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The Foundry: Mods, Ideas, Exploits and Information
higherfasternow
Member, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild Users Posts: 0 Arc User
With much talk about the Foundry and few answers I thought that perhaps we could discuss some of our ideas & etc. for them here.
Several ideas/possibilities are available to us if the foundry is properly implemented (which I trust and hope it will be). For example I've always wanted to make my own quest line. Something with pirates and hordes of treasure, but...
How are they going to make sure people don't exploit and uberize their characters through the use of the foundry?
Back in the days of Bioware's version of NW if you wanted to exploit your character to the max you would just create a Mod where you could level your character up to limit, followed by custom created uber items.
It is my hope that you cannot do this in the Foundry. I hope the foundry is limiting to at least some degrees to stop everyone from becoming Munchkins. This generally ruins the game in some respects, especially for those people who want to get the most of out of their character without cheating/hacking.
My Mod will be called Porto Polo, if the foundry is easy enough to use as well as balanced to the game I hope to be able to share a new quest line with you all in the future.
Anyways, I thought I'd share some thoughts with you all, perhaps this will become a location in the future where we can discuss such uses for the foundry.
Your thoughts? Are you and uber hacker munchkin who wants to create some munchkin-mods? or are you the type to just make a mod withing the scope of the game? or perhaps you won't even use the foundry at all? What are your ideas? Do you have any information about the Foundry you wish to share?
Please discuss
Several ideas/possibilities are available to us if the foundry is properly implemented (which I trust and hope it will be). For example I've always wanted to make my own quest line. Something with pirates and hordes of treasure, but...
How are they going to make sure people don't exploit and uberize their characters through the use of the foundry?
Back in the days of Bioware's version of NW if you wanted to exploit your character to the max you would just create a Mod where you could level your character up to limit, followed by custom created uber items.
It is my hope that you cannot do this in the Foundry. I hope the foundry is limiting to at least some degrees to stop everyone from becoming Munchkins. This generally ruins the game in some respects, especially for those people who want to get the most of out of their character without cheating/hacking.
My Mod will be called Porto Polo, if the foundry is easy enough to use as well as balanced to the game I hope to be able to share a new quest line with you all in the future.
Anyways, I thought I'd share some thoughts with you all, perhaps this will become a location in the future where we can discuss such uses for the foundry.
Your thoughts? Are you and uber hacker munchkin who wants to create some munchkin-mods? or are you the type to just make a mod withing the scope of the game? or perhaps you won't even use the foundry at all? What are your ideas? Do you have any information about the Foundry you wish to share?
Please discuss
Post edited by higherfasternow on
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To answer the concerns of munchkinism...Yeah, I'm as guilty as any other of making/using uber-munchkin mods for NWN 1 and 2 (I'm sorry, I didn't wanna put up with the stupidity that was Khelgar, and-...Well, pretty much everyone except Neeshka and sometimes Sand just to have a decent character for Mask of the Betrayer.) ...And if they have a 'do foundry missions' daily, I'll probably be as guilty of the rest of using a 'fight three waves of mooks to win!' mission to speedrun it occasionally.
As for how they stop it? Star Trek Online actually has a hard-cap on how much XP you can get in foundry-created missions, and far as I can tell, they can't actually -give- you anything outside of random drops. And if you're farming foundry missions for 'epic +5 swords of shooting lightning out of your various body parts' drops, that's no different than farming that patch of generic mooks for one, far as I can tell. Near as I can figure, the Foundry doesn't actually let you create extra mobs in STO, rather the closest you can get is reskinning existing ones and giving them names (For this game, that amounts to 'evil wizard' becomes 'council mage' if you wanted to say, run a story about taking down a corrupt council or something. :P)
That said, this may all be completely moot when the actual Neverwinter Foundry comes out, but this is what I've figured out.
I think they learned the lesson, and it showed in STO. I am thinking its gonna rock in NW. You can imagine, there were great stories in COH and STO. Now you have a bunch of DMs running around just waiting to bring their realms to life? Oh man, just the thought of that is making me totally crazy.
So I am guy who wants to see random dungeons, not loot runs, not xp runs. I want my thieves (yea I still call them that) to go "HAMSTER, that can't be good!", my clerics to fail a wisdom check now and again, just maybe have a fighter with mediocre strength. I want to feel something when I get into the story. We have a ton of excellent writers here. This should be good.
