Looking for people to try my debut foundry story A Magical Mystery Tour

antonkyle · June 2013

Description:

'You have heard that your favourite musical act, The Teables are playing nearby at an Inn called The Lakeside. If memory serves you right you passed this Inn some time ago while out adventuring. If you are quick you can still make it, but before the show can start you must embark of a tale of fantasy, mystery, murder and mayhem. As you travel through many new worlds can you save Bongo from what fate has in store for him?
A story driven chain of events that will take you across the universe to unknown worlds with a comical theme.'

It's not very long and is sort of spoof themed adventure comedy, It's 20-30mins. I would like some feedback about the level of combat. I would like to know if it's too easy/hard and what not. So far I have had one play... which was the Mrs so I don't think that counts.

Thanks to anyone who can spare a little time.

2/7/2013

Come on people, I will swap reviews and what not... Not one person has played it yet and it's great...

06/07/2013

I'm still looking for people to swap reviews.

Code: NW-DJX8BLRA7

docsc00ter · June 2013

Hi. I was really enjoying your quest, and I especially enjoyed the musical references. In fact, I was delighted to leave the inn and find myself fighting those particular critters. Very clever. I thought the idea of having to eavesdrop on the chatter of the crowd in order to find out where to go was clever!

But I encountered a couple of very minor things to fix. Your horses are named things like "Horse 1" and "Horse 3." It's possible to ride through the enemies and skip a lot of combat prior to entering the gate. And I kind of think the gate/portal on the inn map might look better if it was similar to the portal in the next "jumping puzzle" map.

Regarding the jumping puzzles, this is where I'm afraid I had to drop the quest. I'm not a huge fan of jumping mechanics to begin with, but putting enemies on those platforms -- some who can jump over to me, some who just stand there like sitting ducks, and some who fall underneath too easily (resulting in me having to deal with the guy who insults me for falling, when I had to in order to reach the unintelligent mobs) just wasn't fun. Moreover, when I actually successfully lit one of the braziers and tried to go up the stairs, something happened that resulted in multiple spawn encounters surrounding me. I wasn't rushing or anything. But the mobs just piled up, killed me, and convinced me to wait until this area of combat is a bit better balanced before trying again.

Great start, though. Lots of great ideas!

Sc00teR

antonkyle · July 2013

docsc00ter wrote: »

Hi. I was really enjoying your quest, and I especially enjoyed the musical references. In fact, I was delighted to leave the inn and find myself fighting those particular critters. Very clever. I thought the idea of having to eavesdrop on the chatter of the crowd in order to find out where to go was clever!

But I encountered a couple of very minor things to fix. Your horses are named things like "Horse 1" and "Horse 3." It's possible to ride through the enemies and skip a lot of combat prior to entering the gate. And I kind of think the gate/portal on the inn map might look better if it was similar to the portal in the next "jumping puzzle" map.

Regarding the jumping puzzles, this is where I'm afraid I had to drop the quest. I'm not a huge fan of jumping mechanics to begin with, but putting enemies on those platforms -- some who can jump over to me, some who just stand there like sitting ducks, and some who fall underneath too easily (resulting in me having to deal with the guy who insults me for falling, when I had to in order to reach the unintelligent mobs) just wasn't fun. Moreover, when I actually successfully lit one of the braziers and tried to go up the stairs, something happened that resulted in multiple spawn encounters surrounding me. I wasn't rushing or anything. But the mobs just piled up, killed me, and convinced me to wait until this area of combat is a bit better balanced before trying again.

Great start, though. Lots of great ideas!

Sc00teR

I've fixed that map now, sorry it took so long to get back to you but foundry publishing has been down for two days. So I've been unable to fix it. Should all work now.

celestarion · July 2013

As a huge fan of The Beatles, I will play it in a few

oortexplorer · July 2013

Yeah, I'm a major Beatles fanatic, so it is my duty to play your quest. Would be great if you could play mine in return, info in sig.

antonkyle · July 2013

oortexplorer wrote: »

Yeah, I'm a major Beatles fanatic, so it is my duty to play your quest. Would be great if you could play mine in return, info in sig.

No problem, I will try to play all the foundry quests of those that play and review my own and then some more.

celestarion · July 2013

I've played your quest with a lvl 57 GF and it takes about 60 minutes.

