Interesting that killing stuff is the only way that gives xp and loot. That should be changed if possible. As you said, "we're the good guys!" Baldur's gate 2 hinted at that when asking how many people you've killed in getting to the end, hundreds, thousands etc... yet we're the good guys!! We should get diplomacy/stealth xp etc, even if just at the end.
I've now had a look at the foundry and started designing one. Spent a few hours and have a few bits done. My first intro dialogue was long and I felt it was good but the game crashed and I lost it... not sure if it was the server going down or my net but I hadn't saved the dialogue. I had saved most though, so lesson learnt. If it doesn't have a rolling auto-save feature, then that would be essential. I can't be the only one who has lost work due to unforeseen connection issues? Most new designers might probably quit there and not come back?
More monster options would be cool. I've seen most before in other foundries and have killed too many outside foundries that it's hard to bring something new to the table.
I guess they asked for what could help beginners get involved and as a beginner, my first thoughts were what do I click now? I've managed to customise the npc's, armour and all, created dialogue and replies which is good and surprisingly easy.
Adding objectives would be next up and as I stopped after the first one had been done to concentrate on adding tree's and props to furnish the intro area, I'll assume linking objective one to another objective is easy too but I may be wrong? I've set up objective three's npc who I hope will appear once objective two's kills have been done. My plan is to have the mission's be short enough to be eligible for the daily 15 mins, and to stack a campaign. I'd like to have people use my campaign as a short daily event working through the chapters. If they want to do the whole lot in a day, awesome - I'd be lucky and proud, but as I ranted about some that take x amount of time too long, and we can't save half-way in, I'll stick to a campaign built of 15-20 minute story based investigations and kills. That will be the challenge to make the story matter more than the kills...
So far, I think it's going well. easy to use but could do with better or clearer guidance for beginners. I'm pretty intuitive with similar stuff so I jumped straight into the foundry and didn't see a guide etc prior to doing so. Others might not like that? A general "you're the GM now. You will need the following list of ideas prior to starting - npc's, enemies, prop/dead bodies ideas, basic story, possible plot twists/deception, goals and objectives, final outcome etc" might help prepare people for the task at hand. Being prepared will give people more chance of completion and to not feel swamped. We all know a to-do list makes life so much easier before we begin. it'd be the same here.
More props would be useful. I found there was no burning building exteriors etc which would have been cool for my forest town. I found myself just skipping the town itself and just stating then ignoring the fact that the town has been ravaged as there are no props to show the town burning. I'm sure others might agree and can say what they would have liked to enhance their story's background.
More props would be useful. I found there was no burning building exteriors etc which would have been cool for my forest town. I found myself just skipping the town itself and just stating then ignoring the fact that the town has been ravaged as there are no props to show the town burning. I'm sure others might agree and can say what they would have liked to enhance their story's background.
Welcome to the machine.
You probably missed the "Foundry Wiki" button at the bottom of the Foundry starting page.
As far as the burning buildings go -- there is no single piece "burning building exterior 01" type of asset.
You can easily make your own (look at Building Pieces filter) and place whatever fire effects you like on it.
If you'd like an idea of what can be done, look at my Invasion! quest (shortcode: NW-DCGHLSKBT).
Regular buildings get turned into destroyed/burning buildings by "Fire Gnolls" tribe. Lots of burning buildings and grass fields. :-)
Welcome to the machine.
You probably missed the "Foundry Wiki" button at the bottom of the Foundry starting page.
As far as the burning buildings go -- there is no single piece "burning building exterior 01" type of asset.
You can easily make your own (look at Building Pieces filter) and place whatever fire effects you like on it.
If you'd like an idea of what can be done, look at my Invasion! quest (shortcode: NW-DCGHLSKBT).
Regular buildings get turned into destroyed/burning buildings by "Fire Gnolls" tribe. Lots of burning buildings and grass fields. :-)
I will take a look at the invasion quest! sounds like I've missed a few things lol! thanks!
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imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
edited January 2015
I saw a great suggestion on another thread. I would LOVE to see this, and it would be I think very simple to implement.
"Add larger World Map for Foundry. When player travels from one foundry map to another use this map instead of current world map. This will allow use actual Forgotten Realms locations."
I have a question for you spirals999. Actually it's for any and all of the Devs, but since you appear to be speaking for them at the present moment,
It has been mentioned multiple times that the Foundry is not being supported or advanced because there are no metrics to show that it brings in money. However, it was obvious from day 1 that there would be no such metrics. No part of the Foundry is monetized therefore, no one CAN pay money for it directly. It was designed not to be able to provide the metrics whose lack thereof is being cited as a reason not to update the Foundry. What is the logic of that?
It's like saying that I can't afford to spend money fixing my house because I can't drive my house to work. The house was never designed to be driven to work; that's what a car is for. The Foundry was never designed to directly sell things, or else things to buy for it would have been built into the game.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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torontodaveMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 992Arc User
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?
Making your own adventures are fun, Drag and drop on the Story page is easy, the 3D edit mode is great for placing.
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 hate the loading time back and forth when creating/viewing a foundry mission, but I've learned to do my stuff in batches.
- There is no reason for an endgame player to do foundry missions. Incentivize playing them. Some kind of meter that fills and eventually doles out a reward useful enough for an endgame player.
- It makes me wish it was never implemented when people abuse it for RP.. RP should be something that freely flows into a players inventory.. We shouldn't be rewarding a botting community, but it was the only way to GET the RP.. Thus, botters rewarded.
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 of an intro to the foundry would be nice. Be it on youtube, or archived on the twitch page. Originally I found it too daunting a task and never even loaded the foundry. Akro's recent 2 livestreams with Surtr were my first intro to it. After seeing the streams, I went and made a kickass spelljammer quest. (NW-DEJ5E85KF) .. Foundry is offline right now, but as soon as it goes back up, I'm gonna go make it better. =P ;D
The rewards for foundry authors shouldnt be so daunting either.. make 100 quests? Too high.. =P
If players were somehow adequately rewarded for playing verified foundry quests that don't encourage any kind of play-mechanic abuse.. lots of people would use it. In fact, player-made maps + custom mechanics (every author@ has his own way of doing things) once verified to be 'safe', are LESS likely to be able to get taken advantage of by botters due to the unique nature of every designer.