Just a note, as this is a common misconception: The Foundry does not require any visiting of 3rd Party sites or the downloading of any "additional" files, regardless of the Foundry Item - for everything is done on PWE/Cryptic's Servers. Such things would be illegal anyway - so do away with such notions. There is no uploading of content, it is all created on the server, saved on the server, tested on the server and then finally published and opened to the public - all on the server. One cannot access the Foundry while not logged into the game.
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Let me also state the Foundry is NOT the Auora Toolset of the NWN game. Therefore, this advanced Foundry will be more like the STO, NOT Auroa. I would recommend downloading and playing the STO game to see how Cryptic does their games, to appreciate ther process for how they were/are doing this game.
But to sum up what has been posted elsewhere: you must use in-house component items to make your game world, you can't pick specific treasure items, you are capped for xp based on the level range you made the foundry for as well as what level range the playing characcter is, and may not even have an end of mission reward pick in this game (STO does not but does give a "daily" reward of a level-based item or tier 2 purchace/crafting currency for those who play 3 Foundry missions.)
Yeah, some will undoubtedly complain its too limited, but I believe a Foundry thats easy to use and feature rich will spur far more creation than most anything Cryptic has done yet in other games.
I've got a few ideas pertaining to Myth Drannor that I'll be feeding into the Foundry. I wasn't planning to design, but that might change, based on the research I've been doing, especially if they do an ace job on the toolsets.
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I would be nice if we could create our own unique items that can be aquired in our created content. They would obviously have to moderate this somehow, probably not too hard. The item could easily be leveled based on the bonuses given to it by the user. If the item created exceeds the level cap then obviously the DM has made it too powerful and it's useless to all players anyway.
Also I imagine every bit of content will have some sort of level req. or - at the very least - a recommended level. If there is going to be penalties for death (which is strongly hope there is) you dont want players dieing because they strolled into some content that was way too hard for them.
I hope every single bit of visual content in the main game is accesible to foundry users. Except perhaps very quest specific things. Cryptic probably dont want users plagiarizing their own work.
My biggest question however is what are our limits?
Can we only make dungeons? Can we make entire campaigns? Can we make our own persistent areas? (I really like the idea of the last one)
There's a lot to ponder.
Either way I can't wait to find out! I was always fairly limited in NWN1 and 2 toolsets due to my lack of knowledge of scripting but I made some pretty amazing areas for people. I'm just really looking forward to being able to do everything this time and really making my own vision come to life!
BTW Cryptic, I seriosuly hope you BETA the foundry too!
Can we only make dungeons? We can only make instances for 5 players.
Can we make entire campaigns? Not directly but you could create for example 4 instances:
White Dragon adventure part 1
White Dragon adventure part 2
White Dragon adventure part 3
White Dragon adventure part 4
Can we make our own persistent areas? No. Absolutely no support for player driven persistent Worlds. No support for having a DM session either like in NWN persistent Worlds.
BTW Cryptic, I seriosuly hope you BETA the foundry too! Foundry is in the BETA already. There are people in the Forum has been invited to Beta already and they confirm FOUNDRY is in the Beta. At this point with BETA I mean closed Beta for some inviduals and I am not among them. I have also understood that likely they got some temporary PAX Beta key and currently Beta is not available. When devs talk about Beta they mean a more open Beta later this year which has not began.
Finally having instanced does NOT mean by my logic it must be Dungeon crawl you could have forest area but it must be within the instance. This post is my best guess/knowledge if there are some GURUS on the forums they may tell different.
Please do not whine about scripting. Due to scripting in Neverwinter Nights 1 existed great "Wizards" that could create amazing stuff better then the original NWN1 campaign among them the adventure Dark Waters. Dark Waters had voice acting and trailers which are not supported in Neverwinter custom adventures if I have understood correctly.
Thanks for the reply. Appreciate it, while also acknowledging you may not be 100% on some of these things. Yet just about everything you have said would make perfect sense.
Just to clarify. I did not and am not whining about scripting. I was merely pointing out the fact that my lack of skills in the area held me back with the toolset in NWN and NWN2 and also the fact that 'The Foundry' being more accessible is going to be a boon to not only me but a lot of creative types that may not have been able to use the previous toolsets to the extent they may have hoped. Thankfully - as you have pointed out - there were some people who were able to create amazing worlds for us to pour endless hours into in the previous incarnations of the Neverwinter games.
