.
The subscription tab is a mess. I have many authors that I like the work of. If I could look at my sub page and have a list of authors instead of quests. Possibly with a little symbol to allow me to know if they have updated or released something, that would be great. I could then click the author and get a list of all there quest.
I replied in your thread for this suggestion so you know I endorse it. We can already click into the 'More from this author' button, so there is no need for their quests to be randomly listed on our 'Subscribed' tab, just list the authors. (I do realise though, that this would mean the subscribed tab is formatted differently to the other lists and that may not be possible)
It doesn't need the majority of the player-base to use the forums. It only needs some of them. These players then go back to their friends and recommend quests, or post them in their guild forums. Of course the author has to initially make a quest that players want to talk about, but word of mouth is powerful.
Suffice it to say you have a lot more confidence in the player base then I do.
And these contests get so may plays because Cryptic promotes them. It is not the authors, it's Cryptic. Tell me honestly if Cryptic started a contest and did no promotion what so ever... The quest entered in the contest would get any where near the plays the promoted ones got. Again, IMHO it's Cryptic's promotion that gets the plays.
Narayan
Sweet Water and Light Laughter Till Next We Meet.
Narayan
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celantraMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Silverstars, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 465
Seriously, the results being returned are a "round robin list", even if not completely random (player uses a search word/phrase which needs to be in your title or overview). I know authors may think players won't use it, but it is the only option players have when first presented with the new style catalogue, so I have confidence in it as a tool; far more than I do the advanced search options with the plethora of tags. There is a reason for Google being the most popular search engine after all.
I understand that this is a paradigm that logically should apply to the player base, most of us being internet savvy, however the reality is that except for a small percentage of folks, it does not, as the other paradigm of selection from a list is more prevalent as a result that the other tabs offer this easier method. The concept of searching for quests, as you might on the web, is not a taught behavior to the player base within the structure of the game, and as such is not obvious to a large number of potential players. I know I may not be giving the player sufficient credit, but this is my general opinion.
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celantraMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Silverstars, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 465
Suffice it to say you have a lot more confidence in the player base then I do.
And these contests get so may plays because Cryptic promotes them. It is not the authors, it's Cryptic. Tell me honestly if Cryptic started a contest and did no promotion what so ever... The quest entered in the contest would get any where near the plays the promoted ones got. Again, IMHO it's Cryptic's promotion that gets the plays.
Narayan
That is exactly the point, and purpose of the contest. Cryptic puts on the contests so that authors can get the visibility and recognition with elements of the player base that do not delve deeply into the foundry. It is true that I doubt I would have anywhere near as many plays if it were not for this promotion. But in a like vein what has kept my number of plays advancing is word of mouth and general popularity, the fact that I am on the best page, and a combination of other factors(length of quest, daily foundry, etc...). The purpose of competing at all in the contest is the recognition. That is the prize, but everyone wins to an extent, everyone who participates gets some promotion as authors, and that is a good thing. I will not argue the point that without promotion the quests would not get the large number of plays they do. That is the purpose of promotion, and sadly it is part of being an author.
In contrast I would point out something that was passed along in a creative writing class about 20 years ago for me, "that there are roughly 10,000,000 books written per year and only 10,000 get published." I cant swear those numbers are correct or anything, and they certainly don't apply twenty years later, but it does point to a reality that being creative in any endeavor does not stop with the creation of the art. Artists are not recognized for brilliance by happenstance. Promotion of ones work can be, and in most cases is the most difficult part of being an artist. The mental pathways that lead to great art often lead to no ability or knowledge of how to promote. I hate selling in all of its forms, but I recognize that it is an element of being a foundry author. Getting a system that does not force the authors to have to sell their work would be ideal, but then so would a three tiered wiffleworp and I haven't seen one of those lately either.
