I will add your quest to my list of things to do before I die, and all I ask in return is that you add my quest to your bucket list as well. No rush, we're still young.
Wow! One of the best Foundry quests I've played yet, may even be my new favourite. Thoroughly entertaining! Great writing, amazing sets, clever story. Really enjoyed it. Loved the addition of the secret rooms, think I only found 4 or 5 of them but I'll probably run through it again down the road when I have more time.
As mentioned, the writing really shines here. Only thing that really comes to mind as a suggestion is that I wouldn't have minded one last conversation with Bonderleaf at the end. Hopefully the # of plays keeps shooting up for ya. Great work!
tyrinumMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 4Arc User
edited June 2013
Will look into yours tomorrow morning when I can
Mine is as follows: NW-DTWAGIPZH
Relatively simple, smash some goblins, crush some kobolds, meet some interesting NPCs. It's basically a light story with a fair bit of whacking tiny, ugly mobs around
Enjoy! Would appreciate any and all feedback I can get! Looking to expand once I get some feedback from the first quest.
0
mrthebozerMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Ok, I would like to hear why I got the rating you gave me. Hopefully, you'll have the time to tell me soon. :-)
Hey Meysa,
This week has been pretty out of control - I've been able to play a few of the quests on my queue, but not much time left over to compose reviews. I'm getting there.
That said, your curiosity made me wonder, and I went back and looked. This was actually a mistake - you have 1 less star than I intended to give. I do remember that I almost didn't get to leave a review at all - the prompt came up about 2 minutes after I left the quest - thankfully it looks like Cryptic has plans to fix review issues, but that confusion may be why I didn't double check my rating.
On to the review itself - as I said online, this is (mostly) one of the better hack and slashes I've played. The vast majority of your combat is engaging and challenging, but at certain points it gets tedious. What dialogue you do have relies heavily on 4th wall breaking humor - it is a tad overdone, but generally fine.
You start off real strong with your first map and its objectives. It is a real shame that ballistas cannot be aimed and fired by enemy NPCs, that would have been a great touch. I wonder if there is any way to rig an arrow trap in the path of the ballista? Just a thought, I'm not even sure it would work.
Once inside Monte Hall (a joke that somehow flew over my head until I just typed it here ), things start to get a little crazy. Your choice of words in the objectives reflected my thoughts a little too well during the chain-spawning encounters, and at times it seemed like you were almost trolling the player. You paint yourself as a sadistic DM, and some of those moments definitely reflect that - but I think that at points some additional time is needed balancing combat - not to make it easier (with one exception), just to make it less tedious. Here are my suggestions - take them or ignore them as you will:
1. Add some variety to your chain-spawning encounters. Right now it seems like they are mostly just the same encounter spawning again and again from different corners of the room. Spend some time and AI nodes on these rooms - change up layouts, rosters, and behaviors from one mob to the next. Maybe one is all ranged, spread around the perimeter, then a melee mob that bum rushes the player, have a big solo encounter spawn in the middle... you decide. But as it stands right now, the hardest part of this element of your dungeon is left-mouse finger cramps.
2. The non-disarmable traps. The ghost explaining them was pretty funny, but I found myself wondering why this was included. I played a wizard, so it ultimately had no effect on me - but I imagine if I was playing a rogue, I'd be miffed to find the one gameplay mechanic that makes me unique stripped away. I say let them disarm them, but that's just my opinion.
3. Gnoll Commander room. Aye yiy yiy. I won't list the full roster of what was waiting right around the corner for me, but that was just... I don't even know if cruel is the right word The first time I died, it was because I was instantly knocked to the ground and reduced to a pulp before the standing animation could complete. The second time I tried, I only survived by kiting the group back through the map until the hallway of traps messed with their navigation. I was only a level 30 - I'd hate to think of what this is like at 60. Please consider toning this one down just a tad - honestly, the ambush is surprise enough to make it interesting.
That's what I've got. Hopefully things will quiet down for me this weekend, and once I've run through my backlog, I'll take a second crack at it and give it the extra star I felt it deserved. Maybe two extra stars, depending on whatever revisions and improvements you plan on incorporating.
0
mrthebozerMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
Hey oort, your review is coming next, and I'll post it by editing here. But in the meantime - what did you do with Bonderleaf's page? There is one last little line of dialogue available from him depending on what your choice was there. It's not much, and maybe before I submit this for review I'll add some skippable flavor text, but at that stage of development I couldn't think of anything more for him to say, and I really wanted to be done
Edit: "All's Fair In Love And War." There really are too few stories like this in MMOs in general. 99.9% of all content, be it fan made or official, centers around some cataclysm, some doomsday scenario. There are obvious reasons for this, and I fault no one for going that route. But charming, personal moments like this humanize the stakes. Fortune and glory aside, eventually Neverwinter is just bricks and timber that aren't worth all this absurd trouble. Stepping out of the chaos to help a dear old friend with man troubles is the perfect side quest to address this issue. I am happy to see Foundry authors remembering this.