Only allow the 'reward' for the FIRST time any @character plays that foundry.. so you can only get a reward when you play and review something you HAVENT played before.. This ensures that lots of different missions get played, instead of just "that short easy one I already know"
thanks for listening. =D
Quick Ben
NW-DSQ39N5SJ - 'To Infinity, and BEYOND!' - Spelljammer Quest. Skyships, Indiana Jones moments NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
It has been mentioned multiple times that the Foundry is not being supported or advanced because there are no metrics to show that it brings in money. However, it was obvious from day 1 that there would be no such metrics. No part of the Foundry is monetized therefore, no one CAN pay money for it directly. It was designed not to be able to provide the metrics whose lack thereof is being cited as a reason not to update the Foundry. What is the logic of that?
Hi Bardaaron,
This argument or point is somewhat valid and somewhat not. I think when most devs have mentioned The Foundry not performing as it should they use broad terms like "We aren't seeing the numbers" or "the Metrics just aren't there". This doesn't necessarily mean that we aren't seeing The Foundry generate money in and of itself. It was never designed to do that. This is the part of your point that is correct.
The leads on Neverwinter at launch made it clear that we did not want to monetize the foundry directly. Meaning we didn't want to put buttons in The Foundry UI that said "Pay to have access to this asset, or this feature". They recognized that Foundry Authors were going to be our enthusiasts and we did not want to put barriers up for them.
So if we weren't expecting to make money then what were we expecting? Well, I wasn't at the table when The Foundry was in concept and when the vision for The Foundry was being discussed. I was busy making sounds for STO and Neverwinter when it was still a baby. So take everything I say with a grain of salt.
If I recall correctly The Foundry was supposed to be a core feature. Meaning all of our games were supposed to have a Foundry after Champs. So STO had a Foundry first and it was being developed for Neverwinter at the same time. Then It was decided that more resources were going to be poured into The Neverwinter Foundry and that it was going to be featured as the shining star of Neverwinter. The Foundry ceased to be a core feature and STO was kind of left with a less developed Foundry.
So it was blasted all over the media that Neverwinter was different and would offer a unique DnD Experience because of The foundry. The rest is history...
So what can we take away from this? If I had to theorize, The Foundry was meant to draw people in and keep people playing. In other words, retention. Retention is probably just as important of a metric as monetization. Retention is how many people keep playing your game for how long. Obviously we want more people playing longer. I think someone stated earlier in this game that "playing players = paying players." This is true. However it is also nice to show your publisher, the one who cuts the checks, that you have a lot of people playing your game that they spent a ton of money on.
I'm guessing that when they analyzed the data they did not see indicators that The Foundry was in any way contributing to retention. The leads and the execs saw The Foundry as a very expensive feature that turned out to be more of a gimmick in terms of retention. So it wasn't monetized and it wasn't contributing to retention and it was causing exploits. People were burned, they lost excitement for The Foundry and gave it only minimal attention.
This is only my theory. This shouldn't be taken as official Cryptic Canon. We have already gone over what went wrong and how we could have done better in this forum thread. I think The Foundry can drive retention AND monetization in a way that makes everyone happy and hopefully we will implement a way to test this theory in the future.
Hopefully in this long winded post I have answered your question bardaaron and illustrated why it is a little more nuanced than your original premise.
"the shining star of Neverwinter"
That's why I started playing this game. However, it's not really living up to that yet.
Ask anyone in the game - Foundry has the potential to be the lifeline of this game and provide the devs with such a player-base that they can retire early.
However, right now it's like walking uphill both ways in the snow (in flip-flops and no jacket) - it's hard to make good Foundries because of bugs/UI issues/limitations (and I'm not even talking about anything exploitable - you know that even with those "safeguards" it's been exploited heavily already). It's hard for "enthusiasts" to realize their creative dreams (however, there are some seriously impressive quests that people have made considering their limitations), and it's hard to provide regular players with anything interesting to do there.
I am still waiting for "the shining star."
I understand your point Spiral, and again, thanks for being so honest and let us know a bit what's happening on the other side.
I think the foundry has a huge potential, for both retention, new players and generating income, all at the same time. But for that to happen, you need to give players a reason to use it more than just a few times for curiosity. So far the only people that play it are either people who care for a good story and prefer to run a good story with something different, than doing the same dailies over and over again; and people who like to farm stuff.
But the rest of the players have little to no reason to play it. why would they? there's absolutely nothing in it for them. No valuable rewards at all, for starters.
Cryptic needs to find a way to both reward legit players and authors and prevent exploiting, and then you'll really see how much potential the foundry has, and you'll see all the numbers you're interested. but so far Cryptic has just focused on preventing expoiting, and taking away freedom from legit players/authors.
Eldarth already gave a few ideas on how to give good rewards and prevent exploiting them, but ultimately the decision is yours to make.
...
So what can we take away from this? If I had to theorize, The Foundry was meant to draw people in and keep people playing. In other words, retention.
...
I can't speak for anyone else, but Foundry is why I'm still here, and while I'm no whale I have spent probably in the range of $300 on this "free" game.
Want an additional guaranteed sale - probably multiple times - from me? Give me the opportunity to buy additional Foundry quest slots with Zen. 15 just isn't enough for me.
I can't speak for anyone else, but Foundry is why I'm still here, and while I'm no whale I have spent probably in the range of $300 on this "free" game.
Want an additional guaranteed sale - probably multiple times - from me? Give me the opportunity to buy additional Foundry quest slots with Zen. 15 just isn't enough for me.
It may take me a while to finish any quests--especially to finish THAT MANY--but eventually, if they were a reasonable price, I would buy more foundry slots with zen.
Spirals, I have to say that it appears that this thread isn't actually doing anything good. You guys have released a patch that in the effort to stop botters, went and broke countless legitimate foundries. It's that kind disservice to foundry authors that has generated a lot of the hard feelings expressed by many foundry authors.
