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What do you want to see included in the foundry?
spellwarden
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 357 Bounty Hunter
apocrs1980 gave me the idea by asking specific questions of what was possible with the foundry.
So I felt it was only right and well to ask the forums: What would you like to be able to do with the foundry. Never mind if it has been added already or not. And if you are certain that it cannot be added, or easily exploitable, please add a suggestion how to avoide this, following the formula:
Suggestion: blah blah blah
Example: Blah blah blah
Potential exploit and workaround: blah blah blah
For example.
Suggestion: I would like to be able to create pathing for items triggered by some author-determined prerequisit.
Example: The Haunted House requires a cleric or magic-user to combat all the way down the basement. There awaits a shrine to some old evil god. As the Magic-user activates the shrine and enters into meditation, a poltergeist starts to toss around plates (stuff with "physics") in the room. A few ghosts appear, and eventually a great deamon, by which time the magic-user has finnished his/her incantation. Once the deamon is defeated, the house-ah is-ah purified-ah.
Potential exploits and workarounds: There could be a problem with how many critters appear. It should be challenging, but not impossible, should the cleric decide to do the incantation.
So I felt it was only right and well to ask the forums: What would you like to be able to do with the foundry. Never mind if it has been added already or not. And if you are certain that it cannot be added, or easily exploitable, please add a suggestion how to avoide this, following the formula:
Suggestion: blah blah blah
Example: Blah blah blah
Potential exploit and workaround: blah blah blah
For example.
Suggestion: I would like to be able to create pathing for items triggered by some author-determined prerequisit.
Example: The Haunted House requires a cleric or magic-user to combat all the way down the basement. There awaits a shrine to some old evil god. As the Magic-user activates the shrine and enters into meditation, a poltergeist starts to toss around plates (stuff with "physics") in the room. A few ghosts appear, and eventually a great deamon, by which time the magic-user has finnished his/her incantation. Once the deamon is defeated, the house-ah is-ah purified-ah.
Potential exploits and workarounds: There could be a problem with how many critters appear. It should be challenging, but not impossible, should the cleric decide to do the incantation.
Post edited by spellwarden on
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Example: a little kid runs through room laughing and tells you to follow him, then disappears through some door in the next room.
Potential exploits: none? They aren't combat npcs so won't be exploitable for loot etc.
In addition to Babylon: I would like to add textboxes in any size which does not require activation for viewing... speech-bubbles if you will.
if there is any one thing that I would love added to the Foundry it would be what I touched on in my previous post the I will go more in depth here.
Suggestion: added sub menu for boss Characters which allows at % of life boss has added ability and gives a drop down or tool tip of all current abilities related to that class and race.
Example: 5 man party encounters the last boss of a UGC dungeon each mini boss previous to him had a special ability to get players use to the mechanic (lets say mini boss 1: Arcing Cleave with cone telegraph, mini boss 2: ground slam with AoE telegraph, and mini boss 3 has enrage at 25% life and attacks 50% faster) as you begin to take Grogg down he gains one of the abilities of the previously defeated mini bosses you fought - example Grogg starts out with Oppressive chains and immobilizes a random party member for 10 sec at 75% health Grogg has added ability Arcing Cleave, at 50% he gains Ground Slam, and his last 25% he becomes enraged. This in my mind would make for very memorable boss encounters and cause players to draw upon their coordination and skill set they are using with their class.
Potential exploit would be that the Author would make the boss incredibly OP which for some gamers they love that challenge, but I think the star rating for the content would help curb that.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
I really hope we'll be able to put certain effects into the story of the dungeon. (Like "This NPC follows the player characters till this room is cleared" followed by "NPC recites set dialogue" then "Spawn boss") We should have that kind of control over the instance at the very least.
Example: A dungeon that can be pitch black and allow torch bearers with no weapons (i.e. one person cannot fight if everyone wants to see)
Potential Exploit: Only getting people killed endlessly on traps, but since there seems to be no death penalty, none..? Maybe griefing potential...
Exactly this.
PvE Enthusiast.
Playstyle tags
Suggestion: Have fixed tags for playstyle that people can apply to quests (or search quests through them), and have them be a quick one-click filter in the quest browser. Some example playstyles are 'farm', 'story', 'friends', 'guild', 'challenge'. These would be in addition to the tags already supported by the Foundry (as well as custom tags).
Example: Alice likes to test her characters' power by playing challenge-oriented quests: ones that have lots of tough monsters and traps, or are otherwise challenging to defeat. Bob likes playing story-oriented quests: ones with lots of text, lore, details, and probably not optimized for loot/xp. Chris likes playing farm-oriented quests: ones focused on getting as much loot/xp as possible within the limits of the Foundry (without exploiting). They all want to find quests they want, but they end up having to wade through hundreds of other quests in the list that don't apply to their playstyle -- they tend to rate these quests poorly and then move on.
Enter the tag system. Just by selecting the tag, Alice will only see challenge-focused quests, Bob will only see story quests, Chris will only see farm quests, and they'll all be happy. Similarly, quest makers will make sure to select the appropriate tag for their quest so that they can reach the appropriate audience.
Potential exploits: None. You could tag your quest with all possible playstyles, but chances are, it won't be good at all things for all people, and thus your rating will suffer for it.
Favorites lists
Suggestion: Implement a personalized "favorites list" for each player (no limit to the number of favorites). If a player really likes a particular quest, they can mark it as a favorite; there'd be an interface element to remove quests from the favorites list as well. If someone looks for quests in the Foundry, they get a parallel window next to the "usual" one that shows the quests their friends and guildmates like the most (in order of "# of favorites", and a mouseover shows which friend(s) like a particular quest), with the option to remove friends/guildies from this filter. Maybe make it possible to send favorites lists to people directly (as a mail attachment) with the standard anti-spam protection measures in place. