Honestly, I'm not a fan of this idea, because it doesn't encourage players to play new foundries, it just changes the focus from only playing the same 15-minute daily to only playing the same contest entry. It still doesn't get longer stories, that potentially took months to craft, any extra plays.
If they're going to add a reward system, it need to be one that gives benefit from all quests, and encourages people to not only play Foundry quests, but to try new ones.
That's already how it works. Monsters scale to level.
Unfortunately, they do not scale in any way to gear score, so most of the (overgeared) level 60s don't find much of a combat challenge in most Foundry quests.
they dont scale to groups however, which is why I propose them to have the same "skull" level as the monsters that appear in CTA's and special events. There wouldnt have to be any concern on weither theres a group or not or what level the group consists of and weither said group is around the same levels or an assortment of levels.
The way it scales now. a level 60 goes into a group with a level 10, find out the monsters level is like 4. Or go into a foundry with a level 60 and 2 level 25's and the monsters are like level 45-50. Its just not all that fun.
What does the foundry do right? It exists. Most MMOs are just a copy paste of each other with a different coat of paint and NW is no exception - following the WoW style - and this lack of originality in most MMOs is what stops me dishing out what little money I have on them. The foundry changes that for me, and is the reason why I am considering putting money into NW, once I have some. However...
What does the foundry do wrong? While I would never wish away the foundry - it is the primary thing keeping me with this game - I do have issues with it; The bugs, the limited content (from a DM perspective), the lack of rewards for players (speaking as a DM who wants players to get something out of it), lack of greater encounter customization, the lack of bosses, the lack of OR and AND options in quests which makes me feel like my hands are tied as an RP DM... but mostly, looking at what long time authors have been saying, the fact that by all accounts the foundry seems all but abandoned by the NW team. I have the painful suspicion that this thread is not here to benefit NW, but for the developers to gather ideas for UGC for yet another of their throw away games that they churn out with bugs *cough*Startrek*cough* then all but abandon. Cryptic has been getting a bad rep as a very unconcerned for its player base, money grabber company with no real staying power.
What would I add to the foundry to encourage more authors? More content, more story telling options (AND/OR options and non linear, multiple option quest endings), more player rewards (foundry specific preferably, such as unique armors, tokens for a unique shop, fashion items, unique mounts and companions (perhaps based on NPCs from award winning foundry campaigns?)) PVP arena options with their own loot such as tokens to sell, more rewards for award winning foundry authors, such as voice acting for their NPCs and perhaps the option to have some NPCs as companions (which would be such a mark of pride for a foundry DM - it certainly would for me), perhaps a small zen reward for award winning authors.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? The main one I have played there is Minecraft and it's UGC mods, which I find well done through the huge range of variety it can bring to play - new tec trees, new items, new looks, new play styles, all sorts. NW's foundy is kinda a one trick pony in a way; you have a linear quest with perhaps some degree of fighting and NPC interaction and nothing much else - what differentiates each quest then is the authors ability to make something fun and engaging and as unique as possible out of the tools available, which as I have already stated, is not as varied as it could be (the room bases for example and room builder options could do with being a lot more varied).
I motion for Sticky! Oh wait, uhm *looks around and slowly pins a tack in this*
First as someone who was drawn to Neverwinter by two things: 1) Forgotten Realms and 2) Foundry, thank you for this feedback thread!!! You just got me all happy again like a baby puppy with a new toy! Anywho... Here's my feedback. I know I've forgotten to mention some things, I am sure. It always happens. So if I do, I'll reply again in the same format with such pertinents.
What do you feel The Foundry does right?
I feel it does allow us to tell a proper story and also provide an array of ways to introduce combat and story together.
What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing?
I really enjoy the 3d Editor, being able to fly around and plop things down where I want and adjust on the fly.
Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
Because I have been a DM of the Realms for 20+ years and I have so many unfinished, finished, and never played adventures that I'd like to bring (and already have begun) to the game through the foundry.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short?
I am sorry for being blunt, but I feel it fell short in the "Potential for Revenue/Income" department. Meaning that I feel that it was erroneously placed on the back burner or not enough Staff has been placed to specifically focus on the Foundry. Please see my feedback below in the "How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?" section.
As for feature/mechanically, I feel that the foundry missing the ability to have multiple ways to accomplish an objective is severely limiting. As it is now, we have to have clear cut objectives that must be completed in order to advance. I'd like to see multiple objectives for a "forked" path style of story telling.
Also, Traps. I realize you probably made traps not be tied to XP for foundry exploitation reasons. However, traps are useless and only an annoyance, for authors and players, for the most part. Mind you, they can be used in awesome fashions how they are for the sense of fun and story, but there's little reason to pay them heed in game or foundry. I don't like comparing games, especially same franchise games but... I wish we had DDO's mechanics for traps in game and in foundry.
Also, Daily Foundry quests favoring quests with little or no substance, there are no incentives to do foundry quests that are longer than 15 minutes.
What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
I absolutely loathe writing dialog in the dialog editor, and I love writing adventures and dialog for my NPCs in PnP D&D. It is too small, cramped and often buggy with the scroll wheel and left clicking. As well, with it side-scrolling as a layout, it means that if you're not seeing the far right of the current dialog, the pop-up window to edit the dialog will show off screen until you scroll to the right enough. This makes it very annoying to go back and proof-read, spell-check, and find dialog after testing. As well, the censor filter warning does not tell you what word is being caught nor does it even allude to where that word is.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation?
Dungeon Master functionality for Authors for the hard-core role-players.
Foundry Specific "Cosmetic Gear" (akin to CTA/Event transmutables) and other loot only obtainable in the foundry.
Foundry Specific Gear Sets only obtainable in the Foundry. Also, along with this, you could do as it was originally planned and allow us to give such special loot a unique name, if it drops. I know you guys had some original loot mechanic devised and I don't know exactly what it was but I remember the WotC/WB/Cryptic panel where it was stated that we'd have some "Fluff" type influence on dropped gear in the end chest. This was in alpha maybe?
Non-linear objective trees. (While we can make a semblance of this via dialog and a lot of trickery, it is still not good enough to compare to what could be beheld if we had a true non-linear objective tree.)
Dragons! Dude, DRAGON! Seriously, dragons. Yep, I'm going to say dragons again. Dragons. Okay. (Seriously, FR's dragons are iconic and unique in their habitat and statistics. I love FR dragons and am sad I cannot "play" with them as a DM.
How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
With a dedicated Foundry Team vocal in the day-to-day activities, bug reports, and future development. I don't mean that the team we have isn't dedicated, just that if it were me who could dictate how many staff are positioned to work only on the foundry, it would probably be equal to half the entire work-force of the game. You see, I feel that the Foundry should be, and always should have been, the major feature of this game. It's potential as the perfect DM tool is endless.
Look at Neverwinter Nights series, for example. Their UGC fan-base is still reigning strong. You have a major source of revenue and income waiting for you here. All it needs is love (I.E. Serious Funding).
Also, I'd like to see it implemented as the backbone for a UGC Player Housing system, akin to Ultima Online mixed with TES Series.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right?
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights 2
Elder Scrolls single player series
Landmark
What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
All in all, I feel you have a great UGC tool here and in your own devising of it as a unique tool, you do have it "right." It's just that there are so many little things missing from Neverwinter's Foundry here that all add up to more of major annoyances rather than making it not be a "right implementation." Along with a great number of outstanding bugs that have been around for a long time, it all wears on you as an author.
For example, some little things off the top of my head are things other UGC games have that NW could do even better with, given the time and resources:
[LIST=|INDENT=2]
[*]Rewarding end-loot. (In NWN, we could dictate our loot and make it as rewarding as we felt, as a DM. I understand that won't ever be possible here, rightly so as an MMO. However, our current loot table is just horrendous and we, the Foundry Authors get almost ALL of the blame.)
[*]Scaling of static objects (Mind you, I went ecstatic when you allowed us to rotate stuff, thanks for that!!!)
[*]Dungeon Master functionality for Authors for the hard-core role-players.
[/LIST]
Well.. this does a great job summing up how i feel about the Foundry. Well said.
What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
One of the things the foundry does right is only allowing authors access to content that is already downloaded (textures, music, sounds) instead of forcing users to download even more data that contains every author's custom files before someone can play the quest.
