A Clash of Wills NW-DQ8I5BZSF

varna · June 2013

I've been sitting on this mission for a while waiting for the sound bug to be fixed, so now I've finally published it.

Author: @scosglen
-Name: A Clash of Wills
-Short Code: NW-DQ8I5BZSF
-Mission Type: Solo (should work with multiple players, but some dialog and scripting will not be ideal for anyone but the leader)
-Average Duration: 20-30 minutes, ~15 if rushing
-Dialog: Light textual exposition, some optional inspectable objects in environment that add contextual storytelling
-Amount/Difficulty of Combat: Medium (Tested on level 60 GWF. If I can do it anyone can)

Clash of Wills is a solo adventure with light dungeon crawling and emphasis on atmosphere, setpieces, and some suspense/light horror. A huge amount of effort has been invested scripting audio, and in creating hand-built environments with as much polish as the Foundry toolset and my sanity reasonably allow, so hopefully I have at least something novel for you to see.

The mission spans 4 maps (Noncombat intro, two combat maps, noncombat outro) and has four distinct environments. The climax of the mission is a sequence that makes extensive use of audio and FX objects, large scale outdoor set construction, and has some technical tricks that I hope many Foundry authors will find interesting.

It's my first piece of Foundry content, and It would be great if some people could give it a run through to get it vetted in the search system and work towards having it eligible for rewards. Of course, I am also looking for reactions and feedback!

So, sincere thanks to anyone who can spare a few minutes to give it a spin.

varna · June 2013

screenshots added to pique interest:

lovepeas · June 2013

Played this last night and really enjoyed it. Nice job.

oggbrox · June 2013

Holy hell.

I LOVE YOU, DUDE! This was so **** good! THE END... BLOODY BRILLIANT! You are a genius! What an atmosphere!
The whole build-up was simply amazing. This is how quests should look like!
Already the first map gave me the chills. Real horror-crime-thriller-feeling! Woah! You could cut the air.

EPIC Endstage. Simply EPIC! Also REALLY loved the end when the boss is done. Please... please... can I post a screenshot? Or is that too much spoiling?

I got some questions for you, if that is okay!?

- I swear... there was a drow or something in one of the corridors! He dissapeared like a **** ghost! What trick was this?
- The goblins are drinking beer. I thought, that enemies can't get animations?
- One of the stronger goblins... he got a pretty big sword... and at the end of the fight... he went... big!? Am I insanse or was that real?
- At the end magical signs appeared... and then disappeared... again... what is the trick?

I only found one point that I didn't like:

- At 242 0 321 is a torch in the wall.

lol!

Btw: Your writing is superb. Real pleasant style of writing with a good amount of niveau.

You can see... you got a new fan. I'm excited about you! Will put your quest in my signature.
Are you working on a new one? Hope so, man! I got a big grin on my face!

Love you, Neverwinter and the Foundry!

zahinder · June 2013

Also really liked this quest. Great interactions and well-crafted environments.

winterswitch · June 2013

You've shown the way, my friend. This quest stands among the VERY best work I've seen come out of the Foundry. It's deeply entertaining.

I hope the daily speedrunners never find out about your quest. Almost all of them are incapable of appreciating something like this. I have a few suggestions, but feel free to ignore them. The freaking thing is perfect:

--dialogue at your horse: "correspondence" is misspelled
--the logbook: set off the middle phrase with commas (Many names are listed, corroborating....months, of isolated...)
--during The Descent: a duergar encounter popped in such a way that the mobs were buried up to their waists (coords -35, -248)
--in the final chamber dialogue, the word "has" is missing (...whispering has been silenced...); also, I don't believe the interactables in this chamber were active the first time I visited. Not sure if this is intentional.

Loved the "captive audience" room, the details in the metallurgy area, the design of the outdoor prelude map, the timing of the final string of encounters. ****.

pavvo · June 2013

Very very cool quest. Really really loved the last bit. Mind telling me what map that was? You can PM me if you don't want to say it out here.

Outstanding work! Definitely deserving of 5 stars and the maximum tip.

Appreciate if you could give my quest - Amulet of the Shining Sun- NW-DRKKGUI26 a walkthrough and give me some pointers on how to spruce it up. Once again, bravo sir

varna · June 2013

Big thanks to everyone who took a chance and helped get some plays and reviews in. The map is now reward-eligible! I would still love to see more people give it a try. I have some small tweaks to the environment and encounter positioning I'd like to implement along with some minor text fixes and tweaking some invisible walls. Hopefully I can get the map submitted for featuring and make a post in the spotlight forum if the tools ever come back online.

@oggbrox You are not crazy, there was definitely a "certain" NPC that was set up very carefully to give you only a glimpse of him at the end of a hallway. The way NPCs disappear when set to "disappear when" happens to be a nice slow "fade out" effect, and I have it hooked up to a position marker. You can definitely assign animations to any NPC. The way I did it with encounters was I believe to set their behavior as "animate" or something like that-- they will stand in place and perform the assigned animation, then attack when you get near like a normal encounter. Gaoler Zog, the goblin that "gets big" is a Berserker Foulspawn encounter that's wearing a goblin costume. As for the magical signs, you are probably referring to an effect called "demonic summoning" I think. It's listed in the FX details.

@winterswitch Copyediting notes are greatly appreciated. There's not a huge volume of text in the quest but it's all been re-written many times and I'm only human. I'll definitely get those fixes in as soon as I can. The props in the final chamber not being interactive until the very end was a deliberate decision for a variety of reasons-- mostly I thought it would be weird to walk around reading books and examining doodads with a monster right next to you.