I have a beta invite - when it comes - so I'm glad to know 'The Foundry' will be there for us to try. Very excited for this beta to start.
I want to thank you also, for the work compiling the info mostly, as its buried deep in the forum and news/trailers. I know the disclaimer of it not being precise, but it helps get a round about picture on what the classes, campaign and user created mod limits might be. We, after all plan on living there, if its half of what we expect, for quite a long time.
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Are you sure about this? In STO you can make missions for up to the max group size, but some missions can be accomplished solo, duo, etc.
While scripting can, and will, hold back many creative minds from creating their own visions it also supplies the largest amount of creative control. If Cryptic limits creations to the very core features they include and don't supply *any* programming capabilities for the users I would be very scared for the game.
There were dozens of pre-written scripts in NWN1 which content creators *could* have used to make simple quests however they tended to be very poorly organised with little guidance on how to use them without first being experienced with programming and frankly Bioware supplied almost no support in explaining or providing simple outlines on how to access or modify those scripts in a "Scrpiting for Dummies" fashion.
That was the fault of Bioware more so than scripting itself. Those of us who spent a lot of time programming NWN1 would become familiar with a lot of the semi-generic scripts provided in the toolset but I know from personal experience that knowledge of them only came from knwoing what you were doing beforehand which is the actual problem presented with scripts mentioned here.
I would love to see Cryptic spend some time on making easy to access and use generic tools for those creative minds which can't be blamed for the lack of desire in learning a programming language.
But that shouldn't be at the expense of those who would like to use more advanced features.
If restricted programming isn't allowed I find it hard to see any truly entertaining storylines coming to light. On the persistant world I worked on we spent a lot of time developing our own generic programming system so that developers wouldn't *need* to know programming in order to create quests. Look at it as a game engine within a game engine.
It had it's place and made content much easier to produce and gave our server a large amount of quests compared to the large majority of NWN servers without the lag/file size overhead.
However these quests were cookie cutter quests. Large amounts were somewhat of a "Fed-Ex Quest" of go here, find that, do this, then that. I wouldn't say if you played one you played them all but you can't have *only* cookie cutter quests. Eventually it gets old and you need something a bit more.
It's not right or fair to do what Bioware did, albeit unintentionally, by making programming knowledge be a prerequisite for content development because they couldn't/wouldn't/didn't take the time to create a system such as our own which simplified and standardized programming.
But neither is it right to limit the creative potential of the community to keep everybody on a level playing field.
In the end we all want a fun enjoyable, and in the case of Neverwinter Series, ever-evolving game. Cookie cutter quests have their place but they don't make for an ever-evolving game. By all means implement them, but do not limit those with the capabilities to provide more.
It may not be fair that a person who doesn't know how to program or have access to those who can program to make a more advanced storyline but it would be an injustice to the potential of the game to limit creative potential to that extent.
I completely agree with this. As someone who was held back by scripting it was awesome to see what those who knew what they were doing were capable of making. Yet it was a little disheartening that my ideas could never come to fruition.
We need accessibility while maintaining depth. If Cryptic can accomplish this then I can't see why this game wont last a LONG time as there's certainly no shortage of creative minds waiting to get their grubby little hands on the foundry.
2nd is what I wish for is a free reign anything you want to do version of Foundry, but the catch is it won't be on their servers and has to be a 3rd party host. Given this anything created within this 3rd party host will not exist in their MMO world. People would have to make their own interface and someone will have to make a gui interface for Persistant world searches with Foundry. In the end Foundry could be in itself a licenced product say 100 thousand dollars per licence to make their own game?
No offense but...
You talk about common sense. I tend to agree with you on your first point about scripting although I hope they allow it to some extent. Obviously the foundry will have to be limited to maintain control and balance. That point has been mentioned multiple times on this thread already.
Your second point however seems a little worse thought out. There's no way they'll purposely allow use of Foundry created content outside of their servers. In the end this is still a business, they are doing it to make money. It's a F2P game and therefor the revenue comes exclusively from mirco-transactions. So why on earth would they want people playing the game outside of their servers where they have absolutely no control and the players have no desire to give Cryptic their credit card details? This DEFINATELY wont happen.