That is exactly the point, and purpose of the contest. Cryptic puts on the contests so that authors can get the visibility and recognition with elements of the player base that do not delve deeply into the foundry. It is true that I doubt I would have anywhere near as many plays if it were not for this promotion. But in a like vein what has kept my number of plays advancing is word of mouth and general popularity, the fact that I am on the best page, and a combination of other factors(length of quest, daily foundry, etc...). The purpose of competing at all in the contest is the recognition. That is the prize, but everyone wins to an extent, everyone who participates gets some promotion as authors, and that is a good thing. I will not argue the point that without promotion the quests would not get the large number of plays they do. That is the purpose of promotion, and sadly it is part of being an author.
In contrast I would point out something that was passed along in a creative writing class about 20 years ago for me, "that there are roughly 10,000,000 books written per year and only 10,000 get published." I cant swear those numbers are correct or anything, and they certainly don't apply twenty years later, but it does point to a reality that being creative in any endeavor does not stop with the creation of the art. Artists are not recognized for brilliance by happenstance. Promotion of ones work can be, and in most cases is the most difficult part of being an artist. The mental pathways that lead to great art often lead to no ability or knowledge of how to promote. I hate selling in all of its forms, but I recognize that it is an element of being a foundry author. Getting a system that does not force the authors to have to sell their work would be ideal, but then so would a three tiered wiffleworp and I haven't seen one of those lately either.
And I feel Cryptic could do more with a little effort.
Say for instance... Pick 10 quests at random that are daily eligible. Tell the player base that if they run 4 of those quests in one day that they will get an Astral Diamond reward of say maybe 1000AD. That way random quests would get promoted, players would get a small reward, and authors would get plays/reviews.
Edit to add: And these random quests would change daily.
Narayan
Sweet Water and Light Laughter Till Next We Meet.
Narayan
How about a "Topics" tab -- several columns of topics, radio buttons for each column (i.e. only one topic per column can be selected). [Obviously "Cheese" would be the most important and should be first column.]
I understand that this is a paradigm that logically should apply to the player base, most of us being internet savvy, however the reality is that except for a small percentage of folks, it does not, as the other paradigm of selection from a list is more prevalent as a result that the other tabs offer this easier method. The concept of searching for quests, as you might on the web, is not a taught behavior to the player base within the structure of the game, and as such is not obvious to a large number of potential players. I know I may not be giving the player sufficient credit, but this is my general opinion.
I don't disagree as the option to perform a word search was always there I believe, only it was hidden among a strew of other fields and was mislabelled to a degree. And I have to admit, so keen was I to get to the tagging part of the Foundry, I actually overlooked the Quick Search field completely at first.
I don't think lack of use will necessarily come from a lack of savvy on the players' part. It may take a few trips to the catalogue for it to register with a player - it is new after all, and in my defence all our preview feedback was focussed on the new Tag system - but it is all there is upon opening the catalogue. It is in your face and clearly labelled. The players who don't use it are probably content with replaying quests off the best tab for the Daily, but those who wish to look deeper (and the existence of the Quick Search field screams "More here!") can do so with ease.
Of course the only people who know how often the search field is used and how successful it is in terms of overall results are the Foundry devs (and what great data it will be providing on our search habits). But on a personal and player level, I am finding it the best change to have come with the patch.
An example of how powerful it is...say I couldn't remember your name, Celantra, or the name of TDT, but I know that the quest I want to play won the recent contest. I type in 'contest' and...oh, you didn't mention contest anywhere in your description, never mind. But wait! canny KMHKNIGHT, who came second in a previous contest, mentions that in the overview of his editable version and as a result is top of the organic search list. That's your place for the taking Celantra - authors need to be savvy too.
Another useful thing for authors to do would be to look at the initial suggestions for the tags that were proposed by the devs. I doubt those suggestions were personal preference; more likely they were found to be the most common used search terms in the old catalogue. If I were writing an overview, I would try to get as many of those terms into my description as I could.
How about a "Topics" tab -- several columns of topics, radio buttons for each column (i.e. only one topic per column can be selected). [Obviously "Cheese" would be the most important and should be first column.]
