Absolutely - I definitely wouldn't put in normal/easy/hard individual tags - but I know a fair number of us make our quests adjustable from combat light to combat heavy - hence "Adjustable Difficulty." If I put in tag Combat Focus, Challenging then I lose everyone looking for something not too difficult. If I put only Combat Focus, Solo then I lose everyone looking for a Group or Challenging.
Either way I'm forced to lose half (some?) of my potential audience.
Don't forget these tags are going to be 100% player driven. So if someone people tag it as Challenging and some don't, you'll still likely show up in the results of someone searching for "Challenging."
Although that raises a good question I don't think we've seen an answer to - how many and/or what percentage of a particular tag does a quest have been flagged as in order for it to show up in those results? Or will anything flagged that way show up, and is it sorted by the amount or percentage or something?
In other words, if I search "Challenging," will something with, say, 10% of the players who have played it tagging it as "Challenging" be enough for it to show up? If so, will it be listed below something that has had 75% of the players tag it that way?
And as far as that list goes, I think it looks pretty good to me. Thanks for the interactive discussion!
Although that raises a good question I don't think we've seen an answer to - how many and/or what percentage of a particular tag does a quest have been flagged as in order for it to show up in those results? Or will anything flagged that way show up, and is it sorted by the amount or percentage or something?
Exactly. What happens if 25% of the people playing my quest choose to play it at an Elite difficulty level and tag it with Challenging on their review -- only 25% of my reviews get a Challenging - is it then sorted below every quest that is actually designed ONLY to be Challenging. Once again, I end up at a disadvantage by catering to a wider audience.
...and definitely - thanks for hearing our thoughts.
OK gang,
I have a list that we should take a look at.
The team looked at all the feedback and suggestions.
How does this look?
Roleplay
Puzzle
Lore
Humor
Exploration
Story Focus
Combat Focus
Solo
Group
Challenging
Eventful
Unusual
I do like this list much better than the original list.
I don't think players will understand 'Eventful' because I do not.
Also, Challenging might be a good description for a quest, players will not search for it. What they will search for is 'easy', my guildie has an entire following based on that one word....
Will we still be able to search within the quest description text?
Then we would still be able to have author/guild/specialty "tags" (i.e. #AdjustableDifficulty, etc).
As long as we don't lose description searching, I'll be quite happy.
OK gang,
I have a list that we should take a look at.
The team looked at all the feedback and suggestions.
How does this look?
Roleplay
Puzzle
Lore
Humor
Exploration
Story Focus
Combat Focus
Solo
Group
Challenging
Eventful
Unusual
I approve; it's probably as close to my ideal as I could wish for and certainly a lot closer than I expected (I changed my mind, it's better!*).
I assume 'Unusual' is a descriptive you see quite often in review boxes, as really off the top of my head there are only a handful of quests I would have tagged as such - 'Tower District Travails' and 'Whispers from the Void' come to mind. However, I really like 'Unusual' as a tag and can see myself using it quite often to signify more specific story types that don't crop up so often - "story", "unusual" for a horror, for example - or where the author does something a little different to the norm - "combat", "unusual" where the author has created almost unique enemy encounters.
'Eventful' I understand perfectly and think it's a good counter to 'Roleplay' of the 'Tavern' type as well as a good bedmate (to interactive roleplay and all type of quests, of course). If your quest has a lot of things to fight/interact with, or possibly even just look at, on my way from one objective to the next, I would describe that as 'Eventful'. It could also be used to described a pivotal chapter in a campaign.
I understand the reservations of 'Challenging' but it is a common tag used by author and player alike. I have only ever seen it in a positive light and only ever used it positively, that I can remember. Since pushing 10k GS on my L60, real challenging encounters are hard to find, as opposed to when I first hit L60 and could hardly complete a Foundry (circa 4k GS). 'Challenging' is certainly a tag I would search for and respond to positively, but there is no doubt that the fates of some authors will be left in the hands of the gods of scaling. However, the chance to minimise any negative outcome is in the authors' hands - for example, include a difficult slider, specify what range of difficulty they are aiming for etc. (Edit: Just saw bbl's explanation for it as a 'qualifier' and agree that what isn't tagged is as important as what is - just like player comments in the review box ).
*Actually, having thought through these three tags, I think they are ideal. They are certainly a lot more flexible than some of the tags I listed and not being inclusive or exclusive is definitely the way to go.
Eventful - used in the case where one would speak to the events of the quest. For instance, there are a lot of triggered spawns or when conditions used very well. Eventful could also be used to signify the pace of a quest. In simple terms, a quest with a lot going on could be eventful.