I like the fact the foundry was implemented in Neverwinter because it gives an outlet for authors to present material to the masses with out the requirements for anyone to go to a website or download anything in order to find it and play it.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
The Foundry fell short by not giving us any advanced features like timers or detailed customization of encounters. We're also lacking access to every available asset already in the game which was promised to us during beta. The worst part about the Foundry is how corrupt the review system is.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
Author rewards for creating good quests and player rewards for playing quests. Don't care what it is just as long as there is something in it for everyone. I would like to see access to more advanced features to further customize our quests.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age and Skyrim all gave us access to tool sets with advanced features and extreme customization. The availability of scripting was definitely a plus.
What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
I like the freedom of creativity, the toolset is reasonable and there are enough variations to make your maps stand out. The story builder is good and easy to use. I have fun creating dynamic ambience in my maps, sounds, fog, backdrops and I also like spending time micro placing clutter. I also like building custom areas with bits of the toolset that probably should be used for other things. The only thing keeping me going back to neverwinter is the foundry.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
I would like to see logic built into the story builder, it is fairly linear and the choices you make don't really have an impact on the rest of the story. I think 1700 items on a map is not enough, I'd like at least 2500. 'Appear when' for waypoints would have helped me a lot. There needs to be more than a couple single NPC encounters. The only thing I hate doing, which is a very strong word but I suppose it would have to be manually placing objects. You can use the tool to place on already set objects, but when you hover them the 'sticky' dissappears, probably something to do with wireframing...but would be nice to reset the wireframe so objects snap to each other, without having to reset the whole map as it normally crashes for me.
Just a bit about the review system : Because it requires real people to review these things it will always be corrupt, there is no escaping it. The only way to be make it almost fair would be if Cryptic reviewed them all themselves and were a bit more pro active in promoting foundries. I've seen the same 5 in the list now for over 2 years maybe? seems like it.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
The reason I think authors like the foundry so much is because our creativity can be viewed and appreciated, some of these foundries are like art pieces and people like to show off a bit sometimes. And it's nice getting feedback, it strokes the ego. I see a lot 'I want better rewards, then I'd play more' comments, then others complaining that it's being abused for resources. And that's all well and good but what about the Authors? What would incentify the Authors? I would like a crack at it being showcased, even for a week, as I am sure every Author would. But again it would need to be checked by Cryptic to make sure it's not an exploit.
I'm not bothered about titles and rewards, I just want someone to have a go at my quests, that is reward enough. Even if they say it's <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, at least they played it.
I don't think anyone playing my quests would be bothered by no loot in the big chest, the joy of playing it would be reward enough, so it's win win lol
The answer to this would simply be for Cryptic to take more notice of our work.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
I think the foundry editor is outstanding. I would like the ability to create a pallet of items, rather than hunting for them each time. I also think the foundry has to be one of the easiest editors I have ever used. I also like the farcry editor for the same reasons.
I personally don't think there is much wrong with the editor itself, but the community could be doing with a groom.
Ok now that i have your attention, I have some ideas that can benefit both Cryptic (financially) while at the same time benefit players getting more refining points faster (both paying and non paying players),and at the same time bring some purpose back to the foundry encouraging people to make and use it Foundry created content.
first i would like to point out some facts :
the game rules clearly state that an exploit means utilising the game mechanics to gain an unfair advantage over anouther player.
With the current state of the game :
1) anyone using fey blessing or dragons hoard enchants is gaining an advantage over players who do not use them,
2) farming in the wild (sharandor ,dread ring etc) the enchants have about a 30 second cooldown,this means a player who rampages across an empty instance killing everything for one hour (with 5 x Greater dragons hoard enchants equiped),
can net about 60,000 refining points worth of refining stones per hour,
based on the same averages of drop rates of refining stones farming in the foundry with its 2 minute cooldown will likely net you about 20,000 rp per hour.
Clearly farming in the wild is a significant advantage over farming in the foundry and therefore foundry farming is in fact a disadvantage over farming in the wild ,and is therfore Not an exploit.if anything farming in the wild is more of an exploit.
With the changes coming in mod 6 players want and need a whole lot more refining points than ever before,
cryptic clearly hope to also earn more money out of it while at the same time the game economy clearly has to much astral diamonds that need to be soaked up.
My solutions to all of these facts are very simple: 1)the zen market already has xp boosters and coalescent wards to Guarantee an enchant upgrade,
bring in an Refining stone booster,(drops bop RP)
1 x refining stone booster at 1000 zen cost and Guarantees 1 x refining stone drops for every kill for 1 hour,BOP,
2 x refining stone booster at 2500 zen cost and Guarantees 2 x refining stones drop for every kill for 3/4 hour,BOP,
3 x refining stone booster at 5000 zen cost and Guarantees 3 x refining stones drop for every kill for 1/2 hour,BOP,
Then as well as this add in a refining point booster, 2 x refining points booster at 1000 zen cost and doubles the value of refining points applied during refining ,lasts 1/2 hour.BOP.
(during a 2 x rp weekend this will sell like hot cakes with every one wanting 4 x rp for 1/2 an hour,or alternatively make this item unusable during 2 x RP weekend)
These items clearly suit people that want to spend real money ,while those that farm up some AD can also benefit from them,while at the same time these items offer a better return on AD for RP than buying the rubies ever will.
these items also help the free to play players who dont spent money simply becuase players who spent money for refining points will spend it in zen (directly benefiting Cryptic) and not in the Auction house as a result the prices of refining stones in the auction house will plummet making it easy for free to play players to buy and helping new players too with very cheap RP.
On top of that these items give a greater benefit than dragons hoard and feyblessing enchants.which ends all arguments about whether foundry farming is unfair or not.
Coming back to the foundry , cryptic should introduce a new category in the foundry called booster farms,
this a section exclusively for farming, and the best farming map for using with a refining stone booster gets into the "featured Farmer" section,
and while other players can use these farming maps with just dragons hoards and fey blessing enchants for small time farming it would in no way give them any advantage over the paying players that use them with refining stone boosters.
Players would vote these maps based on best RP produced using one of the boosters.And Boosters would be exempt from the cooldown of the dragons hoard and fey blessing enchants.
Clearly these boosters will soak up huge amounts of astral diamonds,directly benefit Cryptic financially,and give all players a lot more refining points easier than currently,while at the same time introducing a new reason to create and use the foundry,and at the same time directly benefiting anyone that just wants to farm for free.
My final points are: There should be a reward to the player whose map gets Featured farmer (or just gets featured),such as one free booster.
There should be a reward to the player who comes up with a great idea that the devs like and then incorperate into the game,
such as an exclusive mount (one thats not avaliable anywhere except by proposing great ideas,
perhaps called the "genius mount" maybe a flying lightbulb the player rides inside and effects like the Tensors disc mount?).
These boosters should be BOP same as coalescent wards ,
And lastly there would be no further reason for anyone to complain if Cryptic introduce new and different artifact equipment,or even increase player and gear level up each year (level 80 anyone?)
or new enchant levels,
or even entirely new weapon and armour enhancments better than current
(maybe even pvp focused ones ,how bout a null sphere armour enchant that cancels one targeted spell ,once per 2 minutes ?).
With so many new ways to farm extra RP there should be no reason for anyone to complain about how much RP any gear takes to level etc.
So thats my ideas and helps everyone,
When should i expect delivery of my new genius mount ? ;-)
I appologise for posting this in several different catagories ,this was in no way intended as Spam.
I felt there are aspects of my sugestions that fall into other areas and not just Foundry ,and assumed that not everyone would read the foundry section of forums,as i certainly dont have time to read all sections.
I hoped that a wider range of viewers would then read it and hopefully provide feedback and opinions of my ideas.
Again im sorry if this was interpreted as spam.
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apocrs1980Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, SilverstarsPosts: 0Arc User
Ok now that i have your attention, I have some ideas that can benefit both Cryptic (financially) while at the same time benefit players getting more refining points faster (both paying and non paying players),and at the same time bring some purpose back to the foundry encouraging people to make and use it Foundry created content. *Snip*
While I appreciate your passion and insight into wanting to better the Foundry and game as a whole, I believe you would find yourself in the minority on this view.
Farming foundries in general have been stated in many posts that they are breaking the ToS.
Furthermore, they can be a slap to the face of many foundry authors who spent literally month's crafting a foundry which is rich with story, lore, and painstaking work to make awesome environments for the masses, only to have their hard work be sunk below a slew of farming foundries. They really do nothing for the Foundry community except generate contempt, resentment, and frustration.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The Cragsteep Crypt - BETA Ravenloft Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
While I appreciate your passion and insight into wanting to better the Foundry and game as a whole, I believe you would find yourself in the minority on this view.
Farming foundries in general have been stated in many posts that they are breaking the ToS.