The idea of licensing out their engine isn't totally farfetched but I seriously doubt any part-time developer is going to pay enough to make it worth their while and no full time developer would need to.
no offense taken, this is what the forum is for.
i read a few posts but wasnt about to read everything on this thread.
the licencing idea was "not" part of my common sense segment. <-- sorry saw that today had to edit and fix it. was late last night
Anyways, I hope they do something about player made content, even though if they can only place chests with a certain percentage of good drops, then if one would put 100 chests in their game side by side then that would equal 100% chance of a good drop if that drop was originally 1 %
the other ones were just intresting brainstorming ideas that could have potential to them like how valve licences out their source engine and other companies use the crysis engine etc..
I know now for sure that is "up to five players" = 1-5 players. YES you can have 1 player solo content. Remember NWN1? Most content was for 1-2 players anyway... but you know now that max content what you can do is for 5 players.
Please also remember instance does not mean it must be inside a Dungeon. I believe you cand create forest and also likely mountain and water areas. Yes I do think many good adventures have a Dungeon, but there are also many outside forest area adventures in NWN1 and beautiful landscapes. However everything must be inside an instance, but if instance become to big you can do many instances for one adventure. Simply tell people that first instance is for DD level 1-3 people next is for 4-6 level etc.
The only problem if one adventure is done like many instances then I do not know if loot etc. will carry over to next instance?
Having the ability to program aspects of the game doesn't directly allow exploits. That comment showed more that you're unfamiliar with the programming permitted by NWN or most modifiable games than informative. That's not a bad thing but claiming to be educated about something you aren't experienced with doesn't make for much common sense.
It is common sense it will be more limited than the Aurora Engine but every other conclusion you drew is flawed from inaccurate assumptions.
Neverwinter Nights had a very restricted coding language on *purpose.* Even when there's no rules to dictate balancing game developers almost never allow full out access to game code to be directly modified. If you do there's a good chance somebody could corrupt the entire game or worse so even when games are fairly modifiable they still keep a large amount of stuff under wraps.
You'd be truly surprised to see what NWN would have been like if there was no programming cabalities even if quests could be easily generated without them. Anything which made a quest more than a hack and slash path required scripting.If we relate building game content to childrens toys a quest-line which lacked scripting was akin to using Legos. Interesting in it's own right but building a Kin-Ex rollercoaster is a much different endeavor with "grander" results.
Basically blocked off pathways, doors which could only be opened by NPC's or by certain actions, Ambient effects and just visuals which showed your actions had results required scripting.
And while I'm sure it's possible to build in complicated tools to do this it would limit the possibilities far more than most would prefer and I guarantee the difference would be noticeable. Furthermore it would be guaranteed to take more effort to make their cookie cutters than simply limit the programming capabilities of the Foundry.
And no matter how different the Foundry is from the Aurora Engine those basics will apply. They are a fact of life to any game.
OF COURSE any programming Cryptic allows would be more limited than the Aurora Engine but 90% of the features of the Aurora Engine wouldn't provide any exploits or game balance issues. Most of what was scripted was purely for visuals and depth. Giving items, loot, xp or any other permanent effect was a rare occasion. In fact the Aurora Engine didn't even allow programmers to modify a single thing on character sheets such as stats or skills.
The closer to home issue would be to make sure that players don't program unstable or resource demanding actions. And for that, as well, there's a simple solution which I can assure you they will include regardless: a fail-safe. Even a person going crazy cluttering an area with pre-made objects or effects can cause unstable instances and without a doubt they will prevent that from occuring by limiting the amount of resources in an area an/or (more likely) an in-game feature which will shut down any instance which goes out of a pre-set tolerance range.
It would be cool if well written, rated, and reviewed adventures could have some sort of zen kickback for the author. The reward could be small and non-redeemable for cash, but would help provide incentive for quality content.
The criteria on how user generated adventures and stories are rated and eligible for reward is probably worth its own thread, but suffice it to say that I think a viable system is possible and it would end up as a boon to the game both in popularity and profitability.
unfortunately there is a better reason that authors will not be allowed
to 'open' script.
open as in do anything they want.
ever checked out 2nd life ? they have open scripting
and about 10,000 different kinds of sex beds ect..
that include a varienty of activities to include some that
are illegal to do for real.
so why all the restrictions?
simple truthful answer - stop perverts
Obscenities can be banned/monitored. That is not the only or even major concern.
