Weekly Community Poll #7

ambisinisterr

The Foundry is what makes Neverwinter unique and different from other MMO's. The game industry is flooded with MMO's but only a few of the hundreds can put UGC on their resumé and the Neverwinter Community has really made some awesome content for us all to enjoy!

However, despite the quality content with the current tools available to authors one of the requests I hear most often from players is regarding making the Foundry more meaningful in our day to day gaming experience. So...

What Foundry feature/improvement would most make foundry content more enjoyable from a player perspective?

Note this poll is not promissory in any way.
These polls are created by the Community Team in order to generate player feedback and give the developers food for thought.

ambisinisterr

Again, Cryptic already knows that given the option we want everything. There would be no need for a poll if such an option existed because everybody would vote 'all of the above.'
Make the hard choice in the poll and choose one.

If you have additional thoughts beyond a simple vote please do leave your feedback in a response.
For instance while I firmly believe saying you want everything is more or less the same as informing Cryptic the sky is blue I think rating what is the most and least impactful would be very helpful.

tcarnce

the option so all mobs will jump or can attack everyone on blind spots.
against afk farming. not saying more.
well not option, but change haha.

kirkcaldy

Voted for Improved Rewards, as its the main thing,
as far as I am concerned.
Its not really rewarding to do Foundries at present,
apart from your daily, for AD.

Would also have voted for Difficulty Sliders if able to.


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ambisinisterr

tcarnce wrote: »

the option so all mobs will jump or can attack everyone on blind spots.

If you see any UGC that prevents mobs from attacking players please send me the Quick Find Code and I will make sure it gets reviewed and removed.

Content which prevents mobs from attacking players in order to allow for easy experience or drops violates the EULA and will be removed and action may be taken against the authors of that content. The Foundry exists so that players can create new content for us to enjoy as if they were developers. It does not exist in order to subvert normal progression and rewards.

ortzhy

Imo Foundry should be the main attraction of this game, content created is amazing and is a shame that i have to farm this and that 100 times to be able to keep the pace and not explore more foundry content. With a bit of careful planning in allowing published content to be considered eligible for rewards, to avoid exploits , i think they could alleviate the pressure for adding new content and redirect those resources to other areas such as creating new classes, boss mechanics.

angrysprite

I had to go with better rewards for the simple reason I believe this is the fastest, easiest improvement the Devs can make in a timely fashion that would encourage more players to play more Foundry quests.

Though I have to admit that Story Trees would (normally) be my primary vote, but I understand deeply how the Foundry works technically and I just don't see this ever coming without a deep rewrite under the hood = lots of Dev time and effort; who know when (if!) such a feature would ever see the light of day.

dardove

While I would love to see story trees and diverse boss mechanics, what I want to see most is a reward system for playing foundry quests.

bioshrike

I voted for better rewards, but the caveat to that is that there needs to be a better system to avoid farm or exploitative quests which seek to maximize those rewards and minimize the effort one must put in.

I'd also like to see something of a streamlined interface for creating content, as it can be rather daunting to the uninitiated.

ironzerg79

Yeah, hate to say it, but people chase carrots. I'd love to see more rewards. Even give Foundries a chance to earn "Platinum" status or something, that allows better items to drop at the end. These Foundries can be personally reviewed and approved. Make the ones with the best stories, combat and layout really stand out, and motivate Foundry authors to create very elaborate Foundry missions, to earn Platinum status.

And to that point, I'd love to see Cryptic just trash obvious farming maps. I think those only serve to diminish the reputation of the Foundry. They can start by making a rule that the title or description can't include any language that refers to "farming".

psyb3rtr011

Wow, great question. I answered based on the question, "What Foundry feature/improvement would most make foundry content more enjoyable from a player perspective?"

I chose Quest Story Trees, and here is why:

1) More Diverse Boss Mechanics:
This was my second choice, but I think, with creative use of existing Boss Mechanics, and strategic placement of supporting Mobs, this can easily be replicated. For instance:

Spell casting Bosses would have strategically placed Archers and Healers in protected positions, more difficult to access and protected by cover and concealment.. Tank and Striker reinforcements coming in from several locations. They would move about the battle field, avoiding the opposing Tanks and Strikers, and seeking positions where they cannot get surrounded and have a defensive line of Tanks. Think Red Wedding in Game of Thrones. Hard to get to the Crossbowmen when they are up on a ledge firing down.

Striker and Tank Bosses, would likewise have supporting mobs strategically placed. They would have Control Wizards in the strategic locations with the Archers and Healers. They too would have Tank and Striker Reinforcements arriving from all directions.

Too often, mobs are randomly placed, all bunched together, or come from the same direction all the time.

Built-in Difficulty Sliders:

I have seen Foundry designers implement something like this already. So, see this as already available.


Improved Rewards:

Nice to have, and something I have championed and made recommendations before on how to do, but if you are doing the Foundries solely for the rewards, then you are completely missing the purpose of them. They are a source of great adventure and stories, that you get to write by playing through them. Better rewards is just icing on the cake, and a lower priority, in my mind, than Branching Plot Lines.


