Perhaps if cryptic added flag that is set to true when the player either interacts with something new or kills a mob, and have that flag reset to false after x amount of time. The player can only earn XP while the flag is set to true. This would reasonably limit the player to earning XP by actually interacting with something, rather than hoping around via macro or bot.
Campaign - Trail of the Imaskarcana (NWS-DMFG77QOF)
Perhaps if cryptic added flag that is set to true when the player either interacts with something new or kills a mob, and have that flag reset to false after x amount of time. The player can only earn XP while the flag is set to true. This would reasonably limit the player to earning XP by actually interacting with something, rather than hoping around via macro or bot.
And geared people that can do the dungeon at a run would get screwed because it takes them 1/4 of the time or less to run it than a casual player. This is not a good system.
And geared people that can do the dungeon at a run would get screwed because it takes them 1/4 of the time or less to run it than a casual player. This is not a good system.
Just add in the gear score scaling of encounters as mentioned earlier. That'd also make content challenging for 60+.
imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
edited January 2015
There is very little that I can think of that could potentially be exploited in a foundry that hasn't already been exploited in the main game.
I'm frankly tired of the argument that they can't put in a reward system because people will find a way to exploit it, given the rampant exploiting that goes on in the main game already.
If you make the rewards bind to account on pickup, and make them cosmetics, transmutes, and green level mounts and/or companions, then there is pretty much no game balance effect that could happen *even if* someone found a way to massively exploit it to get those things without actual play.
We need a reward system. It's time they added one, instead of fretting about possible exploits.
If you make the rewards bind to account on pickup, and make them cosmetics, transmutes, and green level mounts and/or companions,
Since I think rewards are the big thing that need to change, I just want to put in a little opinion on this. Other than some, repeat some companions with good actives, everything on this list is vendor trash and wouldn't motivate me to step into a foundry what so ever, especially if they were bound so that I couldn't even sell them to someone that did find them to be something other than trash.
I would like to see gear rewards that continue to take the player's level and gear score into account in the final chest and throughout. I am happy with the higher level encounter drops topping off at blue, but that the end chest NEVER gives out better than green is ludicrous. Anyone 60+ has NO use for that, and many have no use even for blues except to sell them for AD. I really think that gear score should factor into the challenge and reward levels, and if the player is at a certain point, then purples in the end chest should be possible.
I would also love it if authors could design either transmutes for items, or else item templates which could appear in end-rewards. The former would be bound, and cosmetic, so that they wouldn't break anything, but we the authors would get to give them a name, a tooltip, and design the look, to give something exclusive to a particular foundry. The latter "item template" would be to provide an actual item that provided bonuses. In a way, it is just an extension of the former idea, only it's a real item (not just cosmetic) and the author gets to decide what type of bonus it gets, such as a bonus to critical, defense, or bonus HP. The degree of those bonuses, however, would scale with the level of the player character (and/or gear score as mentioned before) to make it relevant, but not so good as to be easily exploitable.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited January 2015
In subscription based games cosmetics are the easy answer reward.
"We want to give an incentive to do this activity but we don't want to break the game in any way. Well let's just put in some cosmetics"
In subscription models this works great because the company already gets its money from having access to the game...unfortunately this logic has followed some of the F2P Devs and the players.
In a free to play game the company should be focusing on selling cosmetics. Not giving them away with *coughs*events*coughs* I mean content. Okay, jokes up, yeah I don't agree with the cash shop having such a limited amount of cosmetic items and so many being given away from the game's content.
Giving cosmetics away for free is like creating your own competition. Certainly it should be done from time to time but it shouldn't be the go to answer like it currently is in Neverwinter. And for all the naysayers who say "I won't pay for anything that doesn't give me gameplay benefit" I have three words for you: League of Legends. If you really won't pay for cosmetics then that is great news for you. Enjoy the game for free!
So to tie this together...
We have enough cosmetics being given away. The devs need to stop taking the easy answer because that causes them to rely on way too many "convenience" purchases for comfort. Instead The Foundry should focus on giving RP rewards, unique items, new enchantments (including weapon and armor?), campaign-style rewards...etc.
What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
The foundry is the best part of the game because some quests/adventures are better than official dungeons. Official dungeons are nothing but long hack & slash skirmishes with bosses. It is very nice to solve puzzles, clues, and generally the mood is more D&Dish than official material.
It is fun playing foundry to level alts once you have leveled you first character through the official game.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
There are a lot of useless foundries in the list, made by people who just want to exploit the game. These people should be banned. Also foundry stop at level 60. nobody would do foundries at level 60. I like doing foundries even for small rewards, but NOT for no rewards.
