Brainstorming ways to make the Foundry Profitable

bardaaron

Since it's been pretty well established that the reason the Foundry gets ignored by the Devs at Cryptic is because, as an entirely free feature, it makes Perfect World absolutely no money, so from a business standpoint, it's a waste of resources. So, while they probably still won't do anything, it seems like if we could come up with some really great ways for them to make money WITHOUT CHARGING FOR THE FOUNDRY, it's the most likely thing to catch their attention. And if they have a way to make money off of it (any at all) that at least gives them an incentive to fix the bugs, and maybe even give us some of the things we've been asking for since beta.

There have been a few great ones put forward already, like Temporary Zen items, and Product Placement. But let's not stop there; let's see how many ideas we can come up with. For purposes of this thread, don't worry about whether the ideas are "good" or not. We can work that out and see what we like and support. Throw them all at the wall, and see what sticks.

So, since I am posting this, I'll start us off. I will also try to keep this updated with any additional ideas.

• Zen store ads on loading screens: A lot of quests have several maps, which means several loading screens. That's space that could be used to advertise zen store items.
• Bundles of exclusive content: Honestly, I would be annoyed if they did this, but I am pretty sure there would be foundry authors who would purchase exclusive content. This would be things like access to a terraforming kit including hills and rivers, desert maps, and things like that; or themed non-plotline expansions (perhaps one that's more seafaring with aquatic enemies, a Calimshan pack, or one that expands on the Underdark). This would be analogous to how you can play the game for free, but if you want access to a Scourge Warlock, you have to pay.

eldarth

bardaaron wrote: »

So, while they probably still won't do anything, it seems like if we could come up with some really great ways for them to make money WITHOUT CHARGING FOR THE FOUNDRY, it's the most likely thing to catch their attention.

bardaaron wrote: »

• Bundles of exclusive content: Honestly, I would be annoyed if they did this, but I am pretty sure there would be foundry authors who would purchase exclusive content. This would be things like access to a terraforming kit including hills and rivers, desert maps, and things like that; or themed non-plotline expansions (perhaps one that's more seafaring with aquatic enemies, a Calimshan pack, or one that expands on the Underdark). This would be analogous to how you can play the game for free, but if you want access to a Scourge Warlock, you have to pay.

Contradict yourself much?

This has been vehemently, venemously, LOUDLY, repeatedly rejected by foundy authors since beta.

For every one that "might" pay -- a dozen would leave in disgust. And the foundries containing the "exclusive" content would rapidly become the only ones played.

If they did something like this -- I would be one of the first ones out the door.

bardaaron

I don't see it as a contradiction, as such. Don't get me wrong; I'm not clamoring for it; I wasn't even saying I necessarily thought it was even a GOOD idea, I'm just, as mentioned, throwing things out there. However, the difference between "charging for the foundry" and "bundles of exclusive content" in the Zen Store is that in the "exclusive content" option, it would only be for special packs, analogous to how people can purchase the "Scourge Warlock" or "Dragonborn," except containing extra stuff for the Foundry instead. I think for purposes of that, if the idea holds any water at all, I think that it should function rather like the above, in that it would only provide extra detail assets, and perhaps encounters. No special functions that can't be achieved with the standard foundry.

I am ABSOLUTELY OPPOSED to them charging for standard foundry content. I would definitely leave the game if they started charging for what we already have. That said, I played DDO before this, and they sold access to extra quests in the Turbine store; and the Zen Store also already offers exclusive stuff for every other part of the game; so I was merely thinking that paying for "extra" stuff is by no means unheard of.

But perhaps you're right, and even having optional foundry stuff require payment would drive players away. If people do feel that way, then I do not want to push forward anything that would damage the Foundry community.

eldarth

bardaaron wrote: »

But perhaps you're right, and even having optional foundry stuff require payment would drive players away. If people do feel that way, then I do not want to push forward anything that would damage the Foundry community.