Group Scaling:
Something I have seen implemented already, so, like scaling difficulty. Not high on the priority list.

Which brings me to my choice, Quest Story Trees (ability for authors to make multiple endings/paths). As I said above, the beauty of the Foundry is the Stories written and presented by the authors. Giving them the ability to have the story branch out, and be less linear, is only going to make for better Foundry adventures, and thus more enjoyable for the players.

maegmaag

Well, from this list only one thing would be an addition to the foundry and thats the bosses. That said i am referring to bosses like...bosses.
For a start some kind of copies of bosses from normal versions of dungeons like Syndrith, the karrundax crew, Blackdaggers, Idris et c. or skirmishes.

Anyway the crucial part missing in foundry is the "dungeon" mechanics. Difficulty, objective trees, multiple paths and endings and such are quite possible to make (not sayin its easy for a regular user). The lack of interaction mechanics with toggle state checks, levers, pressure plates, ability score checks or even paragon path checks (even being it possible only in dialogue trees), real traps (i mean fatal traps even and much much stronger versions of the vent traps with long lasting effects), damaging volumes (varied as the vent traps and actually dealing debufs and/or damage high enough to prevent the pc continuing thru such area), some global vars (global for whole quest; not rly asking for script bindings but i vote for perl ^^) et c. et c., is what took almost all my enthusiasm i had at start away. Even single one addition of what i mentioned would be huge improvement. Sure, a "dungeon delve flag" for the quest, to increase power of the mobs/traps/et c. to the level of normal dungeon delves versions at least, would be the 1st thing i would use. It could be working as CTAs as well.

hustin1

I would have liked to see another option:

Puzzle Mechanics

levers, switches, buttons, dials, secret buttons (no interact sparkles), etc.: stuff that would force players to figure out how to proceed.

gonalius

I think improved rewards would probably have the best return, and be best at drawing people in. However I think non-equipment rewards would probably be best in order to lessen abuse. So fireworks, tomes of companion experience, small chests of goods (rarely)... Or perhaps bring in the dice roll from the SCA login reward as a daily for the first completed foundry mission. Nothing in the rewards that would be impressive on its own, but combined with good stories in the foundry missions anyway and the daily AD quest, I think that would stand a chance at attracting more regular visitors without making it too unbalanced.

wingedkagouti

Three things have votes at this point and those are the three things I see as having the most impact.

Improved Boss Mechanics. This is a major weakness of the game in general. Bosses are boring sacks of hp hidden behind a horde of adds. Fighting the Aboleth on the crumbling platform is the most interesting boss fight in the game for me.

Improved Rewards. This would not make the content more enjoyable, but it would make it worthwhile. As such I did not vote for this, even though I think it is a must have.

Quest Trees. This could make things very interesting, but as far as I can tell it would also take far more work than any of the other options. Both to implement/test the system itself and to add to a Foundry quest. And it would probably not give as much of a boost for the amount of work as improved boss fights would.

klkcahboy90

I vote for "Improved Rewards" because I think that currently the lack of rewards for Foundry quests, relative to official quests, is driving majority of the players away from playing Foundry quests.

Less players playing Foundry quests, means less plays and less plays means less people who will get to see and appreciate Foundry authors' work.

Thus, in my opinion, if this is not given priority and done first or if an alternative solution to encourage more players to play the Foundry quests is not given, there is no point to the other options.

Of course, if given the choice to choose more than 1 option then I would naturally choose all.

Unknown

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pitshade

I voted Improved Rewards, but probably not the way it was meant. I think for me the best improvement they could make to make Foundries more desirable would be to change the way that the Dailies (Rhix and Lord Protector) work. For level 60s, make it so that you have to complete enough Foundries so that the average time adds up to at least 60 mins rather than 4 Foundries with a minimum average time of 15. Making this change would allow people whose time is at a premium to actually run the longer Foundries and get actual loot from them. I would also change it so that the average time was only calculated using data from single players running them, with a possible addition so that the author could set a suggested number of players, and the average time would be based on that number of players or fewer. With the current system, it's always annoying to log in and find that some of your 'old standbys' have had their time drop to the point where they don't qualify.

sylvialynn

Hard to vote, I want multiple ones.

valwryn

Random Generators - Instead of relying on falling drow (which takes up resources if ya have multiples) to decide the doomed adventurers outcome. The generators can have 2-10 possibilities. It is up to the author as to what goes into each one (Oh the Horror). :eek:

fgreyspear

This was such an obvious poll. I am only surprised to see that it is not a 100% win for the rewards...

Sure all of it would be nice to have, but the rewards are clearly underwhelming and after having done 50 or so of these does it just not pay off when compared to all the things one can do in the game. Of course I wish I had the time to do it all, but it is just too much.