Traps. these are completely useless. nobody dies for traps. These must be LETHAL. Now they are ludicrous.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
You need to give authors possibility to make DUNGEONS. This because some of the authors are better than official devs that made the official dungeons. Authors need to have possibility to make 5 people instances/dungeons and the loot must be decent. I would like to play ONLY foundry at max level (60) because it is not fun doing daily missions over and over and over godzillion times.
Authors should be rewarded for publishing high quality materials. Some of them need to be rewarded at least with ZEN. AT LEAST. Other that abuse the game need to be banned forever. There is need to have more control on who publishes and what is published.
Too many : "fast quest to get rewards" type of foundry. Authors that work with players to abuse the system to get fast the daily foundry quest. These must be banned. Authors banned. Players suspended for some time.
we need less foundries available but of giher quality.
Also there is need to have a different foundry browser. On top of list there are always the same ones.
Final considerations:
devs, you need to understand that daily missions and farming is not what people want. Farming is something that you can do better in other games. and farming is NOT FUN for most of the people.
This game should focus on foundry adventures and campaigns.
Main focus should be foundries. I think if you manage to move the bull's eye on the foundries you will get even more money. And if you consider that you can get help by a lot of good authors that are making now incredible foundry adventures.....
I know that people consider Foundry a LOST CAUSE. I hope it is not and if it is, remember that the game will die because of daily missions farming.
Daily missions are boring and for pvp there are better games out there.
The problem with real purple level equipment as rewards and/or rp points, is that it could be easily exploitable, unless they do the work to police foundry quests themselves efficiently, which I assume they prefer not to do, considering how they've handled it in the past.
EDIT: Also what I would really really like to add to the foundry. the option to upload music to it. I'm a musician and custom music can add a whole new experience to a quest.
please let us upload custom music, if you want, make it so each track has to be validated before being aviable, to prevent people uploading copyrighted music or just a song that says "*****" a thousand times.
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imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
We have enough cosmetics being given away. The devs need to stop taking the easy answer because that causes them to rely on way too many "convenience" purchases for comfort. Instead The Foundry should focus on giving RP rewards, unique items, new enchantments (including weapon and armor?), campaign-style rewards...etc.
For cosmetic items to be a significant source of zen sales, they need a different system than they've got. Three slots for cosmetics is not sufficient if they really want to get some zen sales going. More slots = more variety = more sales. And the cosmetic items in the zen store need to be cheaper. Right now most people, even those who like cosmetics, would never consider buying them from the zen store because they are so overpriced, and so limited.
That said, the reason I proposed cosmetics as a reward for Foundry is that they have resisted so firmly giving ANYTHING that actually impacts game play, because of the possibility of exploits. You're right, I'd love to see unique purples from a Foundry Token shop the same way they have them in the PvP shop. I'd like to see RP rewards, new enchants, campaign-style rewards. But unless we get an entire new crew of people in charge, I don't see the current ones doing any of that.
The could add cosmetics and mounts/companions that can be either bought with Zen or for free in the foundry. that way some people will buy them, and others will play the foundry, and cryptic gets both more people spending and more people playing foundry quests.
That doesn't stop farming foundry quests though.
The could add cosmetics and mounts/companions that can be either bought with Zen or for free in the foundry. that way some people will buy them, and others will play the foundry, and cryptic gets both more people spending and more people playing foundry quests.
That doesn't stop farming foundry quests though.
Or even cosmetics for companion / mount, making them customizable may be a new thing who won't impact gameplay and if you have like me the cheaper zen mount, seeing it every corner ... Well i know that it could be hard to implement because of differents mounts ... but at least for most horse it should be easy enough to do so (for mechanical mount it can be color, text or other things ...)
But well it may be outside of foundry so ... Well anyways it's posted, if it give them ideas ...
EDIT: Also what I would really really like to add to the foundry. the option to upload music to it. I'm a musician and custom music can add a whole new experience to a quest.
please let us upload custom music, if you want, make it so each track has to be validated before being aviable, to prevent people uploading copyrighted music or just a song that says "*****" a thousand times.
So, you and a thousand other authors upload 15 minutes of music say once a month.
That's 250 hours of (present company excepted) probably amateurish music that "someone" has to listen to every minute of -- after all, what's to prevent anyone from say "*****" a dozen times at mark 14:45?
I really doubt thousand of authors will upload custom made music, also it's a suggestion. I would prefer total liberty to upload whatever the hell we want (music wise) and if there's a problem with a certain one then it can be reported, be it copyright issues or nasty language. It's not like you can exploit music anyway.
In champions online if your costume is too close to an existing character, you can be reported, in here it would be the same.
you report a music from a quest (or the quest itself) and then someone checks if it's valid or not.