You did a fine job of spreading out the pros and cons of each suitor. The clones were a funny touch, and I liked that you included a clone saleswizard in the bar to tie into it. There were quite a few hilarious character concepts floating around that bar, for that matter. I was left wishing I could learn more about them, though. Consider revisiting them with dialogue options. Either flavor text or, if you are feeling ambitious, questions about their opinion in the matter.
The quest objectives did their job well, but I wish they could be less linear. This should be possible, but pretty tricky, and would require a major overhaul. But letting me choose who to talk to first, or to only obtain one wedding present, would be awesome. Difficult to implement, though.
The final fight is a tad disturbing, and I am not sure it is intentional. Because you spawn the encounter nearby on a dialogue prompt, we end up witnessing a violent domestic disturbance that seems very uncharacteristic of the attacker. Consider reworking the ending to focus the attack on the player or other man. And one final note on this - Ms. Future city watch might have something to contribute to that encounter if you set her up accordingly.
The only other note I have is that I found it very endearing that you worked the title into the dialogue. I admittedly did a poor job of proofreading (or you did a great job before I played it) - I am not great at this to begin with, and there has been a sharp decline in play time this week, so I've been focusing on larger story and quest notes.
I am working on new quest and it's supposed to be a LONG one, with puzzles and exploration.
I have a puzzle that would work very well with the idea of rotating 'capturepoint' object, like your thermostat. Can I use the same idea/object if I give credit to your quest in description? I would never come up with the idea of rotating capturepoint on my own and I think it's a very distinctive part of your quest.
mrthebozerMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
Aw shucks, eskarine! I'm happy to hear my work has helped you with your ideas - and of course you can use it. Ultimately, I don't think any of us own a darn thing we come up with in the Foundry. That said, thank you very much for the courtesy of asking first. Giving credit is optional - if you have the room to spare in your character limit, I'd love the additional publicity and bragging rights, but don't let it get in the way of your own designs. Can't wait to see how you incorporate it!
I think I will make the characters limit so I can include you
I know that in theory, nothing in foundry is truly ours, but the thermostat thing got stuck in my head and now I don't see a different way to make my puzzle. I don't want to look like I stole that idea without asking first.
Bozer, your quest is flat-out stunning. Loved the way you use level design to evoke a feeling of unreality. The whole time I was playing it I felt a bit "off", and I mean that as the highest compliment. How much time did you spend putting it together?
I expect your opinions are in high demand by the community here, but if you can find 15-20 minutes, I'd appreciate your input on: "Final Examination" (NW-DRMB39T5T). Thanks.
The Green Zone (NW-DP66H66F6): Train at a top-secret Goblin military installation. Hive Mind (NW-DN9YKEVUS): Get inside a crashed alien ship to discover its purpose. Absolute Zero (NW-DOVUXHT8P): Activate a massive teleportation machine to pursue an evil mastermind.
This week has been pretty out of control - I've been able to play a few of the quests on my queue, but not much time left over to compose reviews. I'm getting there.
That said, your curiosity made me wonder, and I went back and looked. This was actually a mistake - you have 1 less star than I intended to give. I do remember that I almost didn't get to leave a review at all - the prompt came up about 2 minutes after I left the quest - thankfully it looks like Cryptic has plans to fix review issues, but that confusion may be why I didn't double check my rating.
On to the review itself - as I said online, this is (mostly) one of the better hack and slashes I've played. The vast majority of your combat is engaging and challenging, but at certain points it gets tedious. What dialogue you do have relies heavily on 4th wall breaking humor - it is a tad overdone, but generally fine.
You start off real strong with your first map and its objectives. It is a real shame that ballistas cannot be aimed and fired by enemy NPCs, that would have been a great touch. I wonder if there is any way to rig an arrow trap in the path of the ballista? Just a thought, I'm not even sure it would work.
Once inside Monte Hall (a joke that somehow flew over my head until I just typed it here ), things start to get a little crazy. Your choice of words in the objectives reflected my thoughts a little too well during the chain-spawning encounters, and at times it seemed like you were almost trolling the player. You paint yourself as a sadistic DM, and some of those moments definitely reflect that - but I think that at points some additional time is needed balancing combat - not to make it easier (with one exception), just to make it less tedious. Here are my suggestions - take them or ignore them as you will:
1. Add some variety to your chain-spawning encounters. Right now it seems like they are mostly just the same encounter spawning again and again from different corners of the room. Spend some time and AI nodes on these rooms - change up layouts, rosters, and behaviors from one mob to the next. Maybe one is all ranged, spread around the perimeter, then a melee mob that bum rushes the player, have a big solo encounter spawn in the middle... you decide. But as it stands right now, the hardest part of this element of your dungeon is left-mouse finger cramps.
