Not Cool...

guitarzan698 · October 2015

Don't you just love it when you spend countless hours developing your quest. You publish your baby.. and start getting reviews. Things are going great.. mostly 5 stars.. and couple of 4's .. and everybody has great advice. You continue to fix those little bugs that you missed... then somebody goes and drops a stink bomb on you ... a 1 or 2 star review.. with no explanation.

Great.

zebular · October 2015

It happens a lot. Don't sweat it. As long as the content is good, your positive reviews will out-number and out-weight the negative ones. You should see some of the comments my foundries get. I've gotten poor reviews for things not even under my control, as well as biased reviews by trolls who vote negatively just because I'm a moderator. Yet, the good reviews out-number the deplorable ones, massively. Keep making quality content and the despicable votes/comments will be drowned out in due time.

kellnaforian · October 2015

I worried for a while as well, when I first published...each 1 or 2 really stung. Zebular is absolutely correct though. You have a high quality Foundry you are building. The positives will absolutely outweigh the negatives for yours. Keep building!

guitarzan698 · October 2015

Thanks... I've been working on part two of my current work "The Last Outpost" and it's really turning out very nice. But, yeah... those low star bombs really hurt. I really don't mind when they have a legitimate issue but to leave no message at all... just feels wrong.

kellnaforian · October 2015

I always loved the following:

1 Star - "HAMSTER lootz"
1 star - "!"
2 stars - "Was really good!"
4 stars - "absolutely the best foundry I've ever played!"

Enjoy building. When I was building my second Persistent World in NWN 1, I got down and someone told me, "build it and they will come." Good advice. If you truly enjoy building it and put a lot into it, it will turn out well and most people will enjoy your creation.

By the way, they did come.

valcontar73 · October 2015

Yeah, no matter what you do, sometimes there are some trolls outhere that vote 1 star no matter what.

Someone said me once, "This wood seems empty" map had 1200 items... (That was when the foundry had a limitation of 1200 items per map.)

Sometimes I got 1 star because a dwarf tank would not like to jump! "I don't want to jump, so here is my 1 star for you!, This is not Mario Bross" he said very upset...

And so on..

instynctive · October 2015

I really don't like it when a reviewer posts spoilers.

That's such bad form.

torontodave · October 2015

It's just a reminder that our work, (like the devs) sometimes get HAMSTER on. ;D

instynctive · October 2015

The devs, however, have the advantage of not using a crippled editor. :-P

kellnaforian · October 2015

instynctive said:
The devs, however, have the advantage of not using a crippled editor. :-P

Possibly, but they may also have someone looking over their shoulder directing them as well as setting and pushing deadlines. They also have to work within the confines of content created by someone else (or many others). I'm not sure about you, but I am not certain I could be as creative under those conditions.

I feel we have the creative advantage.

guitarzan698 · October 2015

I try to keep in mind that lots of kids play this game and many are just plain children. I can't expect consideration or respect from selfish kids. I don't mind a bad review if they would at least give some sort of reason. But to give a HAMSTER review then not say a word is just pitiful. Either they are just plain jealous of my work or they believe that by slamming me they can improve their own position. Rather sad...

mrgiggles651 · October 2015

guitarzan698 said:
I try to keep in mind that lots of kids play this game and many are just plain children. I can't expect consideration or respect from selfish kids. I don't mind a bad review if they would at least give some sort of reason. But to give a HAMSTER review then not say a word is just pitiful. Either they are just plain jealous of my work or they believe that by slamming me they can improve their own position. Rather sad...

If you go back to beta/early release you'll see that there was plenty of organized intentional low marks to hurt authors when they were about to pass a threshold (such as getting on the best list, or 4 star average). The reviews put in for those one stars were even cut and pasted, with numerous identical reviews coming in with one star from different player names.

guitarzan698 · October 2015

BOOM!

Once again my latest foundry creation has been slammed with a poor star rating. So far I have gotten 16 plays in the quest "The Last Outpost"... most of which are 5 star.. with a few 4's. One 3 and One 2...

I really don't mind the poor reviews ... what bothers me is that no explanation is given as to why they did not like the quest. It seems grossly unfair to the hard work done by all the authors... not just myself. I'm very sure this happens to everyone but instead of railing against this I have decided instead to ask for the help of my fellow authors. I ask that those authors that have not tried this work to give it a play and a fair review... if you don't like it .... just give it the rating you think it deserves and please state your reasoning for the rating. I feel enough confidence in my own work to ask for this and I believe the outcome will outweigh the few low star reviews. I would also like to offer to review the work of others in exchange. I realize that this foundry creation can use tons of details added to what is already there... but I don't think this is any reason to slam the work. Just when is any project finally 'done'? The answer is ... never. You will always be able to look at any creative work and say.."I should have done this instead..." or "I need to add a few more of ...."

Anyone want to trade reviews with me?

"The Last Outpost"
NW-DA8J8WDJF

maegmaag · October 2015

Am one of those who never leave a comment, for various "and quite good" reasons, and very rarely give all 5 stars. Ran thru ur Last Outpost and its not work done worth more than 3 in my eyes. On top of it, i can c why someone may even hate the quest and ill make an exception and tell u some of those why, for they r quite general matter. Talking about quests, not "farms" of any kind.