Regarding traps: I agree with the general sentiment being expressed in this thread that traps need to be much more lethal than they are now. As it is, if I step on a trap, the flash of red makes me jump, but then I just go, "oh, a trap." There have been times I wanted to make heavily trapped areas, but the insignificance of traps makes it kind of pointless. They are an annoyance and a minor "hit point tax" more than a danger. I wouldn't go so far as to say that traps should one-shot you (that leads more to frustration than a sense of being challenged), but a 1/2 or even 3/4 max HP trap would be great. That way if you're healthy, it gives you a chance to down some healing potions or get to a respawn point before you die, but if you have been hit, or run into one during combat, you go down hard.
But I really want there to be more variety in traps anyway. Pit traps, rooms with water filling up (I have one of these in a quest I am making, but it requires a lot of water planes tied to drop timers), and some more damage over time, and AoE traps.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
For cosmetic items to be a significant source of zen sales, they need a different system than they've got. Three slots for cosmetics is not sufficient if they really want to get some zen sales going.
All things I have criticized. However they need to address those problems and add cosmetics into the shop.
The shortcomings of the inventory mechanics and store need to be fixed rather than be an excuse to continue giving cosmetics away for free and charging to skip play time.
Yes the Foundry is in this lackluster state because of fear of exploitation but as has been said numerous times within this thread; Cryptic should have never taken that stance. In order for the Foundry to succeed they need to set some rules and enforce them.
This means breaking a few eggs to make an omlette. Yes people who are used to their rule violating quests will throw a fit and stop playing like they did when the game was first released. I didn't miss them when the devs actually policed the foundry and I won't miss them now. They need to look at this as a benefit for the game because in order for the foundry to be a draw source it needs to have some standard of quality.
Don't deny everybody something shiny because of a few bad apples. Put in some rules and enforce them. Improve the report system so that players with higher report accuracy get prioritized report reviews and trolls who report things falsely get lower (if not ignored) reports. Invest in the continued maintenance of the foundry.
Think of it as a roadway. You can't just put down a road without setting some rules for traffic flow and every once in a while you will have to either police those breaking the rules or fix the potholes.
Regarding traps: the Legend of Grimrock editor lets you place "emitters", and you can attach any spell effect to one via a drop-down. So for instance you can emit fireballs, lightning, poison gas, etc. You can also place receivers for emitted effects that can trigger other things (doors, timers, counters, other traps, trapdoors, basically anything that can be triggered). A few simple additions to the "special" tab would do wonders.
Harper Chronicles: Cap Snatchers (RELEASED) - NW-DPUTABC6X Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
I know some authors really want very dangerous traps but only one class can deal with them as they are currently built. Remember in NWN how every class, no matter what they were, had the ability to see and disarm traps? Otherwise you would have had to play a rogue every time.
Until there is something like that I don't think deadfall style traps are likely to be in the game.
Find me in game with @DoctorBadger (Un)Academic Field Work Foundry Campaign: NWS-DAPZB2CTZ
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imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
I know some authors really want very dangerous traps but only one class can deal with them as they are currently built. Remember in NWN how every class, no matter what they were, had the ability to see and disarm traps? Otherwise you would have had to play a rogue every time.
Until there is something like that I don't think deadfall style traps are likely to be in the game.
The traps would need to be something that you can avoid if you're clever, perceptive, or skillful, or can avoid entirely if you've got a rogue with you. That other D&D MMO does traps quite well, I think, and I'd like to see something along that level. That way, if you're not playing a rogue, you can get past them, but if you're playing a rogue, you can easily get past them. After all, this is a D&D game, and that's (among other things) what rogues do in D&D.
I know some authors really want very dangerous traps but only one class can deal with them as they are currently built. Remember in NWN how every class, no matter what they were, had the ability to see and disarm traps? Otherwise you would have had to play a rogue every time.
Until there is something like that I don't think deadfall style traps are likely to be in the game.
Not all traps have to kill or even cause damage. Think spike-pit without the spikes. Now the adventurer must figure a way out of it... this could create awesome puzzle-type quests, except there is no XP or any other kind of player-reward for quests that focus on this sort of style. Everything has to be pew-pew unfortunately. But, even having the spike-pit they use in Ebon Downs would be nice (have they added that one, yet?).
Authors want to create a sense of danger and this is really hard to do with no real Boss-type encounters (doesn't have to be real bosses, but really difficult encounters) and existing traps - though they can cause real damage at specific player-levels cause minimal, minor damage at other player levels (they don;t seem to scale to player level reliably).
Hell, I'm still waiting for them to add basic *levers*.