2. The non-disarmable traps. The ghost explaining them was pretty funny, but I found myself wondering why this was included. I played a wizard, so it ultimately had no effect on me - but I imagine if I was playing a rogue, I'd be miffed to find the one gameplay mechanic that makes me unique stripped away. I say let them disarm them, but that's just my opinion.
3. Gnoll Commander room. Aye yiy yiy. I won't list the full roster of what was waiting right around the corner for me, but that was just... I don't even know if cruel is the right word The first time I died, it was because I was instantly knocked to the ground and reduced to a pulp before the standing animation could complete. The second time I tried, I only survived by kiting the group back through the map until the hallway of traps messed with their navigation. I was only a level 30 - I'd hate to think of what this is like at 60. Please consider toning this one down just a tad - honestly, the ambush is surprise enough to make it interesting.
That's what I've got. Hopefully things will quiet down for me this weekend, and once I've run through my backlog, I'll take a second crack at it and give it the extra star I felt it deserved. Maybe two extra stars, depending on whatever revisions and improvements you plan on incorporating.
I'll work on tuning the encounters, in the main halls. The problem is there isn't a lot of variety with types of gnolls, though I suppose I could use another type of monster and just re-skin it. The end room doesn't have to be that hard. I'll give you a hint, that you can kill/pull them in a certain order to make the final encounter much less challenging. This weekend is when I was planning on putting some work into costuming and decorating the place, so I'll put in some work on rebalancing some fights as well.
As for the traps, I'll probably leave them the way they are, but the reason I put in the ghost to explain them, is because of a comment I saw somewhere about doing this with traps and rogues crying about it, so I figured I'd let them know it was intentional. BEsides, I'm tired of getting one shotted, or stunlocked, in PvP so this is my revenge! BWUAHAHAHAHAHAHA *snork* HAHAHA
Hey oort, your review is coming next, and I'll post it by editing here. But in the meantime - what did you do with Bonderleaf's page? There is one last little line of dialogue available from him depending on what your choice was there. It's not much, and maybe before I submit this for review I'll add some skippable flavor text, but at that stage of development I couldn't think of anything more for him to say, and I really wanted to be done
:: Detailed review will be here this evening. ::
Thank you kindly. Look forward to reading it.
I believe I did not tear out his page, but I could be wrong. I think having him re-appear at the end would sort of bring the whole thing full circle, and it could be a great send-off as he's such a great character to begin with. But of course you don't want to put in a dialogue scene just for the sake of having a dialogue, even if you have nothing to say there.
Love the title as well. Just a great quest all-round.
Hey man, I've changed my mind. I'd love a review by you Mrthebozer.
NW-DT4OV7EXH
Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.
0
mrthebozerMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
I've acquired something of a backlog in quests to review this weekend. I will definitely get to each one, more or less in the order of posting, so stay tuned. I level my wizard exclusively through foundry content ( I shamelessly stole this brilliant idea from a brilliant reviewer whose name escapes me tonight in a less than brilliant lapse of memory), so if you posted, I will definitely play. Stay tuned.
You did a fine job of spreading out the pros and cons of each suitor. The clones were a funny touch, and I liked that you included a clone saleswizard in the bar to tie into it. There were quite a few hilarious character concepts floating around that bar, for that matter. I was left wishing I could learn more about them, though. Consider revisiting them with dialogue options. Either flavor text or, if you are feeling ambitious, questions about their opinion in the matter.
Thanks for the review. This is definitely an interesting suggestion. I may consider adding a small dialogue option or two in the pub, and it might be fun to have an NPC talk about the 2 suitors.
The quest objectives did their job well, but I wish they could be less linear. This should be possible, but pretty tricky, and would require a major overhaul. But letting me choose who to talk to first, or to only obtain one wedding present, would be awesome. Difficult to implement, though.
Yeah, initially my plan was to provide the option to speak to the 2 characters in either order (same with the missions), but it seemed difficult to figure out how to do it at the time (especially being new to the Foundry) and so I took the easier route. I think it is probably do-able in some form or other, but I'm not sure it would provide enough value to be worth the time investment. Especially since I'm hoping to work on quest # 2 and not finding a whole lot of time to do that so far.
The final fight is a tad disturbing, and I am not sure it is intentional. Because you spawn the encounter nearby on a dialogue prompt, we end up witnessing a violent domestic disturbance that seems very uncharacteristic of the attacker. Consider reworking the ending to focus the attack on the player or other man. And one final note on this - Ms. Future city watch might have something to contribute to that encounter if you set her up accordingly.
Never thought of that but it's a great point. May be very difficult to find a way to do it, I'll give it some thought. If it's going to be either very hard or time consuming, your last sentence would provide a way to at least do something about it. I will definitely look into that for sure.
mrthebozerMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
Alright, orangefiree, I made it through the first 3 chapters of your campaign, and I was a harsh critic, but I hope you find my input useful. The things I liked, I liked enough to revisit this later if you intend to go back and touch things up. So first, the things I liked:
-Brizax is a hoot! I love his obsession with rewards and his fast talking.
