test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
The typical reviews I get..
wuhsin
Banned Users Posts: 0 Arc User
Reviewer 1 wrote:2 easy lol - 5 Stars
Reviewer 2 wrote:Horrible waste of time. I kept falling and dying. There is no campfire. - 1 Star
Reviewer 3 wrote:Way too difficult and frustrating. - 1 Star
Reviewer 4 wrote:Toughest Foundry mission I've played! - 5 Stars
Reviewer 5 wrote:Easy mode is too easy. - 1 Star
These aren't word for word, and no one has been named, but these are typically the reviews I get on a day to day basis on both the quests in my campaign. I hardly get any comments on the Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms graphic novels characters I used. It's always about the difficulty, despite the fact I give more difficulty options than most Foundry authors.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by wuhsin on
0
Comments
It makes me want to have absolutely no combat in my next map. lol
Having played far too many foundries to remember them all, and having read a good proportion of the comments left to those foundries the thing I notice about comments regarding combat is that players are turned off by combat for which there is no obvious reason, and so will complain about it being too hard or too easy when often what they mean is "too pointless".
Which is why I always try to limit myself to a maximum of three (preferably two) combats between story elements (pay offs). I've had one complaint that my combat is too hard (Water Elemental combat in Hidden Valley) and one that the combat was not "tactical enough" (as the player did not offer any other comment or insight I am unsure what specifically is meant by that).
I thought the combat is Pirate City was brilliantly paced, and my thoughts on Zigby's have been PM'd to Wuhisn already.
All The Best
Looking For Reviews For Your Foundry Quest?
Drop By Scribe's Enclave & Meet Up With Volunteer Reviewers.
I hate to break it to you, but the majority of players that are doing your quests are not professional reviewers. If the average player is having difficulties with your quest, then they are not sitting around thinking about how great the setting is, they are trying to figure out how to survive.
And then there are the stereotypical internet trolls, who don't even deserve a mention.
FWIW....seeing authors complain (or brag) about their reviews is a big turn off for even wanting to do that persons quest. It's something that the authors may want to keep in mind. (This isn't meant for Wuhsin alone, but all the authors out there.)
Sweet, thanks!
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
I just got my first random 1 star review. Everyone who bothers to write something about my quest has given me 4 or 5 stars. Amazingly, someone played through the whole thing (30 minutes) just to down rate it. I'm wondering if they died a few times on my encounters. My quests are generally combat oriented, and I do tend to encounter stack. Both of my quests, however, have either difficulty sliders and/or optional allies to make combat a bit more easy for high level characters.
The Planar Rescue
The Hands of Jorath
Short Code: NW-DIQ4VNRDU
Short Code: NW-DSJ437GPU
As zagnar said, the scaling of missions to levels is not at all well-balanced and even at cap not all L60s are equal. We are a mix of levels, gear, skill and taste in quests. All of you here know this, so why you insist on talking about trolls or bot accounts (both of which could be used as equally to 5* quests as 1* them) is really stretching. Make the quests you enjoy making for the players who enjoy the type of quests you make.
Sure, some people who won't like your style will wander in accidentally and one star you. It's unavoidable so stop trying to avoid it by making your quests be a one-size fits all (I'm talking in general here, not to any one author). You can of course decrease the chance of accidents happening by making it clear in your overview what the player can expect inside. Something you have obviously decided against doing Wuhsin and that's fair enough, your decision.
Going slightly off-topic, but it is in a similar vein. I've read so many comments disparaging the player base - we don't read, we're morons, we have no appreciation for your craft etc. - and yet when one guy puts up a thread asking for recommendations for quests that would make a good daily, authors of long quests which didn't meet his criteria were quite happy to push their own quests under the proviso he "skips dialogue", 'doesn't explore", "don't take side quests", one even suggested he skip the reading!
I also made a thread 12 hours ago, giving you all an opportunity to say something nice about each other's work. Hopefully mrthebozer won't be the only contributor, because it would be really nice to see you all focus on the good stuff and the good reviews and the good players instead of focussing on everything bad all the time.
I think that showing class and level (when the foundry was done) would be a good and maybe helpful add on for the reviews
Only a fraction of my reviews are ever like that. I get more "love the map and great story". Then the occasional "loot sucks" lol
Dreamscapes Campaign
I. Darkly Dreaming / NW-DPSH505XY +Daily Foundry!!
II. Shattered Dreams / NW-DGARDHDR7
Just ran and rated both of your quests today. I didn't one star either of them though. Sending you a PM about a bug that can make one of them unable to be finished.
