How are we supposed to provide accurate analytics with the current state of the Foundry?

mathmaster74 · March 2017

nevfe said:
I get the sense that the number gathering exercise is about preparing a justification for shutting it down permanently.

You have put it out there. What many of us fear, but were afraid to say. I agree with you and hustin1 that I would gladly work on it myself if there were a way.

joenettles · March 2017

nevfe said:
The Foundry, done well would lift this game up like no other. I'm still amazed at the quality some people manage even with the state it's in. But it probably needs a complete re-write and my suspicion is that Cryptic are not going to do that because they can't justify it when it won't run at all on consoles.

Perhaps there might be a way Cryptic could get get the player base to work on the rewriting the code itself? I've more years under my belt in the computer industry than I care to admit to now. It's something I might consider doing on some sort of 'no sale, no fee' basis. I.e. if a player-team of coders could come up with a Foundry system good enough that helped the game earn revenue then there'd be rewards at the end.

If they are going to start over and build a new editor, It could be Open Sourced (maybe) a little by moving it all onto it's own servers. Even if they don't Open Source any of it, taking it off the live shard would fix almost all the current problems. If the Editor, Storage, Publishing, and For Review steps are on a server alone, then only the finale approved publish went to the live shard (every Tuesday). This way the editor could be built as a multi-platform engine like Unity3D. Be the same publish system to PC, but they could patch the library to consoles once a week or month. But it would take years to accomplish this, I don't want to wait years to get it back.

ltgamesttv · March 2017

nitocris83 said:
Hi everyone! This exact same concern was brought up when we internally discussed gathering metrics. The short answer: we aren't just looking at current usage but also past, drop off rates and correlation to foundry issues, etc. We didn't go into deep level discussions on how we'll gather the data due to time constraints (as you saw, I suck at keeping to a schedule when streaming) but it's not "let's take a look at the last couple days of usage".

This is very appreciated, however the issue has almost ALWAYS been broken mechanics, slow fixes, slow resets after server resets, and poor access to tools. This is going to affect the data mining since many, many moons ago. This is most unfortunate as there are some VERY talented quest writers and foundry authors who love this aspect of the game.

I can only hope that you are able to correctly extrapolate the serious interest that has always existed in this game for the foundry and the resources that should be dedicated to it.

Thanks for your time.

mathmaster74 · March 2017

nitocris83 said:
Thanks! I'll make sure to share this with the team. It's actually really helpful to know when players identify the game being a good state in case something changes. That allows us to either revert or look back at what factors were optimal!

This quote is from the Neverwinter Discussion (Xbox One) > Player Feedback (Xbox One) > THANK YOU WORKS FINE!

@nitocris83 Could you ask the following of the team, please? Is it not possible "to either revert or look back at" Foundry versions that "were optimal"? I believe a number of authors have cited the pre-SoMI Foundry as being a good state before things changed. Old versions must exist, no? Can the assets be copied over (or duplicated) from an old version? That's all we really need for now. This might only be a quick fix, but a quick fix would be way better than data mining, would instill a lot of player support for your new team, and could bring back one of your arguably best features so mimic king could more seriously entertain a notion that seemed to tickle his fancy during the livestream...Foundry PvP.

mysteriasdrassa · March 2017

Bring back AD rewards for doing foundry quests and I would start doing them again.. I really liked the inventiveness of some of the authors,, but with NO incentive to running the quests, and having to budget and divide my playtime to my most useful advantage,, I quit running them... ie, no reward, no sense running the content

hustin1 · March 2017

*sigh*

Even publishing is disabled. I can make edits to existing assets, maybe duplicate assets (though I haven't tried it), and even save my work-in-progress quest. I made the final chest inaccessible and intended to publish it for testing and feedback, but...no-go.

EDIT: Hmm. The tooltip said "Publishing is currently disabled for the Foundry", but upon reentering the editor it now says "Currently Publishing". Um, okay...

If it works, it's called "Blood Magic" (working title only). It cannot be exploited -- there are no enemies yet and the end chest is hidden behind a wall.