I can work around most of the authoring shortcoming if only they'd find a way to incentivize more players to actually play the non-Featured stuff.
whay about putting several traps together? would it do more damage? or is there a restriction on how close you can put traps?
back to the original topic, I'd really LOVE if they could actually police the foundry more looking for exploits and delete them and then enable us to get better rewards, but considering the amount of new quests that are submitted everyday, I think it would be a lot of work for them.
Please take a few minutes to answer the following questions:
What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
The foundry is a good tool for creating your own adventures. there is an excellent variety of assets, such as the room builder parts (though they are time consuming to correctly place). Quests are very easy to add into the world, being able to place a location anywhere on the map, or use any existing quest entrance. Being a Dungeon Master, I greatly enjoy the chance to make adventures for this game.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
Unfortunately, foundry falls short in many areas. There are many limitations, which have proven completely ineffective at stopping exploiters, instead holding back REAL foundry authors. There are also many features that are still needed, and foundry can be very buggy. I wouldn't say I wish it was never implemented into neverwinter, but it can be very frustrating at times.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
First off, I want to be able to add a final battle with a dragon. Dragons are my favorite monster from D&D, making excellent main villains, and challenging fights. The ability to add boss battles would be excellent. One of the features foundry really needs is to be able to make custom encounters! The pre-made encounters make us have to disguise nasher hexers as the lizardfolk shaman in the final room. Simply give us the monsters, and tell us the details of balancing encounters. I would remove, or at least loosen, the limitations. If you want an imp farm, FINE. It ruins the game for you, but that's your problem. The limits aren't stopping them anyway. Finally, fix the bugs! I spent an hour yesterday trying to fix my foundry character...
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
Halo's Forge allows users to create custom maps, which allow for more variety if the standard maps become boring. Halo players can also customize the game modes, having many, many options to make a session interesting.
The game ROBLOX is an MMO which revolves around user-made content. Using the studio, players can actually create entirely new games using the basic framework of the ROBLOX game engine. The motivation for doing this, is that the more people visit your game, the more ingame currency you are awarded. furthermore, since ROBLOX as a whole has nothing to 'farm', there is no point in making games for this purpose.
+10000 to magenubbie's post.
I agree that if the foundry was given more attention, and us authors had more freedom to create things (with a way to prevent massive exploiting, that is) Neverwinter could potentially be a huge thing.
First off, I've written books before so can and would have little problem writing a creative, interesting foundry, even leading to a campaign. To be honest, I've not tried to do it for various reasons, one being time vs reward. It is a unique system, one which makes the game special compared to others, and I will attempt making one now that I've become more hooked on neverwinter, (not sure if the game has improved that much over the last year or so for others but definitely feels more developed for me right now... inc. recent winter events!!!)
Secondly, I'd like to publically thank those that do make the foundries. I've played more good than bad. It'd be nice though to have specific recommendations on what's new and may be interesting to player X rather than player Y.
Bear in mind that I am very much pro-Foundry, as it keeps us, the players, thinking about our role in the world, creatively as much as anything else. Most MMO's say "you saved the world" etc, etc but we all know we are one of many who played the campaign. So creating a foundry is OUR individual part of the world that ALL can see, we are part of the world and loved (hopefully) by the many reviewers.
My gripes about foundry missions from 15 min dailies for astral diamonds to campaigns for those who want a big journey -
1) loot is varied, and sometimes can get too much if you don't have extra bags. You have to price up the loot in the inventory and discard some. That kinda spoils the effect, adds time. Also, specific role loot at the end would be better for me than random pickups everywhere. Someone posted to say a ranking system / level system for loot would be cool... I like that. I would also offer something like in the Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter series where Cespenar or Deekin etc could forge a unique, great item out of several parts, i.e Bow, bow string, etc.
Every so many foundries you get a unique part that makes the item more special so it levels up with you. You get the wood, then a cast, then the Bow would be forged, you find a unique enchantment, then you get a special string, then special arrows every so far in the foundry Campaign, tailored to whichever role the player is. This makes you want to keep doing them. The RPG element moves from the player to the player and his weapon/armour. You would care for the item like a companion or even the main character.
2. Some missions in the foundry say they will take X amount of time, but end up 3x the time. Frustrating and I know that a certain role may fly through it but a cleric may struggle. Also give us the visible option to drop out and continue at another time in-case it is taking too long. We all have jobs, families too, so getting caught by a never-ending mission is infuriating. It's like "WTF? there's more goblins??!!"
3. As I've not designed a mission, it may be possible already, but most missions seem to be just farms for loot or skirmishes. Some element of puzzles would be great and in keeping with the D+D universe. I like how the Sword Coast adventures offers simple puzzles like "the mirror talks to you..."... you then role dice. But implementing a whole well written story without fighting and with fun puzzles would make a change from hacking through twenty goblins. We can do that outside of the foundry and away from the possible foundry mission bugs that may be lurking. Keeping us in game doesn't always have to be about killing everything. A thievery foundry where stealth is advised would be cool etc - especially if we were rewarded for being stealthier. Or a mission where you get riddled by a dragon who spawns enemies when you get it wrong until you get it right etc.
