Which do you personally have more fun playing? Foundry Quests or Developer Quests?

hiddenfate · December 2013

After looking through the foundry and being slightly disappointed I'm wondering what gameplay other players prefer. Do you have more fun when playing through foundry quests or when playing developer made quests. This is subjective which means there's no wrong answer (unless you say the game isn't fun in which case you're wrong. Your opinion is wrong. Get out.)

cheesegromit · December 2013

Tough to say. I've played a few foundry quests many times, e.g. Old Jerry, because I liked the design, pacing and humour. I would consider it hard to find good quality foundry content though. Sadly lack of time and lack of in-game rewards mean I haven't put any effort into finding/playing new foundry quests for quite some time.

Dev quests are ok, though I can only think of one stands out. Favourite quest goes to A Lich's Lament, no contest.

mconosrep · December 2013

In general I find that the best Foundries are superior to the best in-game storyline and combat. However, the Lich's Lament quest (http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/A_Lich%27s_Lament) in Neverwinter Graveyard is my absolute favourite in any MMO or indeed RPG. Wonderful setup and perfectly voice-acted.

eldarth · December 2013

I didn't vote -- 'cause I have more fun playing with the Foundry Editor!

ranncore · December 2013

Foundry quests are boring. If I could make group oriented quests in the Foundry, or PvP maps, I'd never log into the actual game. I can't remember the last time I ran one.

I don't log into an MMO to solo, and the only time I have for doing so is spent in Sharandar or Dread Ring.

Foundry quests have sub-par XP, pitiful rewards, no challenge. In my opinion, it was a great idea that went nowhere.

It wouldn't even take relevant rewards to make Foundry quests interesting for me - all it would take is group scaling. If I could make challenging content in the Foundry to supplement end-game material in terms of difficulty, I'd be there all day long.

Ideally, Foundry quests set in campaign areas would give rewards relevant to the campaign, and the difficulty for Foundry quests should be adjustable so that authors can make end-game material with chances to drop setless purples and that had real bosses, as well as PvP maps (I seriously have no idea why there aren't more than 2 PvP maps, I could crank out 10 of these a day in the Foundry if I was able to).

trapublican · December 2013

Foundy by far. Some of them are hilarious and most are much better thought out than the kill x or fetch x quests you're granted from NPCs.

eldarth · January 2014

ranncore wrote: »

(I seriously have no idea why there aren't more than 2 PvP maps, I could crank out 10 of these a day in the Foundry if I was able to).

And therein lies (one of) the problem.

If you and every other Foundry author cranked out 10 maps each, which of the 20,000 PVP Foundry Maps do you queue to play?

Edit: Oh, and my "Old Magic" and "Under Siege!" quests scale to 2 maybe 3. My new "Arena of Calimport" attempts to scale for 1-5 PCs. There is an "Adjustable Difficulty" search tag and if people like you would actually help authors who DO try and adjust their difficulty by providing honest, constructive ideas on how well things work with multiple PCs there might be more generated.

tornnomar · January 2014

When leveling a new character I find myself doing foundry quests to compensate for the experience loss from mission(s) I choose not to do because they are simply boring after having done them a few times. Joseph/Dorthea Linkletter for example.
I'll hit the foundry and do a couple of runs and be entertained rather than have to hear "there's yet another secret passage!"

I have fun in both when leveling. After 60, I generally only touch the foundry when Neverember has it as a daily, or if I wanna do something while waiting for something to start like GG or a DD event.

charononus · January 2014

Main quests if mostly for the lairs.

Most main quests aren't difficult but neither is foundry. Lairs aren't difficult but some you have to pay attention.

Foundries are easy, have poor xp, have poor loot, are mostly fan-fiction which I consider bad (some good ones but few and far between).

I only step into the foundry now when I have the lord protectors daily and the regular foundry, and for some reason want rough ad.

ambisinisterr · January 2014

The Foundry Content is far superior.

Bad loot? Yes.
Bad XP? Yes.
Too Solo minded? Yes.