-The final fight in chapter 3 was great - having the Shadowfell sorceress floating above the fight was a great touch that I would have missed had it not been noted in the objective - good thinking!
-The village fight was one of the better uses I've seen of multiple triggered spawns
- Shadowfell in chapter 3 was some nice design work
Now, on to the reasons for my lower star rating (proofreading corrections in [B]bold[/B]):
CRYPT OF SHADOWS
- Brizax's first conversation: typo - I thought someone
- the skeleton debris in the hall is all in a straight line. Is this intentional? If not, consider repositioning and rotating these to add some variety
- rename the cubes. Right now they're using the default name
- the maze isn't so much a maze as it is a series of incredibly long straight hallways with a monotonous design pattern. The majority of my time in this quest was spent holding the w key and waiting to reach the next turn. Consider a smaller map, but with more twists and turns and dead ends.
- the choice of container for the gems when you find them are really small and easy to miss. In fact, I blew past the first one because the giant monster I defeated landed right on top of it, rendering it invisible. I had to backtrack through the whole maze to find it, which made its size especially obvious.
- the treasure chest in the end was floating in the air. Not sure if this was intentional or not.
SHADOWED MOTIVES
- the first villager I speak to had two versions in the same place at the same time. This lead to a weird clipping issue where he was popping in and out of his own face (only way I can describe it). If you need that second one there later, modify the "appears when" dropdown.
- Villager typo: you defeated their
- The house the villager sends us to investigate is totally empty! Consider at least populating it using the default.
- The portal opens before it is supposed to (I think). The girl mentions opening a portal, but it is already there.
- Once through the portal, those shadow effects are ROUGH. Not from a combat standpoint, though it did present new challenges in that regard. The effects were so dense I had a hard time finding treasure drops - something Brizax would be miffed about - and the quest objects are purple fires in a purple fog, which made them really hard to spot.
- Renegade Shadowspawn Leader typo: negotiated. Also, "what is not if left"
- on the castle wall, Vijjial just sort of stands there after being defeated, making the "follow Vijjial" quest confusing. If you set him to despawn, you'll need to go in and see why it is not working.
- Having Vijjial retreat through the hall like that was a nice touch, but came at a price: His minions that spawn attack him! The shadow soldiers in particular liked to teleport at random targets, sometimes choosing their own master.
A VISIT TO THE SHADOWFELL
- Brizax typo: takes us to a different part of the Shadowfell" and "It should be"
- The first map, while showing more detail than previous installments, was still huge and generally monotonous. I would say your quest has the most room for improvement with this point - your maps tend to be larger than necessary and glaringly empty. If nothing else, pay attention to where the walkable area is in outdoor maps, and make sure these are somehow marked by a visible boundary of some sort. Right now there is no indication of where the walkable terrain ends, which complicated battle strategy against encounters near the edge.
- The last time Brizax shows up, his name is Customized Bandit Kallas, or something like that. You'll want to run in and fix that.
- In all instances, your transitions say "go to next map" - this is not anything particularly wrong, and there are more important issues to address, but I've seen this be a sticking point for reviewers in the past, so it is noteworthy.
What you have is a good start. And I know you're takin on a whole campaign here, so there's a lot to consider. But you should definitely revisit these first chapters and give them a little more love, or folks might not stick around for the whole story. In general I would say smaller, more detailed maps. Auto-populate them if that suits your needs, but as important as the combat and story are, folks will get tired of looking at the same thing repeatedly for too long. I hope the type and error list above helps, and please let me know when you've published chapter 4 or applied edits to the first 3.
0
mrthebozerMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
On the other hand, I feel like you raised the bar for the rest of us and I am waaaay over my head with my new project because of you xD
That's a good thing, it means it will be awesome!
0
mrthebozerMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
Hey redneckronin,
I did these reviews slightly out of order because my notes are a mess, and for a little bit there I thought I forgot to take notes on Missing Man. But it turns out I have them! This is a compelling tale so far - I have to say you did a really great job fleshing out said man who is missing. Piecing together his story, and the history leading up to it, was the highlight of this quest, and something I hope you expand on with Hidden Valley and Ancient Curse. Below are my notes (proofreading errors in bold)
Young Commoner Girl:
- and then last full(space)moon
- just a very, well, normal (no comma) person
Young Tribal Woman
- "we have are searching" - "we have been searching"?
Not an error, just a suggestion: During your search for journal pages you can interact with many useless items. This is good design, but you might consider them triggering a 'fail' text string, just something simple like "nothing here". If you make an item in the item editor, require that item to interact with the dead end objects, and never place that object on any map, you will get the desired effect.