"Hah! You are doomed! You're only armed with that pathetic excuse for a musical instrument!!!" *the Savage Beast moments before Lonnehart the Bard used music to soothe him... then beat him to death with his Fat Lute*
Brethren of the Five, Campaign. - Story focused
The Dwarven Tale - Hack 'N Slash
Thing is, sometimes critics speak truths, or some truths. It can be hard to differentiate sometimes.
Brethren of the Five, Campaign. - Story focused
The Dwarven Tale - Hack 'N Slash
(1) Encouraging (i.e., "Loved it. Great story. Creepy setting. Really enjoyed such-and-such. Looking forward to more." And that sort of thing.)
(2) Really helpful suggestions (i.e., "I noticed that a chair or whatever was kind of floating a bit in the third map," or "I found a little typo," or whatever.
(3) Simply uninformed comments (i.e., "Loot sucks" because the player thinks we can control it. Basically the kind of stuff that indicates the player has no idea of the features or abilities of the Foundry editor.)
(4) Really absurd randomness (i.e., My favorite one so far complained that it was hard to see through the fog in my quest and he couldn't see the monsters in the distance. Um, yeah. That's kind of the point of an adventure with "fog" in the title. But there are also things like, "your portrayal of women is disgusting" or "I thought he Halfling was fun" even though there isn't a Halfling anywhere in the adventure.)
(5) Mean-spirited people who obviously had a bad day, had a rage-moment in the adventure, and are just dumping (i.e., I had one review that said "bite me.")
Of course, the overall consensus after hitting that 1000-plays mark is still really positive, so I feel encouraged. And for every odd comment or complaint there are a handful of encouraging notes (Ooo! And even some tips! So cool!).
I guess it just goes to show that large groups of people are actually large collections of highly-subjective and radically-differentiated expectations. Oh well...
You are one of the reasons why there needs to be a better search function. So that you don't end up in those ridiculous "don't you people realize this is a video game?" quests that you just disrespected while claiming to respect them.
Pick your side, take a stand, save--or kill--your former allies.
I think that's a totally valid expectation of the Foundry, and Cryptic has encouraged that with their current setup of requiring four quick adventures. It's the reason I'm designing and refining things to time out at a 15-minute average so that more players can enjoy them. (It's also why I think a lot of the longer quests in the Foundry would be better off breaking up into multiple "chapters" with a story thread instead of that wearisome 45-60 minute average playing time.)
Who knows? Perhaps Cryptic will change things up one day so that you can complete a Foundry daily by 4 15-minute runs OR 2 30-minute runs OR 1 60-minute run, so that players can benefit from running some of those longer adventures. It would encourage more diversity in the published content.
That's just ... awesome. Heh.
As for timing, yeah... I've been honing my ability to regulate pacing of a mission. Part of the challenge is getting a story mission that doesn't vary too much with people who rush through. I could force people to read, but I'd rather not.
The challenge is making a mission that takes at least 15 minutes to play rushing through, but doesn't murder someone who actually bothers to read with a 3 hour epic.
What I'm going to try in my next mission is separate modes in each map -- combat or dialog/non-combat tasks, and try to get each to run at about the same amount of time. Separating them this way SHOULD give me the freedom to tweak either side to get them aligned.
The biggest remaining problem is how unpredictable combat length can be, given different levels and classes.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
I think this is a perfectly valid reason to play Foundry quests. It's not the audience I target, but that's why we have variety. We have pop music and rock music and classical music and hip-hop and rap and country and all these different musical genres. We have bands that cross over between genres and bands that are hard to nail down because they sit in the grey area between styles.
There's no right way to make (or play) Foundry quests, just like there's no one right style in which to make music.
dimm1v1 (I hope) will never ever play my Foundry quests, because he'll absolutely hate them. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't have Foundry quests to his taste that are available for him to play.
I really hope comments like this do not deter authors from creating longer quests if the story demands it. I have spent most of my play time this weekend inside Nyghoma's creations - min 2 hours inside each quest - and have never been more immersed. I do take your point about chapters, but in my experience (as a player) this only works well when each chapter has been designed as a stand-alone in any case.
The only authors who get deterred by comments like that are ones looking for mass-market appeal. There's nothing wrong with that. Popular is a perfectly valid goal to strive for.
But trust me, we're not all like that.
Haha... Kind of funny timing. I got one that said "bite me" just yesterday (or maybe the day before). It was tacked on at the end of a rant about loot and some other stuff that didn't make sense.
As lots of people around here know, I enjoy both short and long Foundry adventures, and have tried to offer an abundance of reviews, feedback, etc. for quests of all lengths.
Sorry for the confusion.
Player 1: "Horse"
Player 2: "Balls"