EDIT #2: Interesting...none of the assets show up in the picker *except* for NPC's. Those DO show up, even the custom ones I had created in the costume editor.

simplyshawn · March 2017

I'm sorry if this has been said, and I promise I did look through the thread and didn't see any dates, but has a deadline for this information gathering been given? Like a... "You'll Know The Fate of The Foundary at The End of April?"

I'd really like to stop guessing and have something concrete to work with, even if it's just a date.

iandarksword · March 2017

Development is generally 9 months or so ahead of what is actually being offered. Considering that the Foundry isn't a priority, and the Dev team is depleted due to other projects, it's likely that all data collection is being done with very limited "free time." The lack of communication on any progress leads to the assumption that there has been no progress of any kind. It also leads some to speculate that there isn't an interest to revive the editor at all, simply delay the inevitable removal of the feature, mostly because it has no place on the consoles.

What many folks have done, and this is not good for business, is move on to other titles but "keep their ears open for word that the Foundry is back to working." A lot of those folks feel that the money they've spent on this game isn't being used to work on the aspects of the game they enjoy most, so they simply stopped and sent their funds elsewhere. Again, not the best for business, but they're voting with what seems to carry the most weight in this business, their wallets. If creating quests using the Foundry is the only reason someone is still logging in, then it's not worth logging in until some sort of action takes place.

I don't think an ultimatum or firm date works in favor of retaining the Foundry. It's likely that the date would pass before adequate data has been collected, forcing the decision that folks in this forum section don't want to hear.

simplyshawn · March 2017

Fair enough, and that sheds a lot of light. I guess I'm just anxious to know... I missed The Foundry, and I was really looking forward to create content for it. Didn't know about NWO until a few months ago.

iandarksword · March 2017

@simplyshawn A lot of folks are anxious to hear some sort of progress. I have quests still unfinished, achievements still to be unlocked, and there are others in the same boat. Every time a new module release happens, I see new artwork that I'd like to use in my quests. There are many people who want the Foundry back up, they've just become burned out from waiting or posting here and hearing nothing.

weaver936 · March 2017

Maybe it's been said before... but reading one of the posts above gave me an idea. Why not include in or exclusively provide in the rewards system vouchers for Guild Stronghold. Ofc, it is always important to avoid exploitation and irrelevance (like not giving decent rewards for something)... but to tie the Foundry into Guild stuff would make sense. Content provided by the community, for the community (their guilds and guild members).

Aside from occasional events and content that's only on the SH... FIxing the Foundry as part of a Stronghold Patch could get the additions past whatever quality control (usage w/e) measures that Xbox and PS4 have and give the community a reason to bother with them again too.

I've always loved the idea of writing Foundry missions that had my guild as the entity that was hiring people of the community to do some tasks...

iandarksword · March 2017

@weaver936 That is definitely something to work in favor of the Foundry. Even if mobs randomly dropped the low-tier Stronghold vouchers or completion of quests awarded Influence, that'd give a little more incentive for players. We've expressed the need for reward improvements for a couple years now, we just need the devs to take action, (which seems to be the ultimate hurdle) and make positive changes in that respect.

hustin1 · March 2017

The sad part is, the Foundry engine is working just fine. Our quests are (of course) stored server-side. The server is having no problems spawning our quests. Further, the editor is having no problems parsing the quest information that the server transmits to our clients. Even further, any custom assets that are already in our quests (items, costumed NPC's) do show up in asset lists. The only problem is getting the editor to work with "canned" assets, i.e. those that are unmodified and are coming solely from local storage. Somewhere there is a disconnect. It could be a data-format issue, it could be a bug in the code that gets local asset data, or it could be something else. Regardless, the problem just has to be very limited in scope and really shouldn't be all that hard to track down. I do this sort of thing for a living. I firmly believe that their engineers could have fixed it ten times over by now. The problem just isn't that large.

mathmaster74 · March 2017

@hustin1 Yeah. It could be something as simple as the assets were moved to a new folder and the project is still looking for them in the old location, or they were given a new naming convention that wasn't updated in the search code. After all...the stock Neverwinter world maps are still available with everything else you mentioned too.

phoenicianson · March 2017

I had recently returned to Neverwinter after a long stay from playing the game between February of 2014 and October of 2016. Prior to my leave of absence, I was an avid Foundry Developer. I spent more time developing Foundry Quests and playing through other author's Foundry creations for the pleasure, experience of playing through their quests, and for ideas for my own quests than I did playing through Cryptic's end game content.