Spirals, I have to say that it appears that this thread isn't actually doing anything good. You guys have released a patch that in the effort to stop botters, went and broke countless legitimate foundries. It's that kind disservice to foundry authors that has generated a lot of the hard feelings expressed by many foundry authors.
Gotta give 'em a little time to analyze and respond to all our suggestions.
As a matter of fact, I'm not sure that "existing" quests got broken as they seemed to just make the portal asset "invalid" for future publishing. So, unlike previous patches, they may not have just wholesale broken things. Perhaps that's a positive that shows they are at least thinking before hacking.
I think we've given them so really powerful anti-farming techniques and some extremely easy ways to improve foundry rewards.
That said, we should start seeing some improvements in the next couple modules, or it will be completely obvious they have no interest in gaining or retaining players using "infinite content."
Gotta give 'em a little time to analyze and respond to all our suggestions.
As a matter of fact, I'm not sure that "existing" quests got broken as they seemed to just make the portal asset "invalid" for future publishing. So, unlike previous patches, they may not have just wholesale broken things. Perhaps that's a positive that shows they are at least thinking before hacking.
I think we've given them so really powerful anti-farming techniques and some extremely easy ways to improve foundry rewards.
That said, we should start seeing some improvements in the next couple modules, or it will be completely obvious they have no interest in gaining or retaining players using "infinite content."
Sprials already stated that he can not say that anything in this thread would lead to anything being done on improving the foundry for this game, again the suits who want to see numbers do not see them in the foundry. My belief is that this is more of an effort to collect data and perspectives from the community regarding the specific questions Spirals asked in the OP.
Most likely the responses will be taken into consideration for the next game they develop that utilizes a foundry feature and try to get as much of this implimented before said game launches. As for the Foundry here in NWO beyond a few new assets and encounters each module I do not see any reason for them to put anymore time into it, which is sad.
If they really want new content to be developed from the foundry and put into the game as an alternative leveling path then they really need to update it with the adequate tools to do it right. Sorry for the wall of text im on my mobile phone.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The Cragsteep Crypt - BETA Ravenloft Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
So what can we take away from this? If I had to theorize, The Foundry was meant to draw people in and keep people playing. In other words, retention. Retention is probably just as important of a metric as monetization. Retention is how many people keep playing your game for how long. Obviously we want more people playing longer. I think someone stated earlier in this game that "playing players = paying players." This is true. However it is also nice to show your publisher, the one who cuts the checks, that you have a lot of people playing your game that they spent a ton of money on.
I'm guessing that when they analyzed the data they did not see indicators that The Foundry was in any way contributing to retention. The leads and the execs saw The Foundry as a very expensive feature that turned out to be more of a gimmick in terms of retention. So it wasn't monetized and it wasn't contributing to retention and it was causing exploits. People were burned, they lost excitement for The Foundry and gave it only minimal attention.
Thank you for responding to my question, spirals. I appreciate the way you are keeping the line of communication open. You have exceeded all of my expectations in that respect.
It is true, I have no doubt, that the foundry is not providing the player retention that it was meant to. However the reason WHY it is failing is what has already been voiced numerous times in this thread. There are no player rewards worth mentioning to draw people in. It saddens me that most players don't seem to care about the stories at all, but I don't fault them for wanting to be rewarded for their efforts in a way that is comparable to what they can achieve elsewhere in the game. As it is, even the AD reward from Rhix is not really worth their time. There is a vicious circle at present regarding exploits. The Foundry doesn't provide adequate rewards, so people exploit the system. Therefore people find ways to exploit the system, so the Devs fight back by nerfing rewards further, or taking things away, in the effort to stop the exploits. This drives more people away from the foundry, where it is now even harder to get quality rewards for time & effort spent, pushing the legitimate players away. However, "cheaters gonna cheat" so the exploiters will just find something else to exploit instead. In the end the battle against the exploiters only makes the exploiters adapt, and makes the Foundry a worse product for everyone else, driving away all of the people you'd hoped to retain.
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 allows for creative time spent in game. Pen and paper DnD would not exsist with UGC and no game should carry the DnD moniker without it. I am very glad that the Foundry exsist for people to take their creative impulses that naturally spawn from the very idea of DnD and realize them in modern vidio game format.
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?
To me the question of measuring the Foundry's functionality is can I recreate a Lair quest that the devs created for the main game. If I can not, because an asset is missing or a piece of functionality (this or that?) then the Foundry has fallen short of what it could be.
The Foundry does not reward people with tangible in game rewards. Most mmo players will not spend game time doing something that does not have a tangible in game reward. There is an intangible reward of experincing a quest, and some quest authors deliver this better than other, and different players are looking for different things in this reguard.
I think that the calls for pvp map making would be a nice addition even though I do not pvp. It would be cool to have a 5 man setting as well where someone could make a skrirmish or even a propper 5 man dungeon.
The lack of boss fights avaible in the foundry is a big probblem as well. It is hard to go though a quest that builds to a climactic sistuation only to fight just a another average solo encounter. Every Lair for every quest in the non-foundry game gets a boss - it would not be hard to make those fights avaible as an assest for the foundry. One per map or even one per Foundry limit. The bosses in the Lair quest dont drop any special grade loot so are exploits really a big problem?
As far as rewards a token system and/or even a campaing with boons could get people (both players and authors) into the Foundry system. For a token system to work he gear on the vendor would have to be real usable gear or the power players will just do the things that reward rel usable gear. I do like the idea of Foundry cosmetic gear too, but that alone will not drive players to participate.
Yes, you should be able to buy quest slots for zen. This is no brainer.
Someone at Cryptic also needs to have the job of shutting down exploit maps. There is an exploit achivment campaing with like 7000 plays under the best tab...
And yes, dialog editor needs work.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
To attract more Authors you have to have rewards and updates. Every time something is added to the foundry its like getting a new toy for an author to play with. We want more toys. For me the single biggest thing I want is some non-humonoid mosters to put in a quest. The game has some (though on the whole not enough) but the foundry is pretty lacking. No gelatenous cube, dreadhound, owlbear, slimes or such. The Monster Manual has plenty of non-humonoids to fight - where are they. Bonus points for adding a displacer beast.
