1. Is will there be audio dialogue options available or will it all be text based? Also will there be cutscenes editors in the foundry and will there be audio features like music? Obviously the demonstrator was pressed on time and can't get into every little detail.
2. Are there any safeguards over ridiculously overly hard quests besides rating the quest? In that are there any safeguards against people who will make a quest so ridiculously difficult that it will only serve to grief players. Internet and MMOs are notorious for people getting sheer enjoyment out of others displeasure and I'm sure there will be a number that will fit this concern.
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aelthas002Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
edited August 2012
I don't see any mention of custom exterior maps. Does that just mean we can just use preset exterior maps or will we be able to make our own custom exterior map? Presets are nice and save time, but I would like the option of creating some unique landscapes if necessary.
I don't see any mention of custom exterior maps. Does that just mean we can just use preset exterior maps or will we be able to make our own custom exterior map? Presets are nice and save time, but I would like the option of creating some unique landscapes if necessary.
...
Are there any safeguards over ridiculously overly hard quests besides rating the quest? In that are there any safeguards against people who will make a quest so ridiculously difficult...
I would like to make some of the quests ridiculously difficult, rather unplayable too. If the foundry does not allow me to make it, it would seem pointless and boring. Therefore, reviews and ratings are enough. Not all quests need to be same. Some quests would be eyecandies, some RP based and some tough(and some hardcore).
Though I would like it more if they have option to make quest sans any XP or rewards, and in return give more options in foundry.
Hey folks, thought I would pop my head in here as well as the GamesCom thread. I'm one of the guys from F2P.com who was in attendance at GamesCom this year, it was my two workmates who got the chance to film the Foundry (the Spanish guys asking some questions). The reason the sound was difficult to hear is that it was pretty much filmed with a HD handheld camera with built in mic (typically used for filming on the games floor or lovely booth babes on the stages ), depending on where you get to sit in the room and how close you can get to the screen/presenter determines whether you're going to get great sound or not. The sound on the other video is considerably better because they would have has a boom mic setup or something before going into the meeting (though for my money the res of the actual video makes it even harder to read some of the text and stuff, but any available content is good content).
From what I gather with quest difficulty is that the mobs will scale to the party level, so if you're level 1 then it will be the same game and mobs as a level 20, but the mobs have more HP and attack, etc. So level wont really come into it as the instance will be altered to fit, however, as you have seen the GM can put in as many mobs as they like in a room (as far as I'm aware) so yes, if they wanted to make a tough encounter (and why wouldn't they want to try that every so often?) then they could throw a truck load of mobs in the room. I imagine in time that some authors will become quite well known (hence the subscription option to track authors content) and some will make "Raid" like encounters for people doing "World Firsts" on their extremely difficult dungeons. As well as this I BELIEVE you are able to put restrictions/pre-requisites on the dungeon itself, so this may be group sizes, level restrictions, etc.
Making dungeons just to grief people is pointless because the number of slots you can earn to make more dungeons is in part dependent on how high your ratings are on your other Foundry builds (presumably you can buy extra slots, but those who keep providing high quality content with good ratings will be rewarded by being able to make more). So if you make bad/lame/grief dungeons then you'll only be able to make a handful and will probably get a bad rep anyway.
The rewards you get from Foundry dungeons will be balanced, so you wont be coming out with any epix-sword of epic-sauce, but again I don't know the full details of this.
Not sure if people caught it from the video but I didnt see it in Crypticmapolis' post of features, but there will be NO DLC that you have to buy to add extra sections/options to the Foundry. Everything in game will be available in the Foundry; items, textures, skins, monsters. The only paid content so far is for costume attire that will probably be useable in the none instanced Foundry dungeons, but the Foundry itself should be a fully working system.
I would like to make some of the quests ridiculously difficult, rather unplayable too. If the foundry does not allow me to make it, it would seem pointless and boring. Therefore, reviews and ratings are enough. Not all quests need to be same. Some quests would be eyecandies, some RP based and some tough(and some hardcore).
Though I would like it more if they have option to make quest sans any XP or rewards, and in return give more options in foundry.
The dev that lead the foundry demo said there were three difficulty levels for the monsters, In addition, DMs can place add extra enemies to an encounter.
While difficulty is not something very important to me, I fully expect and hope that there would be DMs creating some challenging quests.
I have two off beat questions watching those vids though.