@pavvo The finale map is actually nothing more than a medium size completely flat outdoor map. Absolutely everything you see in there was hand placed to build that environment. A lot of the objects in that map are actually strategically placed to obscure the corners of the square map plane from being obvious once you start to get too high in elevation! I'll see if I can give your map a spin at some point.

oggbrox · June 2013

Thanks for the kind reply, bro!

Have posted a screenie into the "...of the week"-thread. Hope that is Okay for you.

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?175571-Foundry-Screenshot-of-the-Week&p=4513801&viewfull=1#post4513801

gorgothus · June 2013

Yup I highly recommend new authors and old check this quest out. (Btw I too thought I saw something at the end if the hall)

I thought my quest was "finished" until I had this one. Simply brilliant.

Now if the darn foundry was up...

antonkyle · June 2013

That was great, I hope you do more.

varna · June 2013

Clash of Wills has made it onto the "Best" tab! Hopefully it will continue to clamber up the totem pole and see more plays.

With the Foundry back online, I've just pushed a new version of the mission that contains some corrections and minor tweaks to dialog, some minor adjustment of enemy positions, some minor decor changes in a few spots, and a couple new FX objects. Most importantly, I made some adjustments to invisible walls that should help prevent a rare case where players could not proceed on Map 3, and a change to the spawn point in map 4 to prevent players from sometimes spawning in the floor.

I've also submitted the map for featuring within the Foundry tools, and I might make a thread in the spotlight forums if no new glaring issues crop up.

gorgothus · June 2013

Good luck Varna!

varna · June 2013

After correcting a few more minor issues and making some more small environmental refinements, I've submitted a "complete" version of the map for featuring and created a Foundry Spotlight thread. There are still some rare or superficial technical issues that I would like to totally fix, but most of the lingering problems are either beyond my control (such as the quest trail not playing nicely with custom environments) or uncommon enough that they do not merit the extremely tedious "hard" solutions that I would have to put in place to totally preclude them.

As of this post, Clash of Wills has climbed up to the number 2 spot on the Best tab (not counting the featured quests that are pinned to the top 3 spots) with an aggregate review score of 4.43 and closing in rapidly on 4000 plays.

I was confident that I had created at the very least a "good" mission, and I expected some modest level of success, but I certainly did not anticipate such an enthusiastic response. Definitely not when I was skulking around in various foundry chat channels and forum threads coercing people to try the mission one and two at a time. So, big thanks again to all the early reviewers who helped get things off the ground.

mlimanardja · August 2013

Hi,

I tried A Clash of Wills today and everything was working just fine until I have to jump down the hole. The hole is not showing any "sparkling" graphic which prevents me from interacting with it. I've killed all the mobs and interacted with all the other things on the map.

Am I missing something or is this a known bug?

Thank you.

aerialx10 · August 2013

mlimanardja wrote: »

Hi,

I tried A Clash of Wills today and everything was working just fine until I have to jump down the hole. The hole is not showing any "sparkling" graphic which prevents me from interacting with it. I've killed all the mobs and interacted with all the other things on the map.

Am I missing something or is this a known bug?

Thank you.

This happened to me last night, too. I was really disappointed. I was enjoying the quest immensely.

invinciblehound · August 2013

aerialx10 wrote: »

This happened to me last night, too. I was really disappointed. I was enjoying the quest immensely.

The same for me. There's no entry point at the hole.

rockaholic2350 · August 2013

Yup am experiencing the same error.. No entry point in the hole.. tried playing from the start atleast 5 times.. Please fix..am dieing to complete the quest

runebane · August 2013

rockaholic2350 wrote: »

Yup am experiencing the same error.. No entry point in the hole.. tried playing from the start atleast 5 times.. Please fix..am dieing to complete the quest

Pretty sure the hole is a teleporter. The last patch broke some of them and Cryptic asked authors not to fix the issue themselves as they are working on it.

jfinderdev · August 2013

Yes, the hole is a teleporter, and in fact this quest was one of the test cases we used to verify we fixed all the teleporters correctly.

Also, this quest is amazing. I think everyone should play it.

plinck · August 2013

jfinderdev wrote: »

Yes, the hole is a teleporter, and in fact this quest was one of the test cases we used to verify we fixed all the teleporters correctly.

Unfortunately, The Descent teleporter hole is still not working for me. Is there something special that I need to do to get it to work, or is it just a bug?

eldarth · August 2013

plinck wrote: »

Unfortunately, The Descent teleporter hole is still not working for me. Is there something special that I need to do to get it to work, or is it just a bug?

Nope, not working for me either -- but I tried running the Aug 23rd version which is probably NOT the featured version. Supposedly Cryptic "fixed" the featured version.

Edit: Since I couldn't leave a five-star review -- I will say it was an excellent quest up to that point. The scenery, the attention to detail was all top notch. I'll definitely have to revisit once this fiasco is settled.

oldswamper · September 2013

I reached the broken teleporter hole with the "Find the remaining Bucklers" instruction still showing. It is a really nicely done adventure up to the breakdown point. I hope to complete it soon.

-Swampy

anubisbeorn · September 2013

i would like to say it was a fun quest i hope they fix the teleporter i want to finish this one.

marcioandre · September 2013

I was going ok in here, fighting and slashing all the way, spent a lot of pots since my healing companion was training, then I get stalled. I thought "maybe I'm missing something here... a lever or so". I looked everywhere, but nothing. Until I come here thinking of asking some tips about what to do next, and I read the quest is bugged in the teleporter...

For the little I've seen, this quest seems very good. But I can't go on any further until they fix that spot.

ciaoperative · September 2013

Hi,

I am having the same problem is everybody else. I cannot interact with the dark pit (teleporter) to proceed and I am stuck.

Can you please help me?

A Clash of Wills NW-DQ8I5BZSF

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