I think one of the biggest issues with having "optional" foundry stuff would split the foundries into haves/have-nots. And from there the "haves" would slowly end up being the only foundries players would play. Then, in order to get any plays at all, that would require you to buy the optional content. Very slippery slope that just leads to craggy rocks at the bottom of a pit.

dtz

bardaaron wrote: »

This would be analogous to how you can play the game for free, but if you want access to a Scourge Warlock, you have to pay.

Just a minor nitpick, but the Scourge Warlock class is available to everyone for free; the Scourge Warlock Booster Pack merely contains extra items to help level one, just like the Hunter Ranger Booster Pack from M2.

grimah

one simple idea is to have more coupons drop in foundry, but thats not a very foundry specific fix.

The best way I think is to use foundry for player retention. (people keep playing = people keep spending). The same reason they release modules and create events.

There are plenty of good foundries (really good ones) that have been made, ive played a few. But they are long forgotten and never get beyond 20-100 rates because theres no way for them to get it out there. So theres a ton of content out there for players that has been ignored. People keep suggesting better rewards for foundries but it will not address this issue, alot of UI changes need to be made (including the adjusted rating system). The players don't scroll beyond 3-4 "load more" clicks (tired of being a hero gets alot of unique/new rates every day). Sure its good to keep the favourites up there so new players can get the good stuff, but what happens when they played through the 10-15 "best" ones? they stop playing them.

They is no decent way for them to make foundry generate ZEN that would not work better with regular content, since foundry content is hard to regulate... If they really want more zen they should look at how their companion system works first, thats where they can get more ZEN easily as it is currently an untapped resource (people tend to only buy pets for active bonuses, so if they gave a way/reason to summon them people would start buying the other ones)

iandarksword

eldarth wrote: »

I think one of the biggest issues with having "optional" foundry stuff would split the foundries into haves/have-nots. And from there the "haves" would slowly end up being the only foundries players would play. Then, in order to get any plays at all, that would require you to buy the optional content. Very slippery slope that just leads to craggy rocks at the bottom of a pit.

There is some argument that this has already happened with the normal game content, it seems a very popular argument from the PVP crowd. I have financial decisions that are made outside of this game, and in truth, I only spend on this game as a treat to myself. That's not very often, because I put myself as a last priority. Paying for additional content would certainly impede the creative options for others who, for various reasons, choose not to purchase or simply can not afford to.

benja32gonsales

I hate the argument: "Hey, Cryptic, look at this, you can make money here", instead of telling them what would be a trully good feature and what would make NWO a good MMO.

eldarth

benja32gonsales wrote: »

I hate the argument: "Hey, Cryptic, look at this, you can make money here", instead of telling them what would be a trully good feature and what would make NWO a good MMO.

That has been done thousands of times. They're clearly not interested in that.

bardaaron

eldarth wrote: »

That has been done thousands of times. They're clearly not interested in that.

And that is exactly why I made this thread. Since they are not interested in "what would make NWO a good MMO," maybe they will react to what will make them some money. If the Foundry is making some money, maybe that will drive them to want to improve the experience and the utility of it.

grimah

Another suggestion which would be indirectly boosting ZEN is making PvP foundry maps. Since People who want to be the "best" at pvp are more likely to spend money to buy the rank 10s etc.

So increasing the appeal to PvP = more money for them.

bardaaron

grimah wrote: »

The best way I think is to use foundry for player retention. (people keep playing = people keep spending). The same reason they release modules and create events.

If it's about retention, then I think we need to factor in that the Foundry could be used in endgame. A lot of players complain about lack of endgame content, which is pretty much just the dailies and boon grinding from whatever the newest module is at any given moment. The Foundry has a great infinite potential to fill this void, but as it is, with a highly-geared lvl 60, the foundry is not likely to create a challenge for these. What if the scaling mechanism took gear score into account, either instead or, or in addition to level? Right now I am not even talking about rewards, though that would really be needed to. I am talking about the challenge. Would gear score scaling make for a more accurate reading of the challenge?