1. Can we interact with the environment items, such as chairs... sitting to lift a drink to fallen friends!
2. Transitioning from one area to another (not UGC), such as one district of Neverwinter to another. Will there be a loading screen or will it feel seamless as you travel through a gate the area ahead of you is already loading?
Sorry for the sidetrack, but those videos are SO amazing looking. I got the feeling I was actually walking on a real life street with people milling about, the narrowness of the streets and how NPCs seem to move about naturally. How fantastic!
Bravo Cryptic!
Glad you're stoked,we are too
1. I'm actually not sure if this kind of thing will make it in for launch... but it would be pretty easy to add since we already do it in STO. I'll see if I can at least add some interactable chairs to the foundry.
2. At the moment, Neverwinter is all large instanced adventure zones with instanced missions attached to those. This lets you attach your mission to nearly any door or gate in the city, and you can convincingly "add" content to existing zones without fighting other authors for real estate.
1. I'm actually not sure if this kind of thing will make it in for launch... but it would be pretty easy to add since we already do it in STO. I'll see if I can at least add some interactable chairs to the foundry.
2. At the moment, Neverwinter is all large instanced adventure zones with instanced missions attached to those. This lets you attach your mission to nearly any door or gate in the city, and you can convincingly "add" content to existing zones without fighting other authors for real estate.
Crypticmapolis, the Foundry is truly evolutionary when it comes to development, bordering on revolutionary. I can't WAIT to create!
1. Is will there be audio dialogue options available or will it all be text based? Also will there be cutscenes editors in the foundry and will there be audio features like music? Obviously the demonstrator was pressed on time and can't get into every little detail.
2. Are there any safeguards over ridiculously overly hard quests besides rating the quest? In that are there any safeguards against people who will make a quest so ridiculously difficult that it will only serve to grief players. Internet and MMOs are notorious for people getting sheer enjoyment out of others displeasure and I'm sure there will be a number that will fit this concern.
1. I don't really have enough concrete information to answer this one yet, sorry
2. We have a rating and vetting system for this kind of thing. When you publish a quest, it will not be available to the public until it is approved by players who have signed up to be a Foundry reviewer. By becoming a reviewer, you gain the privilege to approve a new quest listing, but you also have to accept that you might run into some bad content. Even if a quest passes the review stage, it has a general star rating system, so the cream will rise to the top.
I don't see any mention of custom exterior maps. Does that just mean we can just use preset exterior maps or will we be able to make our own custom exterior map? Presets are nice and save time, but I would like the option of creating some unique landscapes if necessary.
For exteriors, we will have Cryptic made zones and quest areas saved out for use, as well as a large library of blank premade terrain heightmaps (with no objects on the map) to start with. We do not have a heightmap editor in the Foundry currently, although it's definitely on our wishlist.
2. We have a rating and vetting system for this kind of thing. When you publish a quest, it will not be available to the public until it is approved by players who have signed up to be a Foundry reviewer. By becoming a reviewer, you gain the privilege to approve a new quest listing, but you also have to accept that you might run into some bad content. Even if a quest passes the review stage, it has a general star rating system, so the cream will rise to the top.
Interesting will this be a group approval system where the majority rules or one person given a quest to approve?
Always Looking for mature laidback players/rpers for Dungeon Delves!
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited August 2012
Thanks for the additional first hand information Yospeck.
I was glad to see the video regardless of the audio quality and trust me I knew why it was poor audio quality when I saw it. My thanks to you and the rest of your team for sharing the information you received and for taking the additional time to stop in and elaborating on some details we might not have heard in the video!
crypticmapolis, thanks again for the additional Foundry info. I'm glad you guys are finally opening up some information on it!
This is probably going to be a tough question but when you say a heightmap editor is on the wishlist does that mean it's being developed and will hopefully be implemented before or some time after launch?
I truly appreciate that you gave as much information as you did but wishes don't always come true. Other games try to avoid the "but you promised!" issues so much they won't discuss things they want to develop without it at least partially developed first.
If this is simply a wishlist please keep that information coming! Just make sure we know that there's a chance we might not get what's on the wishlist :-D
...
When you publish a quest, it will not be available to the public until it is approved by players who have signed up to be a Foundry reviewer.
...
My concern regarding this is very specific. Namely, will the criteria to allow foundry quests allow flavor quests to be included?
(Namely quests which are based towards only a minority section of gamers. E.g.
Some foundry missions with dialogue choices only to find more about DnD lore, nothing else.