Furthermore, they can be a slap to the face of many foundry authors who spent literally month's crafting a foundry which is rich with story, lore, and painstaking work to make awesome environments for the masses, only to have their hard work be sunk below a slew of farming foundries. They really do nothing for the Foundry community except generate contempt, resentment, and frustration.
This is why i suggested a new catagory in the foundry just for Farming foundries,i beleive that the ToS could have added to it that all farming foundries must have the words farm or Farming in the title and the server could be set to make any foundry with Farm or Farming in the title automatically gets published into the farming section of the foundry thus making it easy to keep farming foundries seperated from all other foundries.
in this way it makes it a simple matter for those looking for some fun foundries to avoid the farming ones ,while those looking for farming maps will have an easy time becuase they will be seperated from non farming ones,just by adding an extra tab just for farming foundries.
Furthermore the ToS are dictated by cryptic ,and as has been pointed out to me it is entirely at their discretion to decide what does and does not breach the ToS.and so they could if they desired add farming as a new and seperate catagory withing the foundry,although farming foundries was not the main point of my original post i was merely pointing out that if refining stone boosters were added as a new item purchaceble with zen then it removes any remaining reason not to have farming foundries,since by using them players are paying for bonus refining stones to drop.
And it just occured to me the Devs could even make farming foundries have an entry requirement ,where a player must have an activated refining stone booster in order to enter a farming foundry,this would put an end to bots as well.
What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
The best thing about the Foundry for me is the creativity it allows. Being able to make maps and stories, even just for Roleplaying purposes, is a great kind of creative outlet. The freedom it allows scenario-wise (placement of objects etc.) really allows for some ingenious builds.
After having played around in the editor, it's really interesting to see what kind of ideas other Foundry Authors have come up with when you recognize the mechanics behind the things that are going on.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
My biggest letdown about it is all the things that aren't in the Foundry, but exist in the rest of the game. Whether it's just missing objects and enemies, or interactive triggers and other mechanics that you can't make.
Some particularly sad discoveries are that there are no targetable/attackable target dummies in there, not to mention even any kind of target dummy object, except for the ones that are in the "Training grounds" cluster object (A couple of dummies, bales of hay and arrows here and there, in one placeable object).
There are also no actual lever placeables that you can interact with to activate doors from afar (as otherwise seen in the game every now and then).
Another thing that gets to me is the lack of reward. Other than marvelling at peoples creations/stories and farming Astral Diamonds, there's not really any kind of significant gain from doing Foundry missions.
I saw someone else suggested a complete removal of typical rewards, replaced with alternative rewards like cosmetic stuff or something else that you can't get anywhere else. I think that would be a very interesting approach. Even if the rewards are essentially pointless to gameplay, something like cosmetic rewards would still draw a crowd, especially among the roleplaying community in Neverwinter.
And finally, a thing that has generally always irked me when playing in Foundries, is that you can never be more than 5 people in one group, and therefore only ever be 5 people in any given Foundry or Dungeon. If we could though, it would be possible to make some absolutely grandiose Foundries of EPIC scale.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
- More objects/triggers/interactables, which already exist in the rest of the game.
- More encounter customization. (Select enemy type, sound set, weapons used, attacks/abilities used etc. AND BOSSES)
- Ability to be more than 5 people inside at a time.
- PvP functions. Perhaps similar to Icewind Dale PvP zones, would make for nice 1v1 training rings or larger deathmatch type maps or competetive objectives.
- Less linear objective trees.
- Probably a lot more I can't think of right now.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
I have yet to actually play the game, but I've recently been looking at a game called Planet Explorers. It looks like you're able to create literally just about anything in that game with their voxel-based mechanics.
other than that I actually think Neverwinter's done it pretty well with the Foundry so far, it has potential as it is, but it could be so much more.
I am currently in the progress of creating a sky map and now more than before (when I had created an indoor dungeon map) I feel the foundry completely lacks objects to place into the map. There are three tiny floating islands and barely anything to build a proper stone bridge, basically no large floating objects at all. I created a large castle made up from dozens of human building parts and put them onto another bunch of dozens of spiky rocks with a solid ground flipped around by 180° and now I'm somewhat stuck as to what to do next because I have so few objects to actually work with.
This has happened to me before. There is but one single door, no possibility to place skill nodes, no levers. Each set of objects like "dungeon" should contain a lot more objects, not just pillars, building stuff like walls, floors and a single arch, but also much more decorative stuff to actually create a convincing and detailed map.
I have worked with the Unreal Development Kit and I think that offers a lot of ideas to improve the foundry. I'm just listing a few that eased the creational process intensely and made the editor to be really enjoyable to work with.
1: The UDK editor consists of four views, top, side, front (each with a grid) and a 3D view, all at the same time which made placing objects just where you wanted them simple and straightforward. On my sky map in the foundry with only a top view, placing anything is frustrating, there's barely any basic height level for most of the objects. Set two different objects to Y = 100, one floats high above you while the other one is down below you. And every time I have to start testing the map just to see where they're finally placed and what they would look like in game. That tiny preview when you select an object in the palette is barely of help when it comes to placement and especially how it looks placed in your map.
2: Light sources can simply be placed anywhere and then tweaked to create just the light you want. Brightness, color, radius, fadeoff, special effects like disco-lights, pulsating, flicker or shadow effects like a rotator so it looks like the light source is placed behind one. Since lights are VERY important for creating a map with a convincing atmosphere, they should be adjustable and not just bound to a few objects creating a very specific light effect. Make them a special object like the sound nodes and then let people adjust them. Sure, it's nice to simply place a torch and you've got all in one, torch object, fire fx and light emission, but then you also have to go with what you got offered.
3: Fog volumes. These are actually plain objects to whom a density info is set, e.g. you just place a sphere in your map and then apply the density and voilá (okay, you also have to disable collision and do a few other things but it's simple nonetheless), there you have a ball of fog. And now comes the really awesome part: the material editor. The use of this little bad boy is somewhat close to your dialog editor. You have nodes with certain inputs which you can connect with the outputs of other nodes. There are calculating nodes like add, multiply, texture coordinates, then there are nodes like texture, color, bump map and animation nodes like a panner, which lets your texture move around. Connect them in the right order and you'll get a truly convincing ground fog made of clouds flowing around in your world. Materials are also used for many other things, like setting texture, which now aren't simply textures but can be applied with trillions of effects.
True, this would be WAAAAY too overkill, but it was incredibly impressive to work with. Anyway, I think it would be great if we had a special fog node to be placed somewhere, set a basic shape like cylinder or rectangle with variable radius/side length, define a top and bottom height, color and density and then fill all the enclosed volume with fog. That way all your fog effects, which are a lot tbh, would reduce to a single item in your object catalogue and you give the possibility to twitch it like the creator wants. In my dungeon I had the desire to get a very thick charcoal-grey fog cutting off the players vision at about 10 feet with additional greyish-blue fog on the bottom. I was not that much surprised, yet still somewhat disappointed there is absolutely no possibility in doing something like it (I could also not get multiple backdrop effects working, only the last one was visible).
Let's face it, what is a cemetery without fog? What is a crypt without fog? What is a dungeon without fog?
4: Movers. You can make a mover out of just about anything. Once you did, you set start and end points and maybe some in between, whichever way your object is supposed to move, set a trigger and you're done. Once you fire the trigger event, your object moves. You could also create infinite motion repeating all over without any trigger. That way you can create very nice floating effects, lifts and many other different things.
I've read discriptions on how to build good quests. One point was to let the player choose what to do and then create alternative events (I think it was on gamepedia). There is little support on creating such alternatives, though. Trying to get an NPC to follow on one response and attack on another is neither a simple nor comfortable thing to do. I think you should bind the visibility of objects not only to the reaching of a dialog prompt but rather to the answer you give to such a point.
Let the players set temporary companions, so one does not have to fall back to adding guards with a custom appearance, one can revive the fallen companions and adjust them with armor, weapons, skills and spells and whatnot.
Applying interaction to map transfer or let map transfer happen without extra interaction. I needed a player to interact with an object, add some quest message upon interacting, apply some effects and then map transfer, I am unable to do so however.
What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
- The foundry is definitely a powerful tool for making custom content. It's fun to be able to make our own custom quests and share them with others. It adds a breath of fresh air and some of the maps people make are quite amazing.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
There is a large lack in our ability to customise the difficulty of our quests. while we can change the general appearance of our enemies, we cannot customise the weapons they use, their own base stats (power/defence/hp) or add true bosses / new abilities to enemies. I feel that having more customisation of our enemy encounters would bring a huge burst of life to the foundry. I would love to have a boss fight where he has triggered heals as he gets lower, and then a new objective pops up to kill his minions which stops the heal, or too even just add healing abilities or other general encounter powers like Takedown / Lunging strike to enemies.