Theme Tab
We more or less have that already, though obviously the most important type of cheese would be used as a search term along with the filtered options
Time - filter option already in
Zone - already works off player's geographical location (can also be set as a preference in the Description field)
Tag - filter option already in
Cheese - type preference in the "Description" field.
Second edit: Out of curiosity I used "cheese" to see what came up and "The Wobbly Leg" wasn't there. Being featured it isn't as if revolting needs any more help getting plays, but still she or he is missing a trick there. If I were searching for this quest, 'cheese' would be my first attempt at trying to find it.
I think the fundamental problem is the system itself and the imposed dead zone. So lets look at the process for a minute.
A new quest is published and goes to the review list. Thank god this tab is searchable and the restriction upon Author Name and Title searches has been removed.
Upon receiving 5 reviews it is moved to the new tab and sits there for a predetermined period of time. The next hurdle is to get 20 plays and a minimum play time of 20 minutes to become daily eligible. At some point based upon currently unknown criteria by me, your quest is removed from the new tab.
Unless you have gotten your quests adjusted rating high enough to transfer to the best list, your quest drops into the phantom zone that not even kryptonions can escape. Unless of course you are General Zod. This is the fundamental problem.
What visibility is there for quests in the phantom zone. At that point authors are relegated to whatever interest they can garner via web promotion, live streams, guild members, barking their quests in zone chat, or taking off all their clothes and running through the streets of Protectors Enclave to get some attention.
There needs to be some in game mechanism to promote a quest to be seen when it is at this state. A paged list, a randomized round robin list, something that makes it easy for a player to just go in and select a quest they may not have ever seen before. Right now people go to the best list, the new list, even the review list because it is easy to go down the list of quests and pick one that appeals to them. There is no such ability for the quest that is not "New" and not "Best." The biggest issue being that some of the best content is buried and never seen, never given the opportunity to get the adjusted rating to move it to the best category.
Don't misunderstand me I think that removing quests that can be considered clutter is one possible solution to the problem, but really the problem is not that easily solved. I would think that at best this may result in a 10-20% reduction to the quest catalog. The real problem is how do you provide visibility to quests in the phantom zone. The catalog of foundry content is huge, last commented at around 260,000 quests in some news story I read. As there are about a hundred quests total across the new, best and review tabs how do we expose the other 259,900 to the player base in a easy to navigate manner that doesn't require pre-knowledge of the Quest ID, Author, or subject matter.
"your quest drops into the phantom zone that not even kryptonions can escape".
How about a "Topics" tab -- several columns of topics, radio buttons for each column (i.e. only one topic per column can be selected).
I don't know that it needs to be all that complicated on the players end. The more complicated, the less it will get used. imo
My main issue with the "advanced" search we have now is the mechanics behind it. No matter what it starts its list with the highest rated quests. When I search a category I want to see lists based more on what I searched. Not ratings. That's why I suggested them changing the search mechanics to a percentage based on the tag(s) I'm searching.
Simplified 3 Quest Example:
Say I search for a 'challenging' and 'story' quest.
Put the quest that 75% of the people who tagged it, tagged it as those on top.
Put the quest that only 50% of the people who tagged it as those in the middle.
And put the quest that only 25%... on the bottom. Even if it has the highest rating.
With the search we have now they are going to put the bottom quest at the top of the list every time. If there were only 3 quests, that'd be ok. But we have so many we can't see them all. So it means that the tagging system won't work. The highest rating quests will always be the ones shown. And the lesser ones will never get the exposure they need when searching by the tags.
Again, it needs to ignore rating when searching by tags. Imo of course.
Again, it needs to ignore rating when searching by tags. Imo of course.
Your not on your own. I would go so far as to say, whoever designed a search system based on tags that does not count the tags was out of their minds. I don't really understand how it was implemented live. It's such an obvious problem. I guess that's just my opinion though.
Your not on your own. I would go so far as to say, whoever designed a search system based on tags that does not count the tags was out of their minds. I don't really understand how it was implemented live. It's such an obvious problem. I guess that's just my opinion though.