Some content which is only do-able by 5% of player base.)
Would such content allowed through your filter system?
My concern regarding this is very specific. Namely, will the criteria to allow foundry quests allow flavor quests to be included?
(Namely quests which are based towards only a minority section of gamers. E.g.
Some foundry missions with dialogue choices only to find more about DnD lore, nothing else.
Some content which is only do-able by 5% of player base.)
Would such content allowed through your filter system?
Though I don't know the extent of what you can and can't do, I imagine you could get quite creative with tools. As you can decide exactly what the NPCs say, can place text based items (scrolls, books, etc) then I see no reason why you couldn't add in "Lore Quests". The criteria for completing a dungeon is down to the GM, so you wouldn't necessarily have to have any combat in a dungeon if that wasn't the purpose of your quest.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "content which is only do-able by 5% of the player base", if you can give an example of a quest you might like to make then it would help. Depending on the restrictions you put on for doing your quest anyway (level req) and the difficulty settings you put in for elite monsters, any puzzles and pitfalls (Riddles, mazes, etc.) then I imagine you can make some extremely difficult adventures that many would find hard to complete.
My concern regarding this is very specific. Namely, will the criteria to allow foundry quests allow flavor quests to be included?
(Namely quests which are based towards only a minority section of gamers. E.g.
Some foundry missions with dialogue choices only to find more about DnD lore, nothing else.
Some content which is only do-able by 5% of player base.)
That's a great idea. If I get what you're saying, your talking about quests that basically net a player information that they need. They may not involve any combat at all. They would be non-combat encounters used to advance the quest story arc in lore-based ways. That's great.
... As you can decide exactly what the NPCs say, can place text based items (scrolls, books, etc) then I see no reason why you couldn't add in "Lore Quests"...
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "content which is only do-able by 5% of the player base", ...
Yes we can decide what NPC say, but can we make it so that your replies have any affect on the game? e.g. if you choose right options only then next mission in campaign will open otherwise it loops and keeps telling you more information which might actually tell you more about story. Just an example, there can be many:-
An artifact that can summon red comet appears. But you want to allow its summoning. You have to convince a cleric of selune that it i ok to summon it. CLeric of selune doesn't want to allow you to summon it because he/she thinks it might hurt selune. Now your character can only progress the mission to next mission if (e.g.) his/her religion/lore check is above a certain value - or if he goes to a hidden room to search for tome among the traps dodging them which details the lore - that it was a misfire which hurt Selune but not the comet itself directly. If you clear either condition, you pass to next mission. etc.
Second one basically means really really tough missions. Maybe not even supposed to be cleared but players playing it by lasting in the map for XX minutes and then take screen-shot before death to boast about it.
That's a great idea. If I get what you're saying, your talking about quests that basically net a player information that they need. They may not involve any combat at all. They would be non-combat encounters used to advance the quest story arc in lore-based ways. That's great.
Yes, exactly. The peaceful mission before you start to fight to bring the player up to the lore of D&D making sure the player understand the story. Rather than just kill anyone displaying red in the reticule. Maybe a few diplo/lore checks to bypass it probably.
My concern regarding this is very specific. Namely, will the criteria to allow foundry quests allow flavor quests to be included?
(Namely quests which are based towards only a minority section of gamers. E.g.
Some foundry missions with dialogue choices only to find more about DnD lore, nothing else.
Some content which is only do-able by 5% of player base.)
Would such content allowed through your filter system?
Not sure if there would be a specific filter for this sort of quest. But nothing requires that a mission have any particular element in it. If I recall correctly, there have been some totally non-combat missions written for STO that just involve the player progressing through a storyline. So learning about a specific piece of lore would at least be doable.
This would be great for a barmaid entry. When you talk to her, an entry about so-and-so over at wherever telling stories about such-and-such. The entry need not be any more involved than that. The player would know where to go and who to talk to and would know that it's storytelling. Because the barmade function only relates to quests available in the general area, it would be perfect for setting up local gossip storylines.
Contrary to popular belief that is a significant subset of the MMO player population seeking activities that simpley lend themselves to simple life in the world being represented. Some of us do not need to be fighting stuff all the time. So even if the core game is going to be all about hack and slash, I see the foundry as a potential outlet for those who want alternatives, and as long as the requirements for a deployable mission are met, then it should be doable...
I'm not really a John Galt,
but I play one on the forums...
:P
Not knowing all the details, and only speculating from what I've seen, then I imagine this is doable but depends on a few mechanics.