The rewards from the end chest of foundry are still useless. I understand that this is in part so people do not just farm foundries to get rich. but A green item for 35 minutes of questing? seriously? this is too little, I recommend introducing better rewards for longer foundry quests.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
As described above I've pretty much explained what I feel would assist in drawing new creators to the foundry market. I would also increase the maximum tip by 100% , and add other incentive for creating premium content through competitions and such.
What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
That was a surprise when I first saw that Neverwinter was having such a tool. I was quite happy then, as I still am, because it allows different views, scenario, sketches, from what this kind of game can do.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
I would like to have a possibility of having "layers" of objects. So, not only could we be able to turn the visibility to all the objects placed in one layer (by turning the visibility of the layer to on, of off) at "run-time", but also, I would be able to turn them off at design time, not taking visual space (if I desire so) at design time.
I would be very happy to change the point of origin for the predefined graphical objects. Sometimes, it is preferable to have the origin at the end of a wall, other times, at its center. The choices should be predefined at design time (with a combo box selection), and cycle-able at fly-by time through a short key from the keyboard.
Scalable objects. SO we van have bigger, or smaller, version of the same object. For some object, it makes sense to scale only one dimension (long straight corridor, as example) by a different factor (than the default 1.00).
Stretchable objects (or linked scalable objects). The goal for these is to close the holes, to extend a plane until it hits other planes. This can be done by LINKing nodes of two graphical objects (ie, a control node of object A has the same (x, y, z) world coords. than another control node of another compatible object . Example, defining a long curved corridor by a sequence of small straight elements. In my old time, when I was using AutoCad, "stretching" was one of the most often used command.
Grouping objects. Or the hability to make our own cluster of objects. Such as repeating a circular stairs, but at a different place in the dungeon. It is a kind of mini-layer for the objects, but where the position can change
Simple animation for some parameters (a littyle bit as for C# objects, in dotNet): which parameter, initial value (position), final value, speed. And it more than one object has to be synchronized, there is room left for the "special" object (Sound, marker, ..., Animation) which could be a collection of synch. object, all stating and finishing at the same time, under some "triggering" action, looping or until... Even simple animation, for a start, that would be fine. Alternatively, give a initial position, a final position, eventually way-points, and interpolate (lineary, or with a spline, or whatever) the missing positions in respect of time, once the trigger fire.
ALTernate part, for the scenario. Right now, we have SEQuence (execute all tasks in a list, one after the other, graphically, the task are vertical, in a column), and PARallel (execute all tasks in a list, in any order, graphically n tasks are in n columns), but we are missing ALT (if you ever learned OCCAM, you see the SEQ, PAR and ALT keywords :-) ). An ALT-list is terminated as soon as one item of its list is terminated (or when n out of m of the tasks are done; by default, PAR is an ALT which terminate when all its m tasks-columns are done), letting the other objects finishing or not their run. An ALT-list is graphically like a PAR list, but a "label" for the block-list tells us if it is either PAR, either ALT (or by how many of the tasks, columns, have to be completed for that alt-task to be considered done). Note that a PAR-list or an ALT-list have tasks (columns) made of SEQ lists (one or many tasks, vertically), columns which, in turns, along their SEQuential process, can contains other PAR or ALT. SEQ is by default (one single task at a time, in a chain of tasks). Graphically AND logically, that seems relatively easy to implement, since it is almost there, when you think about it, in this way.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
There is no many reward to use a dungeon from the foundry, while in the game but making it more "profitable" would probably attract more "ill-made" scenario too. So something would have to be done at two "places", which seems to indicate this is a problem more difficult than normal to solve, unfortunately.
A possible implementation could be to give “guild point to build a guild house” like, each time a scenario (of one of the guild member) is run could help: no real advantage in fights, but collectively, the guild, by vanity, or inter-guild competition, may promote to their members about running some foundry scenario in order to get more points and thus, a better looking guild house, accessible through the guild interface (part of it open to the public, for the “show off” ). Kind of DungeonAndDragonOnline-guild-skyships, for a crude example (if you allow me to mention ANOTHER game, which is contrary to the guidelines… but your next question kind of open the door ). In this case, a filter of foundry quests “by guild of the author” could be welcome. That covers the two said aspect: an insensitive from the inside community, instead of by Arc, and self-arbitration (the guild, not Arc) to eliminate proliferation of poor scenario. Sure, some penalty in the points that you get, when the same player play over and over the same scenario, as example, should be considered, among other things, but make that the start of an idea rather than a finely polished and ready to implement concept. What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
Games, not really, but I often take my inspiration from game to build UI of "serious" app: it should be "fun" to work, and intuitive to use.
I like all these ideas my additional input would be as follows foundries need to have dificulty scaled rewards and the ability of authous to create content equal to or surpassing endgame content in difficulty and rewards, green junk items as a chest loot reward for 4 part storyline quest seiries that can take upwards of 4 hours to finish is ridiculous considering that epic loot could be gained up to mod 6 no rewards edition in 6 minuites with right party!!! make rewards scale to challenge and time taken to complete and unique actions( as opposed to repetitous engagement of mass groups of mobs or slaughter of portal generated mobs
[Q] What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
The Foundry is a great creative outlet, probably the biggest asset this game has to offer, and its a very user friendly tool that allows players to create VERY unique and fun adventures. The MOST fun I had was exploring a dungeon with a few guys, just the scenery was honestly MUCH better and better put together than anything I had experienced before in NW. I am glad because I am HOPING that in the future this will be a more utilized tool.
Honestly, the foundry is what CAN separate NW from the rest of the games out there, its just not used very well right now.
[Q] How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
The biggest area that fell short, for me, was PVP. Back in Beta there was alot of talk about PVP maps in the foundry. The DEV team recently came out and said they scrapped that idea since it would "split the pvp community". The "PVP Community" came back with a response that it would NOT split the community if Foundry PVP were only offered at certain times during the day, much like Guantlegrym is. This is REALLY something I would like to see.
The second area this fell short is the lack or rewards. When I used to play T1/T2 dungeons, I would have GLADLY farmed some player made content instead but there were NO difficult bosses available and NO rewards for playing 1hr+ in the content.
What makes me wish it was never implemented because it makes us realize the tool exists TO create awesome dungeons and PVP maps, however its never implemented as far as real content for either PVE or PVP, which just hurts knowing the potential.
[Q] What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
I would like to see both a PVE and PVP 'contest'. A 1 month contest to create a PVE dungeon, the most popular - selected by both rating(players) and DEVs, gets a "pass over" by the DEVs for QC then implemented into the actual game as a real bonafide dungeon.
Same with PVP. Create a contest to create PVP maps, PVP Foundry would only be available during Foundry hour - thus NOT splitting the community. The most popular map after 1 month gets a QC pass and inserted into the Que system LIVE game.
I also think this would really attract ALOT of players who have the desire to create content as well as give players new content much faster than the DEV team can spit out. It solves both problems!
[Q] What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
The only one I have played is Halo which gave users the abilities to create their own maps and host games on them. Nothing PVE but PVP maps. This was HIGHLY praised and used to even make "racing" maps in an FPS GAME!!! You never know what will come from player content.
I think PVP maps would be the biggest addition that would really drive ALOT of new players to the game as well as bring older players back to the game.
Better and more meaningful achievement rewards would be nice. Most authors are probably intrinsically motivated to make quests, but being rewarded (and not being the purpose of making quests) could help authors to strive in making better quests. Because atm, most of the rewards are pretty much negligible.
Aside from tittles, we get cloaks that don't communicate the idea of the foundry at all imo and does not really stand apart from other cloaks, a book imp which looks pretty cool, a lame bear mount (seriously?), and at the top i think we get the tiny stone companion that augments our character.
I would change the cloak to a costume that gets progressively fancier as you climb up the ranks and tells other players that hey, I'm a big fan of foundries. Might help to establish an identity or group that identifies themselves as foundry lovers.
Change the bear mount to something more creative and relevant. C'mon, you can BUY a bear mount at the zen shop (cooler ones at that). Whats so special about the foundry mount especially if you can just get a waaaaaay cooler mount at the store. The mount imo, has to be as fancy if not fancier than shop ones because this one you have to actually work for it. Again, helps identify one's self as a foundry fan.
