Time Machine, Malfunction

anrix2

Time Machine, Malfunction
Time Machine, Malfunction by @anrix2

Short Code:NW-DP9C2Q3YP

Mission Type: 3 or more Multiple-player story, arena, mirco-crawl, tower defense, and jumping puzzle. Essentially this quest showcases the versatility of The Foundry tool.

Average Duration: Your guess is as good as mine. It is composed of 4 maps.

Amount of Combat: A whole lot.

Starts at: World Map

Mission Summary:

Professor Pittlesworth is calling for a brave party of adventures willing to put their molecules on the line for his arcane research!

This is a group quest! No really it is a group quest; you will not be able to complete it without someone that knows dungeoneering, religion and thievery or arcana!

You are warned, there are parts in the story that will prevent your party from moving forward if the above skills are not represented.

This quest is meant for a party of 3 really skilled adventures, but can be equally fun with a party of 4 or 5.

Author: This is my swan song. I have been sitting on this quest for about 2 months with it near completion. I was going to publish it some time again but the tower defense map ran into some complications with the pathing. Since its near completion I have been holding out, hoping Cryptic would fix pathing, but they have not. I don't think I can hold onto this quest any longer, because I no longer play Neverwinter, but wanted to publish this so my hard work would not go to waste.

I do not think this is as aesthetically polished as Mage Masher, but it should be complete-able and more fun.

Screenshots/attachments:
The arena map:


The micro-crawl map:


The tower defense map:


The jumping puzzle map:



And if by any chance you want to leave me feedback, I will be checking this forum once in a while over the next month or so. Any comments here will be the finishing touches on the quest.

I would offer to trade reviews, but as mentioned, I not longer play the game, this quest was always meant to be my farewell to this amazing Foundry community and the players of Neverwinter.

cipher9nemo

Anrix2, first I wanted to say that I appreciate your work to fill a gap in the Foundry for group only quests. They are far and few in-between.

Now the criticism, hopefully some constructive if you're interested in fixing the quest. This is going to be a wall of text...

We tried out your quest with a 5-man run tonight. We couldn't complete it, but I 'll get to that later. It has a lot of potential, but there are some serious flaws that should be fixed if you're interested in leaving some sort of legacy or farewell quest behind that you can be proud of.

First, the minor stuff... there's some typos here and there, along with misspellings. "hear" instead of "here", "earse" instead of "erase", etc. Also a little overuse of Black and White FX for my taste, but again, minor, trivial stuff.

Now the flaws...

1.) Don't make getting to the next area dependent upon an inventory item that only ONE PLAYER has. That means we all have to check our inventories to see who has it before activating whatever. Worse, the errors for those who don't have it make things even more confusing and clunky, such as "don't have enough strength", "don't have enough faith", etc. Just make it so whatever needs to trigger does so on the next objective, be it a reach point or a kill encounter. And worst of all, if one player gets disconnected, can't make it back, etc. that completely HOSES the progression for the rest of the group. It's an instant abandon quest moment, because no one else can get that item we need to continue.

2.) The invisible walls in the first combat area were more of a nuisance than helpful. Some of us even got stuck and had to /killme since /stuck didn't work. Also, they just felt overly restrictive. For example the supposed-to-be cinematic battle you intended us to watch feels like an untargetable, clunky encounter where we hit an invisible wall, but can still go around to the side and still can't fight the mob while we get blindsided from behind.

3.) The Tower Defense map was just one huge Greenscale zerg of tedious battle. It's not like it was challenging or took strategy, it was just unbalanced compared to the other combat in this quest. First couple of waves were fine, then all of a sudden it was zerg fest time. There's no strategy with zerg fests. Trinity broke down there and group mechanics became unplayable. The only ting we could do was kite things in aggro packs as we soloed stuff away from each other until the zerg was done.

4.) The final jumping puzzle is fun at first until you get to the last gear. You set jumping from the upright gear to the final, huge flat gear a royal pain. Way too high, more than 7 feet or so. After trying forever, we were finally able to find a way up. We had to either jump sideways or jump to the rear portion of the slot above us. That jump was easier if we went to the other side of the upright gear to go through that slot instead, but getting there was a tedious roll of the dice thanks to Cryptic's poor collision detection model on their gears. That's not your fault, but it is your fault for choosing those gears and choosing the angle on that last one. I was able to get to the top, along with one more guildie, but three others couldn't make it. Two stuck around and we were able to explain the finite movements to get up there, but they still had trouble. A third got so frustrated he just gave up. And guess what, that one player has the crystal item in his inventory. So without him the entire party was screwed. So that goes back to flaw #1: DON'T BASE PROGRESSION ON AN INVENTORY ITEM.