Here are the bugs and problems i've noticed:

Sue is talking about his name but you forget to put a capital letter on his name.
In the tavern, the door to go outdoor is not well placed on the wall.
You should rename "Go to Next Map" when you finish a map. It breaks the immersion.
What is the precise reference behind Knowhere boy? In The Beatles universe, there is Jeremy, the Nowhere Man (from the Yellow Submarine movie then this name was taken for a movie about Lennon's life The Nowhere boy)
Kenneth and Loz have the same skin (the skin is easily noticed)
Your braziers in the other world are named with placeholder "Brz_02"... a lot of objects have the same problem, here is the list:

All your secrets
Bag small01 dropped by the boss in the first world
book_open01 in Labyrinthe
Crypt Sarcophagus03 at the end
And other I certainly forget

Keep in mind to always rename an interactive object
You don't replaced the groupe name of encounters. Blue meanies are "undead pirates" for instance.
When you talk again to the Old hermit after he opened the gateway, he say again the incantation. Try to disable the text.
The major problem in the quest, from my point of view, is about the combat. There is no rythm, and fights are redundant. You only used two different groups of encounter in the first part of the quest. Try to use more gameplay, replace some of your encounters by more easy encounters in order to create a rythm.
Your final fight was really surrealistic (2 difficult encounters + 1 easy). I died and I'm GF, I can't imagine the fight for a cleric. I think you really have to balance this fight.
This problem create another one, even if you quest is long, it seems more longer with this redundancy in combat and I've tried to avoid fights.

So I gave you 4 stars. To be honest with you, my real rating is more 3.5, but I'm sure the quest will be better when you'll have balanced and fixed everything, and I don't want to decrease your rating. I like the references you've used (Bowie, Pratchett...). The quest is maybe too long for a normal player, you maybe should cut the quest in two parts for a campaign.

antonkyle · July 2013

celestarion wrote: »

I've played your quest with a lvl 57 GF and it takes about 60 minutes.

Here are the bugs and problems i've noticed:
Sue is talking about his name but you forget to put a capital letter on his name.

In the tavern, the door to go outdoor is not well placed on the wall.

You should rename "Go to Next Map" when you finish a map. It breaks the immersion.

What is the precise reference behind Knowhere boy? In The Beatles universe, there is Jeremy, the Nowhere Man (from the Yellow Submarine movie then this name was taken for a movie about Lennon's life The Nowhere boy)

Kenneth and Loz have the same skin (the skin is easily noticed)

Your braziers in the other world are named with placeholder "Brz_02"... a lot of objects have the same problem, here is the list:

All your secrets
Bag small01 dropped by the boss in the first world
book_open01 in Labyrinthe
Crypt Sarcophagus03 at the end
And other I certainly forget

Keep in mind to always rename an interactive object

You don't replaced the groupe name of encounters. Blue meanies are "undead pirates" for instance.

When you talk again to the Old hermit after he opened the gateway, he say again the incantation. Try to disable the text.

The major problem in the quest, from my point of view, is about the combat. There is no rythm, and fights are redundant. You only used two different groups of encounter in the first part of the quest. Try to use more gameplay, replace some of your encounters by more easy encounters in order to create a rythm.
Your final fight was really surrealistic (2 difficult encounters + 1 easy). I died and I'm GF, I can't imagine the fight for a cleric. I think you really have to balance this fight.

This problem create another one, even if you quest is long, it seems more longer with this redundancy in combat and I've tried to avoid fights.

So I gave you 4 stars. To be honest with you, my real rating is more 3.5, but I'm sure the quest will be better when you'll have balanced and fixed everything, and I don't want to decrease your rating. I like the references you've used (Bowie, Pratchett...). The quest is maybe too long for a normal player, you maybe should cut the quest in two parts for a campaign.

Thanks for the feedback. I will address all these issues one by one as soon as I have played some of these other foundry quests.

Funny you should mention that about the cleric with the last boss. I am a cleric, I was worried that other classes would find it a bit hard as they can't heal. To be fair though I'm not that clued into the fighting in this game just yet. I have only played for two and a half weeks and most of that time has been in the foundry.

One final question is how do I change the groupe name of encounters. 'Blue meanies are "undead pirates" for instance' It is something that has been bugging me for a while. Allthough you have probably answered my question already I was looking at the each one rather than as a group. So I'm thinking maybe that can be changed on layout rather than detail.