Reward. Honestly when I make a quest I make the quest that I want to play. There is a certain reward for that and for the creative process leading to that. For the four quest I have made I have recived roughly 300 plays and 12000AD in tips. From a perpective of purely game time to ingame tangible reward there are a lot of ways to come by 12000AD that take net to no time. A lot of time goes into making an enjoyable quest. As others have said there are some nice rewards listed in the achivements tab but must are out of reach.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
Pen and paper DnD got UGC right. The moddle is simple, give people a large set of assets and guildlines and let them make something that they and the people they know will enjoy. For me, I want some non-humenoid monsters and boss fights and the ability to try to make a 5-man skirmish. Some want to make pvp maps. Some want to make walk though novels with a good dialog editor. And for every person who wants to make these Foundries there is someone one out there who wants to play it. There a just a few boundries in play that need to be solved.
Lorgrius
A Day in the Life of a Ranger NW-DKCE6OZVH The Mines of GubassoDaily! NW-DN7Z5LHAR The Vault of HargonDaily! NW-DP4X6HAEP
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
If players, after the grind, are still without a full BI gear set and give up, their frustration does not automatically lead them to play a foundry quest (with no rewards either) instead. What it does do is annoy them, which results in them focusing on something more rewarding or just leave the game entirely. The foundry cannot fix that, but -with proper care- it can be an alternative for people to grow.
Module after module:
Does playing Foundry quests help me get campaign progress? Does it give me anything I can use towards boons?
Does it give me gear that I can use (at max level)? Does it give me anything I can sell? All those GMoPs I need aren't exactly free. For that matter, does it give me any chance at a decent amount of refinement-related stuff? Apparently not, and I'd even have to contend with a reduced drop rate playing through any normal quest, compared to if I just sit on a regular map and blow away cultists.
Play something for fun? Who has time for that? I need 100+ Tiamat kills per character, you know? That's a lot of hours.
Module after module:
Does playing Foundry quests help me get campaign progress? Does it give me anything I can use towards boons?
Does it give me gear that I can use (at max level)? Does it give me anything I can sell? All those GMoPs I need aren't exactly free. For that matter, does it give me any chance at a decent amount of refinement-related stuff? Apparently not, and I'd even have to contend with a reduced drop rate playing through any normal quest, compared to if I just sit on a regular map and blow away cultists.
Play something for fun? Who has time for that? I need 100+ Tiamat kills per character, you know? That's a lot of hours.
Edit: Adding foundry rewards that allow a player to earn campaign currency from Neverwinter's other campaigns while playing through Foundry Quests is something I feel could be highly beneficial. At least then the player would feel as if they are making some progress in the game while playing the foundry.
The Foundry has seen incremental and continual reduction in rewards... If all you do is take away from a particular aspect of your game, why would you ever expect the player metrics to improve for that section of the game? When you balance something, you take away from one mechanic and give back in another, so the scales aren't tipping in a particular direction.
Nearly every game-mechanic modification to the Foundry has been of the heavy-handed reductionist variety, with virtually zero ACTIVE balancing which adds something back in order to balance the Foundry game play. Continual reduction of the Foundry is why player metrics have also continually dwindled. It's fairly straightforward why the Foundry has suffered.
Campaign - Trail of the Imaskarcana (NWS-DMFG77QOF)
Foundry quests giving a way to earn the different campaign currencies is a great way to make it so more people play them. You just have to make them BoA/BoP so you can't farm quests in order to sell it.
Also it would be wise that only quests that qualify for the daily (an average of 15 mins minimum) give that prize, so people can't just exploit 30 secs foundry quests for them.
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
edited February 2015
BoA campaign boosters earnable by running Foundry missions that qualify for the daily would go very far towards solving my feelings of burnout and despair when I look at RoT boons and consider how many hours of not really being able to do anything but work on those they call for. IMO, every Tiamat is one hour of not being able to get deeply involved in *anything* else, and they're not all going to be wins. It's ludicrous.
The sheer amount of time that has been demanded by the more recent campaigns has been detrimental to getting players doing what they want as opposed to the things that the game designers have decided that they have to do in order to progress. I'm certain that Foundry has suffered most of all, but so have dungeons and skirmishes. A large number of players feel that it's not really possible to keep up with gearing and booning more than one character anymore because the time and AD investment required for just that one character is all they can handle, and more and more alts get parked to farming duty to support that one main, which is something I find really depressing.
It's not directly a Foundry issue, but the overall state of the game is a huge reason why people aren't really *doing* Foundry the way Cryptic had hoped. This situation has been created by your very own cunning plans to aid and abet player retention by gating their character progress behind hours and hours and hours of grinding.
Of course, with no disrespect intended towards Beckylunatic, people should play a game exactly just for fun. And do a foundry because it's fun and something different. That's what it's all about from a gamer's PoV. But the sheer amount of tasks that this game demands from players just leaves no room for it, even if they want to.
I am exactly in agreement with you, and have actually been spending time in Neverwinter doing things that have effectively brought my campaign progression to a standstill, so that I can have fun and not hate the game.
But my hyperbole stands. If I want to progress, Neverwinter is basically telling me I'm not allowed to have any fun at this point.
I am exactly in agreement with you, and have actually been spending time in Neverwinter doing things that have effectively brought my campaign progression to a standstill, so that I can have fun and not hate the game.
But my hyperbole stands. If I want to progress, Neverwinter is basically telling me I'm not allowed to have any fun at this point.
This is also the root of their bot problem too. Fixing this issue would help an amazing number of problems.
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imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
edited February 2015
The other night, a few of us who were in Foundry chat were talking about this.
We had the following ideas, with a few extras I thought of after the fact:
* Put in a function that looks for something already being tracked, and checks if any of those have been done in the last minute. If you 1) complete a component, 2) reach a dialog prompt not previously reached, or 3) complete an objective, the timer resets. If you haven't done one of those three in the last minute, xp stops, loot stops, and the timer for the end chest (see below) stops. This would eliminate a large number of illegal exploits.
