When will Cryptic begin featuring new quests?

tipadaknife

For the past several weeks, Cryptic has been re-featuring older quests. I'm positive that authors have been dutifully submitting their completed quests. Players look to the featured quests tab to point them to the quality quests that have been buried in tons of dreck.

I've reviewed at least a dozen quests that are very worthy of featuring. I'd be happy to provide a list. I think my own Crushbone's Revenge would be a good candidate.

These older quests are great, but the level of mapmaking and storytelling has only grown as authors have become masters with the toolset. Players might be pretty surprised at the stories being told these days. That Northern Docks District contest produced at least three amazing quests. Another author just made a quest that fits in perfectly with the forthcoming expansion.

It would be nice to see some new quests being featured.

sockmunkey

New module in the pipe. Akro is on the hype train. He most likely has little time to devote to featuring quests. And I honestly believe he is the only one currently running the program.

bardaaron

Spirals might do something, but I don't think anyone else ever looks at the foundry.

tipadaknife

Over half of the first 20 quests on the "Best" tab are achievement sploit farms. Some of the others have a featured version and a non-standard version up there. Most of the non-sploit quests have been there for a very, very long time. What sort of impression does this give?

The only impression it can give to a casual, non-foundry-fan is that the foundry is pretty much dead. Few new quests, mostly used to exploit. That couldn't be more wrong.

I don't know what their internal approval process is. But the only way to get good quests in front of the general player population is for someone to put them there.

bardaaron

Well, I've got a few quests I am working on at the moment. With some changes I am making to the structure of some (1 long quest will now be 3 shorter quests) I may be ready to release one very soon.

reiwulf

I'd love to see new quests featured too, and I think there are lots of great new quests available for that, the one's tipadaknife has reviewed has som great ones!

angrysprite

The first thing is the idea that just because a Foundry Quest is "old" means that it isn't any good or of lesser quality than newer ones. My Blacklake Luskan quest was first created during Foundry Beta (Which is even before closed beta for the game in general). It was only just this past September that it became featured. The reviews have been stellar.

Never let the fate that a quest was created or published lull you into believing it's any less good than anything created in the last few months.

There is nothing stopping you from running non-featured quests. One way to get through the "dreck" is to subscribe to the authors whose quests you enjoy.

tipadaknife

My only real point was: The Featured tab is the only showcase authors have. When it is continually used to re-feature previously featured quests, new quests have to rely upon random searches to find new players. And search is beyond broken.

reiwulf

like tipadaknife said, it's not that they're old, it's that many of them have been featured before already.

angrysprite

Featured quests aren't being featured again; the featured list is on a cycling basis to allow exposure to all Featured quests on a rolling basis. Don't get me wrong, I'm not debating the OP point because I agree: new features need to be forthcoming.

I'd like to see a system of depreciating Features: as newer quests are featured, the oldest are removed so there is always a finite number of featured quests. Here's the problem: there are too many featured quests right now (and which are shown is a rolling calendar). First was Sominator, now Akromatic who is the main Community manager who "manages" the featured Quest thing: he plays Foundry, then creates a short list, then some of the Devs also play them, they vote = quest is featured.

Problem: with so many featured already (a large pool already in place) and the pressure to constantly output new Modules and whatnot, the time taken to look at foundry has fallen by the wayside.

As a CM part of Arko's job is to engage the community. When was the last time he did a lockbox exchange event? Currently his in-game calendar is all about dungeon delves and Tiamat. He needs to add Foundry back to that calendar. But I get it: time is tight.

What agro (and Devs if necessary) need to come up with a way for players to nominate Foundry Quests for review. But that would get out of hand almost immediately.

What they need to do: 1) improve player incentive (such as some kind of foundry-specific rewards) and 2) *fix* the search function, starting with allowing AUTHORS to tag their quests, not players.