Challenging - used in the case where the content or combat was challenging. This is the opposite of easy. The word challenging was used instead of hard or difficult because of it's more positive tone. The use of challenging along with other tags gets us a lot. For instance: Solo, combat focus, challenging takes care of a "hard" tag and while it does use multiple tags it allows us not to have an easy tag. Think of this as a qualifier for other tags.
We did skip the normal/easy/hard tags on purpose. On one hand they are subjective and on the other, as with the farm tag, may be equally misleading, confused or over used.
I agree that "Eventful" is rather vague and quite wide-ranging in interpretation, but otherwise I believe that list is spot-on!
Eventful is probably the least vague of the last three additions on the list. It really only has two meanings - either full of events, or containing an important event.
Maybe it's helpful to explain what isn't eventful? If your map has me running from A to get to B and my journey includes traversing long corridors, or a large overland map with nothing happening in between those two points, that is uneventful. If your quest is part of a campaign and doesn't move the story any further forward, that is uneventful.
Personally, I think 'Eventful' is a good inclusion. For example, I may not particularly be drawn to a quest tagged solely as #lore, but if it is tagged #lore, #eventful, it's probably safe to assume the quest is more than just a lesson in Faerun history. In which case, it would definitely encourage me to play that quest.
You can still search quest text so special case tags are absolutely valid and useful.
Players can search for quests with specific tags only, included tags and excluded tags.
Search results will return ANY quest within the search criteria but to see the tag percentage the player can look at the review and tag heuristics on the quest info.
I was struggling with a single word for Adjustable Difficulty so I am going with your suggestion and adding it.
So for now we will go with this list. (If there are any strong feelings about it we can talk about it)
Roleplay
Puzzle
Lore
Humor
Exploration
Story Focus
Combat Focus
Solo
Group
Adjustable Difficulty
Challenging
Eventful
Unusual
Not 'strong' feelings, but the 'Focus' part is a bit contradictory for balanced quests that are 50/50 Story/Combat. Of which there are a lot. Not sure why 'Focus' is needed at all really.
Not 'strong' feelings, but the 'Focus' part is a bit contradictory for balanced quests that are 50/50 Story/Combat. Of which there are a lot. Not sure why 'Focus' is needed at all really.
As long as they are not mutually exclusive it'll probably work out alright -- especially if authors get to put in the first tags, then reviewers would (hopefully) do the same and tag both, and maybe a few would tag Story Focus, and a few would tag Combat Focus, but they'd probably track each other pretty closely.
As long as they are not mutually exclusive it'll probably work out alright -- especially if authors get to put in the first tags, then reviewers would (hopefully) do the same and tag both, and maybe a few would tag Story Focus, and a few would tag Combat Focus, but they'd probably track each other pretty closely.
Yeah, like I said, I don't have strong feelings about it: I really like the proposed list, but the pedant in me questions why two are marked with 'Focus' when others it could apply to (Lore, Puzzle, Exploration etc.) are not. But list as a whole? Thumbs up!
I can't wait to see the tags in action. Unfortunately the Foundry is still disabled on Preview.
0
celantraMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Silverstars, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 465
edited August 2013
I am really happy that this thread resulted in such a good outcome. I think that these tags are leaps and bounds better then what we had before. I am sorry that I only dropped in here at this late hour but in reading through most of the rest of the community voiced what I would have otherwise, so its all good. I do tend to agree with Kartir that the word focused is unnecessary as it will not prevent authors or players from choosing both.
0
agentjasporMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
Searchable Foundry Tags – You asked, and we listened! When the Fury of the Feywild Balance and Gameplay update goes live, Foundry authors will be able to add searchable tags to their quests, making it easier to search for them by gameplay type and other factors.
I bolded the key part. So does that mean we will see the ability for author's to tag their own quests, or is this part of the official news post incorrect?
Slightly off-topic, but I noticed this in today's news item:
I bolded the key part. So does that mean we will see the ability for author's to tag their own quests, or is this part of the official news post incorrect?
This is an error in the post. A correction will be made.
The tag feature is not launching with author driven tags.
While discussing the options for the tag system we looked at several other games and products/services that use tags. We also weighed the pros and cons of having author driven tags vs. player driven tags.
Here are two things that we struggled with and discussed.
Almost immediately the tags added by users are perceived as "incorrect" by the author
Almost immediately the tags added by the author are perceived as "incorrect" and ignored by the player
The perception in both of these cases is that the system is broken
Having two sources with different investment levels adding qualifiers to the content presents a potential conflict for the user. The user looses confidence in the system when it appears the system is broken.
