Like others have said, I think a safe way to start working more on the foundry and see where it goes, without much work is to better the rewards so people play foundry quests more.
player interest in the game and the foundry, and more money being spent go hand in hand.
And thanks a lot for creating and participating in this topic Spirals, it means the world to us foundry authors.
Do you play the Foundry?:
"Yes"
"No, I pvp mainly and Foundry doesn't offer me anything. If I could make or play new pvp maps, that would be another story."
"Not anymore, I'm level 60 - I blow through the enemies and are not challenged in the least or get rewards useful to me."
"No, I'm not sure how."
Why do you play the Foundry?:
"For the daily."
"For the story."
"To level up my char, you can only do the same content so many times."
"For the farm of enchants and items."
What would have you play the foundry more often?:
"If I could receive proper or unique rewards/challenge for my character level/gear/party size."
"If I knew more about which the quality content was."
Wow, Spirals, I admire the heart and truth in your answer. I'm guessing you see the bigger picture just as well as anybody. You probably realize that the data-centric management (as opposed to vision-driven management) is inevitably headed to an exhaustion point. The short-run monetization goals say to pump out new content increasingly quickly to try and keep players thinking the next big update will be the one that "pays off" and each wave of new content will bake in ever more obsolescence of older rewards so players are motivated to pay again and again. The longer-run story of that philosophy is always the same - increasing disillusionment from the players and realization that their investment in playing is being devalued (making investment in another game relatively more profitable).
UGC can break the cycle if the UGC is worth playing. But, that means the key question is: Why don't you play Foundry more? Having found myself more and more logging in only to stare at my screen wondering why I did that and beginning to realize that there is nothing in the game I really want to do anymore, why is the Foundry content not even part of my calculus?
For me, it isn't really driven by the lack of rewards. True, that probably was a reason I did not take the cost on myself to learn more about Foundry when first approaching the game and leveling my first character. I do try to get to "decent" gear so I can hope to explore newly released content in any game, but I don't get any personal enjoyment out of min-max optimizations. That's work. I get paid to do it. I don't pay to do it. Admittedly, I probably did get a signal to avoid Foundry when I hit 60 and saw that the daily Foundry reward now had such a low return on time that I did not want to even learn more about it. Players at that point are hitting a wall already - too much gap between a fresh level 60 and the minimum to not be embarrassed to be seen in any "end game" area. In that context, it does not take much to set a path away from a whole branch of content.
So, I'm asking myself, "Why did I never go back to Foundry content?" And, I think the main answer is: Out of sight equals out of mind. I can remember that a few of the Featured Foundries I did back when I first got the introduction quest were quite fun. They hit on exactly what I play games like this for. They were, like a few self-published e-books, worth exploring just to see where they went (and how). Why did I forget that? I forgot about them because the in-game marketing hit at the wrong time. This game has a surplus of level-cap content already. Before I had explored all of that, the Foundry was more of a distraction than anything else. Now that I've grown bored with the clockwork Lag-a-Mat "fight," I'm a much more receptive audience for this. But, what marketing is there? Nobody in the community is suggesting to do Foundry for rewards (one possible source of reminders). The home screen is the kind of annoying interstitial ad I reflexively delete without reading. Other than this forum thread, I probably would have drifted away from this game (maybe waiting painfully through one more module release) without ever remembering this UGC was here.
I think the primary problem to solve first and foremost is how Foundry can be monetize for revenue stream in a way which players/authors can agree. It will provide incentive for more resource to dedicate to Foundry. That said, instead of simply associating Foundry with just quest, why not have it as an option to purchase using zen some sort of "Foundry map" which can be used as Guild hall where Guild leader (now the author) can design it? Amenities inside the Foundry Guild hall can also cost extra zen.
Any guild with its Foundry Guild hall will get to unlock Daily guild quests for either boons or AD.
I agree with eldarth that a good start to get more people playing would be to let authors choose their quest tags, and add "farming" to the list. at least I would play quests that are more close to what I want.
0
apocrs1980Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2015
Unfortunately, this still does not absolve the issue of what the players actually play the foundry missions for. It is a very minor part of the player base that plays the Foundry missions for the story or experience, a majority just want their daily AD on all their toons and move on, in part the changes made to the game fostered this player base and play style...not to mention that this is nearly 70% of the mmo crowds mentality.
I do appreciate the thought behind making a separate tab for farming, however, I do not believe that the farm map creators would bother using it, and I do not see Cryptic pouring resources into man power to police it. Not trying to be a downer, just a realist.
Further more, I think this thread is more of a data gathering resource to reflect upon what was successful with the Foundry and what could have been done better to apply to future Cryptic projects which use a Foundry system.
Again I say add a toggle to allow better rewards to be gathered from the end chest and better xp gain for the Foundry's that have been featured. This is the only real true way to assure quality control and combat exploitative behavior at the same time with no additional effort on Cryptic's part. Once people realize that they can gain rewards which help to the over all progression of their character towards end game content your matrix numbers will improve giving you guys more flexability to work on making the Foundry that more excellent.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The Cragsteep Crypt - BETA Ravenloft Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
the problem with good rewards for featured quests is that it would make worse the issue with people playing mostly them instead of regular quests.
I mean why play a quest with poor rewards if you can play one with much better ones?
0
apocrs1980Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
the problem with good rewards for featured quests is that it would make worse the issue with people playing mostly them instead of regular quests.
I mean why play a quest with poor rewards if you can play one with much better ones?
The idea behind it is This
1. that at least it would spark interest in the Foundry amongst their casual player base.
2. It is a fair way to assure new quests are being seen and played as Cryptic chooses the featured quests each month
3. It safeguards against exploits
4. It challenges the community to push the envelop to create the best content for the game for featuring.
5. It will improve the matrix numbers for Cryptic to actually invest time into updating/fixing/improvising the Foundry
6. and the biggest argument... it's better then what we currently have...which is nothing.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The Cragsteep Crypt - BETA Ravenloft Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
I guess you have a point.
I still would prefer better rewards for all quests, in a non exploitable way. (costumes? other cosmetics? discount coupons for the Zstore?)
1) PWEs founder wants to buy majority or (oustanding) shares to take PWE private.
2) PWE saw a drop in Q3 performance they attributed to its US operations.
Specifically "During the last financial quarter, which ended in September last year, Perfect World saw slight revenue gains offset by a 50 per cent drop in net profits, which it attributed to the performance of its US operations."
So CLEARLY Cryptic is having profitability issues. You dont need to even be on the inside to know this, its evident in the population. Its also not rocket science on WHY either.
When Cryptic and PWE value an orange artifact item at $600 US. This puts a BIS character in the $3,000+ range. Which would not be absurd IF the items didnt become obsolete every 2-4 months.
Sprials, since you do seem to care about this game. I will post here an offer I sent to Crush and never heard back from. I will write out a full fledged research paper at no cost and email/mail it over to you analyzing all the good and bad with Neverwinter.
All from leveling/PVE/dungeons.campaigns/PVP/real money transactions etc.
Because its too much to post in any thread. My only ask is this finds its way into the hands of someone who can make a difference. I can tell you exactly WHY sales are down, I can tell you whats not working what is working etc.
Why am I offering this? because I have invested too much emotionally/time/financially into my characters and account to continue to sit by watching this game commit suicide.
I care about neverwinter and its success and eventhough I have tried multiple times to quit and play other games, I want to come back to Neverwinter - as I also KNOW others WANT to come back, but there is WAY to much flawed with the game and its business model.