Major concern is IP. Its is more or less impossible to monitor IP in a reasonable time (lets say it will take 2 years or so for a single content?) And its lawsuit bites much more harder than obscenities.
I am also interested how will microtransactions come into play. I have not played STO and am not very experienced in the whole cash shop business model, so I'm just guessing here...
...but I hope that I won't have to pay for every above-basic item for creating my dungeon. My fear is that it may go in the direction of "Oh, you want a different type of chest or trap? 5$. Want to get a different set of textures for your walls? 10$" and so on and so on.
The point being that without spending real cash, you end up with a very generic looking environment and the cost of creating a more immersive dungeon may end up being higher than a month's subsrciption for a Pay to Play MMO.
I'm guessing they'll probably have some sort of "Theme Packages" or something. For example, you get a set of items and environment details based on a Wizard's tower theme or a dwarven ruin or whatever.
As I said, I'm just guessing here, so...
I wouldn't argue against having to pay more to access some features. They have to make their money somehow afterall but I do agree we shouldn't have to pay in order to make an appealing creation.
However, I may not be against having to buy foundry tools such as additional textures, monsters, effects...
But what I think would kill the system right away is if both parties had to buy those features.
I don't mind throwing some money out to access some features in the foundry but if I do that I wouldn't want to force players to buy those features in order to enjoy my own or anybody else's content.
I think it was original Dungeon Siege which towards the end of it's life became a mess of "Connecting with Game Host... Joining Game...Failed...You do not have ____ Mod." It was frustrating enough dealing with the inability to join public games without the added inconvenience of having to pay for the content.
Even when looking for NWN Servers or Singleplayer Campaigns my number one turnoff was seeing a hak pak required to play. It was very rare that I would go out of my way to download a Hak Pak in order to play anything.
I'd hate to see a large amount of foundry features unused due to a payment requirement.
To me it sounds logical that only the DM (or...the custom-Dungeon-creator so to say) has to buy the content pack in order to create his dungeon.
The adventurers who run the dungeon should be able to access it without additional charge, unless it contains some features that are a part of a larger expansion.
For example, not being able to access a dungeon featuring Underdark themes if you do not own the Hypotetical NWO Underdark Expansion makes sense.
And as you said, they have to make money somehow.
Agreed 100%.
I only have a certain dose of uncertainty about how much Foundry content will be available for free and how much will be available via cash shop. Also, the pricing is a factor.
If they sell it as the "Theme Packs" I proposed, I wouldn't have a problem paying 10$ for a pack that features loads of textures, unique traps, models, puzzles and so forth that are related to a certain setting (Elven architecture pack, Underdark tunnels, Luskan trade district, Red Wizard's of Thay tower...whatever.)
I wouldn't like to buy every single thing individually.
Also, one more thing that comes to mind just as I type this - Foundry cosmetics vs. Foundry game-affecting items.
Will only different skins/models/animations/variations of certain items be sold or the advanced versions of the freely offered items?
For example, for free I get an Acid Trap item. You step on a floor tile and acid comes out. Simple.
The Foundry sells variations of the Acid Trap item that I already have. Will those variations be more difficult to beat or just look different? Instead of acid coming out of the single floor tie, the ceiling collapses and acid pours all over the hallway? Will that be only cosmetic or will the players have a harder time surviving that one?
How they can limit players from creating unstable code is a completely separate matter but again can be easily be controlled with simple fail-safes.
However it is more clear there won't be much support for persistent worlds. Everything I have read shows that players will be limited to creating instances such as quests or dungeons and the actual 'world' will be Cryptic's Domain.
I wish I could remember where all the information I found was to cite why persistent worlds won't be supported but logically speaking the fact it will be an MMO hosted and controlled by Cryptic just makes sense that you won't have that much creative power.
The *biggest* disapointment I would have in this game is not being able to program anything. It would be like telling us to use crayons and a coloring book rather than a blank page. Borders and boundaries are understandable and absolutely expected as we certainly don't want any NPC's with a line such as "GiveXP(oPlayer, 10000000);" in it's OnInteraction.
But to be told to color in the lines and reduce the creative choices to that would be outright shameful.