- Very nice touch having the repaired journal appear on the table
- Danaeris. Not sure how I feel about seeing that name on a major character. It does not really fall under any intellectual property violation, as it is just a first name, it is spelled a little differently, and your character is obviously more Stark than Targaryen - but with the popularity of the show right now, the association is pretty hard not to make. Judge for yourself, it's not an important change, but one I felt important enough to jot down in my notes at the time.
- Your "Backpack01" interactable has the default name on it still. Not a major change, but an easy fix.
The Valley Of The Moon Crate:
if the tales be true, it
it is said he lay dying
A Blood Trail interactable dialogue shows the [MissionInfo] tag, because it is misspelled. Fixing the type will fix the font color
Wolflord, at one point, says "already you already" - this sounds a bit awkward to me, not sure what he was supposed to say.
I wouldn't change much of anything in terms of design or combat. Everything worked just right, in my opinion. Correct the above listed typos and you've got a totally solid first chapter. Looking forward to The Hidden Valley!
0
mrthebozerMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
For this weekend's lineup, I have: nyghoma, rdxcyclo, tyrinum, winterswitch, and mllebean. Thanks once again to everyone who has reviewed my quest so far! I think once they incorporate that sound patch and I give it a test run to make sure all my placed sounds are working and triggering right, I'm pretty settled on this being the final version, and I can start moving on to the next project.
0
orangefireeMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,148Arc User
Alright, orangefiree, I made it through the first 3 chapters of your campaign, and I was a harsh critic, but I hope you find my input useful. The things I liked, I liked enough to revisit this later if you intend to go back and touch things up. So first, the things I liked:
-Brizax is a hoot! I love his obsession with rewards and his fast talking.
-The final fight in chapter 3 was great - having the Shadowfell sorceress floating above the fight was a great touch that I would have missed had it not been noted in the objective - good thinking!
-The village fight was one of the better uses I've seen of multiple triggered spawns
- Shadowfell in chapter 3 was some nice design work
Now, on to the reasons for my lower star rating (proofreading corrections in [B]bold[/B]):
CRYPT OF SHADOWS
- Brizax's first conversation: typo - I thought someone
- the skeleton debris in the hall is all in a straight line. Is this intentional? If not, consider repositioning and rotating these to add some variety
- rename the cubes. Right now they're using the default name
- the maze isn't so much a maze as it is a series of incredibly long straight hallways with a monotonous design pattern. The majority of my time in this quest was spent holding the w key and waiting to reach the next turn. Consider a smaller map, but with more twists and turns and dead ends.
- the choice of container for the gems when you find them are really small and easy to miss. In fact, I blew past the first one because the giant monster I defeated landed right on top of it, rendering it invisible. I had to backtrack through the whole maze to find it, which made its size especially obvious.
- the treasure chest in the end was floating in the air. Not sure if this was intentional or not.
SHADOWED MOTIVES
- the first villager I speak to had two versions in the same place at the same time. This lead to a weird clipping issue where he was popping in and out of his own face (only way I can describe it). If you need that second one there later, modify the "appears when" dropdown.
- Villager typo: you defeated their
- The house the villager sends us to investigate is totally empty! Consider at least populating it using the default.
- The portal opens before it is supposed to (I think). The girl mentions opening a portal, but it is already there.
- Once through the portal, those shadow effects are ROUGH. Not from a combat standpoint, though it did present new challenges in that regard. The effects were so dense I had a hard time finding treasure drops - something Brizax would be miffed about - and the quest objects are purple fires in a purple fog, which made them really hard to spot.
- Renegade Shadowspawn Leader typo: negotiated. Also, "what is not if left"
- on the castle wall, Vijjial just sort of stands there after being defeated, making the "follow Vijjial" quest confusing. If you set him to despawn, you'll need to go in and see why it is not working.
- Having Vijjial retreat through the hall like that was a nice touch, but came at a price: His minions that spawn attack him! The shadow soldiers in particular liked to teleport at random targets, sometimes choosing their own master.
A VISIT TO THE SHADOWFELL
- Brizax typo: takes us to a different part of the Shadowfell" and "It should be"
- The first map, while showing more detail than previous installments, was still huge and generally monotonous. I would say your quest has the most room for improvement with this point - your maps tend to be larger than necessary and glaringly empty. If nothing else, pay attention to where the walkable area is in outdoor maps, and make sure these are somehow marked by a visible boundary of some sort. Right now there is no indication of where the walkable terrain ends, which complicated battle strategy against encounters near the edge.
- The last time Brizax shows up, his name is Customized Bandit Kallas, or something like that. You'll want to run in and fix that.
- In all instances, your transitions say "go to next map" - this is not anything particularly wrong, and there are more important issues to address, but I've seen this be a sticking point for reviewers in the past, so it is noteworthy.