So if what you say is true, you "need to show your bosses that Neverwinter is successful so that you can continue being employed. " PM me here, I will give you my cell number, lets chat and I will get to work on my research paper if thats needed.
Im NOT talking about "class balance" thats its own beast. I am talking about the fundamental backbone of the game and how it can EASILY be improved.
PM me and ill give you my cell number or just PM me saying you WILL read what I spend tens of hours writing and WILL pass it along.
I know EXACTLY how to make this game immensely profitable. You guys are sitting on a GOLD MINE and dont even know it!
Hi mate!
I feel with you and i am in the same shoes as you, i too tried many times naively to reach somebody to offer my help and expertise, that i got from working in many fields for a biggest and oldest industrial company in the world.
In my office room i got a Belgian beer standing behind me with the founding date from the 14th century. This is a reminder for me, how to do things the right way.
Let me help you a bit, a game and the IT industry all together is like a cruiser ship.
We are merely passengers. As much as we care for the ships sake, we can't help the crew, even if a big iceberg is coming towards the ship.
CEOs and people working on the upper floors have their own mind and own strategies, which most of the time, we don't know. If they are directing the ship in wrong direction it is not me, not you and not even an employee, who they will ask what to do. Of course the big shareholders have always a Plan B, which we don't have.
I feel very much for this game too, i love it, with all it's little or big bugs or issues too, but sadly we can only sit and watch.
Don't ask for Crush to answer you, he is a Dev, not a person from above, he is not the one, who is making the big decisions.
IT is a special animal in every sense too, most of the time an IT company is not even a primary source for income for a bigger mother company. All people, who work in this industry are like nomads, they come and go and most of the time, they don't even work just for a single company full time.
For the declining numbers and for every problem a game faces, there is a cure, a drastic one of course, but i am not allowed to share it here.
Now speaking as a normal player, yes i write it too, in nearly every of my posts, that as a GM i see the game going into a very bad direction and sadly the numbers give me right. It is sad to see, that once we had to make more guilds to accommodate our many players, now there are only 2 old timers in the guild, me and my friend and others guilds needed to be closed and in the main guild people come and go...
Every game, every MMO nowadays thrives on the trade and the inner market, which here is utterly broken.
The game economics are controlled by a small minority only, who we must say are 90+% exploiters and cheaters. Foundry is now only a playground form them and for a few hard core foundry players, who mainly use it to level up a new toon.
I think not even the deciding people know now, what to do, maybe they are in the same position as we players are, they are waiting up, which is a wrong decision according to my experiences.
On one hand they could get rid of exploits and exploiters, but then game economy would totally collapse, as we see it now with RP points, which are nearly impossible to get the honest, legit way. So a gamer who wants to upgrade one or more toons is faced now with a very steep climb.
On the other hand there are some economic measures to solve this situation for once and all, but since they are drastic i fear the company is not willing to go that way and is trying to get the remaining loss of income from us, other hardcore and new players. Once again wrong.
The economy manipulators are the ones on the other hand, who are making casual players flee, but this would take a long term and in depth look.
And since exploiters pay sometimes huge amounts too, they are allowed to go here amongst us on the other hand they cripple the game economics. It's actually a decision of what you prefer, few players with bigger wallets or more players, with smaller transactions. I for my part would choose the later, but as i said i am just a passenger too.
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
0
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited January 2015
Thank you for the effort Spirals. Although we are definitely angry and frustrated with the state of the foundry and that comes through any time we mention it. Your responses have been a breath of fresh air with honesty, passion and compassionate answers.
I guess I'll just stress the ultimate issue with the Foundry isn't tool-side but player side. We want to play Foundry Missions and we want to enjoy the endless content that we experienced in other games with UGC but the developers have failed in making that possible. Good content is not a reward in and of itself.
And the bulk of the issues with authors stems from the fact their content is not played or enjoyed as much as it should be because the developers failed to address the horrible rewards. That needs to be Cryptic's priority before anything else. Make people want to play and enjoy the content.
Additionally you guys need to set out some rules and enforce them. You can not reward a farm quest the same as a story quest. You need to set out the rules for what is a rule violating farm quest and what is a quest with minimal story and enforce those rules. Right now the reward system falls apart because everything is caught under one umbrella which is limited by the severe end of the farm quest spectrum.
I remember when the gamer first launched people made farm quests and got angry when they were removed because 'Cryptic gave us the tools to make whatever content we liked and I like quests which get me level 1-60 in 15 minutes and drops and an unreasonably fast amount!'
If you want the Foundry to be successful you have to put your foot down and say no. You have to put a standard of quality in content. Not every quest has to be a masterpiece but they shouldn't be blatant farm quests with mobs stuck in locations they can't retaliate from, big open expanses with no decoration or no story to begin with (even if the story is just that you are exploring an area)
As long as those quests continue not only to exist but be the main content played, regardless of how many players like it, then the Foundry will always fall short. Some players like cheat codes. Some players like I-Win buttons. That doesn't ever mean they should be appeased of those desires. Some things simply do not belong in the Foundry and rather than, perhaps, removing that content they should be sent into their own category with less rewards and less incentives so the rest of the content can actually be played and enjoyed.
Seriously, if we wanted to play farm quests we would play your content...
The Foundry needs to be an escape from that...
Increasing rewards and setting standards is the easiest and most effective means to make the community as a whole happier with the Foundry because no amount of tools will overcome those two boundaries.
orangefireeMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,148Arc User
edited January 2015
As far as rewards go, I personally think the best option is cosmetic items. Maybe even bind them if you're worried about exploits, that way they don't even end up on the Auction House and really don't effect anything other than how people's characters look and how your character looks if you use them. Something as simple as dye packs with customized colors and armor transmutes customized to the author's color choices would go a long way to encouraging people to play foundry quests.
As far as my most wanted feature though, I'd honestly much prefer customizeable bosses. I've been able to do a few things, but it's very limited compared to what I want to do. Customized enemies could just not drop rewards if there are worries about exploits. ((Or just drop like minion level rewards.)) A strict limit would be annoying, especially for building encounters that have multiple bosses, but if they don't drop anything/don't drop anything higher than a minion enemy then there isn't really much to exploit.
Neverwinter players are stubborn things....until you strip them down to bone. (Cursed players, my flowers, MINE!) Oh how I plotted their demise.
I guess I'll just stress the ultimate issue with the Foundry isn't tool-side but player side. We want to play Foundry Missions and we want to enjoy the endless content that we experienced in other games with UGC but the developers have failed in making that possible. Good content is not a reward in and of itself.
And the bulk of the issues with authors stems from the fact their content is not played or enjoyed as much as it should be because the developers failed to address the horrible rewards. That needs to be Cryptic's priority before anything else. Make people want to play and enjoy the content.
If there were bound Aquamarines or Flawless Sapphires in the end chests, instead of green gear worth 100-200 RP, we'd likely have far less of a problem with Foundry participation. Those are sort of mid to low refinement point rewards in the grand scheme of refining. Because the bar is set SO high for Artifacts at higher levels, (near exponentially in terms of RP requirements), this seems somewhat fair.
"I don't know, I'm making it up as I go..." Featured Foundry Quest:Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
0
imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
edited January 2015
People actively playing brings potential revenue. We know that.
Foundry can bring in people. We know that, too.
What can we do to encourage this?
We've heard a lot about the rewards-focused viewpoint. There is a large chunk of the player base that is only focused on what they can do to make their character stronger.
I want to address the other major group of Foundry players: the PvE fans looking for good stories to play.
We've got a function for Featuring quests, at a rate of three every so often.
Beyond that, it's a real crapshoot whether or not any given quest is going to be any good.