reiwulf

I think a nice idea (one of many) to make more people play the foundry is to add a foundry campaign, with boons and everything. You would need to play quests (always eligible for daily to prevent 1 min quests)and maybe like the pvp campaign, having to do specigic things in quests to earn the boons (for example: play a quest with an average duration of 30 mins)
Also there need to be a way to make people want to play longer than 15 min quests, but curtrently there are many problems with it. for once you don't get anything more than a 15 min quest, reward wise. second many times you can get randomly d/c and you lose your progress.
If foundry quests would always save progress, and you could exit and re enter the map as many times as you want without loosing anything, (unless you drop the quest that is) AND if there was some sort of incentive for playing longer quests it woud fix the issue.
(maybe for Rhix dailies, have in count the average time and current duration of a quest, and if it's longer than 30 mins having it count as 2, if it takes up more than 45 mins have it count as 3, etc...
Also you could have some companions and free transmutes as prizes for the foundry campaign.

grimah

as i've said countless times before, increasing rewards will not fix the problems with have with foundry. It will help the ones that are currently already being played (the top 20 or so foundries) and farm quests, but authors will still be struggling then giving up trying to get people to play theirs. You really think having some awesome reward will make a difference when some random person (the author) goes into PE and spams their new foundry.

I'm guessing many of you who have featured quests know that people playing your quests is not a problem (when it gets featured) there are people out there that will play, and how slow the original version took to get noticed (for most). We (story style authors) need a platform to get our quests noticed first, BEFORE we think about any of this reward stuff.

Unless you have good promoting skills, you don't have a chance getting plays. I see some very old dedicated authors still have under 100 plays on their 1 year old maps. And believe me when I say making better rewards will not help this issue, I know how to get plays and it has nothing to do with AD or rewards.

bardaaron

grimah wrote: »

as i've said countless times before, increasing rewards will not fix the problems with have with foundry. It will help the ones that are currently already being played (the top 20 or so foundries) and farm quests, but authors will still be struggling then giving up trying to get people to play theirs. You really think having some awesome reward will make a difference when some random person (the author) goes into PE and spams their new foundry.

Depending on the nature of the rewards it would help different quests. However, an incentive for players to play more foundries is good for the Foundry as a whole. Yes, most of the benefit will be to the already well known quests, unless there is something specifically incentivizing less well known quest. Rewards for Foundry achievements--maybe for playing certain numbers of unique quests would help get people playing more. AD Rewards for achievements or "quests" based on Reviewing foundry quests might get some of them more noticed. And changing rewards to make time investment proportional to rewards received, instead of the Rhix 1000 AD per quest, all 15 min would help encourage authors not to worry about keeping it short, and encourage players to take their time, and to "stop and enjoy the content." Of course there would have to be a failsafe. It should be based on average run-time, and if they need to start calculating, it would be good to not factor in idle time, or else, players could beef out an "average" time by just spending a lot of time in it ONCE, and then speed-running it thereafter.

zahinder

What's frustrating is, by this point, I would have spent easily $100-200 on NW that I haven't because I'm frustrated with lack of Foundry development.

And there's absolutely no way to PROVE that to them.

The problem isn't that Foundry doesn't bring in revenue. It does. The problem is that there is no easily measured connection.

I've contemplated something like 'make a zen purchase, tag it with I'M GETTING THIS BECAUSE OF FOUNDRY PLEASE WORK ON IT' but I'm not sure they'd actually listen.

gornonthecob

bardaaron wrote: »

[The Foundry is] an entirely free feature, it makes Perfect World absolutely no money, so from a business standpoint, it's a waste of resources.

I disagree. The foundry is one of the major selling points of the game. Endless quests created by many talented artists/DMs. It's also a highly notable and praised feature by game reviewers, and gets plenty of attention. [Source] [Source]

And if they have a way to make money off of it (any at all) that at least gives them an incentive to fix the bugs, and maybe even give us some of the things we've been asking for since beta.

One of the biggest things I love about the Twitch Livestreams is that the Dev's constantly remind us that they do listen. And I have proof of that. Several times I have submitted an obscure bug report, and after a patch or two, it's fixed. Just because we haven't got that bathtub detail yet doesn't mean they aren't working on the foundry. I've seen a lot of new details added since IWD. The same was true when the Dread Ring was released. What exactly are you looking for? Personally I'm still waiting on the bathtub... I'm looking at you, Akro... make it happen.

