I know this is premature and I know Cryptic is ontop of it. But man. . I wish those who try to game the system would just stop.
My fear is that this people making the exploit maps may create an environment where they have to nerf XP in foundry quests so much that their will be no incentive for others to play our content. As it is trying to get plays can be a daunting task at best. If they are forced to bring xp down to where it is not "profitable" for a player to do foundry quests then I fear our creations will go untouched.
I would love a open and honest discussion to take place on the subject and topic. . I do have some ideas of how we as authors can try to help Cryptic stay on top of this.
One thing is as a community we need to help educate and encourage players to use the terms of usage reporting system. If we can get players to do this then we can help them weed out the bad apples.
What are some other ways that we as authors can help Cryptic not have to sink more money and resources into this system that has excited many of us?
Let's keep it clean and classy.
Comments
I think with the toolset does a decent job of limiting how much a creator can cram into a dungeon to avoid "easy XP overkill", but there's no easy way to control pushing the limits. I think that they need to put more emphasis on the player based evaluations and make Foundry creations achieve 3 stars before being listed on the job board. And if too many negative evaluations are received, the quest is removed and not able to be reuploaded and the creator has his/her hand smacked and publishing privileges are revoked for 30 days.
I'm sure that there are plenty of buffs and nerfs coming to Foundry...we just have to roll with the punches and adapt to the changes and remember that F2P games have an overabundance of selfish people that don't care if they ruin it for others.
Author: @BardicKnowledge
Q1: Prologue - The Lady and the Worm NW-DPQPJSVTH
Tags: #Challenge, #Story, #Solo, #Group
You do realize that easy XP quest get high ratings and lots of plays, right?
Look at the past to see examples of UGC going like this, and what you see is Devs stepping in to stop the farming and instead ruining the whole UGC concept. CoX had a horrible time with losing nearly all the flexibility for story telling in it's UGC because of the Devs saying "you will play this game our way" and in the end the players walked. That is what happens when Devs set standards of "you must play this way or else", players feel stifled and leave.
If we simply embrace this, let those who want hack and slash have it and give them their own tab then those who want story can make their content and not have it buried. You won't get any more plays though. I warn you of that right now. The reason a farm map gets 100 plays for every 1 play your story gets has nothing to do with where it shows up in the list and everything to do with the playstyle difference between "Role"players and "Roll"players.
Or just give a static amount of xp at a certain level at the end of the map.
on that note there is alot who think like me 5 go's/views is better than none
Author: @BardicKnowledge
Q1: Prologue - The Lady and the Worm NW-DPQPJSVTH
Tags: #Challenge, #Story, #Solo, #Group
They always seek the path of least resistance. Best XP for Invested Time. Best Rewards for Invested Time. If they can find a way to get it faster they will follow that path. If one exists with incredible returns it will be the only path taken by a substantial portion of the playerbase.
-Rachel-
I'm sure with a little thought, there can be a fair evaluation and placement process put into place with will reward those quests that have had some real work put into them. Leaving those "OMG EZ MODE" at the bottom of the job board, but still available.
Let's be realistic here, the "Exploit" being done is not an exploit. The game was designed in a way where the AI follows boundaries of the players, no flying up walls, no running through deadly traps etc. Hey Blizzard called its called EVADE, honestly no evade or tether and you say exploit? I say clever use of game mechanics, this isn't doing anything not intended, the unintentional thing is how maps were being made, no game has ever just featured useful content created by players, not halo, not Thawk, not nothing that inspired this online map creation in video games, this isnt DnD on ur table w/ some chunky sweaty guy in a robe, only Featured and reviewed quests should do anything.
LOL, I like the this metaphor
NW-DGYDZ7EAL - Khelgar's Treasure Cave
NW-DTULANXJC - Khelgar's Hideout
Thread with suggestions for Foundry
Side note to this more people @ endgame testing stuff = more possible player base and more community. Get over it we been grinding like this on every MMO since RS.
No need to fear that it might happen, this is exactly what will happen. It happened in CoH, and now history is just repeating itself. Unfortunately player-designed content systems are a magnet for unscrupulous players.
It will shake out like this: roleplayers will get continual use out of the system since they will mostly use it for their own storytelling (they won't be playing your missions, they'll be playing their own missions), people who are writing missions to entertain others will be largely ignored (except for the small community of authors playing each others missions), average players won't use the system at all because there will be little incentive to do so, and exploiters will massively eclipse everyone else when exploits are discovered.
I wish I had some good news, but there really isn't any.
I think just the opposite! The Foundry is a place to let your imagination flow into a story, it's not about XP or loot. People who are too lazy to go out and grind real world zones made it that way. I think if these easy XP mode maps disappear, the creators of quality content will come out to play even more. I hope they nerf the Foundry XP to the point that it's not productive to farm Foundry quests.