Book imp is pretty neat. Dunno about the stone companion though. Isn't there a shop version? For something that requires that much time and effort, I want something with more pzazzzz. Again, something relevant to the foundry. Maybe a balor demon, to go with the imp ? Put on the costume, mount and companion, and your character just screams FOUNDRY MASTER.
I dunno about others, but I would be more interested in the foundry this way. My slice of the pie anyway.
I know not many people will mention this, but the biggest problem plaguing the foundry right now is the list/sorting system, the category etc. regular players have no efficient way of looking for quests, the titles are far too big (banners take up so much room) all they see are "fast review quest #. There also needs to be a revision on the adjust rating formula.
Sure we could get better tools, but right now you can produce something with them. But currently you cannot get people to play them.
authors should be able to tag their own quests, I'm interested in story/lore and exploration quests, but many times quest have those tags and none of it...
authors should be able to tag their own quests, I'm interested in story/lore and exploration quests, but many times quest have those tags and none of it...
Exactly why I begged many, many times during concept discussion for author tags instead of this, as expected, user tag fail.
I am writing a love story for the Foundry. I use Star Trek Online Foundry and Neverwinter Foundry. I used to write stories as a Dungeon Master for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons back in the 1970's and through the 1990's. I set up the mechanics for the love story in my episode so that when the player encounters the love interest character, they will have the option of selecting Veronica or Dexter as the love interest. In my stories, I use dice rolling. STO has a dice rolling emote, but NW does not. So I have players roll their own provided dice or have them get the a dice rolling app.
The dice rolling allows me to set up complex encounters with characters and NPCs, like card games, completing task that require skills that aren't combat actions, and making love. The problem that I am faced with as a writer is how far can we take the love story. What that means is "how context appropriate can the dialog be?" No one seems to know, but love stories are hall marks of many Fantasy Adventure stories.
What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
It's fun creating and telling a story with challenging encounters.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
Fix the bugs, and although the foundry itself is user-friendly, it can still be improved.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
I would like to see an achievement system to be implemented by the creator , which in turn would solve the reward system. A weekly reset or monthly. Basically you can run the same foundry every week to try to achieve something, the harder the achievement, the better reward ( allow us to custom edit are rewards , even epic ones ). Example ..
Every-time you attempt at a foundry, whether its the same or another, you have to achieve something. The achievements can be very creative. For example, defeat a boss under 2 minutes (timer) or use a daily power if the boss or encounters meet a certain condition.
Or defeat an encounter without triggering a trap, the possibilities are endless. Also, allow us to edit epic bosses (dragons etc..)
What do you feel The Foundry does right? What feels good to you and what do you have fun doing? Why are you glad The Foundry was implemented in Neverwinter?
Creating maps. Map creation is fun, even when things start to really lag. Creating stories to go with the maps is also fun. These two things are the ONLY reason I even bothered with Neverwinter. I have a level 34 character, been playing since the Foundry Alpha. About your statement in a reply about retention and the Foundry not having metrics showing it is doing anything for that. Let me tell you to tell your boss. I bought the initial founders pack because I believed in the Foundry. After seeing how it was treated, I have not dropped ON SINGLE DIME in this game. I REFUSE to give Cryptic money, because of their treatment of the Foundry. I am sure there are many like me. The Foundry was the only reason TO PLAY for me. IF the foundry got love and was treated as the core experience it was touted to be, I would dump all sorts of money into the game. In truth the game is self is meh. The Foundry was the dividing line between Neverwinter and MMO clone #634 and the one thing that would have made me a paying customer. Hell, I would even pay a small monthly fee of say $5 or even a large upfront fee of $40 just to access the foundry provided it took front and center once again.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
BUG BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS
That is where the Foundry fell short. Well in truth, the bugs are not the issue, everything has bugs. ITS YOU! Well not you Spiral, but you as in the development team, or more likely the obscenely profit driven management that does not really care about the customer at all (just the green). This is where the Foundry fell short. You guys gave us a great tool that was rough around the edges but showed so much promise, then you just said "screw it, since we don't monetize the Foundry we don't care about the Foundry". And then PWE, Cryptic whoever, let it rot. Sure you put a new coat of paint on once in a while (asset dumps) but as anyone knows, painting over rust does not remove the rust.
When crippling bugs are STILL running rampant in the Foundry after two years, THE SAME EXACT BUGS from Alpha, it shows that people over there at Cryptic and PWE JUST.DON'T.CARE!
Another issue is the exploits. The problem is, this is a free to play game. It attracts people that have these "I need instant satisfaction" mind sets. It's why they spend more money on a free to play game then they would in a subscription based game. SO when you have the Foundry, where they have a choice to invest time into a well designed story, or a quick exploit quest, they will always choose the exploit. Unfortunately you can not fix this problem. It's an issue with society as a whole, but it is compounded in a F2P game where people are used to just buying convenience. This is why the biggest issue with players is their desire to have the Foundry give better rewards. However, with better rewards you have greater incentive to create exploit quests, and the cycle begins anew. But there is a large group of players who enjoy the Foundry for what is was designed to be. A more authentic DnD experience and a medium to interactive with great and unique stories. Problem is, these quests are buried beneath the pile of exploit quests, and they are also getting more rare, and authors are learning that they could write the next Lord of the Rings quality story, and get maybe a dozen plays in a year. The effort is not worth the time.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
Some dev love. Just fixing the bugs and smoothing out the experience will be a HUGE step towards making the Foundry more attractive. Before you try to incentivize content creation, how about you just make creating the content more reliable. Proving to current and potential authors that you are willing to listen to feedback and actually institute change. I am sure most have heard how the Foundry is just the red headed step child of Cryptic, and they don't bother to get invested in a barely supported system.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
This is your only saving grace right now. Not many games have tried this on this scale. Unfortunately for you, Cryptic got taken over by Pay-Win-Entertainment err I mean Perfect World, and the Foundry got lost in the shuffle of creating in-game currency #90045 and finding a way to maximize profits on it.
I'm angry. I come back every few months just hoping, praying someone got fired over there and the new guy made things right. Every time I learn nothing has changed.
The biggest issue is this archiac system of updating the game, with large patches (modules) coming pretty infrequently. While that is one things, waiting until these large patches to fix SERIOUS BUGS that are happening now, just PISSES EVERYONE OFF and shows Cryptic in unable to take a more fluid approach to development.
When Module x breaks something in the Foundry, waiting until Module Y 6 months later to get it fixed is just plain lazy.
Another issue is the exploits. The problem is, this is a free to play game. It attracts people that have these "I need instant satisfaction" mind sets. It's why they spend more money on a free to play game then they would in a subscription based game. SO when you have the Foundry, where they have a choice to invest time into a well designed story, or a quick exploit quest, they will always choose the exploit. Unfortunately you can not fix this problem. It's an issue with society as a whole, but it is compounded in a F2P game where people are used to just buying convenience. This is why the biggest issue with players is their desire to have the Foundry give better rewards. However, with better rewards you have greater incentive to create exploit quests, and the cycle begins anew. But there is a large group of players who enjoy the Foundry for what is was designed to be. A more authentic DnD experience and a medium to interactive with great and unique stories. Problem is, these quests are buried beneath the pile of exploit quests, and they are also getting more rare, and authors are learning that they could write the next Lord of the Rings quality story, and get maybe a dozen plays in a year. The effort is not worth the time.
If there is one constant in this universe besides c it's that I can come to the Foundry forums and still see you fighting the good fight Eldarth.
I tried to stay attached, keep creating but putting so much effort into something when I have to balance military life as well, just to see it get buried in bugs and exploits just wore me out.
Well since I was found out from reading the forums and catching up, that spirals is no longer with Cryptic. So this whole topic is just a moot point. I guarantee not a single person at cryptic besides him even bothered to read this. In fact I would bet money that spirals even being so vocal about the Foundry issues is why he was one of the chosen to bet let go. Don't fall in line and be a yes man, get layed off. That's how greedy ***** companies like PWE and Cryptic work.
Comments
I'm in full agreement to this.
they dont scale to groups however, which is why I propose them to have the same "skull" level as the monsters that appear in CTA's and special events. There wouldnt have to be any concern on weither theres a group or not or what level the group consists of and weither said group is around the same levels or an assortment of levels.
The way it scales now. a level 60 goes into a group with a level 10, find out the monsters level is like 4. Or go into a foundry with a level 60 and 2 level 25's and the monsters are like level 45-50. Its just not all that fun.