So, here's my idea.
Create a new tab in the Search. Call it "Cryptic Recommends" or something like that.
Whoever is doing the quest reviews for Featured, when you come across a quest that you like, whether or not it gets featured, flag it to show up in that tab.
That's it. Nothing else. No other added functionality, no added rewards. Just a nice, clean tab that will only hold quests that the person or persons already officially playing and reviewing our quests for Featured thought was good.
Unlike Featured, this would not be a clone of the quest that can no longer be modified. All the tab would do is point you to the existing quest. The only maintenance that would need to be done would be if people start flagging the quest as having been turned into an exploit after being added to the tab, it would be removed.
This would give those looking for a good story to play, who are sick of slogging through the exploits and farms, a place to start. I think I would dramatically improve the Foundry experience for those players, and it would give some really good authors more exposure, without all of the baggage that comes along with the Featured system.
Thank you for this thread. I would place it in my top three best dev responses in this entire forum. We could use more threads like this to improve media relations :P
There are several pieces of good advice to take away from here. Just to reiterate one and add to it a bit. Since the goal is to make sure that whatever you spend your time working on improves your revenue stream, a common sense goal to be sure, you need to seperate some rewards from the rest of the game and reserve them for the foundry. Adding in coupons for zen items is a swift way to start.
This would be a great opportunity to rexamine the seal stores. You can have foundries drop seals and then fine tune the store offerings. You want us to have more rp ? a couple lion seals for those citrine gems could be neat. (just an example, please use whatever rp reward values you want)
think dungeon keeper. Let those dungeon masters go hog wild.
Heck, i would PAY MONEY to be able to use the foundry to host a role playing session.
I would love the ability to do some limited scripting in the foundry.
My favourite part of biowares nwn was that i could script events.
There are of course many ways to monetize the foundry. BUT the point is, treat it like a mod expansion, or part of one. Add in things that are unique to it. You have shown that in game objects (hoard enchantment) can function differently in the foundry compared to the rest of the game. Dont treat it as he cousin that no understands. Treat the foundry as a system in the game just like blacklake or whispering caverns. It is its own zone with a unique property. Treat it as a value adding property and it will be one.
There are many things i would like to add, but you have your established playbook as a company. You guys have been making these games for awhile now. OF course people expect to have certain things be the same in each of them. Each of these games also has its own unique stuff in it as well. Every game you work on is experience for you to take advantage of. Don't try to reinvent the wheel each time. Use your knowledge.
Ty for making nwo. I am really enjoying it and i want it get bigger and better. Cant wait to see what happens next.
Honestly, I am fed up with the straight-up fetch quests and kill quests that make up 90% of all "quests" in MMOs including this one. I've played D&D for 14 years now, and "Kill 20 Orcs/Cult of the Dragon/Bandits/Zombies/Etc." is not a quest. It may be PART of a quest, but that should never be an entire quest. It's not interesting, or challenging. It doesn't make me feel heroic, it makes me feel bored.
The Foundry is the only place we can get real quests. I love it because it can provide the game-play experience I have always wanted from MMOs and rarely if ever find. The Foundry and DDO are seriously the only places where I have ever seen it to any degree. Unfortunately, in the offical PvE content, we sometimes get more rewards from just talking to a quest giver (XP for nothing) and killing 20 orcs (Kill XP, Quest XP, and monetary/item rewards) than we get for playing through an hour of brilliant heroics and great content made by a Foundry Author.
Improved rewards are greatly needed. I echo others that Rewards and a better search function are the most important changes needed. I support the idea of authors setting their own tags, and setting all the farm quests into their own section.
[Q] What do you feel The Foundry does right?
The very basics are good. Like comments, ratings and to get a small amount of Astraldiamonds as a tip or creating maps.
[Q] What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing?
It is fun to create a new maps.
[Q] Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
I like to generate my own content and share it with friends and the community.
[Q] How do you feel The Foundry fell short?
It is hard to make Monsters look different. We need more Clothes and possibilities to generate different looking NPCs and Monsters. Simply no possibility to generate some riddles or make some serious traps.
[Q] What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry?
Working with Teleporters. Long distance Teleporters doesn’t work and the one you use for a short distance seems not working well. I hate the projector system I never see properly in which direction the projector looks.
[Q] What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
Don’t know.
[Q] What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation?
Trigger that works with time.
Possibility of riddles.
Non-Linear Quest Design.
Creating Bossmonsters from the very basic. This means set hit points, attacks, hit point trigger, transformation and similar stuff to generate an very own Boss.
[Q] How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
As a part of the game and possibility to show player new content! At the current state of The Foundry is more like appendix.
It is there but majority of players don’t use it because there is no point in playing it if we have very much other things to do like farming Tiamat, Dragon Heralds, Dailys, PvP or simply farming refining points in other parts of the game besides The Foundry because you set the ICD to 2 Minutes if you are in Foundrys. Which means the current Foundry lacks on purpose.
An additional reward for players would be great. Every Monster in a Foundry could get an extra drop called “Artifact Fragment”. In a special Shop for the Foundry you can buy new Artifacts that you will only get with the Artifact Fragments which is bound to account/character. An bigger drop of Artifact Fragements could wait in the Chest.
In addition you have a rare drop chance to get an unbound artifact (same as you get from Artifact Fragements) + you get one refinement stone from the chest between white pearl to black opal. To avoid Farm Quests you could implement an anti-cheat mechanic. This means if the quest is a daily the quality of the refinement drop in the chest is increased and if the quest is a featured one the quality of the drop is increased as well. Beta Foundrys doesn’t get any refinement reward.
[Q] What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
Other games give not only the Editor as tool they gave you the programing language to alter some parts of the Editor/Game. Which means you can be more flexible with the content. Some popular strategy games have the Editor to create own maps but you can still generate a whole new game with the Editor which lead to a whole new computer game genre (DOTA, LOL, etc.)
AND very important: the Editor must be BUG FREE!!!
Platypus wielding a giant hammer, your argument is invalild!
Only thing the foundry does right is its availability (well the gui is fine for both 2d and 3d editing). Considering all the restrictions i dont think i like doing anything except maybe terraforming (and i spent hundreds of hours in foundry, i want at least t2-like mobs). I dont think am glad the foundry is on in its state (for such a long time). The foundry fell the moment it went short of active dev and support. I hate doing anything simply for the lack of development and even support (bug fixes). I think that the lack of support and development is the reason why i "wish" foundry was never implemented. I would add a support and an active developer.
A bit nosy NW-DKG7E99X6
"Hardcore" exploration journey and dungeon crawl. Read its description prior to trying it.
Spirals... I want to personally thank you for your candid and honest response to my questions. I suppose you deserve my answers to your questions.
Well.. first, we all agree that the foundry is a great idea. One which brings back a bit of the excitement experienced as a Dungeon Master. Limitations notwithstanding, it's a great tool for expressing our creative imagination, and it also functions as a device to make Neverwinter stand out from the crowd, so to speak. We could have quite a lengthly discussion about what this system has done right... but it seems to be a moot point considering the 900 pound gorilla in the room. With all the creative options available with this system, it seems rather pointless if we can't get anyone to show up for the game. Imagine planning your dungeon all week for the big game on saturday afternoon (usually running well into the late night)... you have spent hours getting everything just right. You even went out and got snacks.. pizza, soda, hot pockets... etc.. then on the day of the game.. no one shows up to play. Bummer....
