Neverwinter Server

rothemoca · January 2017

A while back, one of my friends that played with me from orginal Nwn (neverwinter nights) asked me if this version of Neverwinter storm winter thunder will ever be made for players to host their own rules and gameplay or making it private for their friends to play. Just wondering if this is possible or not.

samaka · January 2017

In a word: NO

This is not a game like Neverwinter Nights where you can host your own environment. It is an MMO, which is under control of Cryptic/PWE and I would say that there is virtually no chance at all of them providing any way of players running their own private servers.

ambisinisterr · January 2017

At launch I had hoped the game would support advanced enough UGC so the official game could be a hub for various persistent world style UGC. I wanted the devs to focus on releasing classes, art assets and items for the game while the people who make the best content (PLAYERS) actually focus on actual content development and it seemed like the devs had at least toyed with the idea of allowing persistent world offshoots before launch.

Unfortunately since Module 2 the company has not only not expanded on the UGC to that level but has virtually abandoned any development on the Foundry for two years. That is not intended as a slight but a statement of fact.

Custom rules would be a never. As samaka said this is an MMO and they would not allow anything that would drastically change the core game or cause imbalance.

The best case scenario is that players are given the ability to create custom persistent content with some limitations but that would depend on if the devs ever accept the advice from NWN persistent world developers and players. Right now the bigger battle is proving to them that the reason why Foundry content is dead is because they failed to deliver good reasons for people to play it. Their stats show there is no interest in the UGC and we readily agree with the stats...
We just don't accept the illogical conclusion their statisticians came up with.

lukejones77 · January 2017

ambisinisterr said:

Custom rules would be a never. As samaka said this is an MMO and they would not allow anything that would drastically change the core game or cause imbalance.

LOL

lyaise · January 2017

As Ambisinisterr said, the closest solution (bearing in mind it's an mmo) is the Foundry.

This could be simply amazing.

For someone who loves story based mmo's, the ability to create new scenarios, limited only by the players' imaginations, is a fantastic tool.
Unfortunately, as with other areas in the game, it has been starved of resource and attention. There are a small number of exceptions, but on the whole the Foundry is now just a run through purely for the daily - if players can even be bothered doing it.

A great idea, eagerly anticipated by a section of the player base - then pushed into the background to gather dust, joining other features in the increasing 'if only' bin.

lukejones77 · January 2017

lyaise said:
As Ambisinisterr said, the closest solution (bearing in mind it's an mmo) is the Foundry.

This could be simply amazing.

For someone who loves story based mmo's, the ability to create new scenarios, limited only by the players' imaginations, is a fantastic tool.
Unfortunately, as with other areas in the game, it has been starved of resource and attention. There are a small number of exceptions, but on the whole the Foundry is now just a run through purely for the daily - if players can even be bothered doing it.

A great idea, eagerly anticipated by a section of the player base - then pushed into the background to gather dust, joining other features in the increasing 'if only' bin.

In all fairness to Cryptic, whilst there were some extremely talented players creating great maps, the vast majority of maps actually run/botted by people were maps designed to exploit the game.

Don't underestimate the damage that has been done to the economy and to the game because of bots and exploits. This applies to both the Foundry and the Gateway we used to have.
I can't really fault Cryptic for stopping either of these, particularly if their resources to deal with such issues (they did try), were limited.

You're probably also asking for trouble if you're releasing new content very infrequently, and players are using the foundry to show how quickly and professionally it can be done by amateurs

samaka · January 2017

I think that exploits and maps of that nature will always exist within any User Generated Content. As will people just 5-starring everything they see... and others 1-starring everything, regardless of the content.

I think that to be really effective the UGC needs to be curated, but in Neverwinter, that will never really happen. I know there are websites out there where people are creating their own curated lists of content they deem of exceptional quality. I have also seen the occasional thread on these forums as well.

I don't know what percentage of all UGC is of exceptional quality, but it is probably a fairly low number, unfortunately!

iandarksword · January 2017

Console ports, while good for development income, hurt the Foundry because that feature was excluded from the console versions. Bots? Bots are found anywhere in a game that favors bot-like activities. There are a myriad of issues Cryptic failed to address in what should be their signature feature. It was designed by Cryptic exclusively, as something to set their game apart from other MMO games. They should've been parading it as an accomplishment rather than slowly dismantling the player base's interest by knee-capping rewards and incentives. It's just sad and frustrating that the authoring community has to bear the burden for those decisions. I've gone so far as to ask on live streams why they don't want to run Foundry, the answer I receive most often is: "there's no reward in it for me."

ambisinisterr · January 2017

lukejones77 said:

lyaise said:
As Ambisinisterr said, the closest solution (bearing in mind it's an mmo) is the Foundry.

This could be simply amazing.

For someone who loves story based mmo's, the ability to create new scenarios, limited only by the players' imaginations, is a fantastic tool.
Unfortunately, as with other areas in the game, it has been starved of resource and attention. There are a small number of exceptions, but on the whole the Foundry is now just a run through purely for the daily - if players can even be bothered doing it.

A great idea, eagerly anticipated by a section of the player base - then pushed into the background to gather dust, joining other features in the increasing 'if only' bin.
In all fairness to Cryptic, whilst there were some extremely talented players creating great maps, the vast majority of maps actually run/botted by people were maps designed to exploit the game.

You are the typical person speaking with no experience of the glory that was NWN or any other game which offered proper UGC.
"Amateurs" Do a better job then devs if they have the tools.

The problem is that much of the UGC was designed around the daily "Complete 4 Foundry Quests in a Day." The slew of bad Foundry Quests are directly because of Cryptic's lack of effort. The better content which is fun to run is buried beneath the menagerie of quests that actually reward people based on the rules Cryptic funneled them into.

Every quest was set to need a minimum play time of 15 minutes average in order to count. This means people built Foundry quests around this daily quest as, just to name ONE of the flaws of this system, is that to get then reward you were forced to spend a minimum of an hour playing Foundry quests which offered no rewards other than the daily quest reward. This means you are rewarded for spending 15 minutes in a quest. Not one second more.

The content was crippled by the Daily reward and lack of rewards for content which did not "farm" the daily.
There were some great quests to play through. Who knows how many of them are broken now due to updates now.
The exploitative grinding nature is Cryptic's fault. The majority of content in NWN and NWN2 as well as other games with properly rewarded UGC tend to fun and balanced with rewards.

iandarksword · January 2017

What @ambisinisterr said about the 15 minutes requirement is absolutely true. It became more apparent during the Cult of the Dragon contest, we actually had a player/author who noted the average stars and plays were fewer for longer, story-centric quests. This contest was sponsored by the Community Manager at the time, who admitted that he expected maybe 10 entries, instead the contest yielded well over 100 due to community interest. After the contest, we then tried to adapt as a community to recommend that longer planned quests be broken up into shorter ones arranged in a campaign. Shortly thereafter, module 6 came and the loss of hourly events as well as AD incentives for participation.

Another glaring current issue is the inundation of "Fast Review" quests that are misleading in their description. By completing the "Fast Review" quests players are told in the description that they can earn Foundry rewards such as the imp companion and Silverback Bear mount by reviewing all quests in the author's campaign, when in reality both authoring and review requirements must be met. So the authors of the "Fast Review" quests receive the rewards and the duped players are left with half of the requirements, sound like a scam to anyone else?

Neverwinter Server

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