What does the foundry do wrong? While I would never wish away the foundry - it is the primary thing keeping me with this game - I do have issues with it; The bugs, the limited content (from a DM perspective), the lack of rewards for players (speaking as a DM who wants players to get something out of it), lack of greater encounter customization, the lack of bosses, the lack of OR and AND options in quests which makes me feel like my hands are tied as an RP DM... but mostly, looking at what long time authors have been saying, the fact that by all accounts the foundry seems all but abandoned by the NW team. I have the painful suspicion that this thread is not here to benefit NW, but for the developers to gather ideas for UGC for yet another of their throw away games that they churn out with bugs *cough*Startrek*cough* then all but abandon. Cryptic has been getting a bad rep as a very unconcerned for its player base, money grabber company with no real staying power.
What would I add to the foundry to encourage more authors? More content, more story telling options (AND/OR options and non linear, multiple option quest endings), more player rewards (foundry specific preferably, such as unique armors, tokens for a unique shop, fashion items, unique mounts and companions (perhaps based on NPCs from award winning foundry campaigns?)) PVP arena options with their own loot such as tokens to sell, more rewards for award winning foundry authors, such as voice acting for their NPCs and perhaps the option to have some NPCs as companions (which would be such a mark of pride for a foundry DM - it certainly would for me), perhaps a small zen reward for award winning authors.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? The main one I have played there is Minecraft and it's UGC mods, which I find well done through the huge range of variety it can bring to play - new tec trees, new items, new looks, new play styles, all sorts. NW's foundy is kinda a one trick pony in a way; you have a linear quest with perhaps some degree of fighting and NPC interaction and nothing much else - what differentiates each quest then is the authors ability to make something fun and engaging and as unique as possible out of the tools available, which as I have already stated, is not as varied as it could be (the room bases for example and room builder options could do with being a lot more varied).
Well.. this does a great job summing up how i feel about the Foundry. Well said.
One of the things the foundry does right is only allowing authors access to content that is already downloaded (textures, music, sounds) instead of forcing users to download even more data that contains every author's custom files before someone can play the quest.
I like the fact the foundry was implemented in Neverwinter because it gives an outlet for authors to present material to the masses with out the requirements for anyone to go to a website or download anything in order to find it and play it.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
The Foundry fell short by not giving us any advanced features like timers or detailed customization of encounters. We're also lacking access to every available asset already in the game which was promised to us during beta. The worst part about the Foundry is how corrupt the review system is.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
Author rewards for creating good quests and player rewards for playing quests. Don't care what it is just as long as there is something in it for everyone. I would like to see access to more advanced features to further customize our quests.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age and Skyrim all gave us access to tool sets with advanced features and extreme customization. The availability of scripting was definitely a plus.
@Moonchips
I like the freedom of creativity, the toolset is reasonable and there are enough variations to make your maps stand out. The story builder is good and easy to use. I have fun creating dynamic ambience in my maps, sounds, fog, backdrops and I also like spending time micro placing clutter. I also like building custom areas with bits of the toolset that probably should be used for other things. The only thing keeping me going back to neverwinter is the foundry.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
I would like to see logic built into the story builder, it is fairly linear and the choices you make don't really have an impact on the rest of the story. I think 1700 items on a map is not enough, I'd like at least 2500. 'Appear when' for waypoints would have helped me a lot. There needs to be more than a couple single NPC encounters. The only thing I hate doing, which is a very strong word but I suppose it would have to be manually placing objects. You can use the tool to place on already set objects, but when you hover them the 'sticky' dissappears, probably something to do with wireframing...but would be nice to reset the wireframe so objects snap to each other, without having to reset the whole map as it normally crashes for me.
Just a bit about the review system : Because it requires real people to review these things it will always be corrupt, there is no escaping it. The only way to be make it almost fair would be if Cryptic reviewed them all themselves and were a bit more pro active in promoting foundries. I've seen the same 5 in the list now for over 2 years maybe? seems like it.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
The reason I think authors like the foundry so much is because our creativity can be viewed and appreciated, some of these foundries are like art pieces and people like to show off a bit sometimes. And it's nice getting feedback, it strokes the ego. I see a lot 'I want better rewards, then I'd play more' comments, then others complaining that it's being abused for resources. And that's all well and good but what about the Authors? What would incentify the Authors? I would like a crack at it being showcased, even for a week, as I am sure every Author would. But again it would need to be checked by Cryptic to make sure it's not an exploit.
I'm not bothered about titles and rewards, I just want someone to have a go at my quests, that is reward enough. Even if they say it's <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, at least they played it.
I don't think anyone playing my quests would be bothered by no loot in the big chest, the joy of playing it would be reward enough, so it's win win lol
The answer to this would simply be for Cryptic to take more notice of our work.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
I think the foundry editor is outstanding. I would like the ability to create a pallet of items, rather than hunting for them each time. I also think the foundry has to be one of the easiest editors I have ever used. I also like the farcry editor for the same reasons.
I personally don't think there is much wrong with the editor itself, but the community could be doing with a groom.
I have some ideas that can benefit both Cryptic (financially) while at the same time benefit players getting more refining points faster (both paying and non paying players),and at the same time bring some purpose back to the foundry encouraging people to make and use it Foundry created content.
first i would like to point out some facts :
the game rules clearly state that an exploit means utilising the game mechanics to gain an unfair advantage over anouther player.
With the current state of the game :
1) anyone using fey blessing or dragons hoard enchants is gaining an advantage over players who do not use them,
2) farming in the wild (sharandor ,dread ring etc) the enchants have about a 30 second cooldown,this means a player who rampages across an empty instance killing everything for one hour (with 5 x Greater dragons hoard enchants equiped),
can net about 60,000 refining points worth of refining stones per hour,
based on the same averages of drop rates of refining stones farming in the foundry with its 2 minute cooldown will likely net you about 20,000 rp per hour.
Clearly farming in the wild is a significant advantage over farming in the foundry and therefore foundry farming is in fact a disadvantage over farming in the wild ,and is therfore Not an exploit.if anything farming in the wild is more of an exploit.
With the changes coming in mod 6 players want and need a whole lot more refining points than ever before,
cryptic clearly hope to also earn more money out of it while at the same time the game economy clearly has to much astral diamonds that need to be soaked up.
My solutions to all of these facts are very simple:
1)the zen market already has xp boosters and coalescent wards to Guarantee an enchant upgrade,
bring in an Refining stone booster,(drops bop RP)
1 x refining stone booster at 1000 zen cost and Guarantees 1 x refining stone drops for every kill for 1 hour,BOP,
2 x refining stone booster at 2500 zen cost and Guarantees 2 x refining stones drop for every kill for 3/4 hour,BOP,
3 x refining stone booster at 5000 zen cost and Guarantees 3 x refining stones drop for every kill for 1/2 hour,BOP,
Then as well as this add in a refining point booster,
2 x refining points booster at 1000 zen cost and doubles the value of refining points applied during refining ,lasts 1/2 hour.BOP.
(during a 2 x rp weekend this will sell like hot cakes with every one wanting 4 x rp for 1/2 an hour,or alternatively make this item unusable during 2 x RP weekend)
These items clearly suit people that want to spend real money ,while those that farm up some AD can also benefit from them,while at the same time these items offer a better return on AD for RP than buying the rubies ever will.
these items also help the free to play players who dont spent money simply becuase players who spent money for refining points will spend it in zen (directly benefiting Cryptic) and not in the Auction house as a result the prices of refining stones in the auction house will plummet making it easy for free to play players to buy and helping new players too with very cheap RP.
On top of that these items give a greater benefit than dragons hoard and feyblessing enchants.which ends all arguments about whether foundry farming is unfair or not.
Coming back to the foundry ,
cryptic should introduce a new category in the foundry called booster farms,
this a section exclusively for farming, and the best farming map for using with a refining stone booster gets into the "featured Farmer" section,
and while other players can use these farming maps with just dragons hoards and fey blessing enchants for small time farming it would in no way give them any advantage over the paying players that use them with refining stone boosters.
Players would vote these maps based on best RP produced using one of the boosters.And Boosters would be exempt from the cooldown of the dragons hoard and fey blessing enchants.
Clearly these boosters will soak up huge amounts of astral diamonds,directly benefit Cryptic financially,and give all players a lot more refining points easier than currently,while at the same time introducing a new reason to create and use the foundry,and at the same time directly benefiting anyone that just wants to farm for free.
My final points are:
There should be a reward to the player whose map gets Featured farmer (or just gets featured),such as one free booster.