I still have much to learn about the foundry, I only really started this quest so I could learn as I go. Still be sure to check back in a couple of days. I hope to address all these issues and the feedback is great. Really helps to have other views.

celestarion · July 2013

antonkyle wrote: »

Funny you should mention that about the cleric with the last boss. I am a cleric, I was worried that other classes would find it a bit hard as they can't heal. To be fair though I'm not that clued into the fighting in this game just yet. I have only played for two and a half weeks and most of that time has been in the foundry.

I think you're not lvl 60. You'll see the game is very different once you approach to lvl 50 even more with a cleric. I've created mine when I was low level, and I'm still balancing it each week

.

antonkyle wrote: »

One final question is how do I change the groupe name of encounters. 'Blue meanies are "undead pirates" for instance' It is something that has been bugging me for a while. Allthough you have probably answered my question already I was looking at the each one rather than as a group. So I'm thinking maybe that can be changed on layout rather than detail.

About the group name, you have to change it in details for each monster. Select the monster and you can both give it a name and a group name. In the same encounter group you can even give a differente group name for each monster.

voxx75 · July 2013

celestarion wrote: »

As a huge fan of The Beatles, I will play it in a few

This +1

antonkyle · July 2013

OK, so I've updated it again and played all the foundry quests on this page, now I need more, reviews for reviews and what not...

On a side note this system for the foundry sucks monkey balls. Some 12 digit code is the only way to find people's quests but you can't copy and paste the codes, that would be too easy.

Also why can't you see the quest's in the foundry without the code? By title for example, or Author

But more importantly why is much of the content that can be found in 'the best' section poor in comparison to some that can't even be found without a 12 digit code, it seems a little unbalanced. If I want to categorise by best then this should be the highest star ranking that has, lets say more than 10 reviews with ALL the content in the list not just the same 10 quests that have a high ranking because they have the most views and can be easily played without thinking and therefore good for the daily foundry quest for people that are not even interested in the foundry quests.

Here is how it should be done:

First of all categories, like fantasy, Horror, Mystery and Combat. This would allow people to get what they want. If I make a quest that is all mystery and very little fighting then someone who wants to just bish bang bosh is not going to like it now are they which means that a poor review is given and then the person that wants all mystery and what not is not going to bother because it has poor ratings. Without categories how will people know what they are getting? It's not rocket science now is it. Seriously who is running the show here?

Also ALL the quests should be on there, however rubbish they are. If by chance someone puts something offensive then it should be removed and deleted with that person being warned, second time your out type thing.
If I want to dig up the quests that no one has yet played then why not? I can't do that because now because there is no way to find them, except coming out of the game and going onto the forum. If I keep doing that, eventually something will catch my eye while I'm doing this and it will be bye bye Neverwinter. Surly that’s the last thing cryptic want, yet they are doing everything they possibly can for me to do exactly this.

Anyway rant over.

karitr · July 2013

You can copy and paste into game.

If you want to play quests that haven't been played yet then click on the "For Review" tab. There are plenty (0) played Foundry quests whose authors would be happy for a play-through.

As for your other comments regarding how quests achieve their 'Best' rating, have you even looked at them? Cragsteep Crypt has an average play time of 102 minutes, Visitors from the Underdark has 37 mins. The Mad Guardsmen - number 3 on today's best list - isn't even eligible for the Foundry Daily. So no, these quests aren't there simply because they are good for the daily, they are there because they are good.

This is how you get on the Best list: Player plays a quest. Player goes to guild forum and recommends the quest in the thread set up for just this purpose. Guildies play quest and recommend to other friends who recommend it to their friends etc. Imagine just how many guild forums there are. If your quest gets on the recommendation list of just a handful, it can and will get the audience numbers it deserves. Of course it has to be worthy of recommendation to begin with.

I'm sorry for being a little condescending on your thread, but I am getting disheartened with author's blaming other authors, their 'moronic' audience or the Foundry catalogue for a lack of plays/bad reviews. There is no doubt that yes, the catalogue could use some work - and is indeed being worked upon - but some of you are sounding just a little bit too entitled and it won't ingratiate you to the very audience you are trying to attract.

Now I have had my rant, I will add your quest to my to-play list.

xpurpleinsanityx · July 2013

Heya, overall this was really good. Love the feel of the different environments...Some bugs that you may wanna be aware of:

Going to the rocks there were 2 copies of the old wizard...they got in the way of each other and it was hard to talk to the right one.