For example;
If the dungeon you have made in the Foundry is a maze you may have an NPC at the beginning who wants you to go into the maze to recover the Sword of Yospeck (this is an epix purple...). So at the beginning you have the NPCs dialogue options:
1) I will go into the maze and collect the sword of Yospeck [Accept Quest]
2) Why do you want the sword? [More Lore]
If the player selects option one then obviously they just go off and make their way into the maze with the quest. If they pick option two then it goes further:
"My son was taken by the Dragon Belthaziaa, the Sword of Yospeck was crafted from the fires from which he was born and only it can destroy the dragon."
1) Sounds like your son was a fool to be caught so, but as you are paying for my time I will help [Accept Quest]
2) I am sorry to hear about your son, I hope with my aid you will be able to rescue him [Show Compassion]
Picking option two takes you on further:
"Thank you for your compassion brave adventurer. I have not ventured far into the maze myself, but what I have come to learn is that if you follow the flowers they should lead you at least half of the way into the maze". (here it links back to the first question to accept the quest). In the maze at each junction there may be one that has a small patch of flowers, by following that route you can avoid a lot of the monsters and traps.
So by finding out more about the NPCs story you can put in clues and tips about your encounter for those willing to listen to the lore. It's all about being creative and using the tools in interesting ways.
An artifact that can summon red comet appears. But you want to allow its summoning. You have to convince a cleric of selune that it i ok to summon it. CLeric of selune doesn't want to allow you to summon it because he/she thinks it might hurt selune. Now your character can only progress the mission to next mission if (e.g.) his/her religion/lore check is above a certain value - or if he goes to a hidden room to search for tome among the traps dodging them which details the lore - that it was a misfire which hurt Selune but not the comet itself directly. If you clear either condition, you pass to next mission. etc.
IIRC, the comment we got was that all missions will have the same outcomes, so what you're outlining will likely be impossible. Offering several path choices to reach the same outcome within one mission might be possible, but no comment on that so far.
Yeh, I think you would have to tie in multiple dungeons. I mean you can RP in the normal world outside of instances, so you could make two instances that are mirrors of each other, but with slightly different quests, and play the Cleric NPC yourself.
As for multiple paths, again I think that will come down to how you design your dungeons with the tools available. Two paths, one goes through a load of lowbie mobs but who appear in force, or one path that goes through a handful of elite mobs (or a third hidden path that is hard to find but has no mobs).
My concern regarding this is very specific. Namely, will the criteria to allow foundry quests allow flavor quests to be included?
(Namely quests which are based towards only a minority section of gamers. E.g.
Some foundry missions with dialogue choices only to find more about DnD lore, nothing else.
Some content which is only do-able by 5% of player base.)
Would such content allowed through your filter system?
My hope is that there is an eclectic group of play testers to provide feedback. I'm also hoping that Cryptic will dedicate the resources necessary to interact with that feedback group, at least for the first few months of game play.
While I do want to create some content my main goal is to become a part of the feedback test group for the foundry. I like a wide range of content types from pure hack-n-slash to stories that use verbs other than "zap and stab" to create the adventure. I would really hate to miss out on content because the review chain became too homogeneous.
Anyway, the foundry looks awesome and has so many possibilities as it matures even further.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
My hope is that there is an eclectic group of play testers to provide feedback.
I'm not sure that would work because while some content might be VERY well designed it might be very well designed for only a few people.
I guess a wording for gillrmn's concern is: will the rating system have categories?
If the majority of players are hack and slash players only concerned with kill, loot, repeat then a great quality quest which gives a lot of lore, conversations, strategy and/or thought to complete may suffer from negative votes from players who just don't enjoy that style of content.
Furthermore if I was developing a system such as that not only would I develop categories I would also add a scaled rating system. If a person continually rates RP/Lore" content low (or high) I wouldn't count their rating as much as somebody who varies their score.
People who don't enjoy the style of content shouldn't continue to play or vote for content that isn't their cup of tea. I know I tend to not like PvP in most games so I already know if players could develop PvP content I would either not play, vote appropriately if I enjoy it, or refrane from voting since my opinion is already biased.
I'd hope the rest of the community would do the same.
Thanks for the creative discussion. I got many insights on probable solutions.
Also, if you haven't noticed yet, "Edit your Avatar" is now clickable. They might add more avatars soon :-)
Goodbye ugly blue dragon!