The Foundry can be an exceptional feature to make Neverwinter Online the best game ever... but only if it is properly implemented. It only works if people have a reason to use it. I'm very sure that both PWE and Cryptic understand the potential of this feature. Now it's simply a matter of getting the rewards adjusted correctly to match the rest of the game... while at the same time, a way must be found to stop any exploits of the system. If this can be done... we've all got a winner here. If not.. NWO will go down in flames.
This is just my own, humble, opinion. Once again, I would like to thank you for your response to my questions I hope the problems with the foundry can be sorted out.. It would be quite a shame if this wonderful facet of NWO does not live up to it's potential.
Thank you...
Guitarzan698
0
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited January 2015
That's actually a perfect example guitarzan.
The Foundry may be simple and additional tools will help make some cooler missions but it doesn't matter if nobody shows up to the party.
Right now you can make plenty of content which is dang enjoyable. More tools are just fluff to make cooler things, but no matter how cool you make the content it won't matter if nobody shows up to play. Active authors may want more tools but the inactive authors and the authors that left for other pastures want their content played. They don't want to do all the work and then see nobody play their content or worse yet play their content and give it a negative review because it wasn't a brainless farm mission like most foundry missions are now.
Now some may point to the search feature. To an extent this is a problem but the bigger problem is that very, very few players actually play foundry missions and those that do are probably playing the same 15 minute farm quests over and over again until they either lose their minds or the quest is pushed beneath the fifteen minute threshold. If more players wanted to play foundry quests, particularly a variety of quests, then the search feature would be less of a situation to begin with.
Which brings up something which I don't think has been brought up in this thread before...
The devs should encourage variety. Give more rewards based on the last time you played a specific quest or maybe even a certain author's quests. Encourage players to not simply find an easy to do quest and do it over and over again. Encourage them to play a variety.
And of course maintain QA standards by removing and penalizing the authors who would abuse such a system by making duplicates of their farm quests to exploit the system...
Seriously...can't stress that enough. Penalize the exploiters rather than everybody else. Quality content right now is buried because Cryptic didn't hold up its end of the deal in enforcing non-exploitive behaviors. That trend has to stop.
Which brings up something which I don't think has been brought up in this thread before...
The devs should encourage variety. Give more rewards based on the last time you played a specific quest or maybe even a certain author's quests. Encourage players to not simply find an easy to do quest and do it over and over again. Encourage them to play a variety.
And of course maintain QA standards by removing and penalizing the authors who would abuse such a system by making duplicates of their farm quests to exploit the system...
Seriously...can't stress that enough. Penalize the exploiters rather than everybody else. Quality content right now is buried because Cryptic didn't hold up its end of the deal in enforcing non-exploitive behaviors. That trend has to stop.
This.
I would love to see a variety incentive implemented that would give extra rewards for a quest you've never played before. This could be a static bonus, like a rp gem for instance, given every time you play a new quest. This would encourage players to play as many different quests as possible, since they don't get that gem for replaying the same quest.
The way to deal with exploiters is to get rid of them, not to penalize everyone. It's like trying to remove a tumor with a shotgun. Yeah, you might get rid of the cancer, but you killed your patient in the process. There has been very little action taken directly against the exploiters; instead, Cryptic just maimed the whole foundry by nerfing the rewards so much that exploit quests are the only way to get decent loot. Shotgun surgery.
Yes it is. There's a ten hour long combat entirely optional rpg module, with entirely useless loot progression (you could finish the game with the same stuff you start the game with, +1 swords don't help when you don't have to fight). It got many downloads and is considered one of the best mods for that rpg. Those people obviously viewed the content as a reward in and of itself.
"Explore and defend one of the most beloved cities from Dungeons & Dragons as it rises from the ashes of destruction," reads the game's description. "This action RPG set in an immersive MMO world will take you from the besieged walls of the city to subterranean passageways in search of forgotten secrets and lost treasure." source
The issue is this is an actionrpg, and the target audience for actionrpgs doesn't care about story, actionrpg is at it's core about the pavlovian click, click, click, get shiny, repeat for even shinier. Story in an actionrpg is, to paraphrase John Carmack, 'like the plot of an adult movie".
Basically, in an action rpg, good story content is not a reward in and of itself. It's simply the wrong genre for story focused content.
I wasted five million AD promoting the Foundry.
0
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited January 2015
No. It's not.
You can argue all you like but it's not. And it has nothing to do with action combat, MMO or RPG or anything else.
It has to do with perspective and options.
Now if you are playing a solo game with no rewards just for a story...that's all that is to the game.
If you are playing an online game with minimum content a lot of people, like myself, will do all the quests once just because there's time to kill and stories are fun anyway.
When you are talking about thousands of quests with no incentives to play at all other than story...when you look at the rest of the game giving tens digits time better return on time investment...it's not.
It's very much like saying you can eat candy for one dollar per hour or eat ice cream for ten dollars and hour. I'll be eating the ice cream. And every time I think about eating candy I am going to look at that one and turn around and go back to the ice cream.
This is not a single player game. The time you play ends up meaning something and if time is not adequately rewarded it's no longer fun to all but a very, very, very exponentially almost impossible to find select few people.
It doesn't have to be more rewarding but it does have to be comparably rewarding. No MMO content is ever fun enough to say "you get nothing for your time." In fact it's a dang flaw to ever think content should be rewarded less because it's more enjoyable. It's not a job and only becomes one when you can't opt to play enjoyable things to progress.
Yes it is. There's a ten hour long combat entirely optional rpg module, with entirely useless loot progression (you could finish the game with the same stuff you start the game with, +1 swords don't help when you don't have to fight). It got many downloads and is considered one of the best mods for that rpg. Those people obviously viewed the content as a reward in and of itself.
"Explore and defend one of the most beloved cities from Dungeons & Dragons as it rises from the ashes of destruction," reads the game's description. "This action RPG set in an immersive MMO world will take you from the besieged walls of the city to subterranean passageways in search of forgotten secrets and lost treasure." source
The issue is this is an actionrpg, and the target audience for actionrpgs doesn't care about story, actionrpg is at it's core about the pavlovian click, click, click, get shiny, repeat for even shinier. Story in an actionrpg is, to paraphrase John Carmack, 'like the plot of an adult movie".
Basically, in an action rpg, good story content is not a reward in and of itself. It's simply the wrong genre for story focused content.
Saying that an Action Combat RPG (note that RPG stands for Role-playing Game) does not constitute their being a playstyle for Story and such content is inherently flawed in and of itself. Even though it is Action Combat, it is still an RPG.
Yes it is. There's a ten hour long combat entirely optional rpg module, with entirely useless loot progression (you could finish the game with the same stuff you start the game with, +1 swords don't help when you don't have to fight). It got many downloads and is considered one of the best mods for that rpg. Those people obviously viewed the content as a reward in and of itself.
"Explore and defend one of the most beloved cities from Dungeons & Dragons as it rises from the ashes of destruction," reads the game's description. "This action RPG set in an immersive MMO world will take you from the besieged walls of the city to subterranean passageways in search of forgotten secrets and lost treasure." source
The issue is this is an actionrpg, and the target audience for actionrpgs doesn't care about story, actionrpg is at it's core about the pavlovian click, click, click, get shiny, repeat for even shinier. Story in an actionrpg is, to paraphrase John Carmack, 'like the plot of an adult movie".
Basically, in an action rpg, good story content is not a reward in and of itself. It's simply the wrong genre for story focused content.
Borderlands 1, 2, pre-sequel are action oriented rpgs and their story is great. Hellgate London also has/had a great storyline. Champions online has a great storyline, too. *Hint* the way is the goal *hint*
So no, your assumptions could not be more off, hehe.