* Add Foundry Tokens. These tokens would be found in the end-chest. They would only be available on a daily-eligible quest. Tokens would bind on pickup. Whether to account or to character would be a point for discussion.
* The number of them you get would be based on your play time (see above). For every X number of minutes of play, you get one token. This would make it so that you get equivalent rewards for playing any length of quest, instead of the current system which favors the shortest daily-eligible quests.
* Tokens can be gained once per day from any single Foundry quest. This would encourage people to play a variety of quests.
* +50% tokens if it's the first time you've ever completed that particular quest. This would encourage people to play new quests.
* Tokens could be redeemed at a Foundry Vendor, for whatever Cryptic felt like offering as rewards, only available through Foundry tokens and not elsewhere. Level-appropriate salvageable purple gear... green companions... 50% mounts... fashion items or transmutes... that kind of thing. Stuff that didn't affect game balance, but that people would want to get.
These would not be cheap. You'd need a lot of Foundry tokens to get something. But you'd know how many you needed, and thus know that eventually you're going to get what you want. Items obtained from the vendor would be bound on pickup. Again, whether to character or to account would be a topic for discussion.
* Add in randomly coupons for temporary zen items. As Eldarth points out, the first hit's free. If you get a 110% zen store mount for 2 hours from a coupon, you might like it so much that you'll go buy it with zen once the coupon expires. Make the coupons bound, so that you have to play Foundry to get them. Make them either so that if you have a specific coupon in your inventory/bank you won't get another of that same type, or that they have timers on them like other zen store coupons, and go away if unused. These coupons would potentially increase interest in zen store items, and thus potentially bring in more money.
* Offer a zen store item to increase the number of Foundry tokens gained for a limited time. This would also potentially bring in more money.
Here's where it ties in to recent posts:
* Make campaign items something you can buy with enough Foundry tokens.
I think that this would be a fair and equitable reward system, relatively easy to implement (as most of what would be required already exists in-game, and the code could be adapted), and would dramatically raise interest in running Foundry quests, especially if the rewards could be applied to progression in otherwise extremely grindy campaigns.
I am exactly in agreement with you, and have actually been spending time in Neverwinter doing things that have effectively brought my campaign progression to a standstill, so that I can have fun and not hate the game.
But my hyperbole stands. If I want to progress, Neverwinter is basically telling me I'm not allowed to have any fun at this point.
And because of this, I have more-or-less abandoned trying to progress in any meaningful way. It's just not fun. Foundries are fun, and I value that fun immensely more than a higher gear score (or Average Item Level).
The other night, a few of us who were in Foundry chat were talking about this.
We had the following ideas, with a few extras I thought of after the fact:
* Put in a function that looks for something already being tracked, and checks if any of those have been done in the last minute. If you 1) complete a component, 2) reach a dialog prompt not previously reached, or 3) complete an objective, the timer resets. If you haven't done one of those three in the last minute, xp stops, loot stops, and the timer for the end chest (see below) stops. This would eliminate a large number of illegal exploits.
As mentioned, these have already been posted in the Foundry forum.
* Add in randomly coupons for temporary zen items. As Eldarth points out, the first hit's free. If you get a 110% zen store mount for 2 hours from a coupon, you might like it so much that you'll go buy it with zen once the coupon expires. Make the coupons bound, so that you have to play Foundry to get them. Make them either so that if you have a specific coupon in your inventory/bank you won't get another of that same type, or that they have timers on them like other zen store coupons, and go away if unused. These coupons would potentially increase interest in zen store items, and thus potentially bring in more money.
me too, I'm stuck at 14k GS at the moment, and haven't changed much lately...
I like imaginaerum1's idea, it's more or less what we have been telling for a long time.
We can give lots of ideas, but at the end it depends on cryptic's decision and will to actually do something with the foundry, or else, all our ideas are in vain.
Comments
I've now had a look at the foundry and started designing one. Spent a few hours and have a few bits done. My first intro dialogue was long and I felt it was good but the game crashed and I lost it... not sure if it was the server going down or my net but I hadn't saved the dialogue. I had saved most though, so lesson learnt. If it doesn't have a rolling auto-save feature, then that would be essential. I can't be the only one who has lost work due to unforeseen connection issues? Most new designers might probably quit there and not come back?
More monster options would be cool. I've seen most before in other foundries and have killed too many outside foundries that it's hard to bring something new to the table.
I guess they asked for what could help beginners get involved and as a beginner, my first thoughts were what do I click now? I've managed to customise the npc's, armour and all, created dialogue and replies which is good and surprisingly easy.
Adding objectives would be next up and as I stopped after the first one had been done to concentrate on adding tree's and props to furnish the intro area, I'll assume linking objective one to another objective is easy too but I may be wrong? I've set up objective three's npc who I hope will appear once objective two's kills have been done. My plan is to have the mission's be short enough to be eligible for the daily 15 mins, and to stack a campaign. I'd like to have people use my campaign as a short daily event working through the chapters. If they want to do the whole lot in a day, awesome - I'd be lucky and proud, but as I ranted about some that take x amount of time too long, and we can't save half-way in, I'll stick to a campaign built of 15-20 minute story based investigations and kills. That will be the challenge to make the story matter more than the kills...
So far, I think it's going well. easy to use but could do with better or clearer guidance for beginners. I'm pretty intuitive with similar stuff so I jumped straight into the foundry and didn't see a guide etc prior to doing so. Others might not like that? A general "you're the GM now. You will need the following list of ideas prior to starting - npc's, enemies, prop/dead bodies ideas, basic story, possible plot twists/deception, goals and objectives, final outcome etc" might help prepare people for the task at hand. Being prepared will give people more chance of completion and to not feel swamped. We all know a to-do list makes life so much easier before we begin. it'd be the same here.
More props would be useful. I found there was no burning building exteriors etc which would have been cool for my forest town. I found myself just skipping the town itself and just stating then ignoring the fact that the town has been ravaged as there are no props to show the town burning. I'm sure others might agree and can say what they would have liked to enhance their story's background.