What they do have a problem with is exploiting.
Can't really get into the details of exactly how people are exploiting the AI (even though it's pretty common knowledge at this point) but the fact is that the the AI is extremely vulnerable to exploit. Not even all the exploits have been really widely used at this stage and there's many, many ways to exploit the very poorly designed AI.
This is the result of what happens when you don't have an open beta for a game. By that I mean a publicly accessed on going beta that will eventually be wiped of all it's content and not this launch that they labeled an open beta.
Yea if they did nerf it I see no point in bothering with the Foundry at all. I only do Foundries for XP and loot. I love the Draconis Pub foundry and have run it countless times and even have somewhat paid attention to what's going on inside of it story wise out of boredom from running it before all the super grind maps came out.
I know control wizards can kite around 30 Ogres but it's a fairly intensive process and isn't really that time efficient.
I for one want to be able to reach max level without touching developer content. NOT with farming/grinding mods, but just doing quests in Foundry. If that gets killed, then the game is pretty useless in my eyes.
I understand your viewpoint, just realize that this will kill at least 60% of the people who are doing Foundry content right now. There's a slipper slope here. You can't just pass judgement on this, because it also kills Foundry for those of us who want to experience it, but also don't want to get no reward/not able to level from this content.
Otherwise, the only quests getting major play will be the five-minute daily quests, just to fill the daily allotment. As another poster said, players tend to go the path of least resistance to gain rewards. Honestly, that's probably about 80% of the player base. If you make Foundry content too difficult to level up in, then you've lost 80% of potential reviewers.
Besides if all these (grinding monster experience) players don't have foundry quests to grind. Do you think you will be able to complete any quests requiring killing mobs in any cryptic created content map? Nope, zone will be filled with people grinding mobs.
Lets frustrate everybody instead.
Correct the bugs/exploits. Give us the experience back. Long live the foundry.
You know what, I'm okay with that. I don't want them playing my quests anyway, because they'll just downvote 'em to 1 star because there's too much talkin' and not enough killin', so if they have their own little speed leveling corner of the foundry where they can sit over there and not bother anyone else, I'm all for that.
This isn't players. This is people, in general. It's a sad reflection of our society.
The only way they could legitimately do it would be to keep a record of each exploit map as they delete them. Hopefully have a system in place where they can check who ran said maps. Analyze the amount of XP the player earned running that map across various runs. Analyze how much XP they've earned since then and then add them together and calculate their real level...
...when all said and done it's easier to let them just get a pass this time or ban them.
Do you know why I say this? Because I've done it already. Take the "I am Slayer" mod as an example. Great mod. Awesome twist ending. But after I've played through it on one character, I just clicked though the conversation options and killed the Drow on my glowy path with my other characters. And I am an exception because I actually DID read it the first time. Multiple play throughs is exactly like playing through the main Neverwinter campaign multiple times: Once you've read it, you know the story. Why bother reading it again? Now I'm just going to kill whatever is on my glowy path no matter how good the story was the first time I read it.
Look, I know how it feels to put a lot of time and effort into something that you've crafted. I write and craft a story for another community. We all tell ourselves that we're just doing this for ourselves. Baloney. Deep down you know you want to be appreciated by other people. At least with this game, if someone likes your stuff, they will tip you with AD.
My point is that you should be thankful for the play throughs you DO get and stop worrying about what other people are doing. Sometimes they just want to kill stuff without thinking about it. And maybe, just maybe, half the players for your mods actually do read whatever you wrote. Maybe.
Here: When you play a foundry quest, add a comment keyword. Report it. I think if we put Loot Farm or EXP farm in the notes of the quest, then it would be a little easier for the company to check the content and review it. That is what I do.
Ok so I leveled my CW from 40 to 53 last night. I just want to get him to 60 already, but here is the difference I already leveled my GWF to 60 via the questlines. I don't want to have to level my characters via quests in zones each and everytime I make an alt. I will if I have to but I will simply blow through the missions and not even bother with dungeons or skirmishes.
I am ok with myself and other players doing that why? Because that is what I did in Star Trek when the game came out. I built one character. Had fun lvling him with friends. My alt was burning through space encounters and hit 50 in 2 days. Didn't kill the game for me. Just let me have a high lvl character to do stuff with later on when I want. I also work full time and have a fairly busy schedule so when I get the chance to focus my efforts and maximize my levels I am all for it.
I do think players need to do some questing on each class so they can learn the fundamentals of how to operate the class they play. However NW is a different game at 60 and most classes are completely different at that level than while leveling up so you have to in a way learn your class over again especially for elite dungeons. What I did on my GWF from 1-59 helped me learn my attack style. I simply had to remold my build to get to a better and more effective system to handle dungeons with my friends.
Now all my alts are simply to play elite dungeons with my friends and guildmates and do the odd bit of pvp from time to time.