Frankly, I enjoy working on the foundry even with it's bugs and glitches. I think it says a lot about an author who can roll with it, and find fun or quirky ways to get around issues. It makes you think. Maybe I'm a HAMSTER... I dunno. But I look at the creative solutions to "OR LOGIC" or other requested features, and I'm completely amazed at what people come up with.

To sum up the rest of your post:
The day they charge me for premium 'details' to place in my maps is the day I will remove all my quests and stop making foundry quests.
-DEAD SERIOUS-

zahinder

I just want reliable ways to advertise and find audience without having to spend every moment trying to get attention.

I'd be happy with no fixes or more content, EVER, if they'd do matching or some other ways so that people trying to find interesting stories could do so easily.

(I'd also like a time-scaled reward scheme, and it baffles me why STO has it and NW doesn't)

reiwulf

I think people interested in stories can find them, it's just that there isn't that many people intrerested to start with.
When I want to pla something with a story I just check the tags and look for "story" in related words too, and so far it works.

zahinder

The tag system is utterly useless and I'm ... frankly shocked it even got out of design discussions.

You search for stuff with Story tag... ok, there's 50k plays, Combat and Humor get 40k hits, Story gets 1. OH HEY it shows up as a story mission.

I mean, seriously, what gets me is the stuff they waste their time on. Because we only get a small amount of work at a time.

eldarth

The part that frustrates me is that they can't even have an unpaid intern correct spelling mistakes.
...and how many detail assets do suppose are 1'x1'x1' ? I'd bet over 50%.
Just some really, incredibly simple fixes they can't even be bothered fixing.

huajia2

Charging for foundry content is bad for everyone involved. Not only will it cause a rift among the foundry authors, the simple fact is there's not enough of a target audience for it. The foundry authors as a whole seem to be a small percentage of the gamers. And it seems like at least half of us would never buy into exclusive content (and as some have said, they'd leave altogether if they tried to sell it to us.) So it wouldn't do the company any good, because they wouldn't make enough money on it to be worth the investment of time and money in the first place.

The fact is, the ones calling for changes to the foundry aren't the ones playing the foundry quests, but those of us who author them. Which is probably why the foundry keeps taking the back burner. If the company is going by percentages of players asking for things, the foundry authors would keep coming up with the short straw.

I think there's already some great ideas for how the foundry could help sell zen items. (Saw the placement of zen store items thread, and I think that's a super idea. Giving the players a chance to see the items up close would definitely add to the sales.) I also agree that a better search and the ability to save progress would encourage players to play a larger variety of foundry quests.

I think the bottom line is, we need non-foundry authors to get involved in asking for things for the foundry. The more people to request it, the more chance it'll garner attention from the company. However, it's obviously already hard to get gamers to play foundry quests, let alone get involved in req fixes and more content. It's a bit of a conundrum.

zahinder

My feeling is that there is a large pool of potential audience that simply never formed or gave up because of the difficulties of the system and how unrewarding it feels.

If I had to ask for only one thing, I would ask for time-scaled rewards, like STO has. I think that one change would leverage the most potential change -- authors could feel free to make hour long missions, and players wouldn't feel like they are being cheated or derided for playing them.

huajia2

zahinder wrote: »

My feeling is that there is a large pool of potential audience that simply never formed or gave up because of the difficulties of the system and how unrewarding it feels.

If I had to ask for only one thing, I would ask for time-scaled rewards, like STO has. I think that one change would leverage the most potential change -- authors could feel free to make hour long missions, and players wouldn't feel like they are being cheated or derided for playing them.

Personally time-scaled rewards are one of the asked for foundry fixes I don't want. I'd much prefer the ability to save progress over time-scaled rewards. Look at the daily dungeons. You have groups who explore and find all the hidden caches, and ones who only care about running through it as fast as possible to finish the final boss and get the final treasure chest. Personally, I like to explore, and I constantly find myself chasing after the group because I was checking on a side hallway. Now take that and apply it to the foundry.