Nope, not just yours, I agree with you and runebane too.
Kirksplat is wise, and has been a valued member of the STO Foundry community for a long time.
When I heard about NW Foundry and started poking about it, I was _thrilled_ to find an evolutionary advance in Foundry. It UTTERLY CRUSHED me to find how the search and UI worked, and that apparently Cryptic had learned absolutely NOTHING from 2+ years of commentary and examples of STO.
To hear devs say 'we are watching the tag system to see how things work in practice' makes me lose all faith in them. This isn't rocket science. The behavior of players in Foundry is really obvious, really well-established in many examples from STO Foundry. Furthermore, issues of search behavior and how people interact with an interface are well-studied elements of internet behavior (IE: Amazon, Google, etc.)
In short, Cryptic has absolutely no excuse for NW Foundry to be in the state it is in now.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Comments
I have no idea how many quests get published in a week. But I would guess it is a lot more then you think. There has to be thousands of quests out there. And I would also guess the with the one on one off system a quest would not be on the for review tab long enough to get 5 reviews. I would guess that on some occasions a quest could be published one day and the next day it would be down far enough to be removed by the one on one off system. What if you have 100 new quests published in one day? Is that out of line? With 2 million players and only 1% of them doing foundry Quests that is 20,000 authors. Even take 1% of that and you have 2000 authors. Maybe someone from Cryptic could give us an ideas as to how many quests there are and how many new quests get publishes each day/week... Roughly...
Not sure what you mean by this statement.
Now this I agree with. Only one problem, or question. What happens to the quest after it runs it's featured course?
Narayan
Narayan
Here is our current and never-really-changing STO list of "top rated" foundry missions. The ones in yellow are stories. This list does not change much. If you consider that many of these stories are done by the same person, then... here I will count. In STO the number of story writers in our "best" are.... 18. Players can find the stories of 18 people in our "best" Fed list. It's far worse for Klingons. Like 90% of their lists are loot farms.
We also have a category that you guys don't have. It's called "Hot." 139 of 146 missions listed are exploits, loot farms and non-stories.
Alpha Flight (stickied spotlight)
Battleship Royal Rumble
Avenging Resolution
This Far No Further
Admiral Bobo Goes to War
Admiral Bobo Goes to War (easy)
Fed Farm 102 ACD
Star Trek Allegiance, part 3
In the Shadow of Midas
loot-o-matic 3000
Star Trek Allegiance Part 2
Battlegroup Chaos Rumble
The Intrawarp Experiment
Repairing Utopia Planitia
Emissary of the Pah-Wraith
Dark Alliance part 2
Iconian Connection
No Prize for Second Contact
Radio Blast from the Past
Finding Lascaux
Quark the Farmer
Star Trek Allegiance
Boff Grinder: Klingons
Grinder: Doom the Dominion
Grizz's Farmer
No Prize for Second Contact II
Mirror Wars
Farm 101 ACD
Infected Ground Training
Happy Farmer
EC Farmer
Battleship 1 on 1
Another Man's Hell
Dark Alliance Part 1
Overture
Undine Ground Accolade
Romulan Ground Accolade
Rising Phoenix
Captain's Table Rumble
Finding Resolution
Mirror Wars, another part
Ad Majorem
The Grinder: Orions
Energy Credits
Battleship Bashing
One Too Many
Target Practice
One and Done Fed
Elachi Ground Accolade.
So we are back to thousands of author hawking their quests trying to get plays/noticed?
And I have not seen any real new ideas as to how this should change. It is the same... Get on the list for so long then get dropped off that list. Basically the same as it is now, with a few minor tweaks.
Narayan
PS. How many authors do you think there are making quests? and how many of those authors visit these forums?
Narayan
Narayan
That will probably look a mess. I'm so bad at forums.