I was extremely disappointed to read upon my return that the AD gains had been removed from the Foundry, and then subsequently the Foundry itself had been decommission for a period of time. I had a few guild-mates play through one of my Foundry Quest that I had to go back to republish since all of my quests for some reason became unpublished upon my return; however, only one of the several quests would republish, the remaining quests continue and persistently give me publish errors and WILL NOT publish or have errors in the test playthrough that will not permit me to fix so they remain unpublished. Moreover, I was filled with excitement to see what new tools and content was introduced into the Foundry after my long stay away, only to find that not only was there no new content, but there is no content whatsoever. I cannot create maps, characters, items, nothing. All of the assets are gone. I thought initially there was something wrong with my particular version of the game, but after research, I discovered that Cryptic removed the assets.

1. Restart the Foundry tools again and incorporate the new content from the recent mods since your abandonment of the Foundry and the content updates.

2. Remove and require players to republish their quests for those accounts that have been stagnant or have not been logged into for an extended period of time +6 months, unless of course that Foundry quest has been adopted as a Feature. This way people who have long since abandoned the Foundry and the game itself will not have quests published that may be bugged, cannot be played, clog up the database and the servers.

3. Reintroduce Astral Diamonds ("AD") daily reward with Foundry quest playthroughs so players who predominantly play solo have a means to gain AD without having to wait each week to perform weekly quests, and this will provide more variety as a whole. Increase the daily from the former 4 or 5 quests to 10 quests (double it to require more playthroughs, which will inherently create more interest).

4. Update the available mobs for more difficult combat and to support party play, more specifically, higher level boss mobs. Update the maps to include newer content. Update the design same.

5. Enhance the dated Catalogue to make it easier to locate quests from authors, and refine searches, and or reorganize tabs to make it easier to find quests - perhaps even based on the amount of reviews the quest has received.

CRYPTIC, YOU NEED TO MAKE MONEY ON THE FOUNDRY TO KEEP IT GOING, THEN:

1. Charge for additional slots for quests and or campaigns as an additional resource for real money to help fund the continuing support of the Foundry.

2. Offer a Zen store upgrade that a player can pay for in order to offer a chance for better rewards at the end of their quests, while requiring those quests to have certain time minimums to avoid publication of short quests simply for improved loot. Create a sliding scale for that purpose to increase the quality of the loot (i.e. levels of purchasable upgrades on Zen market for better loot, or chance for better loot even).

3. Offer additional tools to be available through Zen Market, i.e. map sets, mob variety, environmental assets.

Perhaps then Cryptic, you will have a means to generate income to financially support the ongoing support of the Foundry.

Cryptic, I rarely involve myself in crying out for something on the forum for the game, but I take exception in this case because the Foundry is/was awesome... people live to create, but other people want to be rewarded for participating in another's creation. In this game, that requires the ability to earn AD. No one cares about achievements in a game built around economy.

While I wholly understand removing AD from actions that can either be exploited through bots, or exploited by players creating 50 characters to benefit from farming AD through invocation and professions, there is simply little if any logic with removing AD as a daily reward from the Foundry, not at least any logic that I can discern. AD is was what made the Foundry relevant within the greater part of the community, because every author wants his/her audience, and to keep Foundry relevant and make it worth its upkeep as developers you have you maintain the incentives for the medium. In this case, and I reiterate, that is AD for playthroughs.

Whether you feel that my suggestions above lack merit or make sense what is important to me, and the many people who were and would like to again be avid Foundry supporters, is that you please reconsider the state that you have left the Foundry, Cryptic. Breathe life back into the single most unique aspect of your game that set it apart from every other MMO, the Foundry.

Please. Thank you for your consideration and review.

robzilla45 · March 2017

To the authors: I really don't think any of you understand what's happening here. The foundry was NEVER intended to be a part of this game.. it was only used as a marketing tool to attract customers. Fully one third of the advertising was about the foundry.... before release. Support was quickly dropped after that. The problem with this tool will NOT be fixed as that would require a programmer actually looking at the code and that's not going to happen. From the moment I heard about this gave moving over to consoles I know it was the end of the foundry.