Group A & D explores the area of a really short quest completely, upping it's time. Group B & C run through a longer quest, skipping all the side-quests. In the end, both quests end up with the same "average" time, and give out the same rewards. Now you're going into Quest A thinking it should be long, or Quest B thinking it should be short, and finding out the opposite, and either getting extra rewards for a short quest, or jipped on a longer one. Yes, the "average" time should cancel this out, but that would depend on the number of plays, and which time of gamers played it.

Simply not a fan of that. Keep the rewards the same, but give the ability to save progress. You can complete a short quest for a foundry, start a long foundry quest, save progress, finish it the second day for that day's reward, or play another short foundry, and not finish the longer one til day three. (Like when you take on multiple quests in the regular section of the game. Rewards don't change, but you can finish them whenever you want to claim them.)

I have limited game play time with my work schedule, and I often promise myself I'll play a longer foundry that's caught my eye on my day off, but that depends on what's happening in RL and in-game. If an event is on, chances are the long foundry is going to wait for another free day.

tantivetyrell

Not under any circumstance is there to be a paywall of any type to be introduced to CONTENT CREATION. Paying for more privileges to create content for the game is preposterous in the highest degree.

bardaaron

Ok, I see that NOBODY likes the second idea. That's cool. I wasn't sure if I liked it either. I think it's been pretty well established that is a "no" at this point. So let's get to coming up with some more ideas! Better ones!

gornonthecob

The whole premise of making the foundry 'profitable' is just a bad idea. The goal shouldn't be to make the foundry profitable, but to make the foundry rewarding. When the foundry becomes more rewarding it would be the focus of players, and as a side-effect, would become more profitable.

zahinder

Well, I think Foundry _is_ profitable, so I would recast this as 'how do we demonstrate Foundry's usefulness to the brand?'

bardaaron

gornonthecob wrote: »

The whole premise of making the foundry 'profitable' is just a bad idea. The goal shouldn't be to make the foundry profitable, but to make the foundry rewarding. When the foundry becomes more rewarding it would be the focus of players, and as a side-effect, would become more profitable.

So, your argument is that when Foundry is more rewarding to players, then owing to the fact that it attracts more player attention, they will want to do right by it to keep their player-base happy. That may be so, and I would like to see that. However, it does still require that they actually make the foundry rewarding, which requires a time and effort investment on their part that they do not seem inclined to exert. Perhaps the Devs listen, but they don't provide. There are occasional bug fixes, but there are also tons of bugs that have been around forever that have NOT been fixed, and they certainly haven't gotten around to giving us any of the easy features that have been asked for since Beta, so it seems pretty clear that their work schedule doesn't slot any foundry time on a regular basis.

The idea of having to make the foundry profitable is not an ideal scenario. I'd rather see our foundry fixes and requests take place without money having to be a thing. But it doesn't seem to ACTUALLY be the case. They seem to need some incentive that they aren't getting at present, and we are currently locked in a circular logic argument:

Company won't allow Foundry updates until Foundry is more popular
Foundry won't become more popular without updates
Ergo, Foundry will never be updated.

Making it profitable, though not an ideal scenario, is a jab at circumventing this cycle of inattention.

zahinder wrote: »

Well, I think Foundry _is_ profitable, so I would recast this as 'how do we demonstrate Foundry's usefulness to the brand?'

Ok, I can get on board with this. It's definitely the feature that drew me to the game. I was minorly interested in other features, but those were just peanuts compared to the Foundry. So I am all for either changing the focus of this thread, or even making a wholly new thread dedicated to determining how we "demonstrate the Foundry's usefulness to the brand."

zahinder

The problem:
'I enjoy this game at least in part because it has Foundry, so I play it and spend money on it.'

How do we SHOW that?

reiwulf

I agree, if it wasn't for the foundry I wouldn't even have logged in a second time after seeing NW is only made of small instanced maps instead of an open world.