In a test where the author seeds the initial tags we see that player tags outweigh and dilute the tag an author may have added in just a few plays. With the number of plays we are seeing on live, that single tag becomes invisible if the other tags, added by users, are not the same.
There is, admittedly, an assumption on our part.
In the end the more a tag is used, the closer the content matches that tag. That match happens without an initial seed of tags. After investigation, weighing options and looking at potential issues with the system, we decided not to include author tagging for now.
I will however say that the discussion of author seeded tags is not closed. We are rolling out the tag system without author seeded tags but we will be watching the way tags are used very closely. There will be a review of the system, it's use and the needs of both the player and author.
In a test where the author seeds the initial tags we see that player tags outweigh and dilute the tag an author may have added in just a few plays. With the number of plays we are seeing on live, that single tag becomes invisible if the other tags, added by users, are not the same.
I see no problem with that. The authors "first" tag vote simply gives the quest a searchable identity. As you say, after a number of plays it becomes irrelevant. I'm totally good with that. At least my quest is visible to the audience I designed the quest toward -- if it deviates after that by user opinion, so be it -- I may need to understand my audience better in that case.
agentjasporMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
edited August 2013
Thanks for the insight on the decision process, very interesting. I see where you're coming from, and it will definitely be interesting to see how it unfolds and how much the authors and players agree or disagree on which tags are appropriate for specific quests.
You missed one, you should definitely add 'Easy' as one of the tags. Easy is what I design my missions to be, and Easy is what I search for when looking for a new mission to play. You remembered Challenging, but you missed its opposite
We did skip the normal/easy/hard tags on purpose. On one hand they are subjective and on the other, as with the farm tag, may be equally misleading, confused or over used.
As I suggested in another thread, select "challenging" in the tags to exclude field and you have your 'easy' quests
Comments
Don't forget these tags are going to be 100% player driven. So if someone people tag it as Challenging and some don't, you'll still likely show up in the results of someone searching for "Challenging."
Although that raises a good question I don't think we've seen an answer to - how many and/or what percentage of a particular tag does a quest have been flagged as in order for it to show up in those results? Or will anything flagged that way show up, and is it sorted by the amount or percentage or something?
In other words, if I search "Challenging," will something with, say, 10% of the players who have played it tagging it as "Challenging" be enough for it to show up? If so, will it be listed below something that has had 75% of the players tag it that way?
And as far as that list goes, I think it looks pretty good to me. Thanks for the interactive discussion!
The Crystal Relics - NWS-DMXNCNAVJ
Tower District Contest Entry: Undercover Brother - NW-DCD6OI9JE
Exactly. What happens if 25% of the people playing my quest choose to play it at an Elite difficulty level and tag it with Challenging on their review -- only 25% of my reviews get a Challenging - is it then sorted below every quest that is actually designed ONLY to be Challenging. Once again, I end up at a disadvantage by catering to a wider audience.
...and definitely - thanks for hearing our thoughts.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
I do like this list much better than the original list.
I don't think players will understand 'Eventful' because I do not.
Also, Challenging might be a good description for a quest, players will not search for it. What they will search for is 'easy', my guildie has an entire following based on that one word....
Then we would still be able to have author/guild/specialty "tags" (i.e. #AdjustableDifficulty, etc).
As long as we don't lose description searching, I'll be quite happy.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
I approve; it's probably as close to my ideal as I could wish for and certainly a lot closer than I expected (I changed my mind, it's better!*).
I assume 'Unusual' is a descriptive you see quite often in review boxes, as really off the top of my head there are only a handful of quests I would have tagged as such - 'Tower District Travails' and 'Whispers from the Void' come to mind. However, I really like 'Unusual' as a tag and can see myself using it quite often to signify more specific story types that don't crop up so often - "story", "unusual" for a horror, for example - or where the author does something a little different to the norm - "combat", "unusual" where the author has created almost unique enemy encounters.
'Eventful' I understand perfectly and think it's a good counter to 'Roleplay' of the 'Tavern' type as well as a good bedmate (to interactive roleplay and all type of quests, of course). If your quest has a lot of things to fight/interact with, or possibly even just look at, on my way from one objective to the next, I would describe that as 'Eventful'. It could also be used to described a pivotal chapter in a campaign.