Welcome to the machine.
You probably missed the "Foundry Wiki" button at the bottom of the Foundry starting page.
As far as the burning buildings go -- there is no single piece "burning building exterior 01" type of asset.
You can easily make your own (look at Building Pieces filter) and place whatever fire effects you like on it.
If you'd like an idea of what can be done, look at my Invasion! quest (shortcode: NW-DCGHLSKBT).
Regular buildings get turned into destroyed/burning buildings by "Fire Gnolls" tribe. Lots of burning buildings and grass fields. :-)
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
I will take a look at the invasion quest! sounds like I've missed a few things lol! thanks!
"Add larger World Map for Foundry. When player travels from one foundry map to another use this map instead of current world map. This will allow use actual Forgotten Realms locations."
This. I want this.
It has been mentioned multiple times that the Foundry is not being supported or advanced because there are no metrics to show that it brings in money. However, it was obvious from day 1 that there would be no such metrics. No part of the Foundry is monetized therefore, no one CAN pay money for it directly. It was designed not to be able to provide the metrics whose lack thereof is being cited as a reason not to update the Foundry. What is the logic of that?
It's like saying that I can't afford to spend money fixing my house because I can't drive my house to work. The house was never designed to be driven to work; that's what a car is for. The Foundry was never designed to directly sell things, or else things to buy for it would have been built into the game.
- There is no reason for an endgame player to do foundry missions. Incentivize playing them. Some kind of meter that fills and eventually doles out a reward useful enough for an endgame player.
- It makes me wish it was never implemented when people abuse it for RP.. RP should be something that freely flows into a players inventory.. We shouldn't be rewarding a botting community, but it was the only way to GET the RP.. Thus, botters rewarded. More of an intro to the foundry would be nice. Be it on youtube, or archived on the twitch page. Originally I found it too daunting a task and never even loaded the foundry. Akro's recent 2 livestreams with Surtr were my first intro to it. After seeing the streams, I went and made a kickass spelljammer quest. (NW-DEJ5E85KF) .. Foundry is offline right now, but as soon as it goes back up, I'm gonna go make it better. =P ;D
The rewards for foundry authors shouldnt be so daunting either.. make 100 quests? Too high.. =P
If players were somehow adequately rewarded for playing verified foundry quests that don't encourage any kind of play-mechanic abuse.. lots of people would use it. In fact, player-made maps + custom mechanics (every author@ has his own way of doing things) once verified to be 'safe', are LESS likely to be able to get taken advantage of by botters due to the unique nature of every designer.
Only allow the 'reward' for the FIRST time any @character plays that foundry.. so you can only get a reward when you play and review something you HAVENT played before.. This ensures that lots of different missions get played, instead of just "that short easy one I already know"
thanks for listening. =D
Quick Ben
NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
Hi Bardaaron,
This argument or point is somewhat valid and somewhat not. I think when most devs have mentioned The Foundry not performing as it should they use broad terms like "We aren't seeing the numbers" or "the Metrics just aren't there". This doesn't necessarily mean that we aren't seeing The Foundry generate money in and of itself. It was never designed to do that. This is the part of your point that is correct.
The leads on Neverwinter at launch made it clear that we did not want to monetize the foundry directly. Meaning we didn't want to put buttons in The Foundry UI that said "Pay to have access to this asset, or this feature". They recognized that Foundry Authors were going to be our enthusiasts and we did not want to put barriers up for them.
So if we weren't expecting to make money then what were we expecting? Well, I wasn't at the table when The Foundry was in concept and when the vision for The Foundry was being discussed. I was busy making sounds for STO and Neverwinter when it was still a baby. So take everything I say with a grain of salt.
If I recall correctly The Foundry was supposed to be a core feature. Meaning all of our games were supposed to have a Foundry after Champs. So STO had a Foundry first and it was being developed for Neverwinter at the same time. Then It was decided that more resources were going to be poured into The Neverwinter Foundry and that it was going to be featured as the shining star of Neverwinter. The Foundry ceased to be a core feature and STO was kind of left with a less developed Foundry.
So it was blasted all over the media that Neverwinter was different and would offer a unique DnD Experience because of The foundry. The rest is history...
So what can we take away from this? If I had to theorize, The Foundry was meant to draw people in and keep people playing. In other words, retention. Retention is probably just as important of a metric as monetization. Retention is how many people keep playing your game for how long. Obviously we want more people playing longer. I think someone stated earlier in this game that "playing players = paying players." This is true. However it is also nice to show your publisher, the one who cuts the checks, that you have a lot of people playing your game that they spent a ton of money on.
I'm guessing that when they analyzed the data they did not see indicators that The Foundry was in any way contributing to retention. The leads and the execs saw The Foundry as a very expensive feature that turned out to be more of a gimmick in terms of retention. So it wasn't monetized and it wasn't contributing to retention and it was causing exploits. People were burned, they lost excitement for The Foundry and gave it only minimal attention.
This is only my theory. This shouldn't be taken as official Cryptic Canon. We have already gone over what went wrong and how we could have done better in this forum thread. I think The Foundry can drive retention AND monetization in a way that makes everyone happy and hopefully we will implement a way to test this theory in the future.
Hopefully in this long winded post I have answered your question bardaaron and illustrated why it is a little more nuanced than your original premise.
- Spirals
That's why I started playing this game. However, it's not really living up to that yet.
Ask anyone in the game - Foundry has the potential to be the lifeline of this game and provide the devs with such a player-base that they can retire early.
However, right now it's like walking uphill both ways in the snow (in flip-flops and no jacket) - it's hard to make good Foundries because of bugs/UI issues/limitations (and I'm not even talking about anything exploitable - you know that even with those "safeguards" it's been exploited heavily already). It's hard for "enthusiasts" to realize their creative dreams (however, there are some seriously impressive quests that people have made considering their limitations), and it's hard to provide regular players with anything interesting to do there.
I am still waiting for "the shining star."