None of those are the fault of the Foundry Authors.
Strip away those issues and compare them for the actual content and Foundry Content is far more enjoyable.

Better Stories.
Interesting Areas.
Better character development.

The top 5% of Foundry Content makes any Dev Content seem bland.
But those shortcomings, that need to be improved by the developers and not the authors, drag down the enjoyment level quite a bit.

Content is a very specific term. Saying the developer content is better because of the rewards and incentives is a truly incorrect way to gauge the "fun" of the content. I don't do Foundry Content often because of the horrible rewards but the content itself is far more enjoyable than the Developer Content.

The Foundry has more enjoyable content killed by bad mechanics out of their control.

cheesegromit wrote: »

I would consider it hard to find good quality foundry content though

It is quite literally impossible to find good content when limiting the time frame to 15 minutes.
The best content is 15-45 minutes in length as they have enough time to build more in depth storylines and can provide more interesting options in the objective development past kill this rinse and repeat.

When you look for 15 minute quests you are going to find a myriad of daily farm kill quests. That simply has no hope of being anything substantial. And again this is the fault of the developers for making a bad daily reward system.

If you try the longer content you will find better content but it will be less rewarding in terms of the daily which is why I keep pushing them to adjust the horrendous system currently in place.

eldarth · January 2014

ambisinisterr wrote: »

The Foundry Content is far superior.

Bad loot? Yes.
Bad XP? Yes.
Too Solo minded? Yes.

None of those are the fault of the Foundry Authors.
...
The Foundry has more enjoyable content killed by bad mechanics out of their control.
...

Amen. +A Gazillion! "Sign" here... :rolleyes:

Requests/Suggestions

fudgecak1 · January 2014

[QUOTE=ranncore;6919521
Foundry quests have sub-par XP, pitiful rewards, no challenge. In my opinion, it was a great idea that went nowhere.[/QUOTE]

The reality is the foundry is too gimped, they are holding the reigns to tightly because of their F2P model and desire to make money. They should rethink F2P only and release a single player portion of the game for a modest fee ($20-30$) with an upgrades foundry editor.

As long as you can't add models/textues/levels/new items/better dialogue system/etc. The foundry quests tend to be pretty limited in what they can create because of the purposely gimped editor.

If they want seriously good player made content they are going to have to upgrade what players are able to change but I doubt they will because they are so gungho F2P. They need to rethink F2P only strategy and try to make a full SP single player game to sell with a full on foundry editor, then they can finally have a real community.

charononus · January 2014

fudgecak1 wrote: »

The reality is the foundry is too gimped, they are holding the reigns to tightly because of their F2P model and desire to make money. They should rethink F2P only and release a single player portion of the game for a modest fee ($20-30$) with an upgrades foundry editor.

As long as you can't add models/textues/levels/new items/better dialogue system/etc. The foundry quests tend to be pretty limited in what they can create because of the purposely gimped editor.

If they want seriously good player made content they are going to have to upgrade what players are able to change but I doubt they will because they are so gungho F2P. They need to rethink F2P only strategy and try to make a full SP single player game to sell with a full on foundry editor, then they can finally have a real community.

While I very much agree with what has been said by ambisinister, and it sounds like you do too. Why in the world do you think that f2p is the problem and that a single player version would make it better? Turning this game into single player would eliminate many peoples (including mine) interest in the game.

Turning the game single player doesn't fix any problem with the foundry. It doesn't add in better loot, xp, ad rewards, boss fights, or bug fixes with the search. All it would do is eliminate those that play it because it's an mmo from the playerbase. Let's face it, this is a decent mmo but it would be a horrible single player game. The story and quests aren't developed to the level that's needed for it, and never will be as mmo's are designed with different things in mind.

diogene0 · January 2014

There's a lot of poorly designed quets the foundry. And this game isn't made for storytelling, but still, that's what foundry authors try to do. The lore of D&D is imo a bit poor and there's nothing much to say I would gladly read.

That's just my opinion but this isn't Star Trek online. The foundry there is great, here it's just player created content and it's not fun to play. Since there's no story about neverwinter i want to read, there's nothing I want to see in the foundry.