Aside from these flaws we did have fun. It's just by the time we got to the end we were so pissed with your quest that some of us wanted to complete it just to down-rate you and gripe in the comments. After all your quest doesn't even have a single play in it right now, and these flaws are probably why. The no reviews is probably more befitting of a silent rant than just down-rating you. And I don't really want to down-rate your quest. The jumping part at the end was overkill at that last gear for a group quest. It might have been tolerable for a solo quest, but for a group one, combined with the item issue, it was why we didn't complete it. The insult to injury was the stupid mobs at the top attacking us on our way up. We eventually killed them from range, but that was just wrong. You could of had them spawn after we interacted with something up there instead.

A part of me feels bad because you've invested a lot of time into making this (there are some great parts), because this is your farewell quest, because there aren't many group only quests, and because it has a lot of potential if these flaws could be overcome. I hope you'll stick around long enough to fix them. If you do, you would certainly get a positive review from me for what would otherwise be a fun group quest. In the mean time I'm not going to even try to complete it again because I know whatever group I bring, one or more of them will get frustrated at the end and give up.

So if you're able to correct this stuff in the quest please let us know in this thread. And I'll edit my post to reflect those changes and remove my criticism. Until then I think my post needs to be here as a warning to other groups who want to try this quest so that they won't have to /facepalm too. I hope that sounds fair?

anrix2

Thanks for the feedback. I'll take it down for now and work on it. I was worried that smaller characters wouldn't be able to make the jump on the last gear. Instead of jumping up and through to the large gear, I'll add more gears and make it so the player can drop down on it.

I am also surprised that greenscale map worked at all. The pathing is messed up in the foundry, they just stand there for me, but I will try and increase the timer between those waves. I'll pull the quest for now until I get around to polishing it up.

Thanks again for the feedback.

cipher9nemo

anrix2 wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback. I'll take it down for now and work on it. I was worried that smaller characters wouldn't be able to make the jump on the last gear. Instead of jumping up and through to the large gear, I'll add more gears and make it so the player can drop down on it.

I am also surprised that greenscale map worked at all. The pathing is messed up in the foundry, they just stand there for me, but I will try and increase the timer between those waves. I'll pull the quest for now until I get around to polishing it up.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Thanks! Whenever you get it fixed we'll run it again. And your quest is fun if these issues are resolved, so you'll get a positive review from me at that time.

anrix2

I am republishing with some of the requested changes.

I removed some of the walls in the town square to make it less restrictive.
I fixed a spelling error in the objective, but I am dyslexic, so I can re-read my stuff 100 times and not pick up on some things.
The swamp waves should spawn with longer intervals in between.
The jumping puzzle at the end has additional gears that should make getting to the top easier.

I left in the black and white fx, because it is suppose to represent assimilating to the time after phasing in and before leaping to the next time period. Additionally those class specific items play into quest maps theme(they also enforce the trinity). You can leave a map to restart it without having to restart the entire quest since this quest takes multiple maps. Additionally you can leave after completing a map, sell or take a break and pick it up later.

cipher9nemo

anrix2 wrote: »

I am republishing with some of the requested changes.

I removed some of the walls in the town square to make it less restrictive.
I fixed a spelling error in the objective, but I am dyslexic, so I can re-read my stuff 100 times and not pick up on some things.
The swamp waves should spawn with longer intervals in between.
The jumping puzzle at the end has additional gears that should make getting to the top easier.

I left in the black and white fx, because it is suppose to represent assimilating to the time after phasing in and before leaping to the next time period. Additionally those class specific items play into quest maps theme(they also enforce the trinity). You can leave a map to restart it without having to restart the entire quest since this quest takes multiple maps. Additionally you can leave after completing a map, sell or take a break and pick it up later.

Awesome! Thanks.

Did you change anything about requiring inventory items to progress? Did you change them to killing certain mobs or anything? Or may be I missed that in your notes? You can do class requirements without items. But overall, requiring specific classes to progress in a group Foundry is harsh. That will restrict the number of plays you get by a big number.

anrix2

I understand leaving the items in restricts the audience significantly. I left them in because they add a certain level of flavor to the story. It wouldn't seem plausible in the context of the game world if lets say a GWF could morph the wall in the swamp prison cell, or that a TR could topple a grand wooden orc structure with sheer strength. Additionally, this quest is not for everyone, it was meant to be played by a group, those items enforce that principle. Mage Masher got slammed by a lot of confused solo players who managed to bang their heads through the group setting over a course of hours just to down rank the quest at the end, after unknowingly selecting the tougher mode. I've gotten a lot of mail in game demanding refunds on the potions they've spent...I know insane...those items are a fail-safe to insure solo players do not attempt a group quest.

Plus, in all fairness to the player, the quest description says the quest requires Dungeoneering, Religion, and Arcana or Thievery.

Seeing as how you and your friends have played the quest, I feel it was worth the time, justifing the month I spent on it, I got to share it with someone, anyone else who plays it is just icing on the cake.