Suggestion: Only the first playthrough should count against average duration

tilt42 · May 2013

There is a problem with the current calculation of average duration in that it unfairly penalizes those of us who make story-heavy quests. Take A Hidden Blade, for example. The first time someone plays through that quest, they'll take between 20 and 40 minutes to complete it, most likely leaning towards the latter. When I first published the quest, it had an average duration of close to 30 minutes. Within days however, that number quickly started to drop. The current duration is 14 minutes, which is not enough for the daily Foundry quest.

The reason this is happening is because people have started farming it. Players are replaying it, blazing through the quest at roughly 8 minutes, doing this over and over and over until the average duration no longer reflects reality. And for what? A player who needs to look at the average duration when he's deciding what quest to play doesn't care about the time it takes to replay the quest. He's trying to estimate his own expected time. Likewise, a player who has already played the quest doesn't care about average duration (beyond it qualifying for the daily) as he already knows how long it'll take.

Quests with lots and lots of combat aren't punished all that hard (but still are) for this. It's the quests with lots of dialogue that are unfairly treated by this system. A piece of dialogue that should take a player minutes to complete can be finished in seconds by a player who's only replaying the quest. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see the consequences to this. Authors like myself are actively encouraged by this system to needlessly pad our quests with enemies and systems that delay our players, and that's not a good thing.

My proposed solution is simple: If a player replays a quest he has already played before, his play time should not be used to calculate the quest's average duration. Only the first play should count for this.

Pros:
- Authors will be encouraged to create more story content instead of padding their quests with monsters.
- The average duration will better reflect the actual time a player will need to finish the quest the first time he plays it.
- Average duration won't see a steady decline over time.

Cons:
- Some very story-heavy quests could become very simple to farm. A quest with an average duration of 30 minutes but only a handful of battles might be finished in 5 minutes by a seasoned player. I consider this an acceptable sacrifice in order to make story content more attractive to make.

zogvarnoka · May 2013

As a compromise, what Cryptic could do is give a "first time average" play through length and a "repeat" average time. This would give players a better idea of what they are looking at time wise. Then base the daily qualification off the "repeat" time.

tilt42 · May 2013

That's not at all what I'm asking for, and it wouldn't solve the problem that I described. It's the repeat time being used to determine whether or not a quest qualifies for the daily that is the crux of the issue. Only the first playthrough should count towards this.

nokturnel · May 2013

tilt42 wrote: »

That's not at all what I'm asking for, and it wouldn't solve the problem that I described. It's the repeat time being used to determine whether or not a quest qualifies for the daily that is the crux of the issue. Only the first playthrough should count towards this.

We should also be able to make sure groups can't join Foundry quests intended for 1 or 2 people (aka give authors the ability to set how many players can join their Foundry quest) I'm sure there's a couple groups of farmers out there working non-stop to farm as much AD as possible to trade for real money, running Foundry quests intended to be solo'd as quick as possible to get their daily AD.

lunchtimenow · May 2013

How do you propose solving the problem of a daily foundry quest can be no shorter than 15 minutes?

IMO, if Cryptic wanted 8 minute dailies, they would allow it. So, how can we keep 8 minute daily quests while abiding by Cryptic's rule of a daily foundry quests no shorter than 15 minutes?

tilt42 · May 2013

That's not a real problem. A quest needs to be more than 15 minutes long to qualify as a daily, and that's okay. What's not okay is having story-heavy quests plowed through by farmers, bringing the average WAY down and removing the qualifier (which is important in order to attract players in the first place).

chili1179 · May 2013

Don't like this idea, specifically because of random AFK, groups who have people DC and they sit and wait and those who like to explore every nook and cranny could increase your quests play time to exaggerated lengths and then you are stuck with a 20 minute quest having a 40 minute play time because of it.

It's hard enough for people to get plays that aren't sitting on the featured list for weeks at a time and an inflated play time isn't going to help them get their quest selected by the daily quest crowd.

I would much rather see quests only be eligible for the daily once per month to allow other quests to get into a rotation.