4. The daily foundries for diamonds should be changed etc. Some may just do them for the shiny diamonds- that shouldn't be criticised etc, but how about the longer the event the more diamonds you get after the foundry has been done, we'd switch from 15 minute ones to the campaigns. Either on top of the daily 2000 diamond reward or instead of. There are not many ways to get them, so if foundries dropped them instead of gold, which feels irrelevant for me the more I play, then I'd play more. If the end chest opens and gives 1000 diamonds to player x, then also give an amount to the creator instead of asking us to tip directly.
5. Awesome rewards for those who do make them and those that play them most etc.
That's my tuppence-worth so hope it helps. Glad to see advice is being requested.
A good idea is that better the ending rewards only for foundries that qualify for the daily, at least it means you can't run a 30 sec foundry and get a better reward, you would have to play for at least 15 mins to get it.
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imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
...
2. Some missions in the foundry say they will take X amount of time, but end up 3x the time. Frustrating and I know that a certain role may fly through it but a cleric may struggle. Also give us the visible option to drop out and continue at another time in-case it is taking too long. We all have jobs, families too, so getting caught by a never-ending mission is infuriating. It's like "WTF? there's more goblins??!!"
...
This one's a tricky one, because it's average time.
My most recent quest, T1: The Village of Hommlet, starts with a village to explore. Lots of people to talk to, interlinking dialogs, side quests, the whole bit. Some people have taken an hour or more just poking around in the village. After the village there's a brief inn map, then a whole dungeon area to explore. If you don't care about exploring and just hit what you need to complete the quest, the whole thing can be done in about 10 minutes. If you're really exploring and talking to everyone and doing all the mini-quests? Easily an hour+.
So yeah, I can see that reaction with my quest, because the function that determines average time currently states that the quest is about 35-40 minutes long, which really is NOT accurate if it's your first time through the quest and you're not moving to the next area as soon as it's available.
So yes, I'd love to see some function to allow you to save progress, even if it could only be done at a campfire or something like that.
3. As I've not designed a mission, it may be possible already, but most missions seem to be just farms for loot or skirmishes. Some element of puzzles would be great and in keeping with the D+D universe. I like how the Sword Coast adventures offers simple puzzles like "the mirror talks to you..."... you then role dice. But implementing a whole well written story without fighting and with fun puzzles would make a change from hacking through twenty goblins. We can do that outside of the foundry and away from the possible foundry mission bugs that may be lurking. Keeping us in game doesn't always have to be about killing everything. A thievery foundry where stealth is advised would be cool etc - especially if we were rewarded for being stealthier. Or a mission where you get riddled by a dragon who spawns enemies when you get it wrong until you get it right etc.
To a certain extent, this can be done (a lot of the puzzlier things require a lot of finagling, though). You can definitely put riddles in dialogue and have encounters triggered to appear when the wrong answer is given ("dialog prompt reached"). Unfortunately, killing things is the only thing that is rewarded in the foundry at present. No loot, xp, or anything unless you are killing things. Stealth in a foundry quest is counter-productive, since NOT killing things means your character gets nothing out of their time, when they could at least get some sellable junk drops & XP for wantonly murdering everyone. And we're the "good guys"
Comments
And geared people that can do the dungeon at a run would get screwed because it takes them 1/4 of the time or less to run it than a casual player. This is not a good system.
Just add in the gear score scaling of encounters as mentioned earlier. That'd also make content challenging for 60+.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
I'm frankly tired of the argument that they can't put in a reward system because people will find a way to exploit it, given the rampant exploiting that goes on in the main game already.
If you make the rewards bind to account on pickup, and make them cosmetics, transmutes, and green level mounts and/or companions, then there is pretty much no game balance effect that could happen *even if* someone found a way to massively exploit it to get those things without actual play.
We need a reward system. It's time they added one, instead of fretting about possible exploits.
Since I think rewards are the big thing that need to change, I just want to put in a little opinion on this. Other than some, repeat some companions with good actives, everything on this list is vendor trash and wouldn't motivate me to step into a foundry what so ever, especially if they were bound so that I couldn't even sell them to someone that did find them to be something other than trash.