I think the foundry has a huge potential, for both retention, new players and generating income, all at the same time. But for that to happen, you need to give players a reason to use it more than just a few times for curiosity. So far the only people that play it are either people who care for a good story and prefer to run a good story with something different, than doing the same dailies over and over again; and people who like to farm stuff.
But the rest of the players have little to no reason to play it. why would they? there's absolutely nothing in it for them. No valuable rewards at all, for starters.
Cryptic needs to find a way to both reward legit players and authors and prevent exploiting, and then you'll really see how much potential the foundry has, and you'll see all the numbers you're interested. but so far Cryptic has just focused on preventing expoiting, and taking away freedom from legit players/authors.
Eldarth already gave a few ideas on how to give good rewards and prevent exploiting them, but ultimately the decision is yours to make.
I can't speak for anyone else, but Foundry is why I'm still here, and while I'm no whale I have spent probably in the range of $300 on this "free" game.
Want an additional guaranteed sale - probably multiple times - from me? Give me the opportunity to buy additional Foundry quest slots with Zen. 15 just isn't enough for me.
-- @Gruffydd
It may take me a while to finish any quests--especially to finish THAT MANY--but eventually, if they were a reasonable price, I would buy more foundry slots with zen.
Gotta give 'em a little time to analyze and respond to all our suggestions.
As a matter of fact, I'm not sure that "existing" quests got broken as they seemed to just make the portal asset "invalid" for future publishing. So, unlike previous patches, they may not have just wholesale broken things. Perhaps that's a positive that shows they are at least thinking before hacking.
I think we've given them so really powerful anti-farming techniques and some extremely easy ways to improve foundry rewards.
That said, we should start seeing some improvements in the next couple modules, or it will be completely obvious they have no interest in gaining or retaining players using "infinite content."
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
Sprials already stated that he can not say that anything in this thread would lead to anything being done on improving the foundry for this game, again the suits who want to see numbers do not see them in the foundry. My belief is that this is more of an effort to collect data and perspectives from the community regarding the specific questions Spirals asked in the OP.
Most likely the responses will be taken into consideration for the next game they develop that utilizes a foundry feature and try to get as much of this implimented before said game launches. As for the Foundry here in NWO beyond a few new assets and encounters each module I do not see any reason for them to put anymore time into it, which is sad.
If they really want new content to be developed from the foundry and put into the game as an alternative leveling path then they really need to update it with the adequate tools to do it right. Sorry for the wall of text im on my mobile phone.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
It is true, I have no doubt, that the foundry is not providing the player retention that it was meant to. However the reason WHY it is failing is what has already been voiced numerous times in this thread. There are no player rewards worth mentioning to draw people in. It saddens me that most players don't seem to care about the stories at all, but I don't fault them for wanting to be rewarded for their efforts in a way that is comparable to what they can achieve elsewhere in the game. As it is, even the AD reward from Rhix is not really worth their time. There is a vicious circle at present regarding exploits. The Foundry doesn't provide adequate rewards, so people exploit the system. Therefore people find ways to exploit the system, so the Devs fight back by nerfing rewards further, or taking things away, in the effort to stop the exploits. This drives more people away from the foundry, where it is now even harder to get quality rewards for time & effort spent, pushing the legitimate players away. However, "cheaters gonna cheat" so the exploiters will just find something else to exploit instead. In the end the battle against the exploiters only makes the exploiters adapt, and makes the Foundry a worse product for everyone else, driving away all of the people you'd hoped to retain.
The Foundry allows for creative time spent in game. Pen and paper DnD would not exsist with UGC and no game should carry the DnD moniker without it. I am very glad that the Foundry exsist for people to take their creative impulses that naturally spawn from the very idea of DnD and realize them in modern vidio game format.
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?
To me the question of measuring the Foundry's functionality is can I recreate a Lair quest that the devs created for the main game. If I can not, because an asset is missing or a piece of functionality (this or that?) then the Foundry has fallen short of what it could be.
The Foundry does not reward people with tangible in game rewards. Most mmo players will not spend game time doing something that does not have a tangible in game reward. There is an intangible reward of experincing a quest, and some quest authors deliver this better than other, and different players are looking for different things in this reguard.
I think that the calls for pvp map making would be a nice addition even though I do not pvp. It would be cool to have a 5 man setting as well where someone could make a skrirmish or even a propper 5 man dungeon.
The lack of boss fights avaible in the foundry is a big probblem as well. It is hard to go though a quest that builds to a climactic sistuation only to fight just a another average solo encounter. Every Lair for every quest in the non-foundry game gets a boss - it would not be hard to make those fights avaible as an assest for the foundry. One per map or even one per Foundry limit. The bosses in the Lair quest dont drop any special grade loot so are exploits really a big problem?
As far as rewards a token system and/or even a campaing with boons could get people (both players and authors) into the Foundry system. For a token system to work he gear on the vendor would have to be real usable gear or the power players will just do the things that reward rel usable gear. I do like the idea of Foundry cosmetic gear too, but that alone will not drive players to participate.
Yes, you should be able to buy quest slots for zen. This is no brainer.
Someone at Cryptic also needs to have the job of shutting down exploit maps. There is an exploit achivment campaing with like 7000 plays under the best tab...
And yes, dialog editor needs work.
What would you add to The Foundry to attract more authors and incentivize content creation? How would you like to see The Foundry implemented?
To attract more Authors you have to have rewards and updates. Every time something is added to the foundry its like getting a new toy for an author to play with. We want more toys. For me the single biggest thing I want is some non-humonoid mosters to put in a quest. The game has some (though on the whole not enough) but the foundry is pretty lacking. No gelatenous cube, dreadhound, owlbear, slimes or such. The Monster Manual has plenty of non-humonoids to fight - where are they. Bonus points for adding a displacer beast.
Reward. Honestly when I make a quest I make the quest that I want to play. There is a certain reward for that and for the creative process leading to that. For the four quest I have made I have recived roughly 300 plays and 12000AD in tips. From a perpective of purely game time to ingame tangible reward there are a lot of ways to come by 12000AD that take net to no time. A lot of time goes into making an enjoyable quest. As others have said there are some nice rewards listed in the achivements tab but must are out of reach.