0
apocrs1980Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2015
Actually, Ambisinister is correct,
when it comes to NWO, if you ask the vast majority of the player base of this game, all will tell you they do not bother with playing the foundry missions because it's not worth their time and effort, regardless of the story.
I'm sure there are many authors whom have great stories to tell, however, for the majority of the player base in NWO, they do not care for a story including the main one, they are more focused on how to progress their character with biggest baddest gear.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The Cragsteep Crypt - BETA Ravenloft Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
0
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited January 2015
Just a slight amendment to that, I wouldnt say they do not care about story but rather a good story will not overcome a lack of incentives.
My argument is that there are plenty of people, such as myself, who love playing stories but want an adaquate reward for their time and enjoyment. They don't want to play boring content with great rewards nor do they want to play extremely fun content with no rewards. They want a happy medium.
I normally play every quest in every MMO I play and often get the "why would you do that? It doesn't give anything [I find good.]" question. Because I find doing every quest once fun and it checks off a completionist list which is also fun to me (as well as the lore and story) even if the lore and story wasn't enjoyable.
But the Foundry isn't standard MMO quests and storylines. They're not a complete it once and check it off the bucket list event like in other games so completionists, such as myself, are not attracted to it for that reason and other reasons to play the content are quite limited.
Currently I only play UGC in NW if it is a personal friend (such as Zebular), a quest I get recommended to by a personal source or is an author I know has made top knotch quality content in the past such as apocrs1980. I have no incentive whatsoever to dredge through and experiment with new authors.
Whenever the Foundry is brought up in discussions I tend to find most people echo the same thoughts on this matter. It's not because they only care about rewards. It's because they want something for their time. At least in other games it goes towards a check list. It doesn't in the foundry...and what little of a check list it does go to doesn't give a rat's behind if it was made in five minutes by somebody looking to exploit the foundry with the worst quests ever invented (the quests which are actually played right now) or quality story quests with attention to both visual and mechanical details (not played at all right now).
It's not that rewards are the only thing that matters. It's that rewards do matter. It's very much akin to supply and demand to most people. If something is extremely fun but offers no incentives to play the content then the content won't be played. If the content is extremely boring but gives a lot of rewards then it won't be played.
As a long time Runescape Player (yeah, laugh it up) it had great examples of both ends of the spectrum.
They had a skill called runecrafting. By far the most profitable skill to ever level. Back when I maxed it the net gain was over 500-1,000M Gold Pieces (most players thought 1M was a lot). But it was boring and took a long time so nobody did it.
In the mean time they had this fun PvP system called Tournaments which was basically a series of 1v1's to see who the best fighter was. It was actually a lot of fun (even for non-PvPers like me) but was really never played because the rewards didn't match the enjoyment.
The rewards have to be adaquate for the task. Players play for fun but part of the fun is progressing to virtually every player. You will almost never find any player in any multi-player game that cares about only one end or the other.
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited January 2015
Tl;DR
Almost every player wants middle ground content. Very few will ever say they want boring content with high rewards or fun content with no rewards. Players want enjoyable content with decent rewards and perhaps the option to choose varying scales depending on their mood or goals of that day/week/time period.
Decent rewards aren't the only thing that matter. It's just that decent rewards do matter because even if a story loving person like myself decides for some crazy reason to play foundry content right now I still would be more likely to do the crappy farm quests I don't like, respect or enjoy because at least they give me something comparable to a really, really, really, really,(these can go on forever) bad official content quest.
I will never play anything "just for fun" in any MMO. I spent 5 hours running in circles playing the Stanley Parable this morning having fun. It's pure story. It has no goals really and is purely for the enjoyable experience.
I will never play that content in NW (Foundry or anything else equally unrewarding) because if I am in NW I want to do at least SOME progression. I will log off and play a game which has no progression if I purely want story...or I will play Shadows of Mordor or Batman Arkham ____ if I want a new RPG Story/Progression Binge...I will not choose to play Foundry content because that time in my eyes is 100% wasted.
1 the lack of RP possibility, there is no real possiblity to anime anything in the foundry.
That mean somehow, player that create a foundry should be allow to manage the foundry in live with some tool and some anim.
2 Foundry chest and foundry stats. foundry creator should be able to create and play with some equipment to reward player, to not unbalance things, player should have a foundry chest where foundry equipment can be stocked. It will allows easely way to make foundry creator a story line in a couple of foundry. foundry creator can manage foundry equipment entry (like a lvl equipment and equipment over this lvl canno't be used inside this foundry) exemple: lvl1 = green stuff, lvl 2 blue, lvl 3 t1 , lvl 4 t2 , lvl5 t3 + orange equip, also you can adds to equipment temporary foundry stats (with 1 to 4 more lvl that are add to previous classment).
So the point is as it exist specific pvp stats, you do same with foundry stats, and foundry creator would be able to play on those foundry stats without affecting normal stuff.
Comments
player interest in the game and the foundry, and more money being spent go hand in hand.
And thanks a lot for creating and participating in this topic Spirals, it means the world to us foundry authors.
Do you play the Foundry?:
"Yes"
"No, I pvp mainly and Foundry doesn't offer me anything. If I could make or play new pvp maps, that would be another story."
"Not anymore, I'm level 60 - I blow through the enemies and are not challenged in the least or get rewards useful to me."
"No, I'm not sure how."
Why do you play the Foundry?:
"For the daily."
"For the story."
"To level up my char, you can only do the same content so many times."
"For the farm of enchants and items."
What would have you play the foundry more often?:
"If I could receive proper or unique rewards/challenge for my character level/gear/party size."
"If I knew more about which the quality content was."
UGC can break the cycle if the UGC is worth playing. But, that means the key question is: Why don't you play Foundry more? Having found myself more and more logging in only to stare at my screen wondering why I did that and beginning to realize that there is nothing in the game I really want to do anymore, why is the Foundry content not even part of my calculus?
For me, it isn't really driven by the lack of rewards. True, that probably was a reason I did not take the cost on myself to learn more about Foundry when first approaching the game and leveling my first character. I do try to get to "decent" gear so I can hope to explore newly released content in any game, but I don't get any personal enjoyment out of min-max optimizations. That's work. I get paid to do it. I don't pay to do it. Admittedly, I probably did get a signal to avoid Foundry when I hit 60 and saw that the daily Foundry reward now had such a low return on time that I did not want to even learn more about it. Players at that point are hitting a wall already - too much gap between a fresh level 60 and the minimum to not be embarrassed to be seen in any "end game" area. In that context, it does not take much to set a path away from a whole branch of content.
So, I'm asking myself, "Why did I never go back to Foundry content?" And, I think the main answer is: Out of sight equals out of mind. I can remember that a few of the Featured Foundries I did back when I first got the introduction quest were quite fun. They hit on exactly what I play games like this for. They were, like a few self-published e-books, worth exploring just to see where they went (and how). Why did I forget that? I forgot about them because the in-game marketing hit at the wrong time. This game has a surplus of level-cap content already. Before I had explored all of that, the Foundry was more of a distraction than anything else. Now that I've grown bored with the clockwork Lag-a-Mat "fight," I'm a much more receptive audience for this. But, what marketing is there? Nobody in the community is suggesting to do Foundry for rewards (one possible source of reminders). The home screen is the kind of annoying interstitial ad I reflexively delete without reading. Other than this forum thread, I probably would have drifted away from this game (maybe waiting painfully through one more module release) without ever remembering this UGC was here.
If I may ask, are you interested in getting feedback from the Star Trek Online Foundry community?