I understand the reservations of 'Challenging' but it is a common tag used by author and player alike. I have only ever seen it in a positive light and only ever used it positively, that I can remember. Since pushing 10k GS on my L60, real challenging encounters are hard to find, as opposed to when I first hit L60 and could hardly complete a Foundry (circa 4k GS). 'Challenging' is certainly a tag I would search for and respond to positively, but there is no doubt that the fates of some authors will be left in the hands of the gods of scaling. However, the chance to minimise any negative outcome is in the authors' hands - for example, include a difficult slider, specify what range of difficulty they are aiming for etc. (Edit: Just saw bbl's explanation for it as a 'qualifier' and agree that what isn't tagged is as important as what is - just like player comments in the review box
*Actually, having thought through these three tags, I think they are ideal. They are certainly a lot more flexible than some of the tags I listed and not being inclusive or exclusive is definitely the way to go.
Great job badbotlimit and team.
I agree that "Eventful" is rather vague and quite wide-ranging in interpretation, but otherwise I believe that list is spot-on!
Maybe it's helpful to explain what isn't eventful? If your map has me running from A to get to B and my journey includes traversing long corridors, or a large overland map with nothing happening in between those two points, that is uneventful. If your quest is part of a campaign and doesn't move the story any further forward, that is uneventful.
Personally, I think 'Eventful' is a good inclusion. For example, I may not particularly be drawn to a quest tagged solely as #lore, but if it is tagged #lore, #eventful, it's probably safe to assume the quest is more than just a lesson in Faerun history. In which case, it would definitely encourage me to play that quest.
You can still search quest text so special case tags are absolutely valid and useful.
Players can search for quests with specific tags only, included tags and excluded tags.
Search results will return ANY quest within the search criteria but to see the tag percentage the player can look at the review and tag heuristics on the quest info.
I was struggling with a single word for Adjustable Difficulty so I am going with your suggestion and adding it.
So for now we will go with this list. (If there are any strong feelings about it we can talk about it)
Roleplay
Puzzle
Lore
Humor
Exploration
Story Focus
Combat Focus
Solo
Group
Adjustable Difficulty
Challenging
Eventful
Unusual
*sniff* I love you man. :cool:
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
As long as they are not mutually exclusive it'll probably work out alright -- especially if authors get to put in the first tags, then reviewers would (hopefully) do the same and tag both, and maybe a few would tag Story Focus, and a few would tag Combat Focus, but they'd probably track each other pretty closely.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
Yeah, like I said, I don't have strong feelings about it: I really like the proposed list, but the pedant in me questions why two are marked with 'Focus' when others it could apply to (Lore, Puzzle, Exploration etc.) are not. But list as a whole? Thumbs up!
I can't wait to see the tags in action. Unfortunately the Foundry is still disabled on Preview.
I bolded the key part. So does that mean we will see the ability for author's to tag their own quests, or is this part of the official news post incorrect?
The Crystal Relics - NWS-DMXNCNAVJ
Tower District Contest Entry: Undercover Brother - NW-DCD6OI9JE
There is. Check the latest post by badbot for the "final" list. Roleplay is on it.
The Crystal Relics - NWS-DMXNCNAVJ
Tower District Contest Entry: Undercover Brother - NW-DCD6OI9JE
This is an error in the post. A correction will be made.
The tag feature is not launching with author driven tags.
While discussing the options for the tag system we looked at several other games and products/services that use tags. We also weighed the pros and cons of having author driven tags vs. player driven tags.
Here are two things that we struggled with and discussed.
The perception in both of these cases is that the system is broken
Having two sources with different investment levels adding qualifiers to the content presents a potential conflict for the user. The user looses confidence in the system when it appears the system is broken.
In a test where the author seeds the initial tags we see that player tags outweigh and dilute the tag an author may have added in just a few plays. With the number of plays we are seeing on live, that single tag becomes invisible if the other tags, added by users, are not the same.
There is, admittedly, an assumption on our part.
In the end the more a tag is used, the closer the content matches that tag. That match happens without an initial seed of tags. After investigation, weighing options and looking at potential issues with the system, we decided not to include author tagging for now.
I will however say that the discussion of author seeded tags is not closed. We are rolling out the tag system without author seeded tags but we will be watching the way tags are used very closely. There will be a review of the system, it's use and the needs of both the player and author.
Let's keep an eye on it together.
I see no problem with that. The authors "first" tag vote simply gives the quest a searchable identity. As you say, after a number of plays it becomes irrelevant. I'm totally good with that. At least my quest is visible to the audience I designed the quest toward -- if it deviates after that by user opinion, so be it -- I may need to understand my audience better in that case.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
The Crystal Relics - NWS-DMXNCNAVJ
Tower District Contest Entry: Undercover Brother - NW-DCD6OI9JE
As I suggested in another thread, select "challenging" in the tags to exclude field and you have your 'easy' quests