Ok, back on topic:- adding extra mob will not make content tough. It will make content easy for AoE damager like wizard(more enjoyable too) but tough for other classes. Tough content would have to be continuous rooms of monsters with single strong boss (so defender shines) followed by lot of mobs (where wizard shines). So only a balanced party will make through unscathed.
Challenging content would be like an invasion or re-spawning mobs which don't allow you much rest I suppose.
Doing RP out of dungeon is a nice idea, but I would rather have it in the quest if possible. But thanks for pointing that out.
Also, I get a hint of splitting the party forcibly? Thats a great idea to increase difficulty, if implementing it is possible (considering scripting may be mostly out). Buffing up mobs attacks or nerfing players attack by a dungeon based buff would also be nice as suggested via questions.
Lastly, I agree with ambisinisterr partially. It seems a good solution, but it also raises some concerns in my opinion (who decides the category etc.)
Basically, only those campaigns which have a large player base may eventually be allowed on servers as data hosting will also cost money anyways.
EDIT: Ok you can only click it here, not on this page.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited August 2012
The obvious answer that comes to mind would be to allow the content creator to decide the category.
Think back to NWN and how servers were categorized. Action, PW Action, Roleplaying, PvP...etc.
I don't think an all under one roof policy could work for a game which already shows such a diverse amount of gameplay preferences. Of course the developer should be able to switch his category or maybe even be placed into two categories (such as Puzzle and Roleplaying) if the build could fit into either one.
But doing an all out popularity contest would be disastrous.
Basically look at the music industry for comparison. I haven't been to a store that sold audio CD's in years but I remember looking at things, singing bands I know and going "WTF there's no way this is <category>!!!!!"
If they put it in the wrong category, let the feedback correct their mistake. The only one who will be hurt in such a case would be the creator.
My concern regarding this is very specific. Namely, will the criteria to allow foundry quests allow flavor quests to be included?
Absolutely! The reviewer system is primarily to weed out quests that exploit, grief, or otherwise violate the EULA... Not to judge overall quality. A newly published quest must be rated by at least 5 reviewers before it's available to the public, but even if all 5 give it a 1-star rating, it should pass the initial review stage.
This is probably going to be a tough question but when you say a heightmap editor is on the wishlist does that mean it's being developed and will hopefully be implemented before or some time after launch?
Wishlist means it's not a feature on our schedule currently, so I can't say "yes we are doing that". It's something all the Foundry devs want eventually, so weather we do it depends on the scope of the feature vs. our resources, and feedback from players.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited August 2012
Thanks for the clarification. I figured as much.
I'm glad that Cryptic will be looking into doing such massive projects after release non-the-less. A lesser company would suffice to give a couple of texture packs, maybe a few new monsters and the occasional place-able. After-all redesigning the core tools requires a lot more time and money.
Specific guarantees or not, the desire to continue to better the game after launch is more than we could have expected from most of your competition.
Do you guys have any plans of making it not feel so 2 dimensional... I know most players in STO got so sick of foundry missions the only thing people can try to do now is take object pieces and try to make a fake floor above the actual map to try to make it look unique but in the end its like you are playing STO/Foundry missions on a giant random placed lego collection.
It would be more interesting to give maps customization as well as objects where you have a 3 dimensional aspect to them... some of us do own legos and duplos and don't need a computer for that LOL.
Comments
1. Is will there be audio dialogue options available or will it all be text based? Also will there be cutscenes editors in the foundry and will there be audio features like music? Obviously the demonstrator was pressed on time and can't get into every little detail.
2. Are there any safeguards over ridiculously overly hard quests besides rating the quest? In that are there any safeguards against people who will make a quest so ridiculously difficult that it will only serve to grief players. Internet and MMOs are notorious for people getting sheer enjoyment out of others displeasure and I'm sure there will be a number that will fit this concern.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_7WgszhNN4
You can see a pulldown menu of indoor/outdoor, then a bunch of premade and blank maps to be customised
I would like to make some of the quests ridiculously difficult, rather unplayable too. If the foundry does not allow me to make it, it would seem pointless and boring. Therefore, reviews and ratings are enough. Not all quests need to be same. Some quests would be eyecandies, some RP based and some tough(and some hardcore).
Though I would like it more if they have option to make quest sans any XP or rewards, and in return give more options in foundry.