Thanks
Any guild with its Foundry Guild hall will get to unlock Daily guild quests for either boons or AD.
I do appreciate the thought behind making a separate tab for farming, however, I do not believe that the farm map creators would bother using it, and I do not see Cryptic pouring resources into man power to police it. Not trying to be a downer, just a realist.
Further more, I think this thread is more of a data gathering resource to reflect upon what was successful with the Foundry and what could have been done better to apply to future Cryptic projects which use a Foundry system.
Again I say add a toggle to allow better rewards to be gathered from the end chest and better xp gain for the Foundry's that have been featured. This is the only real true way to assure quality control and combat exploitative behavior at the same time with no additional effort on Cryptic's part. Once people realize that they can gain rewards which help to the over all progression of their character towards end game content your matrix numbers will improve giving you guys more flexability to work on making the Foundry that more excellent.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
I mean why play a quest with poor rewards if you can play one with much better ones?
The idea behind it is This
1. that at least it would spark interest in the Foundry amongst their casual player base.
2. It is a fair way to assure new quests are being seen and played as Cryptic chooses the featured quests each month
3. It safeguards against exploits
4. It challenges the community to push the envelop to create the best content for the game for featuring.
5. It will improve the matrix numbers for Cryptic to actually invest time into updating/fixing/improvising the Foundry
6. and the biggest argument... it's better then what we currently have...which is nothing.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
I still would prefer better rewards for all quests, in a non exploitable way. (costumes? other cosmetics? discount coupons for the Zstore?)
Hi mate!
I feel with you and i am in the same shoes as you, i too tried many times naively to reach somebody to offer my help and expertise, that i got from working in many fields for a biggest and oldest industrial company in the world.
In my office room i got a Belgian beer standing behind me with the founding date from the 14th century. This is a reminder for me, how to do things the right way.
Let me help you a bit, a game and the IT industry all together is like a cruiser ship.
We are merely passengers. As much as we care for the ships sake, we can't help the crew, even if a big iceberg is coming towards the ship.
CEOs and people working on the upper floors have their own mind and own strategies, which most of the time, we don't know. If they are directing the ship in wrong direction it is not me, not you and not even an employee, who they will ask what to do. Of course the big shareholders have always a Plan B, which we don't have.
I feel very much for this game too, i love it, with all it's little or big bugs or issues too, but sadly we can only sit and watch.
Don't ask for Crush to answer you, he is a Dev, not a person from above, he is not the one, who is making the big decisions.
IT is a special animal in every sense too, most of the time an IT company is not even a primary source for income for a bigger mother company. All people, who work in this industry are like nomads, they come and go and most of the time, they don't even work just for a single company full time.
For the declining numbers and for every problem a game faces, there is a cure, a drastic one of course, but i am not allowed to share it here.
Now speaking as a normal player, yes i write it too, in nearly every of my posts, that as a GM i see the game going into a very bad direction and sadly the numbers give me right. It is sad to see, that once we had to make more guilds to accommodate our many players, now there are only 2 old timers in the guild, me and my friend and others guilds needed to be closed and in the main guild people come and go...
Every game, every MMO nowadays thrives on the trade and the inner market, which here is utterly broken.
The game economics are controlled by a small minority only, who we must say are 90+% exploiters and cheaters. Foundry is now only a playground form them and for a few hard core foundry players, who mainly use it to level up a new toon.
I think not even the deciding people know now, what to do, maybe they are in the same position as we players are, they are waiting up, which is a wrong decision according to my experiences.
On one hand they could get rid of exploits and exploiters, but then game economy would totally collapse, as we see it now with RP points, which are nearly impossible to get the honest, legit way. So a gamer who wants to upgrade one or more toons is faced now with a very steep climb.
On the other hand there are some economic measures to solve this situation for once and all, but since they are drastic i fear the company is not willing to go that way and is trying to get the remaining loss of income from us, other hardcore and new players. Once again wrong.
The economy manipulators are the ones on the other hand, who are making casual players flee, but this would take a long term and in depth look.
And since exploiters pay sometimes huge amounts too, they are allowed to go here amongst us on the other hand they cripple the game economics. It's actually a decision of what you prefer, few players with bigger wallets or more players, with smaller transactions. I for my part would choose the later, but as i said i am just a passenger too.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
I guess I'll just stress the ultimate issue with the Foundry isn't tool-side but player side. We want to play Foundry Missions and we want to enjoy the endless content that we experienced in other games with UGC but the developers have failed in making that possible. Good content is not a reward in and of itself.
And the bulk of the issues with authors stems from the fact their content is not played or enjoyed as much as it should be because the developers failed to address the horrible rewards. That needs to be Cryptic's priority before anything else. Make people want to play and enjoy the content.
Additionally you guys need to set out some rules and enforce them. You can not reward a farm quest the same as a story quest. You need to set out the rules for what is a rule violating farm quest and what is a quest with minimal story and enforce those rules. Right now the reward system falls apart because everything is caught under one umbrella which is limited by the severe end of the farm quest spectrum.
I remember when the gamer first launched people made farm quests and got angry when they were removed because 'Cryptic gave us the tools to make whatever content we liked and I like quests which get me level 1-60 in 15 minutes and drops and an unreasonably fast amount!'
If you want the Foundry to be successful you have to put your foot down and say no. You have to put a standard of quality in content. Not every quest has to be a masterpiece but they shouldn't be blatant farm quests with mobs stuck in locations they can't retaliate from, big open expanses with no decoration or no story to begin with (even if the story is just that you are exploring an area)
As long as those quests continue not only to exist but be the main content played, regardless of how many players like it, then the Foundry will always fall short. Some players like cheat codes. Some players like I-Win buttons. That doesn't ever mean they should be appeased of those desires. Some things simply do not belong in the Foundry and rather than, perhaps, removing that content they should be sent into their own category with less rewards and less incentives so the rest of the content can actually be played and enjoyed.
Seriously, if we wanted to play farm quests we would play your content...
The Foundry needs to be an escape from that...
Increasing rewards and setting standards is the easiest and most effective means to make the community as a whole happier with the Foundry because no amount of tools will overcome those two boundaries.
As far as my most wanted feature though, I'd honestly much prefer customizeable bosses. I've been able to do a few things, but it's very limited compared to what I want to do. Customized enemies could just not drop rewards if there are worries about exploits. ((Or just drop like minion level rewards.)) A strict limit would be annoying, especially for building encounters that have multiple bosses, but if they don't drop anything/don't drop anything higher than a minion enemy then there isn't really much to exploit.
If there were bound Aquamarines or Flawless Sapphires in the end chests, instead of green gear worth 100-200 RP, we'd likely have far less of a problem with Foundry participation. Those are sort of mid to low refinement point rewards in the grand scheme of refining. Because the bar is set SO high for Artifacts at higher levels, (near exponentially in terms of RP requirements), this seems somewhat fair.
Featured Foundry Quest: Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG
Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
Foundry can bring in people. We know that, too.
What can we do to encourage this?
We've heard a lot about the rewards-focused viewpoint. There is a large chunk of the player base that is only focused on what they can do to make their character stronger.
I want to address the other major group of Foundry players: the PvE fans looking for good stories to play.
We've got a function for Featuring quests, at a rate of three every so often.
Beyond that, it's a real crapshoot whether or not any given quest is going to be any good.
So, here's my idea.
Create a new tab in the Search. Call it "Cryptic Recommends" or something like that.
Whoever is doing the quest reviews for Featured, when you come across a quest that you like, whether or not it gets featured, flag it to show up in that tab.