My companion caught aggro on the blue guys locked in the pen and I couldn't open the next doorway to progress (was in battle), but when I went back to the campfire...I lost battle mode and was able to progress.

There were many, many, many grammatical errors..too many to list. You may want to run some of your dialogues through a spell-check or something...though there were some that wouldn't catch.. i.e. here/hear mixed up and what-not.

Overall, like I said, brilliant job. The effects were pulled off nicely and the story progression was very good and interesting.

Oh, and my quest is in my sig.

It can be searched by title as well, I'm pretty sure.

antonkyle · July 2013

karitr wrote: »

You can copy and paste into game.

If you want to play quests that haven't been played yet then click on the "For Review" tab. There are plenty (0) played Foundry quests whose authors would be happy for a play-through.

As for your other comments regarding how quests achieve their 'Best' rating, have you even looked at them? Cragsteep Crypt has an average play time of 102 minutes, Visitors from the Underdark has 37 mins. The Mad Guardsmen - number 3 on today's best list - isn't even eligible for the Foundry Daily. So no, these quests aren't there simply because they are good for the daily, they are there because they are good.

This is how you get on the Best list: Player plays a quest. Player goes to guild forum and recommends the quest in the thread set up for just this purpose. Guildies play quest and recommend to other friends who recommend it to their friends etc. Imagine just how many guild forums there are. If your quest gets on the recommendation list of just a handful, it can and will get the audience numbers it deserves. Of course it has to be worthy of recommendation to begin with.

I'm sorry for being a little condescending on your thread, but I am getting disheartened with author's blaming other authors, their 'moronic' audience or the Foundry catalogue for a lack of plays/bad reviews. There is no doubt that yes, the catalogue could use some work - and is indeed being worked upon - but some of you are sounding just a little bit too entitled and it won't ingratiate you to the very audience you are trying to attract.

Now I have had my rant, I will add your quest to my to-play list.

But What is the point of having a best of list if you don't know what it's the best of?

I wasn't talking from an authors perspective. I was talking about choosing which I wanted to play. But now you mention it and the sort of people who would want to play mine. I'm sure all the ones chosen to be on the best list are very good but there are others that are better than many of those that I will never find because the system as it stands dose not allow me too. Unless I go look on the forums that is or join a guild that works for this as well as other area's.

If you had categories like I suggested with each quest shown with the star rating then that would be far better. If it is a case that there would simply be too many then why not have a limited time for those that don't get good ratings such as if you can't get a 2.5 star rating within a month or two it's removed from the list and then can only be found with this NW-gdfhkjdfkjd system.

I'm not wanting to play quests that haven't been played yet, because they haven't been played yet, I was saying how do you find a quest for example a fantasy mystery if it is nowhere to be seen.

antonkyle · July 2013

xpurpleinsanityx, cheers for the comments I will fix these bugs as soon as I can. Did your companion pull aggro from the room next door? I thought having an invisible wall covering the gate would be enough, I will put a box around them. That should work.

As for my grammatical errors then I am sorry. I'm dyslexic and find it very hard to do stuff like this, putting it through a spell check as well as learning how to use the foundry was too much, although I have taken to doing just this now and would have saved much time if I had from the start but sadly I don't think I will ever be good in this area. I will change the ones people point out though.

oortexplorer · July 2013

The dumbest thing about the foundry search engine is that there is no button (unless I am missing something) to select "More" from any of the tabs. If you could look at what's on the Best tab, and I agree that the majority of them are fine quests, and just click more to scroll down to the next grouping, it would be a million times better.

There are tags (#story, #humor, etc.) and they have already said the search tool will be getting a revamp at some point. I am certain this will happen, the only question is when.

xpurpleinsanityx · July 2013

antonkyle wrote: »

xpurpleinsanityx, cheers for the comments I will fix these bugs as soon as I can. Did your companion pull aggro from the room next door? I thought having an invisible wall covering the gate would be enough, I will put a box around them. That should work.

As for my grammatical errors then I am sorry. I'm dyslexic and find it very hard to do stuff like this, putting it through a spell check as well as learning how to use the foundry was too much, although I have taken to doing just this now and would have saved much time if I had from the start but sadly I don't think I will ever be good in this area. I will change the ones people point out though.

No prob, and I'm not quite sure where my companion pulled aggro, but it was before I went in the room next door...happened sometime around when I crossed by the gate. It may have been a one time glitch or something.

karitr · July 2013

Hey anton I played your Foundry and loved it.