What are some other games you feel got UGC implementation right? What can Cryptic Studios learn from the UGC tools of these other games?
Pen and paper DnD got UGC right. The moddle is simple, give people a large set of assets and guildlines and let them make something that they and the people they know will enjoy. For me, I want some non-humenoid monsters and boss fights and the ability to try to make a 5-man skirmish. Some want to make pvp maps. Some want to make walk though novels with a good dialog editor. And for every person who wants to make these Foundries there is someone one out there who wants to play it. There a just a few boundries in play that need to be solved.
A Day in the Life of a Ranger
NW-DKCE6OZVH
The Mines of Gubasso Daily!
NW-DN7Z5LHAR
The Vault of Hargon Daily!
NW-DP4X6HAEP
Module after module:
Does playing Foundry quests help me get campaign progress? Does it give me anything I can use towards boons?
Does it give me gear that I can use (at max level)? Does it give me anything I can sell? All those GMoPs I need aren't exactly free. For that matter, does it give me any chance at a decent amount of refinement-related stuff? Apparently not, and I'd even have to contend with a reduced drop rate playing through any normal quest, compared to if I just sit on a regular map and blow away cultists.
Play something for fun? Who has time for that? I need 100+ Tiamat kills per character, you know? That's a lot of hours.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
The Foundry has seen incremental and continual reduction in rewards... If all you do is take away from a particular aspect of your game, why would you ever expect the player metrics to improve for that section of the game? When you balance something, you take away from one mechanic and give back in another, so the scales aren't tipping in a particular direction.
Nearly every game-mechanic modification to the Foundry has been of the heavy-handed reductionist variety, with virtually zero ACTIVE balancing which adds something back in order to balance the Foundry game play. Continual reduction of the Foundry is why player metrics have also continually dwindled. It's fairly straightforward why the Foundry has suffered.
Also it would be wise that only quests that qualify for the daily (an average of 15 mins minimum) give that prize, so people can't just exploit 30 secs foundry quests for them.
The sheer amount of time that has been demanded by the more recent campaigns has been detrimental to getting players doing what they want as opposed to the things that the game designers have decided that they have to do in order to progress. I'm certain that Foundry has suffered most of all, but so have dungeons and skirmishes. A large number of players feel that it's not really possible to keep up with gearing and booning more than one character anymore because the time and AD investment required for just that one character is all they can handle, and more and more alts get parked to farming duty to support that one main, which is something I find really depressing.
It's not directly a Foundry issue, but the overall state of the game is a huge reason why people aren't really *doing* Foundry the way Cryptic had hoped. This situation has been created by your very own cunning plans to aid and abet player retention by gating their character progress behind hours and hours and hours of grinding.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I am exactly in agreement with you, and have actually been spending time in Neverwinter doing things that have effectively brought my campaign progression to a standstill, so that I can have fun and not hate the game.
But my hyperbole stands. If I want to progress, Neverwinter is basically telling me I'm not allowed to have any fun at this point.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
This is also the root of their bot problem too. Fixing this issue would help an amazing number of problems.
We had the following ideas, with a few extras I thought of after the fact:
* Put in a function that looks for something already being tracked, and checks if any of those have been done in the last minute. If you 1) complete a component, 2) reach a dialog prompt not previously reached, or 3) complete an objective, the timer resets. If you haven't done one of those three in the last minute, xp stops, loot stops, and the timer for the end chest (see below) stops. This would eliminate a large number of illegal exploits.
* Add Foundry Tokens. These tokens would be found in the end-chest. They would only be available on a daily-eligible quest. Tokens would bind on pickup. Whether to account or to character would be a point for discussion.
* The number of them you get would be based on your play time (see above). For every X number of minutes of play, you get one token. This would make it so that you get equivalent rewards for playing any length of quest, instead of the current system which favors the shortest daily-eligible quests.
* Tokens can be gained once per day from any single Foundry quest. This would encourage people to play a variety of quests.
* +50% tokens if it's the first time you've ever completed that particular quest. This would encourage people to play new quests.
* Tokens could be redeemed at a Foundry Vendor, for whatever Cryptic felt like offering as rewards, only available through Foundry tokens and not elsewhere. Level-appropriate salvageable purple gear... green companions... 50% mounts... fashion items or transmutes... that kind of thing. Stuff that didn't affect game balance, but that people would want to get.
These would not be cheap. You'd need a lot of Foundry tokens to get something. But you'd know how many you needed, and thus know that eventually you're going to get what you want. Items obtained from the vendor would be bound on pickup. Again, whether to character or to account would be a topic for discussion.
* Add in randomly coupons for temporary zen items. As Eldarth points out, the first hit's free. If you get a 110% zen store mount for 2 hours from a coupon, you might like it so much that you'll go buy it with zen once the coupon expires. Make the coupons bound, so that you have to play Foundry to get them. Make them either so that if you have a specific coupon in your inventory/bank you won't get another of that same type, or that they have timers on them like other zen store coupons, and go away if unused. These coupons would potentially increase interest in zen store items, and thus potentially bring in more money.
* Offer a zen store item to increase the number of Foundry tokens gained for a limited time. This would also potentially bring in more money.
Here's where it ties in to recent posts:
* Make campaign items something you can buy with enough Foundry tokens.
I think that this would be a fair and equitable reward system, relatively easy to implement (as most of what would be required already exists in-game, and the code could be adapted), and would dramatically raise interest in running Foundry quests, especially if the rewards could be applied to progression in otherwise extremely grindy campaigns.
-- @Gruffydd
As mentioned, these have already been posted in the Foundry forum.
cf. How to Eliminate Foundry Exploits
cf. #6 Limited Time Zen Store Coupons
cf. Temporary Zen Rewards
..and the (also excellent) idea for Foundry Campaign Tokens has been suggested by many, many people in this very thread. :-)
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
I like imaginaerum1's idea, it's more or less what we have been telling for a long time.
We can give lots of ideas, but at the end it depends on cryptic's decision and will to actually do something with the foundry, or else, all our ideas are in vain.