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Foundry campaign
elvalianon
Member Posts: 331 Arc User
I might be asking for the impossible here 
but regardless I want to share this idea.
TL;DR? A campaign for playing foundries, gain points by completing different foundries to unlock tiers with rewards like fashion, transmutes, retraining tokens, inventory bags etc. In my opinion it shouldn't function as a campaign that improves your character, but a fun additional side campaign you can work on when bored of everything else or to gain interesting cosmetic and items.
The foundry, if we are willing to believe it or not, was and still can be a large part of the game. When well executed it could entertain NW's player base near unlimited time with the content that a lot of them want to make and play (if there is a good reason to). I am no developer, but I assume we can all agree that having the player base make content for NW is initially free and in many ways can hold great value, except for maintaining the foundry editor and assuring the foundry to work properly in game of course. However, since NW has near to entirely neglected the foundry concept to begin with, there is no reason for players to even play or make foundries. It gives no rewards (apart from the like what... 2 silver for a piece of useless loot? and is the reward for getting enough reviews even still a thing?) and the only players who still seem to enjoy making or playing them are those who get either asked to or enjoy them for the sake of creating it or living the story. I am and I am pretty sure a good portion of your player base are too, disappointed in this neglect. Thus I propose the following...
Introduce a campaign for playing foundry content. The rewards should be along the line of fashion, companions, a retraining token, a inventory bag, maybe a mount. I do not think it should include any actual boons or content that advances your character significantly in any way, just mostly luxury and visuals, much like the Eye campaign. In my mind it should function as a optional entertaining side campaign with rewards that are interesting to get, but not necessary. This will cater to the player base who enjoy the ecstatic, lore and creative side of the game. I suppose there are many ways to execute the idea, but here is a approach I have come up with...
Add tiers to the campaign, each tier can be achieved by collecting currency you earn by completing a different eligible foundry every time, so we can't play the same foundry 50 times to complete it. Let's say: play 10 foundries for the first reward, 20 for the next up till a 50 or even a 100. This would of course depend on how many eligible foundries exist in the game. Which brings me to the next point.
A eligible foundry should be one that lasts at least 15-30 minutes (I do think that 20-30 min is the current standard?). Or perhaps we could say that a shorter foundry gives 5 points, a longer foundry gives 10. These eligible foundries should be up and down voted by the player base in game to be selected as eligible (like NW already does as far as I am aware).
To make it more interesting at least one end boss should exist in a foundry, 10 groups of enemies (I'm just giving a number) and a few chest should be available. Bosses, enemies and especially chests cannot be placed in a dense area to one another, chests perhaps not even on the same map. In these chests players will have a chance on finding additional currency for the campaign to advance a little bit faster and/or get small interesting items. This will make exploring the entirety of a foundry more interesting and valuable, plus will hopefully encourage foundry makers in creating good quality and lengthy foundries.
Something will have to be done about the extremely hard to balance enemies, they should be tweaked so there is no significant difference in playing the campaign at level 20 or 70, or foundries should be much like the areas where we get scaled up to level 70. We don't want sub 70 players to feel discouraged by the content.
Further more, to make make the foundry authors live easier a few things need to be done to the foundry editor.
- Fix the anchor point of portals (It is currently about 10 feet away from the anchor point and it takes 30 min to place properly if you can even find it in the first place).
- Create a switch to turn visibility of invisible walls on and off. It is REALLY hard to see what your are doing with a object if you can't even see it.
- Add a resize function to objects. A world of possibilities will open when this happens.
- Gradually add some of the newer content (aka objects, fashion etc) to the foundry as well.
- Send foundry authors a mail if their foundry needs to be republished after a reset.
Those are my thoughts so far, if I come up with more I will update on this topic Please feel free to add to this in the comments. I am really curious what others think of this.
but regardless I want to share this idea.TL;DR? A campaign for playing foundries, gain points by completing different foundries to unlock tiers with rewards like fashion, transmutes, retraining tokens, inventory bags etc. In my opinion it shouldn't function as a campaign that improves your character, but a fun additional side campaign you can work on when bored of everything else or to gain interesting cosmetic and items.