There should be a reward to the player who comes up with a great idea that the devs like and then incorperate into the game,
such as an exclusive mount (one thats not avaliable anywhere except by proposing great ideas,
perhaps called the "genius mount" maybe a flying lightbulb the player rides inside and effects like the Tensors disc mount?).
These boosters should be BOP same as coalescent wards ,
And lastly there would be no further reason for anyone to complain if Cryptic introduce new and different artifact equipment,or even increase player and gear level up each year (level 80 anyone?)
or new enchant levels,
or even entirely new weapon and armour enhancments better than current
(maybe even pvp focused ones ,how bout a null sphere armour enchant that cancels one targeted spell ,once per 2 minutes ?).
With so many new ways to farm extra RP there should be no reason for anyone to complain about how much RP any gear takes to level etc.
So thats my ideas and helps everyone,
When should i expect delivery of my new genius mount ? ;-)
I appologise for posting this in several different catagories ,this was in no way intended as Spam.
I felt there are aspects of my sugestions that fall into other areas and not just Foundry ,and assumed that not everyone would read the foundry section of forums,as i certainly dont have time to read all sections.
I hoped that a wider range of viewers would then read it and hopefully provide feedback and opinions of my ideas.
Again im sorry if this was interpreted as spam.
While I appreciate your passion and insight into wanting to better the Foundry and game as a whole, I believe you would find yourself in the minority on this view.
Farming foundries in general have been stated in many posts that they are breaking the ToS.
Furthermore, they can be a slap to the face of many foundry authors who spent literally month's crafting a foundry which is rich with story, lore, and painstaking work to make awesome environments for the masses, only to have their hard work be sunk below a slew of farming foundries. They really do nothing for the Foundry community except generate contempt, resentment, and frustration.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
in this way it makes it a simple matter for those looking for some fun foundries to avoid the farming ones ,while those looking for farming maps will have an easy time becuase they will be seperated from non farming ones,just by adding an extra tab just for farming foundries.
Furthermore the ToS are dictated by cryptic ,and as has been pointed out to me it is entirely at their discretion to decide what does and does not breach the ToS.and so they could if they desired add farming as a new and seperate catagory withing the foundry,although farming foundries was not the main point of my original post i was merely pointing out that if refining stone boosters were added as a new item purchaceble with zen then it removes any remaining reason not to have farming foundries,since by using them players are paying for bonus refining stones to drop.
And it just occured to me the Devs could even make farming foundries have an entry requirement ,where a player must have an activated refining stone booster in order to enter a farming foundry,this would put an end to bots as well.
The best thing about the Foundry for me is the creativity it allows. Being able to make maps and stories, even just for Roleplaying purposes, is a great kind of creative outlet. The freedom it allows scenario-wise (placement of objects etc.) really allows for some ingenious builds.
After having played around in the editor, it's really interesting to see what kind of ideas other Foundry Authors have come up with when you recognize the mechanics behind the things that are going on.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
My biggest letdown about it is all the things that aren't in the Foundry, but exist in the rest of the game. Whether it's just missing objects and enemies, or interactive triggers and other mechanics that you can't make.
Some particularly sad discoveries are that there are no targetable/attackable target dummies in there, not to mention even any kind of target dummy object, except for the ones that are in the "Training grounds" cluster object (A couple of dummies, bales of hay and arrows here and there, in one placeable object).
There are also no actual lever placeables that you can interact with to activate doors from afar (as otherwise seen in the game every now and then).
Another thing that gets to me is the lack of reward. Other than marvelling at peoples creations/stories and farming Astral Diamonds, there's not really any kind of significant gain from doing Foundry missions.
I saw someone else suggested a complete removal of typical rewards, replaced with alternative rewards like cosmetic stuff or something else that you can't get anywhere else. I think that would be a very interesting approach. Even if the rewards are essentially pointless to gameplay, something like cosmetic rewards would still draw a crowd, especially among the roleplaying community in Neverwinter.
And finally, a thing that has generally always irked me when playing in Foundries, is that you can never be more than 5 people in one group, and therefore only ever be 5 people in any given Foundry or Dungeon. If we could though, it would be possible to make some absolutely grandiose Foundries of EPIC scale.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
- More objects/triggers/interactables, which already exist in the rest of the game.
- More encounter customization. (Select enemy type, sound set, weapons used, attacks/abilities used etc. AND BOSSES)
- Ability to be more than 5 people inside at a time.
- PvP functions. Perhaps similar to Icewind Dale PvP zones, would make for nice 1v1 training rings or larger deathmatch type maps or competetive objectives.
- Less linear objective trees.
- Probably a lot more I can't think of right now.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
I have yet to actually play the game, but I've recently been looking at a game called Planet Explorers. It looks like you're able to create literally just about anything in that game with their voxel-based mechanics.
other than that I actually think Neverwinter's done it pretty well with the Foundry so far, it has potential as it is, but it could be so much more.
This has happened to me before. There is but one single door, no possibility to place skill nodes, no levers. Each set of objects like "dungeon" should contain a lot more objects, not just pillars, building stuff like walls, floors and a single arch, but also much more decorative stuff to actually create a convincing and detailed map.
I have worked with the Unreal Development Kit and I think that offers a lot of ideas to improve the foundry. I'm just listing a few that eased the creational process intensely and made the editor to be really enjoyable to work with.
1: The UDK editor consists of four views, top, side, front (each with a grid) and a 3D view, all at the same time which made placing objects just where you wanted them simple and straightforward. On my sky map in the foundry with only a top view, placing anything is frustrating, there's barely any basic height level for most of the objects. Set two different objects to Y = 100, one floats high above you while the other one is down below you. And every time I have to start testing the map just to see where they're finally placed and what they would look like in game. That tiny preview when you select an object in the palette is barely of help when it comes to placement and especially how it looks placed in your map.
2: Light sources can simply be placed anywhere and then tweaked to create just the light you want. Brightness, color, radius, fadeoff, special effects like disco-lights, pulsating, flicker or shadow effects like a rotator so it looks like the light source is placed behind one. Since lights are VERY important for creating a map with a convincing atmosphere, they should be adjustable and not just bound to a few objects creating a very specific light effect. Make them a special object like the sound nodes and then let people adjust them. Sure, it's nice to simply place a torch and you've got all in one, torch object, fire fx and light emission, but then you also have to go with what you got offered.
3: Fog volumes. These are actually plain objects to whom a density info is set, e.g. you just place a sphere in your map and then apply the density and voilá (okay, you also have to disable collision and do a few other things but it's simple nonetheless), there you have a ball of fog. And now comes the really awesome part: the material editor. The use of this little bad boy is somewhat close to your dialog editor. You have nodes with certain inputs which you can connect with the outputs of other nodes. There are calculating nodes like add, multiply, texture coordinates, then there are nodes like texture, color, bump map and animation nodes like a panner, which lets your texture move around. Connect them in the right order and you'll get a truly convincing ground fog made of clouds flowing around in your world. Materials are also used for many other things, like setting texture, which now aren't simply textures but can be applied with trillions of effects.
True, this would be WAAAAY too overkill, but it was incredibly impressive to work with. Anyway, I think it would be great if we had a special fog node to be placed somewhere, set a basic shape like cylinder or rectangle with variable radius/side length, define a top and bottom height, color and density and then fill all the enclosed volume with fog. That way all your fog effects, which are a lot tbh, would reduce to a single item in your object catalogue and you give the possibility to twitch it like the creator wants. In my dungeon I had the desire to get a very thick charcoal-grey fog cutting off the players vision at about 10 feet with additional greyish-blue fog on the bottom. I was not that much surprised, yet still somewhat disappointed there is absolutely no possibility in doing something like it (I could also not get multiple backdrop effects working, only the last one was visible).
Let's face it, what is a cemetery without fog? What is a crypt without fog? What is a dungeon without fog?
4: Movers. You can make a mover out of just about anything. Once you did, you set start and end points and maybe some in between, whichever way your object is supposed to move, set a trigger and you're done. Once you fire the trigger event, your object moves. You could also create infinite motion repeating all over without any trigger. That way you can create very nice floating effects, lifts and many other different things.
I've read discriptions on how to build good quests. One point was to let the player choose what to do and then create alternative events (I think it was on gamepedia). There is little support on creating such alternatives, though. Trying to get an NPC to follow on one response and attack on another is neither a simple nor comfortable thing to do. I think you should bind the visibility of objects not only to the reaching of a dialog prompt but rather to the answer you give to such a point.