I would also love it if authors could design either transmutes for items, or else item templates which could appear in end-rewards. The former would be bound, and cosmetic, so that they wouldn't break anything, but we the authors would get to give them a name, a tooltip, and design the look, to give something exclusive to a particular foundry. The latter "item template" would be to provide an actual item that provided bonuses. In a way, it is just an extension of the former idea, only it's a real item (not just cosmetic) and the author gets to decide what type of bonus it gets, such as a bonus to critical, defense, or bonus HP. The degree of those bonuses, however, would scale with the level of the player character (and/or gear score as mentioned before) to make it relevant, but not so good as to be easily exploitable.
"We want to give an incentive to do this activity but we don't want to break the game in any way. Well let's just put in some cosmetics"
In subscription models this works great because the company already gets its money from having access to the game...unfortunately this logic has followed some of the F2P Devs and the players.
In a free to play game the company should be focusing on selling cosmetics. Not giving them away with *coughs*events*coughs* I mean content. Okay, jokes up, yeah I don't agree with the cash shop having such a limited amount of cosmetic items and so many being given away from the game's content.
Giving cosmetics away for free is like creating your own competition. Certainly it should be done from time to time but it shouldn't be the go to answer like it currently is in Neverwinter. And for all the naysayers who say "I won't pay for anything that doesn't give me gameplay benefit" I have three words for you: League of Legends. If you really won't pay for cosmetics then that is great news for you. Enjoy the game for free!
So to tie this together...
We have enough cosmetics being given away. The devs need to stop taking the easy answer because that causes them to rely on way too many "convenience" purchases for comfort. Instead The Foundry should focus on giving RP rewards, unique items, new enchantments (including weapon and armor?), campaign-style rewards...etc.
The foundry is the best part of the game because some quests/adventures are better than official dungeons. Official dungeons are nothing but long hack & slash skirmishes with bosses. It is very nice to solve puzzles, clues, and generally the mood is more D&Dish than official material.
It is fun playing foundry to level alts once you have leveled you first character through the official game.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
There are a lot of useless foundries in the list, made by people who just want to exploit the game. These people should be banned. Also foundry stop at level 60. nobody would do foundries at level 60. I like doing foundries even for small rewards, but NOT for no rewards.
Traps. these are completely useless. nobody dies for traps. These must be LETHAL. Now they are ludicrous.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
You need to give authors possibility to make DUNGEONS. This because some of the authors are better than official devs that made the official dungeons. Authors need to have possibility to make 5 people instances/dungeons and the loot must be decent. I would like to play ONLY foundry at max level (60) because it is not fun doing daily missions over and over and over godzillion times.
Authors should be rewarded for publishing high quality materials. Some of them need to be rewarded at least with ZEN. AT LEAST. Other that abuse the game need to be banned forever. There is need to have more control on who publishes and what is published.
Too many : "fast quest to get rewards" type of foundry. Authors that work with players to abuse the system to get fast the daily foundry quest. These must be banned. Authors banned. Players suspended for some time.
we need less foundries available but of giher quality.
Also there is need to have a different foundry browser. On top of list there are always the same ones.
Final considerations:
devs, you need to understand that daily missions and farming is not what people want. Farming is something that you can do better in other games. and farming is NOT FUN for most of the people.
This game should focus on foundry adventures and campaigns.
Main focus should be foundries. I think if you manage to move the bull's eye on the foundries you will get even more money. And if you consider that you can get help by a lot of good authors that are making now incredible foundry adventures.....
I know that people consider Foundry a LOST CAUSE. I hope it is not and if it is, remember that the game will die because of daily missions farming.
Daily missions are boring and for pvp there are better games out there.
EDIT: Also what I would really really like to add to the foundry. the option to upload music to it. I'm a musician and custom music can add a whole new experience to a quest.
please let us upload custom music, if you want, make it so each track has to be validated before being aviable, to prevent people uploading copyrighted music or just a song that says "*****" a thousand times.
For cosmetic items to be a significant source of zen sales, they need a different system than they've got. Three slots for cosmetics is not sufficient if they really want to get some zen sales going. More slots = more variety = more sales. And the cosmetic items in the zen store need to be cheaper. Right now most people, even those who like cosmetics, would never consider buying them from the zen store because they are so overpriced, and so limited.
That said, the reason I proposed cosmetics as a reward for Foundry is that they have resisted so firmly giving ANYTHING that actually impacts game play, because of the possibility of exploits. You're right, I'd love to see unique purples from a Foundry Token shop the same way they have them in the PvP shop. I'd like to see RP rewards, new enchants, campaign-style rewards. But unless we get an entire new crew of people in charge, I don't see the current ones doing any of that.
That doesn't stop farming foundry quests though.
Or even cosmetics for companion / mount, making them customizable may be a new thing who won't impact gameplay and if you have like me the cheaper zen mount, seeing it every corner ... Well i know that it could be hard to implement because of differents mounts ... but at least for most horse it should be easy enough to do so (for mechanical mount it can be color, text or other things ...)