I can understand that minimal plays are disappointing, but your quests would be in no danger of being 'inactive' with any of the suggestions I have seen here. How to get more plays is a conundrum; I really empathise with the reluctance to self-promote, I am not a great self-promoter, though have no problem championing others *shrug*
With the catalogue in its previous state, it was possible to publish a quest and have no chance of getting on any list. If a system to remove 'abandoned' quests was implemented, although it is possible your quests wouldn't get on a list, it would be less likely to happen.
I also think authors have to be realistic about the longevity of their quests and how many plays they should be achieving. It is easy to look at a 'Featured' and have a skewed view of what to expect. But to counter the suggestion that Cryptic are only looking after a small percentage of authors, it should be said that it is quests that the players have picked up and ran with that end up being featured, not the other way around. Word of mouth is powerful and 'quality will out' in most cases.
Anyway, I am waffling on and have gone off-topic. I wish your quests were online so I could at least try and search for them if they weren't visible. Same with naransingh's quest(s).
@anton, not messy at all
It looked very good.
As I understand it... Once you get your 5 reviews you are taken off the For Review list and put on the new list.
The only problem I have with the database suggestion is that very few will actually use it. IMHO. And it will take a lot of work to put together and maintain. I mean every time a quest is published and/or withdrawn the database would have to change. Even if you did it once a week to cut down on maintenance, you would have someone complaining that there were errors. Either their quest wasn't put on the list soon enough or that a quest was on the list and they couldn't find it in game. etc...
And if I am right about the work to do the database, Karitr, it would not be worth it for the few extra plays some quests would get.
Narayan
Narayan
Absolutely not. It'd be extremely trivial to implement -- and if it isn't they should fire their database developers.
I could also see it being something (probably a SPL [SQL database] script) that gets run automatically at 4am Monday mornings or something similar.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
I wasn't suggesting a database for the benefit of the authors Narayan :eek:
And I dispute this assertion
1. When the recent contest was held, the amount of plays the authors received were a direct result of a sticky in this forum and an item in the 'News' page.
2. When the patch 10 days ago broke published quests, many players not only came to these forums, they were capable of searching out authors' quest threads and posting to them to inform or complain.
I'm wondering how powerful the Gateway is. It handles game updates in real time; it would be great if it could handle something as large as the Foundry database without seizing up.
I would like to kindly dispute the sentiment behind this statement. In the past two years, I've grown to firmly believe (as a STO author) that Shatner himself could tweet about my mission, and it wouldn't matter, since the UI works against me. We've spent 2 years doing everything that we can outside of the game to get plays. We've begged on forums. We've pleaded on twitter. We've made YouTube trailers. We've reviewed and promoted missions with 6 different podcasts. We've even tried to make a wiki for Foundry missions, which was pointless.
You can't rely on something outside of the game. No amount of self-promotion, begging, PR on a Cryptic website, or pleading in the forums even comes close to a friendly UI that helps a player explore what is out there. This is why most of us have eventually given up. Nothing at all is a substitute to a friendly UI that helps players know what is out there. You could spend months outside of the game doing everything that you can to generate plays. All you really needed to see results is a button that allows players to browse and see what is out there. "Hmm... I've played these 50, what are the top 100? What are the top 200? Maybe I'll see what's on page 5 of the results? What's really new, and not simply auto-republished?"
Players of both of our games cannot find the answers to those questions inside the game. It's baffling as to why. No amount of forum groveling or even a blog post by Cryptic that promotes a mission can counter the craptastic-ness of a badly designed and implemented UI.
Just imagine how frustrating google would be if worked like the Foundry UI.
Everything outside of the game is tribal knowledge, and this company seems to endorse tribal knowledge, especially regarding the Foundry.
A new quest is published and goes to the review list. Thank god this tab is searchable and the restriction upon Author Name and Title searches has been removed.
Upon receiving 5 reviews it is moved to the new tab and sits there for a predetermined period of time. The next hurdle is to get 20 plays and a minimum play time of 20 minutes to become daily eligible. At some point based upon currently unknown criteria by me, your quest is removed from the new tab.
Unless you have gotten your quests adjusted rating high enough to transfer to the best list, your quest drops into the phantom zone that not even kryptonions can escape. Unless of course you are General Zod. This is the fundamental problem.