Foundry is and always has been pretty much a mess I don't see it being improved by much any time soon because it will be a monumental task that requires dedicated Dev time, which costs a lot of money. I'm not defending Cryptic, only stating what it is.

zebular

angrysprite wrote: »

When was the last time he did a lockbox exchange event?

December 5th, 6th, and 7th.

torontodave

we need a whole new way to browse the foundry quests in the catalog.

even calling it a 'catalog' is a joke, for the reasons stated above ^^
- too many farm quests with high ratings,
- 'featured' quests have like 3-4 featured versions? can we go with the *most recent only* pls?
- featured never updated (this should be a fulltime position. foundry overlord. DUNGEON MASTER as it were. =P)
- summary/reviews should be given more space
- sorting 'subscribed' authors into easily viewed categories, as well as sorting played vs unplayed

it should be a giant explorer window. =D

just something to think about when you finally decide to give the foundry love. =D

eldarth

angrysprite wrote: »

As a CM part of Arko's job is to engage the community. When was the last time he did a lockbox exchange event? Currently his in-game calendar is all about dungeon delves and Tiamat. He needs to add Foundry back to that calendar. But I get it: time is tight.

December 22nd - Foundry Instructional Livestream (recap)
January 19th - Foundry Instructional (part 2) Livestream (recap)

...but, yes - featured quests (and screenshot of the month) need to be resumed.

imaginaerum1

angrysprite wrote: »

...
What agro (and Devs if necessary) need to come up with a way for players to nominate Foundry Quests for review.
...

No. Please, no.

I don't want to have to be begging for plays even more than I currently am, just to get someone to eventually nominate me for Featured.

Any player-based interaction to determine which quests get Featured will defeat the purpose of Featured. Someone will find a way to exploit it, and then Featured becomes like the other tabs, full of garbage quests.

Right now, authors nominate themselves, and I think that's the only real way that works for what Featured is, which is Cryptic's choice of which quests are really good.

That said, I'm going to bring back a suggestion I made in the past: a new tab called "Cryptic's Choice".
This would be a list of quests that are only put on that tab by an active decision of someone official. No abusable star ratings, no player nominations, nothing like that. Exactly like Featured, with a big exception: Not limited to 3/featured round.
These quests would be the ones that the Featured reviewers think are really good, but not their choice for Featured.
These wouldn't be unmodifiable clones of the original quests, they would simply be links to those quests, as if you'd somehow searched and filtered for them. Obviously, you'd need some function to allow players to report a quest that has been changed into a farm or exploit. My previous suggestion was that if a certain number of reports are submitted using the existing reporting system (3? 5?) the quest is removed from the list, until such a time as the official folks have a chance to look at it, at which point they would either reset the reports and add it back to the list, or remove the quest, depending on whether or not it was in violation.

This would give a pool of quests to look at for future Featured quests, a clean list of good, non-farm non-exploit quests to play, and give more exposure to good quests that people may not have seen.
I'm not suggesting they flood the tab with new quests, nor that there be a fixed number of quests added each Featured cycle. However many the reviewing team feels deserve recognition but aren't their choice for Featured could be added.

imaginaerum1

It looks like we're still getting reruns instead of new featured quests.

*sigh*

tipadaknife

It's pretty clear from the way the Foundry Authoring achievements are set up that it wasn't originally intended that getting a quest featured was going to be a super-rare event. I guess the "Best" tab was supposed to be a way for good quests to organically rise to the top without having to be featured, but that is clearly fatally flawed by only showing quests that have already been very successful, or are sploit farms.

Maybe, kick quests off the top hundred positions in the Best tab for a month after they've been there for a couple days. Have a constant churn of good, highly-rated quests.

imaginaerum1

Still more reruns.
What is this now, going on three months since we had new featured quests?