From what I gather with quest difficulty is that the mobs will scale to the party level, so if you're level 1 then it will be the same game and mobs as a level 20, but the mobs have more HP and attack, etc. So level wont really come into it as the instance will be altered to fit, however, as you have seen the GM can put in as many mobs as they like in a room (as far as I'm aware) so yes, if they wanted to make a tough encounter (and why wouldn't they want to try that every so often?) then they could throw a truck load of mobs in the room. I imagine in time that some authors will become quite well known (hence the subscription option to track authors content) and some will make "Raid" like encounters for people doing "World Firsts" on their extremely difficult dungeons. As well as this I BELIEVE you are able to put restrictions/pre-requisites on the dungeon itself, so this may be group sizes, level restrictions, etc.
Making dungeons just to grief people is pointless because the number of slots you can earn to make more dungeons is in part dependent on how high your ratings are on your other Foundry builds (presumably you can buy extra slots, but those who keep providing high quality content with good ratings will be rewarded by being able to make more). So if you make bad/lame/grief dungeons then you'll only be able to make a handful and will probably get a bad rep anyway.
The rewards you get from Foundry dungeons will be balanced, so you wont be coming out with any epix-sword of epic-sauce, but again I don't know the full details of this.
Not sure if people caught it from the video but I didnt see it in Crypticmapolis' post of features, but there will be NO DLC that you have to buy to add extra sections/options to the Foundry. Everything in game will be available in the Foundry; items, textures, skins, monsters. The only paid content so far is for costume attire that will probably be useable in the none instanced Foundry dungeons, but the Foundry itself should be a fully working system.
The dev that lead the foundry demo said there were three difficulty levels for the monsters, In addition, DMs can place add extra enemies to an encounter.
While difficulty is not something very important to me, I fully expect and hope that there would be DMs creating some challenging quests.
Glad you're stoked,we are too
1. I'm actually not sure if this kind of thing will make it in for launch... but it would be pretty easy to add since we already do it in STO. I'll see if I can at least add some interactable chairs to the foundry.
2. At the moment, Neverwinter is all large instanced adventure zones with instanced missions attached to those. This lets you attach your mission to nearly any door or gate in the city, and you can convincingly "add" content to existing zones without fighting other authors for real estate.
Crypticmapolis, the Foundry is truly evolutionary when it comes to development, bordering on revolutionary. I can't WAIT to create!
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1. I don't really have enough concrete information to answer this one yet, sorry
2. We have a rating and vetting system for this kind of thing. When you publish a quest, it will not be available to the public until it is approved by players who have signed up to be a Foundry reviewer. By becoming a reviewer, you gain the privilege to approve a new quest listing, but you also have to accept that you might run into some bad content. Even if a quest passes the review stage, it has a general star rating system, so the cream will rise to the top.
For exteriors, we will have Cryptic made zones and quest areas saved out for use, as well as a large library of blank premade terrain heightmaps (with no objects on the map) to start with. We do not have a heightmap editor in the Foundry currently, although it's definitely on our wishlist.
Interesting will this be a group approval system where the majority rules or one person given a quest to approve?
I was glad to see the video regardless of the audio quality and trust me I knew why it was poor audio quality when I saw it. My thanks to you and the rest of your team for sharing the information you received and for taking the additional time to stop in and elaborating on some details we might not have heard in the video!
crypticmapolis, thanks again for the additional Foundry info. I'm glad you guys are finally opening up some information on it!
This is probably going to be a tough question but when you say a heightmap editor is on the wishlist does that mean it's being developed and will hopefully be implemented before or some time after launch?
I truly appreciate that you gave as much information as you did but wishes don't always come true. Other games try to avoid the "but you promised!" issues so much they won't discuss things they want to develop without it at least partially developed first.
If this is simply a wishlist please keep that information coming! Just make sure we know that there's a chance we might not get what's on the wishlist :-D
My concern regarding this is very specific. Namely, will the criteria to allow foundry quests allow flavor quests to be included?
(Namely quests which are based towards only a minority section of gamers. E.g.
Some foundry missions with dialogue choices only to find more about DnD lore, nothing else.
Some content which is only do-able by 5% of player base.)
Would such content allowed through your filter system?