But well it may be outside of foundry so ... Well anyways it's posted, if it give them ideas ...
So, you and a thousand other authors upload 15 minutes of music say once a month.
That's 250 hours of (present company excepted) probably amateurish music that "someone" has to listen to every minute of -- after all, what's to prevent anyone from say "*****" a dozen times at mark 14:45?
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
In champions online if your costume is too close to an existing character, you can be reported, in here it would be the same.
you report a music from a quest (or the quest itself) and then someone checks if it's valid or not.
But I really want there to be more variety in traps anyway. Pit traps, rooms with water filling up (I have one of these in a quest I am making, but it requires a lot of water planes tied to drop timers), and some more damage over time, and AoE traps.
All things I have criticized. However they need to address those problems and add cosmetics into the shop.
The shortcomings of the inventory mechanics and store need to be fixed rather than be an excuse to continue giving cosmetics away for free and charging to skip play time.
Yes the Foundry is in this lackluster state because of fear of exploitation but as has been said numerous times within this thread; Cryptic should have never taken that stance. In order for the Foundry to succeed they need to set some rules and enforce them.
This means breaking a few eggs to make an omlette. Yes people who are used to their rule violating quests will throw a fit and stop playing like they did when the game was first released. I didn't miss them when the devs actually policed the foundry and I won't miss them now. They need to look at this as a benefit for the game because in order for the foundry to be a draw source it needs to have some standard of quality.
Don't deny everybody something shiny because of a few bad apples. Put in some rules and enforce them. Improve the report system so that players with higher report accuracy get prioritized report reviews and trolls who report things falsely get lower (if not ignored) reports. Invest in the continued maintenance of the foundry.
Think of it as a roadway. You can't just put down a road without setting some rules for traffic flow and every once in a while you will have to either police those breaking the rules or fix the potholes.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Until there is something like that I don't think deadfall style traps are likely to be in the game.
(Un)Academic Field Work Foundry Campaign: NWS-DAPZB2CTZ
The traps would need to be something that you can avoid if you're clever, perceptive, or skillful, or can avoid entirely if you've got a rogue with you. That other D&D MMO does traps quite well, I think, and I'd like to see something along that level. That way, if you're not playing a rogue, you can get past them, but if you're playing a rogue, you can easily get past them. After all, this is a D&D game, and that's (among other things) what rogues do in D&D.
Not all traps have to kill or even cause damage. Think spike-pit without the spikes. Now the adventurer must figure a way out of it... this could create awesome puzzle-type quests, except there is no XP or any other kind of player-reward for quests that focus on this sort of style. Everything has to be pew-pew unfortunately. But, even having the spike-pit they use in Ebon Downs would be nice (have they added that one, yet?).
Authors want to create a sense of danger and this is really hard to do with no real Boss-type encounters (doesn't have to be real bosses, but really difficult encounters) and existing traps - though they can cause real damage at specific player-levels cause minimal, minor damage at other player levels (they don;t seem to scale to player level reliably).
Hell, I'm still waiting for them to add basic *levers*.
I can work around most of the authoring shortcoming if only they'd find a way to incentivize more players to actually play the non-Featured stuff.
back to the original topic, I'd really LOVE if they could actually police the foundry more looking for exploits and delete them and then enable us to get better rewards, but considering the amount of new quests that are submitted everyday, I think it would be a lot of work for them.
You used to be able to -- the last patch limited traps/emitters to be no closer than 10'.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
The foundry is a good tool for creating your own adventures. there is an excellent variety of assets, such as the room builder parts (though they are time consuming to correctly place). Quests are very easy to add into the world, being able to place a location anywhere on the map, or use any existing quest entrance. Being a Dungeon Master, I greatly enjoy the chance to make adventures for this game.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
Unfortunately, foundry falls short in many areas. There are many limitations, which have proven completely ineffective at stopping exploiters, instead holding back REAL foundry authors. There are also many features that are still needed, and foundry can be very buggy. I wouldn't say I wish it was never implemented into neverwinter, but it can be very frustrating at times.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
First off, I want to be able to add a final battle with a dragon. Dragons are my favorite monster from D&D, making excellent main villains, and challenging fights. The ability to add boss battles would be excellent. One of the features foundry really needs is to be able to make custom encounters! The pre-made encounters make us have to disguise nasher hexers as the lizardfolk shaman in the final room. Simply give us the monsters, and tell us the details of balancing encounters. I would remove, or at least loosen, the limitations. If you want an imp farm, FINE. It ruins the game for you, but that's your problem. The limits aren't stopping them anyway. Finally, fix the bugs! I spent an hour yesterday trying to fix my foundry character...