It would be nice if they'd get around to featuring some new quests.
I've got what I think is my best work yet sitting there in the feature-review queue, and it even ties in with the upcoming expansion. I'd really like to get a chance at getting it featured, but that requires that they actually start featuring again.

katamaster81899

I was going to submit my foundry to be featured, but after seeing this, I'm not so sure. I even got Akromatik to play it and review it. If he has any say in it, I think I'd have a shot, just due to the nature of it :P

tipadaknife

Sounds like, from the Twitter thing today, that they'll be taking the current super popular quests, like, I suppose, Tired of Being The Hero and Old Jerry, over to the XBox. They're not going to take any of our quests over to the XBox, they have all the UGC they need.

reiwulf

that's so sad...

katamaster81899

You're kidding, right? That's just... lame...

iandarksword

imaginaerum1 wrote: »

Still more reruns.
What is this now, going on three months since we had new featured quests?

It would be nice if they'd get around to featuring some new quests.
I've got what I think is my best work yet sitting there in the feature-review queue, and it even ties in with the upcoming expansion. I'd really like to get a chance at getting it featured, but that requires that they actually start featuring again.

I actually hit Akro up on Twitter about some Foundry stuff, and he said that the upcoming module and Xbox one release have kept him too busy to pursue Foundry quests at the moment. Not that he doesn't want to run quests, they just haven't allowed him time to. I dont mean to burst everyone's bubble, but it's pretty clear the Foundry isn't a priority to the higher ups at the present. I've taken to Twitch streams to try to get the streamers' attention, and no one there seems remotely interested in running foundries because they don't get anything of value for doing them. The best advice I can give is to just keep churning out whatever your creativity allows and hope that eventually someone gets bored enough to see it. It's extremely sad, yes, but it is what it is. If anyone is interested, I've tweaked the one quest I have released multiple times, including today. Chances are it's different than the last time any of you ran it. I have another two in the works, but if nobody is going to play them, I'm not going to hurry at finishing them.

phoenix1021

That's pretty sad what's happening with the Foundry! It's one of the things that got me playing, I didn't know it was in such a poor state. I've seen so many nice, creative quests otu there already, but most are buried real deep. The search-function is also very bad, so all authors have is being featured.
I really hope they change their mind on this. Also, I see so so many Foundry quests that are just "click this chest to get archievements" or "fight monsters that can't fight back". That needs to be taken care of as well. Basically 50% of the "best" and "new" tabs are just those quests, so it is even harder to find the real ones.

mrgiggles651

tipadaknife wrote: »

Sounds like, from the Twitter thing today, that they'll be taking the current super popular quests, like, I suppose, Tired of Being The Hero and Old Jerry, over to the XBox. They're not going to take any of our quests over to the XBox, they have all the UGC they need.

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?410401-Time-to-address-the-elephant-in-the-room&p=5190971&viewfull=1#post5190971

Cryptic had all the content they wanted by about a month after launch. That's the time when the Foundry stopped receiving significant dev attention.

zahinder

What user content really needs is a predictive algorithm, like other large database warehouses (Amazon, for example).
Like, 'hey, you marked Bla and Bla very highly, you might like Bler'

Sadly it'll never happen.

tipadaknife

Aaaand the answer to the original question is ... this week. Three quests, one of them mine, all of them not previously featured as far as I know...

THANKS AKRO AND/OR OTHER DEVS!

I look forward to playing newly featured quests again!

torontodave

tipadaknife wrote: »

Aaaand the answer to the original question is ... this week. Three quests, one of them mine,

congrats!! I haven't submitted mine yet.. want to be sure all the little bugs are gone.

But THANKS FOR THE FOUNDRY LOVE CRYPTIC! =D

Now get us those extra rewards for playing *unplayed* eligible foundries ;D

moonchipz

tipadaknife wrote: »

Aaaand the answer to the original question is ... this week. Three quests, one of them mine, all of them not previously featured as far as I know...

I logged into the game just to see if this was a troll post. Apparently its not. There are actually some featured quests that I haven't seen before. Interesting.