Though I don't know the extent of what you can and can't do, I imagine you could get quite creative with tools. As you can decide exactly what the NPCs say, can place text based items (scrolls, books, etc) then I see no reason why you couldn't add in "Lore Quests". The criteria for completing a dungeon is down to the GM, so you wouldn't necessarily have to have any combat in a dungeon if that wasn't the purpose of your quest.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "content which is only do-able by 5% of the player base", if you can give an example of a quest you might like to make then it would help. Depending on the restrictions you put on for doing your quest anyway (level req) and the difficulty settings you put in for elite monsters, any puzzles and pitfalls (Riddles, mazes, etc.) then I imagine you can make some extremely difficult adventures that many would find hard to complete.
That's a great idea. If I get what you're saying, your talking about quests that basically net a player information that they need. They may not involve any combat at all. They would be non-combat encounters used to advance the quest story arc in lore-based ways. That's great.
An artifact that can summon red comet appears. But you want to allow its summoning. You have to convince a cleric of selune that it i ok to summon it. CLeric of selune doesn't want to allow you to summon it because he/she thinks it might hurt selune. Now your character can only progress the mission to next mission if (e.g.) his/her religion/lore check is above a certain value - or if he goes to a hidden room to search for tome among the traps dodging them which details the lore - that it was a misfire which hurt Selune but not the comet itself directly. If you clear either condition, you pass to next mission. etc.
Second one basically means really really tough missions. Maybe not even supposed to be cleared but players playing it by lasting in the map for XX minutes and then take screen-shot before death to boast about it.
Yes, exactly. The peaceful mission before you start to fight to bring the player up to the lore of D&D making sure the player understand the story. Rather than just kill anyone displaying red in the reticule. Maybe a few diplo/lore checks to bypass it probably.
Not sure if there would be a specific filter for this sort of quest. But nothing requires that a mission have any particular element in it. If I recall correctly, there have been some totally non-combat missions written for STO that just involve the player progressing through a storyline. So learning about a specific piece of lore would at least be doable.
This would be great for a barmaid entry. When you talk to her, an entry about so-and-so over at wherever telling stories about such-and-such. The entry need not be any more involved than that. The player would know where to go and who to talk to and would know that it's storytelling. Because the barmade function only relates to quests available in the general area, it would be perfect for setting up local gossip storylines.
Contrary to popular belief that is a significant subset of the MMO player population seeking activities that simpley lend themselves to simple life in the world being represented. Some of us do not need to be fighting stuff all the time. So even if the core game is going to be all about hack and slash, I see the foundry as a potential outlet for those who want alternatives, and as long as the requirements for a deployable mission are met, then it should be doable...
but I play one on the forums...
:P
For example;
If the dungeon you have made in the Foundry is a maze you may have an NPC at the beginning who wants you to go into the maze to recover the Sword of Yospeck (this is an epix purple...). So at the beginning you have the NPCs dialogue options:
1) I will go into the maze and collect the sword of Yospeck [Accept Quest]
2) Why do you want the sword? [More Lore]
If the player selects option one then obviously they just go off and make their way into the maze with the quest. If they pick option two then it goes further:
"My son was taken by the Dragon Belthaziaa, the Sword of Yospeck was crafted from the fires from which he was born and only it can destroy the dragon."
1) Sounds like your son was a fool to be caught so, but as you are paying for my time I will help [Accept Quest]
2) I am sorry to hear about your son, I hope with my aid you will be able to rescue him [Show Compassion]
Picking option two takes you on further:
"Thank you for your compassion brave adventurer. I have not ventured far into the maze myself, but what I have come to learn is that if you follow the flowers they should lead you at least half of the way into the maze". (here it links back to the first question to accept the quest). In the maze at each junction there may be one that has a small patch of flowers, by following that route you can avoid a lot of the monsters and traps.
So by finding out more about the NPCs story you can put in clues and tips about your encounter for those willing to listen to the lore. It's all about being creative and using the tools in interesting ways.
IIRC, the comment we got was that all missions will have the same outcomes, so what you're outlining will likely be impossible. Offering several path choices to reach the same outcome within one mission might be possible, but no comment on that so far.
As for multiple paths, again I think that will come down to how you design your dungeons with the tools available. Two paths, one goes through a load of lowbie mobs but who appear in force, or one path that goes through a handful of elite mobs (or a third hidden path that is hard to find but has no mobs).
middle vid 20 mins with Craig
1. Can you increase the size of the aggro spheres?
2.Can you set monsters to use stealth?
3.Can you speed up monsters attacks and movement?
4. Can any level player character enter your adventure? And if they could, is your adventure set to the level of that player?
Thanks for answering our questions!!