What visibility is there for quests in the phantom zone. At that point authors are relegated to whatever interest they can garner via web promotion, live streams, guild members, barking their quests in zone chat, or taking off all their clothes and running through the streets of Protectors Enclave to get some attention.
There needs to be some in game mechanism to promote a quest to be seen when it is at this state. A paged list, a randomized round robin list, something that makes it easy for a player to just go in and select a quest they may not have ever seen before. Right now people go to the best list, the new list, even the review list because it is easy to go down the list of quests and pick one that appeals to them. There is no such ability for the quest that is not "New" and not "Best." The biggest issue being that some of the best content is buried and never seen, never given the opportunity to get the adjusted rating to move it to the best category.
Don't misunderstand me I think that removing quests that can be considered clutter is one possible solution to the problem, but really the problem is not that easily solved. I would think that at best this may result in a 10-20% reduction to the quest catalog. The real problem is how do you provide visibility to quests in the phantom zone. The catalog of foundry content is huge, last commented at around 260,000 quests in some news story I read. As there are about a hundred quests total across the new, best and review tabs how do we expose the other 259,900 to the player base in a easy to navigate manner that doesn't require pre-knowledge of the Quest ID, Author, or subject matter.
Yep. Due to the contest promotion I got my lone 1-star vote from the general public, and my five or six 4-5 star votes from fellow authors/forum readers. It is extremely hard seeing the nice trees in the forest of tangled overgrowth and loot farms. Hopefully, over time, this tag/review system will help weed things out, but without even an authors seedling to the tags... I'm not holding my breath. Thankfully, I have so much fun "playing" in the Foundry, I don't really give a rats behind if I get lots of plays. But, at least a few, especially a few with constructive ideas and suggestions is definitely a cherry on top.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
To be fair though, well over half my plays were on the first day and other than the winner I think most were like this. Yours could not be finished that day, I tried them all.
I do however think more could have been done in game for that and maybe future competitions.
Another small thing that would really help plays:-
The subscription tab is a mess. I have many authors that I like the work of. If I could look at my sub page and have a list of authors instead of quests. Possibly with a little symbol to allow me to know if they have updated or released something, that would be great. I could then click the author and get a list of all there quest.
It would even be nice if the number of subscribers could be some how presented. People would then see how popular authors are. A good representation on if they are good or not.
Another thing that would generate plays is instead of the foundry daily or as well. Why not have a little AD for each one done? say 250. It would be no different than professions quests that give AD. It goes without saying that only daily quests should count and pay out only once per day/week for each player. If someone played four 15 min quests (min) that's still only 1000 per hour at best. Not the quickest way to make AD.
To each his own. If this forum is used as much as you seem to think then it is unique. I say this because in every MMO I have played the forums are used by a very small percentage of the player base. Just look at these forums... I have never seem more then 40 viewers on the Foundry forum at one time. It is usually around 10-15. The General forum is usually any where from 5 to 10 times the Foundry forum viewers. As I type this there are a less then 250 viewers on the whole forum. Granted it id early morning where I am at. But even if you multiply it 10 times, you still only have 2500 viewers. Out of, what we are told by Cryptic, 2 million users. a very small percentage. Which is what I was saying... The vast majority of players do not use these forums. Edit to add: There needs to be more in game ways to find and promote UGC quests.
Narayan
Narayan
I could not agree more Celantra. I also think that it would help, new authors especially, if Cryptic would actually install the links at the bottom of the first page of the foundry. You know the links at the bottom for tutorials, Wiki pages, etc... Now they just go to a page that states it is a future thing. That would give new authors some guidance and help.
Narayan
Narayan
You have no idea how many plays you actually had as your quest was broken to the point it was unable to be completed. It was on my third attempt that I actually got to the review box - I persisted with it, but you can't blame players for not going back a second or third time as I did. Your quest wasn't the only broken one; there were 2 others that I was unable to complete on my first attempt.