To join in the general consensus, the grammar and spelling really do need work to bring the text up to the standard of the rest of the quest. I agree spell checkers will only do so much but perhaps you have a friend or family member you could ask to help?

ETA: I think the effects in the last encounter room (Spinetti) could be turned down a little. Being as it is already a pretty small space, without a whole lot of room to avoid getting stuck between pieces of furniture, the fire and smoke made avoiding the red circles even more impossible. Not to mention he attacks again immediately you respawn at the fireplace, before you have a chance to use an injury kit and rebuff.

oortexplorer · July 2013

Okay, I played this quest and have some mixed feelings about it. It really feels like a great first draft of a screenplay that has a lot of potential, but is in dire need of a rewrite. Was a 3, but I gave it 4 stars because it has a lot of elements that I liked.

First, the good. It's a great concept, with lots of clever details and story elements scattered throughout. Great use of NPC's, solid maps, interesting story. Loved seeing Bobby, the whole inn portion is quite well done.

The bad: it's just way, way too long. You really need to consider trimming it down a little bit, or making it into a two part campaign. Perhaps both. One example is the blue meanies. I mean, the costume design is fantastic, and they are perfectly selected in terms of their powers and even their death animation. But there are just too many of them. I nearly dropped the quest during the maze part. Just really became a frustrating grind, and not at all fun. Sort of the same point about the jumping puzzle. Although here, I suspect you will get many differing opinions. It takes forever to get to a brazier, and get back. Having to do it 4 times just seems like punishment. The final battle was also quite frustrating and time-consuming, but it is a boss battle so at least here it makes a certain amount of sense.

Then there's the writing. A lot of is quite clever, but just way too many spelling and grammatical errors that are detrimental to the quality of the quest as a whole. You really do need to go through it all with a fine - tooth comb and clean it up.

In the end, some great ideas here, both in terms of story elements and details, but also in the use of foundry tools, that just make the spelling issues and problems with the quest stand out even more. I think the average play time here is over an hour, and that's a lot to ask of people. Some editing, done properly, will make this a much tighter and better quest overall. There are a lot of quality elements here as well though.

antonkyle · July 2013

oortexplorer wrote: »

Okay, I played this quest and have some mixed feelings about it. It really feels like a great first draft of a screenplay that has a lot of potential, but is in dire need of a rewrite. Was a 3, but I gave it 4 stars because it has a lot of elements that I liked.

First, the good. It's a great concept, with lots of clever details and story elements scattered throughout. Great use of NPC's, solid maps, interesting story. Loved seeing Bobby, the whole inn portion is quite well done.

The bad: it's just way, way too long. You really need to consider trimming it down a little bit, or making it into a two part campaign. Perhaps both. One example is the blue meanies. I mean, the costume design is fantastic, and they are perfectly selected in terms of their powers and even their death animation. But there are just too many of them. I nearly dropped the quest during the maze part. Just really became a frustrating grind, and not at all fun. Sort of the same point about the jumping puzzle. Although here, I suspect you will get many differing opinions. It takes forever to get to a brazier, and get back. Having to do it 4 times just seems like punishment. The final battle was also quite frustrating and time-consuming, but it is a boss battle so at least here it makes a certain amount of sense.

Then there's the writing. A lot of is quite clever, but just way too many spelling and grammatical errors that are detrimental to the quality of the quest as a whole. You really do need to go through it all with a fine - tooth comb and clean it up.

In the end, some great ideas here, both in terms of story elements and details, but also in the use of foundry tools, that just make the spelling issues and problems with the quest stand out even more. I think the average play time here is over an hour, and that's a lot to ask of people. Some editing, done properly, will make this a much tighter and better quest overall. There are a lot of quality elements here as well though.

May I ask when you played it? I have changed much of the fighting, the are now no fights while jumping and I removed a couple in the maze. Not sure if you played it before or after.

Anyway I have renewed all the text now and changed much since I read this. Thanks for your comments. It is now my hope that I am almost finished. That goes for everyone that has helped me find the problems and fix them a big thanks and should anyone find any more bugs/problems/mistakes please let me know so I can fix them.

oortexplorer · July 2013

I think I played it Thursday afternoon, but picked it up Wednesday night. I ended up walking under the structure back to the portal, but I saw the spawns waiting after you light the braziers, so if you've removed them it may have been before the update.

Looking for people to try my debut foundry story A Magical Mystery Tour

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