My hope is that there is an eclectic group of play testers to provide feedback. I'm also hoping that Cryptic will dedicate the resources necessary to interact with that feedback group, at least for the first few months of game play.
While I do want to create some content my main goal is to become a part of the feedback test group for the foundry. I like a wide range of content types from pure hack-n-slash to stories that use verbs other than "zap and stab" to create the adventure. I would really hate to miss out on content because the review chain became too homogeneous.
Anyway, the foundry looks awesome and has so many possibilities as it matures even further.
I'm not sure that would work because while some content might be VERY well designed it might be very well designed for only a few people.
I guess a wording for gillrmn's concern is: will the rating system have categories?
If the majority of players are hack and slash players only concerned with kill, loot, repeat then a great quality quest which gives a lot of lore, conversations, strategy and/or thought to complete may suffer from negative votes from players who just don't enjoy that style of content.
Furthermore if I was developing a system such as that not only would I develop categories I would also add a scaled rating system. If a person continually rates RP/Lore" content low (or high) I wouldn't count their rating as much as somebody who varies their score.
People who don't enjoy the style of content shouldn't continue to play or vote for content that isn't their cup of tea. I know I tend to not like PvP in most games so I already know if players could develop PvP content I would either not play, vote appropriately if I enjoy it, or refrane from voting since my opinion is already biased.
I'd hope the rest of the community would do the same.
Also, if you haven't noticed yet, "Edit your Avatar" is now clickable. They might add more avatars soon :-)
Goodbye ugly blue dragon!
Ok, back on topic:- adding extra mob will not make content tough. It will make content easy for AoE damager like wizard(more enjoyable too) but tough for other classes. Tough content would have to be continuous rooms of monsters with single strong boss (so defender shines) followed by lot of mobs (where wizard shines). So only a balanced party will make through unscathed.
Challenging content would be like an invasion or re-spawning mobs which don't allow you much rest I suppose.
Doing RP out of dungeon is a nice idea, but I would rather have it in the quest if possible. But thanks for pointing that out.
Also, I get a hint of splitting the party forcibly? Thats a great idea to increase difficulty, if implementing it is possible (considering scripting may be mostly out). Buffing up mobs attacks or nerfing players attack by a dungeon based buff would also be nice as suggested via questions.
Lastly, I agree with ambisinisterr partially. It seems a good solution, but it also raises some concerns in my opinion (who decides the category etc.)
Basically, only those campaigns which have a large player base may eventually be allowed on servers as data hosting will also cost money anyways.
EDIT: Ok you can only click it here, not on this page.
Think back to NWN and how servers were categorized. Action, PW Action, Roleplaying, PvP...etc.
I don't think an all under one roof policy could work for a game which already shows such a diverse amount of gameplay preferences. Of course the developer should be able to switch his category or maybe even be placed into two categories (such as Puzzle and Roleplaying) if the build could fit into either one.
But doing an all out popularity contest would be disastrous.
Basically look at the music industry for comparison. I haven't been to a store that sold audio CD's in years but I remember looking at things, singing bands I know and going "WTF there's no way this is <category>!!!!!"
If they put it in the wrong category, let the feedback correct their mistake. The only one who will be hurt in such a case would be the creator.
Absolutely! The reviewer system is primarily to weed out quests that exploit, grief, or otherwise violate the EULA... Not to judge overall quality. A newly published quest must be rated by at least 5 reviewers before it's available to the public, but even if all 5 give it a 1-star rating, it should pass the initial review stage.
I really am looking forward to testing it out, seeing what we can do with it and watching it grow as the game does.
Now a couple of questions
Can we make the monsters wander?
Can we make them stealth and stalk?
Can we make them say run ahead and warn other mobs, activate traps, lead players into ambushes?
Can we arrange them in ambush?
Do you have grim tooth traps?
Wishlist means it's not a feature on our schedule currently, so I can't say "yes we are doing that". It's something all the Foundry devs want eventually, so weather we do it depends on the scope of the feature vs. our resources, and feedback from players.
I'm glad that Cryptic will be looking into doing such massive projects after release non-the-less. A lesser company would suffice to give a couple of texture packs, maybe a few new monsters and the occasional place-able. After-all redesigning the core tools requires a lot more time and money.
Specific guarantees or not, the desire to continue to better the game after launch is more than we could have expected from most of your competition.
It would be more interesting to give maps customization as well as objects where you have a 3 dimensional aspect to them... some of us do own legos and duplos and don't need a computer for that LOL.