The system is fine as is I think. If you want your quest to take longer than 15 minutes to complete and be a daily worthy quest then target that length with the "1" spammers or people who replay in mind.

zogvarnoka · May 2013

tilt42 wrote: »

That's not at all what I'm asking for, and it wouldn't solve the problem that I described. It's the repeat time being used to determine whether or not a quest qualifies for the daily that is the crux of the issue. Only the first playthrough should count towards this.

I disagree with you there. If repeating your quest takes 8 minutes then it shouldn't qualify for the daily. So your problem with the average time isn't what you stated:

A player who needs to look at the average duration when he's deciding what quest to play doesn't care about the time it takes to replay the quest. He's trying to estimate his own expected time. Likewise, a player who has already played the quest doesn't care about average duration (beyond it qualifying for the daily) as he already knows how long it'll take.

Your problem with the average time is that your quest no longer qualifies for the daily and not that the average time is misleading to players. My response previously would fix the problem of a player trying to figure out how long a quest will take him to finish. Which is what I thought the issue was you were bringing up.

If you want your quest to keep qualifying for the daily and get more plays because it does then make the encounters in it required and not able to be skipped. I loved your quest. I loved the Lanaar Legacy following it up. I think you did an outstanding job on both. But the minimum time required for the daily is there for a reason. Its to make players spend a certain amount of time playing the game as wanted by the developers. Sorry but I agree with them on this point and stand by my proposed solution.

levitateme · May 2013

The whole review system is utterly broken.

I'd really like a way to wipe the slate clean. If you publish it in order to have play testers, those comments are basically there forever, the times are there forever, etc. It throws off the averages until you get enough plays.... which can be hard because if the initial info wasn't good yet you fixed it, you're basically screwed.

lunchtimenow · May 2013

If dailies are required to be 15 minutes long, then foundry quests farmed below 15 minutes will be ineligible regardless of the type of quest. Short from asking people to stop farming so quickly or putting in counter measures to prevent the map being completed in under 15 minutes, I don't know what solution would work. Saying your quest is 30 minutes the first time through is not the same as the 8 minutes its actually taking people to farm, which sucks when the non-farmed play through of your quest is bloody excellent!

kamaliicious · May 2013

Quest descriptions tells everyone to afk for 15 minutes first time, quest is a one object click. Bingo. Done. Most popular quest ever. 5 minutes tops to make in the editor.

Literally about the only way you could guarantee a 15 minute playtime would be to make a linear path of interior rooms (so no mounts), forcing the player to run for 15 minutes.

lunchtimenow · May 2013

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?158751-Foundry-Trick-Trigger-Timer

Posted this in the parallel thread. Can make a timer that prevents the map from completing. However, this would definitely be considered padding/stalling the player. But at this point, they're already playing the quest in an unintended manner.

coanunn · May 2013

Here is a couple thoughts on the matter..

1) Why are the "Daily" based on average time when a TR goes SO much faster than a Cleric even if there is only one combat in the whole of the quest?
2) Why does a quest either qualify for not qualify based on how fast someone else can get through it at all? Shouldn't the qualification be based on how long it takes YOU to go through it at the time?
3) Why are Author's test runs part of the calculated time at all? I watched the completion time on my quest get cut in half because I had to combat test it. I've now recruited friends and people in game to test for me whenever necessary because of that alone.

So to expand, while I agree with Tilt that right now story/dialog heavy quests are punished by the farmers I do not think it's because of the daily or the average time of completion as much as the fact Cryptic went too far with the XP nerfs and gave farmers no where else to go. The Foundry authors turned on the farmers and said "We want stories not grind houses, go somewhere else" and it is finally starting to bite them on the hand. The farmers are going to play what ever is a) easiest to get though, b) most rewarding, c) easy to find in the search engine. Guess what quest is going to be at the top of that list so long as it's eligible for the Daily? Hidden Blade.

Tilt quite literally wrote the book on encounters and encounter stacking. Hidden blade has spaced out, gated encounters behind multiple story plot points. Unless you know it. Then it has a few "mash button 1" dialog prompts, decent combat that isn't stacked overly much, and it qualified for the daily, showed up on the front tab, had among the most plays and because of a high average had a decent reward in the chest at the end. That is money in the bank for every farmer out there. Why? because there are no more "kill 20 ogres in the sewer" missions for them to go do instead.