Anyway, jaspor kept a log of plays during the end of the week and posted it on the contest thread. I shan't dig it out, but you have seen it yourself...you know that some went from 0-100+ and the winner from 0-1000+ in the week of the contest.
It doesn't need the majority of the player-base to use the forums. It only needs some of them. These players then go back to their friends and recommend quests, or post them in their guild forums. Of course the author has to initially make a quest that players want to talk about, but word of mouth is powerful.
It's called the Quick Search field
Seriously, the results being returned are a "round robin list", even if not completely random (player uses a search word/phrase which needs to be in your title or overview). I know authors may think players won't use it, but it is the only option players have when first presented with the new style catalogue, so I have confidence in it as a tool; far more than I do the advanced search options with the plethora of tags. There is a reason for Google being the most popular search engine after all.
I replied in your thread for this suggestion so you know I endorse it. We can already click into the 'More from this author' button, so there is no need for their quests to be randomly listed on our 'Subscribed' tab, just list the authors. (I do realise though, that this would mean the subscribed tab is formatted differently to the other lists and that may not be possible)
Suffice it to say you have a lot more confidence in the player base then I do.
And these contests get so may plays because Cryptic promotes them. It is not the authors, it's Cryptic. Tell me honestly if Cryptic started a contest and did no promotion what so ever... The quest entered in the contest would get any where near the plays the promoted ones got. Again, IMHO it's Cryptic's promotion that gets the plays.
Narayan
Narayan
I understand that this is a paradigm that logically should apply to the player base, most of us being internet savvy, however the reality is that except for a small percentage of folks, it does not, as the other paradigm of selection from a list is more prevalent as a result that the other tabs offer this easier method. The concept of searching for quests, as you might on the web, is not a taught behavior to the player base within the structure of the game, and as such is not obvious to a large number of potential players. I know I may not be giving the player sufficient credit, but this is my general opinion.
That is exactly the point, and purpose of the contest. Cryptic puts on the contests so that authors can get the visibility and recognition with elements of the player base that do not delve deeply into the foundry. It is true that I doubt I would have anywhere near as many plays if it were not for this promotion. But in a like vein what has kept my number of plays advancing is word of mouth and general popularity, the fact that I am on the best page, and a combination of other factors(length of quest, daily foundry, etc...). The purpose of competing at all in the contest is the recognition. That is the prize, but everyone wins to an extent, everyone who participates gets some promotion as authors, and that is a good thing. I will not argue the point that without promotion the quests would not get the large number of plays they do. That is the purpose of promotion, and sadly it is part of being an author.
In contrast I would point out something that was passed along in a creative writing class about 20 years ago for me, "that there are roughly 10,000,000 books written per year and only 10,000 get published." I cant swear those numbers are correct or anything, and they certainly don't apply twenty years later, but it does point to a reality that being creative in any endeavor does not stop with the creation of the art. Artists are not recognized for brilliance by happenstance. Promotion of ones work can be, and in most cases is the most difficult part of being an artist. The mental pathways that lead to great art often lead to no ability or knowledge of how to promote. I hate selling in all of its forms, but I recognize that it is an element of being a foundry author. Getting a system that does not force the authors to have to sell their work would be ideal, but then so would a three tiered wiffleworp and I haven't seen one of those lately either.
And I feel Cryptic could do more with a little effort.
Say for instance... Pick 10 quests at random that are daily eligible. Tell the player base that if they run 4 of those quests in one day that they will get an Astral Diamond reward of say maybe 1000AD. That way random quests would get promoted, players would get a small reward, and authors would get plays/reviews.
Edit to add: And these random quests would change daily.
Narayan
Narayan
How about a "Topics" tab -- several columns of topics, radio buttons for each column (i.e. only one topic per column can be selected).
[Obviously "Cheese" would be the most important and should be first column.]
Theme Tab
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
I don't disagree as the option to perform a word search was always there I believe, only it was hidden among a strew of other fields and was mislabelled to a degree. And I have to admit, so keen was I to get to the tagging part of the Foundry, I actually overlooked the Quick Search field completely at first.