Almost no work done on prebuilt map, which on top of it is pretty hackneyed/well-worn to majority of players. Even compared to the LoL run, its sections and possibilities r at zero of their potential. The map is Big Empty, making the player to simply run directly from one objective to the next, no matter the geo (terrain, objects, environment...). Almost no points of interest. Slowfall volumes at wrong places, thus no matter if its built-in or ur intention, its annoyin, so either remove it or do some terraforming and make use of it. That "inn" is flat and bland as well, not to mention the walls flickering issue - either shift them and/or cover with furniture/pillars or make more complex. Its so common issue am sick of seeing it (no matter if its a wall or a platform/ground), when its so easily (with some very few specific exceptions) solvable. How to-s r for another thread i guess. Dialogues are another story, but at least that "prisoner" could use quite better tree/options. Linear long/er flat dialogues make an NPC but a soulless board. Unless its in the NPC's "character", make a possibility to ask again about some of the matters/things the NPC know or may know. Also am taking that "keyring" for a joke...nvm.

I could go on, with dialogues, with level design, with encounters, "DM notes", "difficulty setting" et cetera, but thats for a full document of general level and quest design matters. Am not sure its fair to impose my personal preferences on others work as well - thats also why the rating/stars translates to "i love it"/"i hate it", instead of "its perfect"/"its trash". Btw, considering the power a Cryptic's level designer should have (read should), i would never rate more than 4, 3 even, any of the official content. But dont worry, am pretty hard to be pleased.

So not everytime 1-2 stars is bashing and not everytime 100 hours of work stand for perfect work done. Right, i give 1 to "almost exploit" only, 2 to "no work done", but 3 is the only medium we have here. Then 4 being for a very good thing and visible and tested effort, whilst 5 in my eyes stands for a perfect work the foundry allows (and again, there is nothing i dont know about what is, what is not and under what circumstances, possible and open to the foundry user/author), leaving me with only one additional "invisible" option and thats a tip of 50-500 AD. I also downrate plagiarism, what ofc depends on my knowledge and memory, and obviously untested both level design and behavior (conditions).

I spent more than hundreds of hours, maybe thousands (including various countless testings of both my "quest" and the foundry itself) on my only "project" since 2013, still very far from being finished - for feeling disgusted by Cryptic behavior and stance towards foundry, burnt out coz of both the required effort/time, issues and waiting for improvements -, but i do not expect more than a couple of ppl telling "its perfect" (well also because not-a-fan wont ever finish it). "I am confident of my work", which i know is but a fraction of what it could or should be, is not an etalon.

Also, try the work of others and in one or two hundreds foundry runs u may find a couple of those worth mentioning, with quite "professional" (effective, clean) work and/or thoughts and/or effort put into it, no matter the complexity or simplicity. Still, crptc/pwe shts on foundry and the franchise as a whole like on a flat stone.

imaginaerum1 · October 2015

That flicker that maegmaag referred to is (if I'm guessing right, as I have not actually run the quest) what I call "overlap flicker". When you have two objects in the exact same spot, it can't decide which one is on top, and it flickers.
An easy solution to this is to select one of the two overlapping objects, and adjust it on the appropriate axis by 0.01 either forward or backward, depending on which one you want to be in front. It's a small enough change that the eye won't notice, but large enough that it solves the problem.

guitarzan698 · October 2015

To Maegmaag:

I would like to thank you... I greatly appreciate your explanation as to why you left no comments with your review of my work although I have to say I do not agree with your reasoning. Perfection will never be reached, my friend. But if I understand your explanation ... you didn't like my quest because ... it's a pre-built map and you have already played that map too many times? You do realize that there are some very significant bugs in the foundry itself (the teleport bug in particular) which make play-testing any map a pain in the neck. And you also realize, no doubt, that MOST players of this game PREFER to have the linear quests... with not much role-playing or dialogue. Perhaps you did not understand what I was going for with this quest although I thought the quest description was fairly clear ... but at least I'm glad you consider my work "medium".

I will be addressing the map issues in the near future...

And once again ... I thank you for the play and review.

torontodave · October 2015

@maegmaag lololol at giving Cryptic's content a 3 rating. ;D

imaginaerum1 · October 2015

torontodave said:
@maegmaag lololol at giving Cryptic's content a 3 rating. ;D

It's true, though. Many a time, when customizing a premade map, I've had to overlap details solely to cover gaps or hide floating plants (that aren't supposed to float), or block off where two details don't align properly... and don't get me started on the why-the-hell-is-that-here invisible walls they scatter around.
Some of the quests are good, but mostly it's go here, kill some of that, click some of these, with no actual depth or real story to it.
I've spent some time over at that other D&D MMO, and the official quests there blow away the ones here. So much more depth to the stories, even the most linear kill ones like the quest chain with the hobgoblins.
Foundry could have been the answer to that, if they'd supported it. Alas.

Not Cool...

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