Let the players set temporary companions, so one does not have to fall back to adding guards with a custom appearance, one can revive the fallen companions and adjust them with armor, weapons, skills and spells and whatnot.
Applying interaction to map transfer or let map transfer happen without extra interaction. I needed a player to interact with an object, add some quest message upon interacting, apply some effects and then map transfer, I am unable to do so however.
A couple of questions I know that will happen.
What if the author of a quest puts 10 dragons in and lags the game? -Only 1-2 dragons allowed per quest.
- The foundry is definitely a powerful tool for making custom content. It's fun to be able to make our own custom quests and share them with others. It adds a breath of fresh air and some of the maps people make are quite amazing.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
There is a large lack in our ability to customise the difficulty of our quests. while we can change the general appearance of our enemies, we cannot customise the weapons they use, their own base stats (power/defence/hp) or add true bosses / new abilities to enemies. I feel that having more customisation of our enemy encounters would bring a huge burst of life to the foundry. I would love to have a boss fight where he has triggered heals as he gets lower, and then a new objective pops up to kill his minions which stops the heal, or too even just add healing abilities or other general encounter powers like Takedown / Lunging strike to enemies.
The rewards from the end chest of foundry are still useless. I understand that this is in part so people do not just farm foundries to get rich. but A green item for 35 minutes of questing? seriously? this is too little, I recommend introducing better rewards for longer foundry quests.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
As described above I've pretty much explained what I feel would assist in drawing new creators to the foundry market. I would also increase the maximum tip by 100% , and add other incentive for creating premium content through competitions and such.
Drunken Goose of MidNight Express. - 3.3k Paladin , 3.6k GWF , 3.1k GF,
Timers
Bosses
and an author tab to let our subscribers know what's going on and a means to advertise like minded authors...
Aside from tittles, we get cloaks that don't communicate the idea of the foundry at all imo and does not really stand apart from other cloaks, a book imp which looks pretty cool, a lame bear mount (seriously?), and at the top i think we get the tiny stone companion that augments our character.
I would change the cloak to a costume that gets progressively fancier as you climb up the ranks and tells other players that hey, I'm a big fan of foundries. Might help to establish an identity or group that identifies themselves as foundry lovers.
Change the bear mount to something more creative and relevant. C'mon, you can BUY a bear mount at the zen shop (cooler ones at that). Whats so special about the foundry mount especially if you can just get a waaaaaay cooler mount at the store. The mount imo, has to be as fancy if not fancier than shop ones because this one you have to actually work for it. Again, helps identify one's self as a foundry fan.
Book imp is pretty neat. Dunno about the stone companion though. Isn't there a shop version? For something that requires that much time and effort, I want something with more pzazzzz. Again, something relevant to the foundry. Maybe a balor demon, to go with the imp
I dunno about others, but I would be more interested in the foundry this way. My slice of the pie anyway.
NW-DKK8NIRO6
Sure we could get better tools, but right now you can produce something with them. But currently you cannot get people to play them.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Exactly why I begged many, many times during concept discussion for author tags instead of this, as expected, user tag fail.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
The dice rolling allows me to set up complex encounters with characters and NPCs, like card games, completing task that require skills that aren't combat actions, and making love. The problem that I am faced with as a writer is how far can we take the love story. What that means is "how context appropriate can the dialog be?" No one seems to know, but love stories are hall marks of many Fantasy Adventure stories.
It's fun creating and telling a story with challenging encounters.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
Fix the bugs, and although the foundry itself is user-friendly, it can still be improved.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
I would like to see an achievement system to be implemented by the creator , which in turn would solve the reward system. A weekly reset or monthly. Basically you can run the same foundry every week to try to achieve something, the harder the achievement, the better reward ( allow us to custom edit are rewards , even epic ones ). Example ..
1. easy = basic rewards
2. novice = novice rewards
3. expert = expert rewards
4. Hard = artifact reward
etc...
Every-time you attempt at a foundry, whether its the same or another, you have to achieve something. The achievements can be very creative. For example, defeat a boss under 2 minutes (timer) or use a daily power if the boss or encounters meet a certain condition.
Or defeat an encounter without triggering a trap, the possibilities are endless. Also, allow us to edit epic bosses (dragons etc..)
Creating maps. Map creation is fun, even when things start to really lag. Creating stories to go with the maps is also fun. These two things are the ONLY reason I even bothered with Neverwinter. I have a level 34 character, been playing since the Foundry Alpha. About your statement in a reply about retention and the Foundry not having metrics showing it is doing anything for that. Let me tell you to tell your boss. I bought the initial founders pack because I believed in the Foundry. After seeing how it was treated, I have not dropped ON SINGLE DIME in this game. I REFUSE to give Cryptic money, because of their treatment of the Foundry. I am sure there are many like me. The Foundry was the only reason TO PLAY for me. IF the foundry got love and was treated as the core experience it was touted to be, I would dump all sorts of money into the game. In truth the game is self is meh. The Foundry was the dividing line between Neverwinter and MMO clone #634 and the one thing that would have made me a paying customer. Hell, I would even pay a small monthly fee of say $5 or even a large upfront fee of $40 just to access the foundry provided it took front and center once again.
How do you feel The Foundry fell short? What do you absolutely hate doing in The Foundry? What are elements of The Foundry that make you wish it was never implemented in Neverwinter?
BUG BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS
That is where the Foundry fell short. Well in truth, the bugs are not the issue, everything has bugs. ITS YOU! Well not you Spiral, but you as in the development team, or more likely the obscenely profit driven management that does not really care about the customer at all (just the green). This is where the Foundry fell short. You guys gave us a great tool that was rough around the edges but showed so much promise, then you just said "screw it, since we don't monetize the Foundry we don't care about the Foundry". And then PWE, Cryptic whoever, let it rot. Sure you put a new coat of paint on once in a while (asset dumps) but as anyone knows, painting over rust does not remove the rust.
When crippling bugs are STILL running rampant in the Foundry after two years, THE SAME EXACT BUGS from Alpha, it shows that people over there at Cryptic and PWE JUST.DON'T.CARE!
Another issue is the exploits. The problem is, this is a free to play game. It attracts people that have these "I need instant satisfaction" mind sets. It's why they spend more money on a free to play game then they would in a subscription based game. SO when you have the Foundry, where they have a choice to invest time into a well designed story, or a quick exploit quest, they will always choose the exploit. Unfortunately you can not fix this problem. It's an issue with society as a whole, but it is compounded in a F2P game where people are used to just buying convenience. This is why the biggest issue with players is their desire to have the Foundry give better rewards. However, with better rewards you have greater incentive to create exploit quests, and the cycle begins anew. But there is a large group of players who enjoy the Foundry for what is was designed to be. A more authentic DnD experience and a medium to interactive with great and unique stories. Problem is, these quests are buried beneath the pile of exploit quests, and they are also getting more rare, and authors are learning that they could write the next Lord of the Rings quality story, and get maybe a dozen plays in a year. The effort is not worth the time.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
Some dev love. Just fixing the bugs and smoothing out the experience will be a HUGE step towards making the Foundry more attractive. Before you try to incentivize content creation, how about you just make creating the content more reliable. Proving to current and potential authors that you are willing to listen to feedback and actually institute change. I am sure most have heard how the Foundry is just the red headed step child of Cryptic, and they don't bother to get invested in a barely supported system.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
This is your only saving grace right now. Not many games have tried this on this scale. Unfortunately for you, Cryptic got taken over by Pay-Win-Entertainment err I mean Perfect World, and the Foundry got lost in the shuffle of creating in-game currency #90045 and finding a way to maximize profits on it.
I'm angry. I come back every few months just hoping, praying someone got fired over there and the new guy made things right. Every time I learn nothing has changed.
The biggest issue is this archiac system of updating the game, with large patches (modules) coming pretty infrequently. While that is one things, waiting until these large patches to fix SERIOUS BUGS that are happening now, just PISSES EVERYONE OFF and shows Cryptic in unable to take a more fluid approach to development.
When Module x breaks something in the Foundry, waiting until Module Y 6 months later to get it fixed is just plain lazy.
Just so you know, they've been given a complete (and simple) solution for totally preventing exploits for almost 6 months now:
01-10-2015 Completely Preventing Foundry Exploitation implementation
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
If there is one constant in this universe besides c it's that I can come to the Foundry forums and still see you fighting the good fight Eldarth.
I tried to stay attached, keep creating but putting so much effort into something when I have to balance military life as well, just to see it get buried in bugs and exploits just wore me out.
Keep in trucking my good man.