It's been a little fun.... and a lot of frustration.

mathmaster74 · March 2017

I have had a potential realization dawn on me. One that saddens me. I feel the need to share it as it may explain a lot if true: The Foundry exists in its current state to allow previously created user content to continue to be available to players, and that may be the sole reason it exists in even its current state. Cryptic wants to continue to offer UGC it has, but quite possibly wants no more. This may be why they leave The Foundry up, but empty. Of course they wouldn't want to admit this to us, so it would only make sense to find a way to "gently" let us down. I don't want to believe it...but it seems to fit.

waryur · April 2017

Ugh. That is a sad realization @mathmaster74 . Ugh.
Make me think of a different angle.
Perhaps this is part of the datamining - what authors have republished their quests (or tried to) in order to sort out author activity. And then also measure how many quests are being run, with essentially no advertising of the Foundry's existence.
To analyze data, you need a baseline. If you are doing a lookback data review, a current baseline is what you need to help determine any meaningful statistical shift in the data. If I wanted to see how many authors are still active, and how many quests are being played right now (and drill down further types of quests i.e. exploit quests vs content quests (some quest titles and descriptions are giveaways as exploits)), I would probably do this. It would be one way to control the data so you get "good" baseline data.

This would also yield data about quests that failed to publish when the author tried. And quests that republished without author input (which is every Featured foundry quest ever). They could also now measure how many featured quests were attempted and actually completed as some featured quests might be broken now because of bugs or changes to the game. Example, my featured quest is pretty unplayable because when the level cap got raised to 70, it became a lot harder and I can't edit it so I've had people message me they couldn't complete it because of the difficulty.

Those numbers might help identify patterns in order to clean up foundry server space (which is part of why the foundry would be down for increasingly longer periods of time after each module due to the sheer number of quests being loaded) and create queries/safeguards to monitor that server space/broken quests.

torontodave · April 2017

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iandarksword · April 2017

@tntslayer1 Botting what? Gold? Green gear drops? Why? There's more lucrative places for bots in just basic dungeons. There's been nerfs galore to Dragon's Hoard enchants, so botting in Foundry probably gives the least rate of return compared to other content. Did you even read the original post or are you just trolling?

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wintermurloc · April 2017

@mimicking#6533

any updates on the foundry (datamining, revitalization

) ? I really cannot bear to run another daily quest or weekly quest .. Its getting really stale to run dailies for the umpteenth time, atleast allow the featured foundry quest rewards to give out campaign currencies so that ppl can find alternate sources of progression without having to run those horrendous dailies. I'm quite possibly going to kill Kavatos if he asks me to reactivate those damn alarms again at the Sea of moving Ice, lol not really.. I like how Kavatos has been fleshed out by commander ander. This wizard has become my favorite npc in game. Now allow us to utilize the foundry to bring lore , backstories and content in our own ways. There are so many talented authors and the work done on their quests are nothing short of extraordinaire. You have a goldmine here and i just don't understand how you guys simply fail to realize the potential here. You are one of the godfathers of this game lol, you've been there at the very beginning of this game and possibly one of the minds to conceive the foundry. Pls get the resources and love the foundry needs and bring it back with a bang. This will be the greatest legacy you leave behind and rest assured a huge flock of die hard dnd enthusiasts will rally if the foundry becomes an important part of this game again.

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robzilla45 · April 2017

tntslayer1 said:

iandarksword said:
@tntslayer1 Botting what? Gold? Green gear drops? Why? There's more lucrative places for bots in just basic dungeons. There's been nerfs galore to Dragon's Hoard enchants, so botting in Foundry probably gives the least rate of return compared to other content. Did you even read the original post or are you just trolling?
make a low lvl pvp and learn

Uh... as long as they have the "D&D" name on it.. it's not a 'pvp' game.. although, that seems to be what the developers want it to be. It seems to be the standard practice in this world.... find something cool, a big corporation buys it.. then squishes all the cool out of it for maximum profit.... screw the consumer.

How are we supposed to provide accurate analytics with the current state of the Foundry?

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