I don't think lack of use will necessarily come from a lack of savvy on the players' part. It may take a few trips to the catalogue for it to register with a player - it is new after all, and in my defence all our preview feedback was focussed on the new Tag system - but it is all there is upon opening the catalogue. It is in your face and clearly labelled. The players who don't use it are probably content with replaying quests off the best tab for the Daily, but those who wish to look deeper (and the existence of the Quick Search field screams "More here!") can do so with ease.
Of course the only people who know how often the search field is used and how successful it is in terms of overall results are the Foundry devs (and what great data it will be providing on our search habits). But on a personal and player level, I am finding it the best change to have come with the patch.
An example of how powerful it is...say I couldn't remember your name, Celantra, or the name of TDT, but I know that the quest I want to play won the recent contest. I type in 'contest' and...oh, you didn't mention contest anywhere in your description, never mind. But wait! canny KMHKNIGHT, who came second in a previous contest, mentions that in the overview of his editable version and as a result is top of the organic search list. That's your place for the taking Celantra - authors need to be savvy too.
Another useful thing for authors to do would be to look at the initial suggestions for the tags that were proposed by the devs. I doubt those suggestions were personal preference; more likely they were found to be the most common used search terms in the old catalogue. If I were writing an overview, I would try to get as many of those terms into my description as I could.
We more or less have that already, though obviously the most important type of cheese would be used as a search term along with the filtered options
Time - filter option already in
Zone - already works off player's geographical location (can also be set as a preference in the Description field)
Tag - filter option already in
Cheese - type preference in the "Description" field.
Second edit: Out of curiosity I used "cheese" to see what came up and "The Wobbly Leg" wasn't there. Being featured it isn't as if revolting needs any more help getting plays, but still she or he is missing a trick there. If I were searching for this quest, 'cheese' would be my first attempt at trying to find it.
"your quest drops into the phantom zone that not even kryptonions can escape".
Now that is funny! TY
We need a phantom zone TAB...
Chewdog
I don't know that it needs to be all that complicated on the players end. The more complicated, the less it will get used. imo
My main issue with the "advanced" search we have now is the mechanics behind it. No matter what it starts its list with the highest rated quests. When I search a category I want to see lists based more on what I searched. Not ratings. That's why I suggested them changing the search mechanics to a percentage based on the tag(s) I'm searching.
Simplified 3 Quest Example:
Say I search for a 'challenging' and 'story' quest.
Put the quest that 75% of the people who tagged it, tagged it as those on top.
Put the quest that only 50% of the people who tagged it as those in the middle.
And put the quest that only 25%... on the bottom. Even if it has the highest rating.
With the search we have now they are going to put the bottom quest at the top of the list every time. If there were only 3 quests, that'd be ok. But we have so many we can't see them all. So it means that the tagging system won't work. The highest rating quests will always be the ones shown. And the lesser ones will never get the exposure they need when searching by the tags.
Again, it needs to ignore rating when searching by tags. Imo of course.
Your not on your own. I would go so far as to say, whoever designed a search system based on tags that does not count the tags was out of their minds. I don't really understand how it was implemented live. It's such an obvious problem. I guess that's just my opinion though.
Nope, not just yours, I agree with you and runebane too.
When I heard about NW Foundry and started poking about it, I was _thrilled_ to find an evolutionary advance in Foundry. It UTTERLY CRUSHED me to find how the search and UI worked, and that apparently Cryptic had learned absolutely NOTHING from 2+ years of commentary and examples of STO.
To hear devs say 'we are watching the tag system to see how things work in practice' makes me lose all faith in them. This isn't rocket science. The behavior of players in Foundry is really obvious, really well-established in many examples from STO Foundry. Furthermore, issues of search behavior and how people interact with an interface are well-studied elements of internet behavior (IE: Amazon, Google, etc.)
In short, Cryptic has absolutely no excuse for NW Foundry to be in the state it is in now.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?