What I am missing on the list, not that I think it would matter for this poll since rewards are so very obvious, is that it needs stricter rules as to which foundry quest should be available to the community. I have seen players sharing quests that were purely meant for farming, where there is nothing to see, no story to be had and it was made completely save to farm hundreds of monsters. These are dumbing down the game-play and players should be protected from it for their own sake. If we get better rewards then this needs to be addressed, because this kind of farming will get much worse. Players will start to rely on these farming quests, many more will start running these and it becomes mandatory for most players to do it if they want to compete (peer pressure).

lolssi83

I voted for story trees since that is what rpgs are all about for me, the choice.

Sure the rewards could be better but I don't want to see epics in the last chest. What I'd like to see is bit more skill nodes and maybe bit better quality. Small chance <1% to have some epic item to drop from mobs, adjusted to your level of course. Perhaps some token/s in the last chest but this should be balanced carefully to avoid farming.

maxilockheart

definitely improved rewards... and if possible, make rewards based on difficulty/duration of foundry, at the moment going harder or longer foundry doesnt provide any benefit, they just consume time...

on top of it if i could go 1 long foundry to finish whole my daily quest instead of going 4 short ones over and over it would be awesome

PS: other options are cool too, but at first there need to be a reason to do foundry then we can add harder bosses with even better loot, easy/medium/hard tree path in story with different bosses and rewards etc, looking forward to it

wingedkagouti

fgreyspear wrote: »

This was such an obvious poll. I am only surprised to see that it is not a 100% win for the rewards...

That's because the poll asks what can be done to make it more enjoyable to play Foundry content. Not everyone thinks tanglible rewards are the enjoyable part of gameplay, some are more interested in challenges, player interaction and storylines and thus think it would be more enjoyable if the game let them focus on those areas.

While I do think improved rewards are a necessity to make Foundry content worthwhile, I do not believe it would make the content more enjoyable.

oicidraz

I would like to see more seriousness in foundries that cryptic accepts, not just a couple of monsters, a floor, a chest and all set!. I'd like if they only accept those with a good map, funny or compelling story, seriousness in putting good content!.

wingedkagouti

oicidraz wrote: »

I would like to see more seriousness in foundries that cryptic accepts, not just a couple of monsters, a floor, a chest and all set!. I'd like if they only accept those with a good map, funny or compelling story, seriousness in putting good content!.

Cryptic does not review Foundry content before a Foundry author is allowed to publish it. That would cost way more money than anyone is willing to spend.

eldarth

Requests/Suggestions

• Shifting a portion of normal loot drops to Final Chest & Encounter loot caches
• Foundry Doubloons - awarding experience/rewards for non-combat objectives
• Foundry Rewards and multiple Chests loot tables
• Non exploitable author placed Skill Nodes

silverquick

More Diverse Boss Mechanics
Built-in Difficulty Sliders
Improved Rewards
Group Scaling
Quest Story Trees (ability for authors to make multiple endings/paths)


Can I take all of the above?

Honestly I don't do much with rewards portion, I tend to run a lot foundries because while it can be hit and miss on the story side, the reality is, they build up my gold supply quickly which can be huge when you're running a lot of dungeons and are frequently buying a lot of potions and kits, or changing out enchantments a lot because you use multiple sets of armor or weapons depending on what you need for any given group.

Foundries for me generally have always payed out really well in general items and gold drops when you put radiant enchantments in the utility slots.

So I get what I wanted regardless, but... I tend to look for the story and adventure modules. Heck even the "you've found a mysterious map" and have to find a hidden temple type. It doesn't even have to be really deep, only adventurous.

No I don't generally crawl the "Monster Farm" ones, I actually want a real D&D adventure when I do a foundry. If I wanted to play Diablo II I'd heat up that game. While its true I love some of the ones with excellent combat and no story... the reality is... I want both combined. Or a really good exploration foundry.

And admittedly lower quality boss mechanics and diverisity for creation are limited.

abaddon523

Loot is the entire key to improving the foundry. It's a drum I've been banging for a while. People will go pummel the Pirate King for the 200th time despite no storyline, scenery they've seen 200 times, and no challenge solely for the loot. Most of them would probably rather spend that time on new, interesting, good-quality player created dungeons if the rewards were in the same zip code as dungeon delves.

More people playing Foundry missions would prompt more people to make foundry missions (how many people make a foundry mission, see it get 10 plays in a month then say "nuts to this" and don't bother making anymore?), which improves the quality and quantity of the content of the foundry. That also makes for happier players who are less likely to get bored and leave the game because of the repetitive end game content.

zebular

All of the above! Choosing only one however, I went with "Quest Story Trees (ability for authors to make multiple endings/paths)."

cheesegromit

The biggest problem for me when it comes to foundaries is finding ones I enjoy playing. As people have variable tastes I've played plenty of highly rated ones that I thought were pretty average. It can be quite a time sink with nothing to show for it, which is why I voted for better rewards. Although in retrospect I'm dubious that rewards will ever be what I consider "good". I'm not sure what sort of rewards I would even consider as worthwhile.

Quest Story Trees sounds very interesting and would be my second choice, particularly if it could be used in a cause and effect style.