The foundry, if we are willing to believe it or not, was and still can be a large part of the game. When well executed it could entertain NW's player base near unlimited time with the content that a lot of them want to make and play (if there is a good reason to). I am no developer, but I assume we can all agree that having the player base make content for NW is initially free and in many ways can hold great value, except for maintaining the foundry editor and assuring the foundry to work properly in game of course. However, since NW has near to entirely neglected the foundry concept to begin with, there is no reason for players to even play or make foundries. It gives no rewards (apart from the like what... 2 silver for a piece of useless loot? and is the reward for getting enough reviews even still a thing?) and the only players who still seem to enjoy making or playing them are those who get either asked to or enjoy them for the sake of creating it or living the story. I am and I am pretty sure a good portion of your player base are too, disappointed in this neglect. Thus I propose the following...
Introduce a campaign for playing foundry content. The rewards should be along the line of fashion, companions, a retraining token, a inventory bag, maybe a mount. I do not think it should include any actual boons or content that advances your character significantly in any way, just mostly luxury and visuals, much like the Eye campaign. In my mind it should function as a optional entertaining side campaign with rewards that are interesting to get, but not necessary. This will cater to the player base who enjoy the ecstatic, lore and creative side of the game. I suppose there are many ways to execute the idea, but here is a approach I have come up with...
Add tiers to the campaign, each tier can be achieved by collecting currency you earn by completing a different eligible foundry every time, so we can't play the same foundry 50 times to complete it. Let's say: play 10 foundries for the first reward, 20 for the next up till a 50 or even a 100. This would of course depend on how many eligible foundries exist in the game. Which brings me to the next point.
A eligible foundry should be one that lasts at least 15-30 minutes (I do think that 20-30 min is the current standard?). Or perhaps we could say that a shorter foundry gives 5 points, a longer foundry gives 10. These eligible foundries should be up and down voted by the player base in game to be selected as eligible (like NW already does as far as I am aware).
To make it more interesting at least one end boss should exist in a foundry, 10 groups of enemies (I'm just giving a number) and a few chest should be available. Bosses, enemies and especially chests cannot be placed in a dense area to one another, chests perhaps not even on the same map. In these chests players will have a chance on finding additional currency for the campaign to advance a little bit faster and/or get small interesting items. This will make exploring the entirety of a foundry more interesting and valuable, plus will hopefully encourage foundry makers in creating good quality and lengthy foundries.
Something will have to be done about the extremely hard to balance enemies, they should be tweaked so there is no significant difference in playing the campaign at level 20 or 70, or foundries should be much like the areas where we get scaled up to level 70. We don't want sub 70 players to feel discouraged by the content.
Further more, to make make the foundry authors live easier a few things need to be done to the foundry editor.
- Fix the anchor point of portals (It is currently about 10 feet away from the anchor point and it takes 30 min to place properly if you can even find it in the first place).
- Create a switch to turn visibility of invisible walls on and off. It is REALLY hard to see what your are doing with a object if you can't even see it.
- Add a resize function to objects. A world of possibilities will open when this happens.
- Gradually add some of the newer content (aka objects, fashion etc) to the foundry as well.
- Send foundry authors a mail if their foundry needs to be republished after a reset.
Those are my thoughts so far, if I come up with more I will update on this topic
Please feel free to add to this in the comments. I am really curious what others think of this. 
Post edited by elvalianon on
3
Comments
Your ideas for bringing it back are spot on. I especially like the campaign idea. One of the main issues of foundry was exploitation of its features to farm various stuff like gold or experience, so its drops were nerfed to the bottom. However, if there were to be a foundry campaign and foundries dropped currency only for that campaign, there wouldnt be any point for bots to farm it. It could also have rewards that are foundry related or maybe some fashion items, dyes and such. That way people would be encouraged to play it but bots wouldnt.