Kamalicious, myself and others were very vocal that the XP nerf would not change the players. They are going to play the story missions as if they were farm missions and the authors are punished for it. The same authors who were up in arms demanding all the farm missions be removed. Kind of ironic really. But I digress. The solution is quite simple:
A) Give us a working search with TAGS so we can set a quest as lore, dialog, story, FARM, Grind, Combat..

Make the daily based on the time it takes to complete the quest in question, with a minimum amount of hostile encounters to be cleared. This stops the "padded" dailies from being created as well as eliminates the issue of a quest no longer being eligible for the daily simply because someone else runs it faster.
C) Allow an author to run their own quest without impacting the average run time to preserve the reward in the chest at the end. All this currently does is promote a lack of testing.
D) Most important of all - Stop thinking of everything in an us vs them and how to fix it. The crux of the solution I'm offering is it caters to everyone without punishing anyone.

skuldarn · May 2013

Unintended behavior seems to be the weeds that crop up in every MMO that devs (and in this case player-devs) want to root out because they spoil the garden. I would propose that unintended behavior is always a product of two factors: human nature and the reward structure of the game. Of those two, I only see the latter being malleable. Complaining that people rush through your creations and should slow down and enjoy them will never bear much fruit. Granted, asking for significant changes in the reward structure might not be all that effective either, but at least you're not fighting the result of a million years.

zahinder · May 2013

I think a more complex/accurate solution would be a 'first play' average and a regular average.

If this is the first time you are playing a mission, qualification is based on first play.
On all subsequent plays, you use the regular average.

Unfortunately, this may be more code than Cryptic is willing to do.

zahinder · May 2013

Another idea might be to only let a mission qualify for a given player... once. Replays do normal stuff, but if you want daily foundry rewards, you have to look for something new.

People would only replay missions for their basic enjoyment and base encounter rewards... but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

coanunn · May 2013

I think another component is life-cycle. In my training years ago as a programmer one of the classes taught us about software life-cycle design. You have to plan for life-cycle. In this case we have an awful lot of authors who have no experience with this concept, especially in an MMO setting where life-cycle is a double edged sword. The question becomes do you expect your content to withstand multiple plays by the same player? Or like the main game content will subsequent runs be a button mash dps race to finish and get the reward to move on?

1) How many plays by a single player should any piece of UGC be expected to provide?
2) Wouldn't allowing the "meat grinder" maps where there is nothing but constant combat alleviate this issue entirely?
3) What incentive beyond XP is given for a player to repeat UGC? Specifically in a Dialog/Story heavy module is there anyway to minimize repeat rewards thus funneling the repeat plays into UGC designed for that type of play? (I.E. The meat grinder maps)
4) Does it truly matter or would it be better for a quest like Hidden Blade to see an end of life due to repeat plays that allows other UGC to take the forefront and receive the attention? Does artificially preserving Daily Eligibility in this quest cause other content to not be played?

zahinder wrote: »

Another idea might be to only let a mission qualify for a given player... once. Replays do normal stuff, but if you want daily foundry rewards, you have to look for something new.

People would only replay missions for their basic enjoyment and base encounter rewards... but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Can you guarantee that there will be enough UGC that is eligible for the Daily to feed the need? It may seem silly but I know how long I worked on mine to publish it and have it be long enough. I'm sure there is plenty of content being produced but how much of it qualifies for the daily currently? Is there enough that I won't be out of new quests any time in the lifecycle of the game itself?

d3war · May 2013

The folks that the 15 minute minimum rule is fighting against are the farmers that start up multiple accounts (10, 20, maybe 100?) and run all the dailies on each one. It doesn't matter how long it takes to complete a mission if you read everything, because those folks never read anything. If your quest can be completed in 4 minutes by skipping all the dialog, then these farmers can gain 4 times as much AD by repeating it endlessly, unless there's a restriction on minimum play time.