What you have is a good start. And I know you're takin on a whole campaign here, so there's a lot to consider. But you should definitely revisit these first chapters and give them a little more love, or folks might not stick around for the whole story. In general I would say smaller, more detailed maps. Auto-populate them if that suits your needs, but as important as the combat and story are, folks will get tired of looking at the same thing repeatedly for too long. I hope the type and error list above helps, and please let me know when you've published chapter 4 or applied edits to the first 3.
Thanks, I will edit them as soon as I publish chapter four. (I will be out of town soon so it may take some time to get it finished.)
Neverwinter players are stubborn things....until you strip them down to bone. (Cursed players, my flowers, MINE!) Oh how I plotted their demise.
Comments
First installment of Gavin the "Lucky" series is live
Episodes:
Gavin the "Lucky": Prologue - NW-DEZSTNUT7
As mentioned, the writing really shines here. Only thing that really comes to mind as a suggestion is that I wouldn't have minded one last conversation with Bonderleaf at the end. Hopefully the # of plays keeps shooting up for ya. Great work!
Code: NW-DJ5BFT52F
Author: @oortexplorer
Now eligible for Daily Foundry!
Mine is as follows: NW-DTWAGIPZH
Relatively simple, smash some goblins, crush some kobolds, meet some interesting NPCs. It's basically a light story with a fair bit of whacking tiny, ugly mobs around
Enjoy! Would appreciate any and all feedback I can get! Looking to expand once I get some feedback from the first quest.
Hey Meysa,
This week has been pretty out of control - I've been able to play a few of the quests on my queue, but not much time left over to compose reviews. I'm getting there.
That said, your curiosity made me wonder, and I went back and looked. This was actually a mistake - you have 1 less star than I intended to give. I do remember that I almost didn't get to leave a review at all - the prompt came up about 2 minutes after I left the quest - thankfully it looks like Cryptic has plans to fix review issues, but that confusion may be why I didn't double check my rating.
On to the review itself - as I said online, this is (mostly) one of the better hack and slashes I've played. The vast majority of your combat is engaging and challenging, but at certain points it gets tedious. What dialogue you do have relies heavily on 4th wall breaking humor - it is a tad overdone, but generally fine.
You start off real strong with your first map and its objectives. It is a real shame that ballistas cannot be aimed and fired by enemy NPCs, that would have been a great touch. I wonder if there is any way to rig an arrow trap in the path of the ballista? Just a thought, I'm not even sure it would work.
Once inside Monte Hall (a joke that somehow flew over my head until I just typed it here ), things start to get a little crazy. Your choice of words in the objectives reflected my thoughts a little too well during the chain-spawning encounters, and at times it seemed like you were almost trolling the player. You paint yourself as a sadistic DM, and some of those moments definitely reflect that - but I think that at points some additional time is needed balancing combat - not to make it easier (with one exception), just to make it less tedious. Here are my suggestions - take them or ignore them as you will:
1. Add some variety to your chain-spawning encounters. Right now it seems like they are mostly just the same encounter spawning again and again from different corners of the room. Spend some time and AI nodes on these rooms - change up layouts, rosters, and behaviors from one mob to the next. Maybe one is all ranged, spread around the perimeter, then a melee mob that bum rushes the player, have a big solo encounter spawn in the middle... you decide. But as it stands right now, the hardest part of this element of your dungeon is left-mouse finger cramps.
2. The non-disarmable traps. The ghost explaining them was pretty funny, but I found myself wondering why this was included. I played a wizard, so it ultimately had no effect on me - but I imagine if I was playing a rogue, I'd be miffed to find the one gameplay mechanic that makes me unique stripped away. I say let them disarm them, but that's just my opinion.
3. Gnoll Commander room. Aye yiy yiy. I won't list the full roster of what was waiting right around the corner for me, but that was just... I don't even know if cruel is the right word
That's what I've got. Hopefully things will quiet down for me this weekend, and once I've run through my backlog, I'll take a second crack at it and give it the extra star I felt it deserved. Maybe two extra stars, depending on whatever revisions and improvements you plan on incorporating.
Edit: "All's Fair In Love And War." There really are too few stories like this in MMOs in general. 99.9% of all content, be it fan made or official, centers around some cataclysm, some doomsday scenario. There are obvious reasons for this, and I fault no one for going that route. But charming, personal moments like this humanize the stakes. Fortune and glory aside, eventually Neverwinter is just bricks and timber that aren't worth all this absurd trouble. Stepping out of the chaos to help a dear old friend with man troubles is the perfect side quest to address this issue. I am happy to see Foundry authors remembering this.
You did a fine job of spreading out the pros and cons of each suitor. The clones were a funny touch, and I liked that you included a clone saleswizard in the bar to tie into it. There were quite a few hilarious character concepts floating around that bar, for that matter. I was left wishing I could learn more about them, though. Consider revisiting them with dialogue options. Either flavor text or, if you are feeling ambitious, questions about their opinion in the matter.