For now all I really want is foundry to come back in a stable way, but I hope the people at cryptic take a note of your suggestions and we can see foundry to become something that makes Neverwinter unique once agan.
Featured Foundry Quest: Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG
Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
I hoped UGC would play an important role in NW. It depresses me that it does not.
There's a million and one reasons for it now but heart and center is that Cryptic's metrics shows little to no return in investment so they choose not to fix the reasons people don't have interest in the UGC.
I just read a post where somebody related it to electric cars and I have to agree. Before Tesla made viable and appealing electric cars the metrics showed people didn't have interest in buying electric cars. Claiming there is no interest when the market doesn't exist yet doesn't make sense and that is what Cryptic has done.
UGC does not appeal to players because of lack of rewards, incentives and any form of gain other than "fun" which is NOT enough on its own. Games should be fun but if the game has a form of progression people will only do what they find fun if it also adds to their progression.
On that same token people create content for others to enjoy. Without players that want to experience the content the Foundry Authors lose interest in creating content.
And thus it sits in the corner barely touched.
Cryptic needs to accept the blame for the failure of the Foundry and invest in making it better. If they get the Foundry right the game will run itself.
And I love whenever I see a thread calling for it. Eventually they will either listen or another MMO will be released that has the tools myself and other NWN fans have been waiting for.
I wouldn't mind any character progression in the campaign, like boons for example. Though, I would feel that it could be hard to maintain the quality of the campaign/foundries versus the reward. This is why I suggested items and cosmetics instead of boons and gear.
It saddens me that even a community manager is disappointed about matters like these. It just proves the giant gap between the community and upstairs.
Side note: If they would re-introduce the AD reward as well, that would be great. Perhaps not similar as it used to be, but let's say complete 3 different foundries a day to claim a small AD reward from the campaign window.
I used to assist another player who streamed Foundry almost exclusively, until the lack of development interest, coupled with decisions made around module 6, forced him away from the game. It felt like there was interest building in the Foundry before that module, but once the daily rewards were removed, everything took a nose dive.
Most of the folks from that period in the game have either given up on creating or left the game entirely. It's been like watching a plague take each colleague one by one, until your friends list is near empty each log-in. So, as mentioned prior, it's good to see interest, but don't get your hopes up for changes any time soon.
Featured Foundry Quest: Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG
Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
The foundry is a mess, the database is just not usuable. No one can find the quests they would enjoy.
Imagine if Steam was like the way foundry was? No one would buy any games. Fix this first then think about a campaign.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Will The Foundry every receive the TLC that I believe it deserves and needs?
Do I still hold out hope, and want it to happen?
Players know the content players want. NWN had a horrible campaign. If it wasn't for the Aurora Toolset it would have faded into obscurity. Instead it got expansions and sequels as well with the reason why we are playing Neverwinter and not Cormyr or Waterdeep.
Cryptic should leverage it. Ask for people to create quests and the like themed for the planned expansions. Take the best submissions, polish them and have them be the official content for the campaign.
There's no reason why we need so many Fed Ex Daily Grind Quests with every expansion when there is UGC that could be tapped.
I've been saying it since before the game launched. In the early days the people who were not familiar with the glory that is NWN lashed back with nonsense about how players suck at making content or authors crying about how it's not fair that somebody gets their content promoted and they might not, but that is my wish and it has been great having somebody else around that carries the same banner.
At this point though ANYTHING would make me happy.
I expect nothing and quietly hope for everything.
Regards,
M.K.
fixing the main bugs in it, and pleeeasse adding the newer assets would be an impressive start. even only that would mean a lot to many of us.
Is something going to be done about the missing content in the foundry editor? It may be buggy and frustrating to work with but not being able to build anything is even worse.
arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1225935/content-missing-from-foundry-editor-cannot-make-or-edit-foundries
That is more hope for improvement than we've had for a long time now.