That's it. Nothing else. No other added functionality, no added rewards. Just a nice, clean tab that will only hold quests that the person or persons already officially playing and reviewing our quests for Featured thought was good.
Unlike Featured, this would not be a clone of the quest that can no longer be modified. All the tab would do is point you to the existing quest. The only maintenance that would need to be done would be if people start flagging the quest as having been turned into an exploit after being added to the tab, it would be removed.
This would give those looking for a good story to play, who are sick of slogging through the exploits and farms, a place to start. I think I would dramatically improve the Foundry experience for those players, and it would give some really good authors more exposure, without all of the baggage that comes along with the Featured system.
There are several pieces of good advice to take away from here. Just to reiterate one and add to it a bit. Since the goal is to make sure that whatever you spend your time working on improves your revenue stream, a common sense goal to be sure, you need to seperate some rewards from the rest of the game and reserve them for the foundry. Adding in coupons for zen items is a swift way to start.
This would be a great opportunity to rexamine the seal stores. You can have foundries drop seals and then fine tune the store offerings. You want us to have more rp ? a couple lion seals for those citrine gems could be neat. (just an example, please use whatever rp reward values you want)
think dungeon keeper. Let those dungeon masters go hog wild.
Heck, i would PAY MONEY to be able to use the foundry to host a role playing session.
I would love the ability to do some limited scripting in the foundry.
My favourite part of biowares nwn was that i could script events.
There are of course many ways to monetize the foundry. BUT the point is, treat it like a mod expansion, or part of one. Add in things that are unique to it. You have shown that in game objects (hoard enchantment) can function differently in the foundry compared to the rest of the game. Dont treat it as he cousin that no understands. Treat the foundry as a system in the game just like blacklake or whispering caverns. It is its own zone with a unique property. Treat it as a value adding property and it will be one.
There are many things i would like to add, but you have your established playbook as a company. You guys have been making these games for awhile now. OF course people expect to have certain things be the same in each of them. Each of these games also has its own unique stuff in it as well. Every game you work on is experience for you to take advantage of. Don't try to reinvent the wheel each time. Use your knowledge.
Ty for making nwo. I am really enjoying it and i want it get bigger and better. Cant wait to see what happens next.
The Foundry is the only place we can get real quests. I love it because it can provide the game-play experience I have always wanted from MMOs and rarely if ever find. The Foundry and DDO are seriously the only places where I have ever seen it to any degree. Unfortunately, in the offical PvE content, we sometimes get more rewards from just talking to a quest giver (XP for nothing) and killing 20 orcs (Kill XP, Quest XP, and monetary/item rewards) than we get for playing through an hour of brilliant heroics and great content made by a Foundry Author.
Improved rewards are greatly needed. I echo others that Rewards and a better search function are the most important changes needed. I support the idea of authors setting their own tags, and setting all the farm quests into their own section.
The very basics are good. Like comments, ratings and to get a small amount of Astraldiamonds as a tip or creating maps.
[Q] What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing?
It is fun to create a new maps.
[Q] Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
I like to generate my own content and share it with friends and the community.
[Q] How do you feel The Foundry fell short?
It is hard to make Monsters look different. We need more Clothes and possibilities to generate different looking NPCs and Monsters. Simply no possibility to generate some riddles or make some serious traps.
[Q] What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry?
Working with Teleporters. Long distance Teleporters doesn’t work and the one you use for a short distance seems not working well. I hate the projector system I never see properly in which direction the projector looks.
[Q] What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
Don’t know.
[Q] What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation?
Trigger that works with time.
Possibility of riddles.
Non-Linear Quest Design.
Creating Bossmonsters from the very basic. This means set hit points, attacks, hit point trigger, transformation and similar stuff to generate an very own Boss.
[Q] How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
As a part of the game and possibility to show player new content! At the current state of The Foundry is more like appendix.
It is there but majority of players don’t use it because there is no point in playing it if we have very much other things to do like farming Tiamat, Dragon Heralds, Dailys, PvP or simply farming refining points in other parts of the game besides The Foundry because you set the ICD to 2 Minutes if you are in Foundrys. Which means the current Foundry lacks on purpose.
An additional reward for players would be great. Every Monster in a Foundry could get an extra drop called “Artifact Fragment”. In a special Shop for the Foundry you can buy new Artifacts that you will only get with the Artifact Fragments which is bound to account/character. An bigger drop of Artifact Fragements could wait in the Chest.
In addition you have a rare drop chance to get an unbound artifact (same as you get from Artifact Fragements) + you get one refinement stone from the chest between white pearl to black opal. To avoid Farm Quests you could implement an anti-cheat mechanic. This means if the quest is a daily the quality of the refinement drop in the chest is increased and if the quest is a featured one the quality of the drop is increased as well. Beta Foundrys doesn’t get any refinement reward.
[Q] What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
Other games give not only the Editor as tool they gave you the programing language to alter some parts of the Editor/Game. Which means you can be more flexible with the content. Some popular strategy games have the Editor to create own maps but you can still generate a whole new game with the Editor which lead to a whole new computer game genre (DOTA, LOL, etc.)
AND very important: the Editor must be BUG FREE!!!
Well.. first, we all agree that the foundry is a great idea. One which brings back a bit of the excitement experienced as a Dungeon Master. Limitations notwithstanding, it's a great tool for expressing our creative imagination, and it also functions as a device to make Neverwinter stand out from the crowd, so to speak. We could have quite a lengthly discussion about what this system has done right... but it seems to be a moot point considering the 900 pound gorilla in the room. With all the creative options available with this system, it seems rather pointless if we can't get anyone to show up for the game. Imagine planning your dungeon all week for the big game on saturday afternoon (usually running well into the late night)... you have spent hours getting everything just right. You even went out and got snacks.. pizza, soda, hot pockets... etc.. then on the day of the game.. no one shows up to play. Bummer....
The Foundry can be an exceptional feature to make Neverwinter Online the best game ever... but only if it is properly implemented. It only works if people have a reason to use it. I'm very sure that both PWE and Cryptic understand the potential of this feature. Now it's simply a matter of getting the rewards adjusted correctly to match the rest of the game... while at the same time, a way must be found to stop any exploits of the system. If this can be done... we've all got a winner here. If not.. NWO will go down in flames.
This is just my own, humble, opinion. Once again, I would like to thank you for your response to my questions I hope the problems with the foundry can be sorted out.. It would be quite a shame if this wonderful facet of NWO does not live up to it's potential.
Thank you...
Guitarzan698
The Foundry may be simple and additional tools will help make some cooler missions but it doesn't matter if nobody shows up to the party.
Right now you can make plenty of content which is dang enjoyable. More tools are just fluff to make cooler things, but no matter how cool you make the content it won't matter if nobody shows up to play. Active authors may want more tools but the inactive authors and the authors that left for other pastures want their content played. They don't want to do all the work and then see nobody play their content or worse yet play their content and give it a negative review because it wasn't a brainless farm mission like most foundry missions are now.
Now some may point to the search feature. To an extent this is a problem but the bigger problem is that very, very few players actually play foundry missions and those that do are probably playing the same 15 minute farm quests over and over again until they either lose their minds or the quest is pushed beneath the fifteen minute threshold. If more players wanted to play foundry quests, particularly a variety of quests, then the search feature would be less of a situation to begin with.
Which brings up something which I don't think has been brought up in this thread before...
The devs should encourage variety. Give more rewards based on the last time you played a specific quest or maybe even a certain author's quests. Encourage players to not simply find an easy to do quest and do it over and over again. Encourage them to play a variety.