The quest objectives did their job well, but I wish they could be less linear. This should be possible, but pretty tricky, and would require a major overhaul. But letting me choose who to talk to first, or to only obtain one wedding present, would be awesome. Difficult to implement, though.
The final fight is a tad disturbing, and I am not sure it is intentional. Because you spawn the encounter nearby on a dialogue prompt, we end up witnessing a violent domestic disturbance that seems very uncharacteristic of the attacker. Consider reworking the ending to focus the attack on the player or other man. And one final note on this - Ms. Future city watch might have something to contribute to that encounter if you set her up accordingly.
The only other note I have is that I found it very endearing that you worked the title into the dialogue. I admittedly did a poor job of proofreading (or you did a great job before I played it) - I am not great at this to begin with, and there has been a sharp decline in play time this week, so I've been focusing on larger story and quest notes.
Thank you for building this!
I am working on new quest and it's supposed to be a LONG one, with puzzles and exploration.
I have a puzzle that would work very well with the idea of rotating 'capturepoint' object, like your thermostat. Can I use the same idea/object if I give credit to your quest in description? I would never come up with the idea of rotating capturepoint on my own and I think it's a very distinctive part of your quest.
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I know that in theory, nothing in foundry is truly ours, but the thermostat thing got stuck in my head and now I don't see a different way to make my puzzle. I don't want to look like I stole that idea without asking first.
*shakes fist*
All because of your awesomely good quest!
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I expect your opinions are in high demand by the community here, but if you can find 15-20 minutes, I'd appreciate your input on: "Final Examination" (NW-DRMB39T5T). Thanks.
Hive Mind (NW-DN9YKEVUS): Get inside a crashed alien ship to discover its purpose.
Absolute Zero (NW-DOVUXHT8P): Activate a massive teleportation machine to pursue an evil mastermind.
I'll work on tuning the encounters, in the main halls. The problem is there isn't a lot of variety with types of gnolls, though I suppose I could use another type of monster and just re-skin it. The end room doesn't have to be that hard. I'll give you a hint, that you can kill/pull them in a certain order to make the final encounter much less challenging. This weekend is when I was planning on putting some work into costuming and decorating the place, so I'll put in some work on rebalancing some fights as well.
As for the traps, I'll probably leave them the way they are, but the reason I put in the ghost to explain them, is because of a comment I saw somewhere about doing this with traps and rogues crying about it, so I figured I'd let them know it was intentional. BEsides, I'm tired of getting one shotted, or stunlocked, in PvP so this is my revenge! BWUAHAHAHAHAHAHA *snork* HAHAHA
Storming Monte Hall NW-DRAQHLR54
Thank you kindly. Look forward to reading it.
I believe I did not tear out his page, but I could be wrong. I think having him re-appear at the end would sort of bring the whole thing full circle, and it could be a great send-off as he's such a great character to begin with. But of course you don't want to put in a dialogue scene just for the sake of having a dialogue, even if you have nothing to say there.
Love the title as well. Just a great quest all-round.
Code: NW-DJ5BFT52F
Author: @oortexplorer
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Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.
NW-DUTKDLBYI
Info and comments at http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?326671-My-first-quest!-Kind-hearted-reviewers-wanted-)&p=4198891#post4198891
On the other hand, I feel like you raised the bar for the rest of us and I am waaaay over my head with my new project because of you xD
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Yeah, initially my plan was to provide the option to speak to the 2 characters in either order (same with the missions), but it seemed difficult to figure out how to do it at the time (especially being new to the Foundry) and so I took the easier route. I think it is probably do-able in some form or other, but I'm not sure it would provide enough value to be worth the time investment. Especially since I'm hoping to work on quest # 2 and not finding a whole lot of time to do that so far.
Never thought of that but it's a great point. May be very difficult to find a way to do it, I'll give it some thought. If it's going to be either very hard or time consuming, your last sentence would provide a way to at least do something about it. I will definitely look into that for sure.
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Author: @oortexplorer
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Yeah, this guy is making all of our jobs harder. (forms angry mob) GET HIM!!!
Just kidding of course, it is very well-deserved and I suspect this quest will wind up on some best-of lists for sure.
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Author: @oortexplorer
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-Brizax is a hoot! I love his obsession with rewards and his fast talking.
-The final fight in chapter 3 was great - having the Shadowfell sorceress floating above the fight was a great touch that I would have missed had it not been noted in the objective - good thinking!
-The village fight was one of the better uses I've seen of multiple triggered spawns
- Shadowfell in chapter 3 was some nice design work
Now, on to the reasons for my lower star rating (proofreading corrections in [B]bold[/B]):
CRYPT OF SHADOWS
- Brizax's first conversation: typo - I thought someone
- the skeleton debris in the hall is all in a straight line. Is this intentional? If not, consider repositioning and rotating these to add some variety
- rename the cubes. Right now they're using the default name
- the maze isn't so much a maze as it is a series of incredibly long straight hallways with a monotonous design pattern. The majority of my time in this quest was spent holding the w key and waiting to reach the next turn. Consider a smaller map, but with more twists and turns and dead ends.