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
Halo's Forge allows users to create custom maps, which allow for more variety if the standard maps become boring. Halo players can also customize the game modes, having many, many options to make a session interesting.
The game ROBLOX is an MMO which revolves around user-made content. Using the studio, players can actually create entirely new games using the basic framework of the ROBLOX game engine. The motivation for doing this, is that the more people visit your game, the more ingame currency you are awarded. furthermore, since ROBLOX as a whole has nothing to 'farm', there is no point in making games for this purpose.
This is good. In the old days, people would throw traps all over, which prevented companions from following you (they won't go over traps).
I agree that if the foundry was given more attention, and us authors had more freedom to create things (with a way to prevent massive exploiting, that is) Neverwinter could potentially be a huge thing.
Secondly, I'd like to publically thank those that do make the foundries. I've played more good than bad. It'd be nice though to have specific recommendations on what's new and may be interesting to player X rather than player Y.
Bear in mind that I am very much pro-Foundry, as it keeps us, the players, thinking about our role in the world, creatively as much as anything else. Most MMO's say "you saved the world" etc, etc but we all know we are one of many who played the campaign. So creating a foundry is OUR individual part of the world that ALL can see, we are part of the world and loved (hopefully) by the many reviewers.
My gripes about foundry missions from 15 min dailies for astral diamonds to campaigns for those who want a big journey -
1) loot is varied, and sometimes can get too much if you don't have extra bags. You have to price up the loot in the inventory and discard some. That kinda spoils the effect, adds time. Also, specific role loot at the end would be better for me than random pickups everywhere. Someone posted to say a ranking system / level system for loot would be cool... I like that. I would also offer something like in the Baldur's Gate/Neverwinter series where Cespenar or Deekin etc could forge a unique, great item out of several parts, i.e Bow, bow string, etc.
Every so many foundries you get a unique part that makes the item more special so it levels up with you. You get the wood, then a cast, then the Bow would be forged, you find a unique enchantment, then you get a special string, then special arrows every so far in the foundry Campaign, tailored to whichever role the player is. This makes you want to keep doing them. The RPG element moves from the player to the player and his weapon/armour. You would care for the item like a companion or even the main character.
2. Some missions in the foundry say they will take X amount of time, but end up 3x the time. Frustrating and I know that a certain role may fly through it but a cleric may struggle. Also give us the visible option to drop out and continue at another time in-case it is taking too long. We all have jobs, families too, so getting caught by a never-ending mission is infuriating. It's like "WTF? there's more goblins??!!"
3. As I've not designed a mission, it may be possible already, but most missions seem to be just farms for loot or skirmishes. Some element of puzzles would be great and in keeping with the D+D universe. I like how the Sword Coast adventures offers simple puzzles like "the mirror talks to you..."... you then role dice. But implementing a whole well written story without fighting and with fun puzzles would make a change from hacking through twenty goblins. We can do that outside of the foundry and away from the possible foundry mission bugs that may be lurking. Keeping us in game doesn't always have to be about killing everything. A thievery foundry where stealth is advised would be cool etc - especially if we were rewarded for being stealthier. Or a mission where you get riddled by a dragon who spawns enemies when you get it wrong until you get it right etc.
4. The daily foundries for diamonds should be changed etc. Some may just do them for the shiny diamonds- that shouldn't be criticised etc, but how about the longer the event the more diamonds you get after the foundry has been done, we'd switch from 15 minute ones to the campaigns. Either on top of the daily 2000 diamond reward or instead of. There are not many ways to get them, so if foundries dropped them instead of gold, which feels irrelevant for me the more I play, then I'd play more. If the end chest opens and gives 1000 diamonds to player x, then also give an amount to the creator instead of asking us to tip directly.
5. Awesome rewards for those who do make them and those that play them most etc.
That's my tuppence-worth so hope it helps. Glad to see advice is being requested.
This one's a tricky one, because it's average time.
My most recent quest, T1: The Village of Hommlet, starts with a village to explore. Lots of people to talk to, interlinking dialogs, side quests, the whole bit. Some people have taken an hour or more just poking around in the village. After the village there's a brief inn map, then a whole dungeon area to explore. If you don't care about exploring and just hit what you need to complete the quest, the whole thing can be done in about 10 minutes. If you're really exploring and talking to everyone and doing all the mini-quests? Easily an hour+.
So yeah, I can see that reaction with my quest, because the function that determines average time currently states that the quest is about 35-40 minutes long, which really is NOT accurate if it's your first time through the quest and you're not moving to the next area as soon as it's available.
So yes, I'd love to see some function to allow you to save progress, even if it could only be done at a campfire or something like that.