The lack of skill nodes is also a killer for me. There's no way i play a solo dungeon without getting all of them. Celadaine or the new dread ring quests just have better rewards, so why bothering trying to find something interesting in that ocean of uninteresting quests?

charononus · January 2014

diogene0 wrote: »

There's a lot of poorly designed quets the foundry. And this game isn't made for storytelling, but still, that's what foundry authors try to do. The lore of D&D is imo a bit poor and there's nothing much to say I would gladly read.

That's just my opinion but this isn't Star Trek online. The foundry there is great, here it's just player created content and it's not fun to play. Since there's no story about neverwinter i want to read, there's nothing I want to see in the foundry.

The lack of skill nodes is also a killer for me. There's no way i play a solo dungeon without getting all of them. Celadaine or the new dread ring quests just have better rewards, so why bothering trying to find something interesting in that ocean of uninteresting quests?

Oh so much this skill nodes really make the foundry poorer. That said I can see why we can't add them as it'd be really easy to create a farm quest with skill nodes that would break things. Not really sure what a better solution to that would be.

I disagree with dnd not having lore, it has tons of lore. However I'm not sure FR has the most interesting lore out of the dnd settings. FR is fun, however other settings aren't as overdone which is the main problem with FR. FR is kind of like the song on the radio that you like the first few times but the stations start playing it a couple times an hour for six months and by the end of that time you just almost hate the artist for writing the song.

hiddenfate · January 2014

eldarth wrote: »

And therein lies (one of) the problem.

If you and every other Foundry author cranked out 10 maps each, which of the 20,000 PVP Foundry Maps do you queue to play?

I will take this question

You could grade foundry developers based on their released maps and only give PvP tools to those who are graded high enough. Next you could set up two rotations of PvP Foundry maps that players can queue for, the "testing" rotation and the "accepted" rotation. Players joining the testing rotation receive extra rewards for giving their feedback and suggestions on the maps, and the best maps from the testing rotation would be migrated over to the accepted rotation after, say, a month or so.

This ensures a steady stream of new map creation and a simple script could prepare a daily list of which accepted maps will appear in rotation that day (then move them to the idle bin for a few days to give the other maps a try).

If we ever get too many maps in rotation then they could create a special Foundry PvP map section where you get a party of 8 players together (add a checkbox to the party menu for foundry pvp prepared) and duke it out. Rewards for this section will be minuscule to avoid grinding, so it'll just be for the fun of it.

charononus wrote: »

Oh so much this skill nodes really make the foundry poorer. That said I can see why we can't add them as it'd be really easy to create a farm quest with skill nodes that would break things. Not really sure what a better solution to that would be..

They could place a limit to the number of skill nodes that can appear (say a maximum of 2 with only a 50% chance of appearing altogether). That way it's a chance but it's not a gamebreaker either.

eldarth · January 2014

hiddenfate wrote: »

You could grade foundry developers based on their released maps and only give PvP tools to those who are graded high enough.

...and by the currently "graded" foundry quests -- instead of 20,000 maps, we would have 19,990 "Pit of ..." PVP maps.

I think the rest of your idea (testing, rotation, accepted) maps while decent would become completely swamped and ineffective by the flood of new "pit of ..." maps.

eldarth · January 2014

hiddenfate wrote: »

They could place a limit to the number of skill nodes that can appear (say a maximum of 2 with only a 50% chance of appearing altogether). That way it's a chance but it's not a gamebreaker either.

Non exploitable author placed Skill Nodes

hiddenfate · January 2014

eldarth wrote: »

...and by the currently "graded" foundry quests -- instead of 20,000 maps, we would have 19,990 "Pit of ..." PVP maps.

I think the rest of your idea (testing, rotation, accepted) maps while decent would become completely swamped and ineffective by the flood of new "pit of ..." maps.

Obviously not the same grading system as now...a "decent" grading system >.> the one now is embarrassing.

Which do you personally have more fun playing? Foundry Quests or Developer Quests?

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