- the choice of container for the gems when you find them are really small and easy to miss. In fact, I blew past the first one because the giant monster I defeated landed right on top of it, rendering it invisible. I had to backtrack through the whole maze to find it, which made its size especially obvious.
- the treasure chest in the end was floating in the air. Not sure if this was intentional or not.
SHADOWED MOTIVES
- the first villager I speak to had two versions in the same place at the same time. This lead to a weird clipping issue where he was popping in and out of his own face (only way I can describe it). If you need that second one there later, modify the "appears when" dropdown.
- Villager typo: you defeated their
- The house the villager sends us to investigate is totally empty! Consider at least populating it using the default.
- The portal opens before it is supposed to (I think). The girl mentions opening a portal, but it is already there.
- Once through the portal, those shadow effects are ROUGH. Not from a combat standpoint, though it did present new challenges in that regard. The effects were so dense I had a hard time finding treasure drops - something Brizax would be miffed about - and the quest objects are purple fires in a purple fog, which made them really hard to spot.
- Renegade Shadowspawn Leader typo: negotiated. Also, "what is not if left"
- on the castle wall, Vijjial just sort of stands there after being defeated, making the "follow Vijjial" quest confusing. If you set him to despawn, you'll need to go in and see why it is not working.
- Having Vijjial retreat through the hall like that was a nice touch, but came at a price: His minions that spawn attack him! The shadow soldiers in particular liked to teleport at random targets, sometimes choosing their own master.
A VISIT TO THE SHADOWFELL
- Brizax typo: takes us to a different part of the Shadowfell" and "It should be"
- The first map, while showing more detail than previous installments, was still huge and generally monotonous. I would say your quest has the most room for improvement with this point - your maps tend to be larger than necessary and glaringly empty. If nothing else, pay attention to where the walkable area is in outdoor maps, and make sure these are somehow marked by a visible boundary of some sort. Right now there is no indication of where the walkable terrain ends, which complicated battle strategy against encounters near the edge.
- The last time Brizax shows up, his name is Customized Bandit Kallas, or something like that. You'll want to run in and fix that.
- In all instances, your transitions say "go to next map" - this is not anything particularly wrong, and there are more important issues to address, but I've seen this be a sticking point for reviewers in the past, so it is noteworthy.
What you have is a good start. And I know you're takin on a whole campaign here, so there's a lot to consider. But you should definitely revisit these first chapters and give them a little more love, or folks might not stick around for the whole story. In general I would say smaller, more detailed maps. Auto-populate them if that suits your needs, but as important as the combat and story are, folks will get tired of looking at the same thing repeatedly for too long. I hope the type and error list above helps, and please let me know when you've published chapter 4 or applied edits to the first 3.
That's a good thing, it means it will be awesome!
I did these reviews slightly out of order because my notes are a mess, and for a little bit there I thought I forgot to take notes on Missing Man. But it turns out I have them! This is a compelling tale so far - I have to say you did a really great job fleshing out said man who is missing. Piecing together his story, and the history leading up to it, was the highlight of this quest, and something I hope you expand on with Hidden Valley and Ancient Curse. Below are my notes (proofreading errors in bold)
Young Commoner Girl:
- and then last full(space)moon
- just a very, well, normal (no comma) person
Young Tribal Woman
- "we have are searching" - "we have been searching"?
Not an error, just a suggestion: During your search for journal pages you can interact with many useless items. This is good design, but you might consider them triggering a 'fail' text string, just something simple like "nothing here". If you make an item in the item editor, require that item to interact with the dead end objects, and never place that object on any map, you will get the desired effect.
- Very nice touch having the repaired journal appear on the table
- Danaeris. Not sure how I feel about seeing that name on a major character. It does not really fall under any intellectual property violation, as it is just a first name, it is spelled a little differently, and your character is obviously more Stark than Targaryen - but with the popularity of the show right now, the association is pretty hard not to make. Judge for yourself, it's not an important change, but one I felt important enough to jot down in my notes at the time.
- Your "Backpack01" interactable has the default name on it still. Not a major change, but an easy fix.
The Valley Of The Moon Crate:
if the tales be true, it
it is said he lay dying
A Blood Trail interactable dialogue shows the [MissionInfo] tag, because it is misspelled. Fixing the type will fix the font color
Wolflord, at one point, says "already you already" - this sounds a bit awkward to me, not sure what he was supposed to say.
I wouldn't change much of anything in terms of design or combat. Everything worked just right, in my opinion. Correct the above listed typos and you've got a totally solid first chapter. Looking forward to The Hidden Valley!
Thanks, I will edit them as soon as I publish chapter four. (I will be out of town soon so it may take some time to get it finished.)