In short, it sucks, but you have to measure by the lowest common denominator or else the whole thing is pointless. Otherwise farmers would just idle overnight for their first play, then start slamming out 4 minute plays forever after.

zahinder wrote: »

Another idea might be to only let a mission qualify for a given player... once. Replays do normal stuff, but if you want daily foundry rewards, you have to look for something new. People would only replay missions for their basic enjoyment and base encounter rewards... but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

coanunn wrote: »

Can you guarantee that there will be enough UGC that is eligible for the Daily to feed the need? It may seem silly but I know how long I worked on mine to publish it and have it be long enough. I'm sure there is plenty of content being produced but how much of it qualifies for the daily currently? Is there enough that I won't be out of new quests any time in the lifecycle of the game itself?

This is a much more interesting idea than changing the way average play time is calculated. Would it be such a bad thing if you ran out of content? Maybe it would spur you to make some yourself?

zahinder · May 2013

If the robo farmers are the primary problem, then an easy solution is make sure 'press 1 a billion times' will not advance the story.

It doesn't have to be cryptic, but this would restrict the problem to folks actually remembering 'ok, I have to run here, press 1 5 1 3 1, then run here...'

Then again, I think A Hidden Blade is like this and still suffers, so maybe it's not enough.

d3war · May 2013

I don't think it's robo farmers, just users who are switching accounts every 5 minutes and doing the quests by hand. I imagine it would be hard to program a macro to follow along with UGC, since it's non-standard and level-matched, but maybe not.

coanunn · May 2013

d3war wrote: »

I don't think it's robo farmers, just users who are switching accounts every 5 minutes and doing the quests by hand. I imagine it would be hard to program a macro to follow along with UGC, since it's non-standard and level-matched, but maybe not.

There is a website dedicated EXCLUSIVELY to writing a script that follows a UGC Dungeon. There is a series of UGC authors creating content just for the users of that website. The users of that site also run and map already existing UGC such as "A Hidden Blade" and are able to set up everything to robo farm it. There was a link to this website posted in General Discussion less than an hour ago on this very topic.

This is again where changing how the daily works is the only real way to discourage this from happening. If all UGC is daily eligible it must have X number of encounters, be X in length and the individual completing it must take a minimum of X minutes to complete it or they fail to receive the reward means that no matter what content they farm they can never make that content ineligible for the daily as it is based on their performance not the quest. This means the content is never punished for the practices of the robo farmers or anyone else.

Look, concentrating on how to stop robo farmers via UGC is pointless, Cryptic/PWE will need to set up 3rd party software countermeasures like any other "big boy MMO". Finding a solution that allows the daily not to punish the author and authors not to be able to exploit the daily is more important for us as a community. Leave the stopping of exploiters to the Devs.

EDIT: Yes, I intentionally left out any information about the exploit site to follow the TOS of the forums and I have submitted a /bug report in game regarding the site in question.

zocat1 · May 2013

coanunn wrote: »

2) Why does a quest either qualify for not qualify based on how fast someone else can get through it at all? Shouldn't the qualification be based on how long it takes YOU to go through it at the time?

I agree with this solution. When you start (enter) a foundry a timer starts. When you leave/complete the foundry the timer stops. >15 min? There you go, reward!
If not, you're allowed to play another foundry and the amount of time is added to it.

Of course there's the problem of just doing a 1click foundry mission and people being afk for 15min. But we already have an AFK detection, so if a player is afk for more than 1min then stop the foundry-reward timer. Of course there are again ways to circumvent this, but there always are.
I personally would say: If people want to afk for 15min, just let them.

On tilt42's original suggestion:
I dont think it is possible with the current system. Afaik there's nothing which keeps track of which foundry mission you've done (and I dont think the foundry missions keep track of who has run them).
Not that it wouldnt be a great addition (coupled with a filter "show only unknown UGC" *cough*).

zahinder · May 2013

I like the timer idea.

Because, really? I honestly don't care if people deliberately make a one-click adventure and sit there like a dumb-a* for 15 mins. Fine. Waste your time the way you like and get out of the way -- at least the reward/time metric isn't messed up.

The big problem is that that can lead to good content being drowned under stupid 1-click stuff... but that's the case anyway, so.

Suggestion: Only the first playthrough should count against average duration

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