And of course maintain QA standards by removing and penalizing the authors who would abuse such a system by making duplicates of their farm quests to exploit the system...
Seriously...can't stress that enough. Penalize the exploiters rather than everybody else. Quality content right now is buried because Cryptic didn't hold up its end of the deal in enforcing non-exploitive behaviors. That trend has to stop.
This.
I would love to see a variety incentive implemented that would give extra rewards for a quest you've never played before. This could be a static bonus, like a rp gem for instance, given every time you play a new quest. This would encourage players to play as many different quests as possible, since they don't get that gem for replaying the same quest.
The way to deal with exploiters is to get rid of them, not to penalize everyone. It's like trying to remove a tumor with a shotgun. Yeah, you might get rid of the cancer, but you killed your patient in the process. There has been very little action taken directly against the exploiters; instead, Cryptic just maimed the whole foundry by nerfing the rewards so much that exploit quests are the only way to get decent loot. Shotgun surgery.
"Explore and defend one of the most beloved cities from Dungeons & Dragons as it rises from the ashes of destruction," reads the game's description. "This action RPG set in an immersive MMO world will take you from the besieged walls of the city to subterranean passageways in search of forgotten secrets and lost treasure." source
The issue is this is an actionrpg, and the target audience for actionrpgs doesn't care about story, actionrpg is at it's core about the pavlovian click, click, click, get shiny, repeat for even shinier. Story in an actionrpg is, to paraphrase John Carmack, 'like the plot of an adult movie".
Basically, in an action rpg, good story content is not a reward in and of itself. It's simply the wrong genre for story focused content.
You can argue all you like but it's not. And it has nothing to do with action combat, MMO or RPG or anything else.
It has to do with perspective and options.
Now if you are playing a solo game with no rewards just for a story...that's all that is to the game.
If you are playing an online game with minimum content a lot of people, like myself, will do all the quests once just because there's time to kill and stories are fun anyway.
When you are talking about thousands of quests with no incentives to play at all other than story...when you look at the rest of the game giving tens digits time better return on time investment...it's not.
It's very much like saying you can eat candy for one dollar per hour or eat ice cream for ten dollars and hour. I'll be eating the ice cream. And every time I think about eating candy I am going to look at that one and turn around and go back to the ice cream.
This is not a single player game. The time you play ends up meaning something and if time is not adequately rewarded it's no longer fun to all but a very, very, very exponentially almost impossible to find select few people.
It doesn't have to be more rewarding but it does have to be comparably rewarding. No MMO content is ever fun enough to say "you get nothing for your time." In fact it's a dang flaw to ever think content should be rewarded less because it's more enjoyable. It's not a job and only becomes one when you can't opt to play enjoyable things to progress.
[ Support Center • Rules & Policies and Guidelines • ARC ToS • Guild Recruitment Guidelines | FR DM Since 1993 ]
Borderlands 1, 2, pre-sequel are action oriented rpgs and their story is great. Hellgate London also has/had a great storyline. Champions online has a great storyline, too. *Hint* the way is the goal *hint*
So no, your assumptions could not be more off, hehe.
when it comes to NWO, if you ask the vast majority of the player base of this game, all will tell you they do not bother with playing the foundry missions because it's not worth their time and effort, regardless of the story.
I'm sure there are many authors whom have great stories to tell, however, for the majority of the player base in NWO, they do not care for a story including the main one, they are more focused on how to progress their character with biggest baddest gear.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
My argument is that there are plenty of people, such as myself, who love playing stories but want an adaquate reward for their time and enjoyment. They don't want to play boring content with great rewards nor do they want to play extremely fun content with no rewards. They want a happy medium.
I normally play every quest in every MMO I play and often get the "why would you do that? It doesn't give anything [I find good.]" question. Because I find doing every quest once fun and it checks off a completionist list which is also fun to me (as well as the lore and story) even if the lore and story wasn't enjoyable.
But the Foundry isn't standard MMO quests and storylines. They're not a complete it once and check it off the bucket list event like in other games so completionists, such as myself, are not attracted to it for that reason and other reasons to play the content are quite limited.
Currently I only play UGC in NW if it is a personal friend (such as Zebular), a quest I get recommended to by a personal source or is an author I know has made top knotch quality content in the past such as apocrs1980. I have no incentive whatsoever to dredge through and experiment with new authors.
Whenever the Foundry is brought up in discussions I tend to find most people echo the same thoughts on this matter. It's not because they only care about rewards. It's because they want something for their time. At least in other games it goes towards a check list. It doesn't in the foundry...and what little of a check list it does go to doesn't give a rat's behind if it was made in five minutes by somebody looking to exploit the foundry with the worst quests ever invented (the quests which are actually played right now) or quality story quests with attention to both visual and mechanical details (not played at all right now).
It's not that rewards are the only thing that matters. It's that rewards do matter. It's very much akin to supply and demand to most people. If something is extremely fun but offers no incentives to play the content then the content won't be played. If the content is extremely boring but gives a lot of rewards then it won't be played.
As a long time Runescape Player (yeah, laugh it up) it had great examples of both ends of the spectrum.
They had a skill called runecrafting. By far the most profitable skill to ever level. Back when I maxed it the net gain was over 500-1,000M Gold Pieces (most players thought 1M was a lot). But it was boring and took a long time so nobody did it.
In the mean time they had this fun PvP system called Tournaments which was basically a series of 1v1's to see who the best fighter was. It was actually a lot of fun (even for non-PvPers like me) but was really never played because the rewards didn't match the enjoyment.
The rewards have to be adaquate for the task. Players play for fun but part of the fun is progressing to virtually every player. You will almost never find any player in any multi-player game that cares about only one end or the other.
Almost every player wants middle ground content. Very few will ever say they want boring content with high rewards or fun content with no rewards. Players want enjoyable content with decent rewards and perhaps the option to choose varying scales depending on their mood or goals of that day/week/time period.
Decent rewards aren't the only thing that matter. It's just that decent rewards do matter because even if a story loving person like myself decides for some crazy reason to play foundry content right now I still would be more likely to do the crappy farm quests I don't like, respect or enjoy because at least they give me something comparable to a really, really, really, really,(these can go on forever) bad official content quest.
I will never play anything "just for fun" in any MMO. I spent 5 hours running in circles playing the Stanley Parable this morning having fun. It's pure story. It has no goals really and is purely for the enjoyable experience.
I will never play that content in NW (Foundry or anything else equally unrewarding) because if I am in NW I want to do at least SOME progression. I will log off and play a game which has no progression if I purely want story...or I will play Shadows of Mordor or Batman Arkham ____ if I want a new RPG Story/Progression Binge...I will not choose to play Foundry content because that time in my eyes is 100% wasted.
1 the lack of RP possibility, there is no real possiblity to anime anything in the foundry.
That mean somehow, player that create a foundry should be allow to manage the foundry in live with some tool and some anim.
2 Foundry chest and foundry stats. foundry creator should be able to create and play with some equipment to reward player, to not unbalance things, player should have a foundry chest where foundry equipment can be stocked. It will allows easely way to make foundry creator a story line in a couple of foundry. foundry creator can manage foundry equipment entry (like a lvl equipment and equipment over this lvl canno't be used inside this foundry) exemple: lvl1 = green stuff, lvl 2 blue, lvl 3 t1 , lvl 4 t2 , lvl5 t3 + orange equip, also you can adds to equipment temporary foundry stats (with 1 to 4 more lvl that are add to previous classment).
So the point is as it exist specific pvp stats, you do same with foundry stats, and foundry creator would be able to play on those foundry stats without affecting normal stuff.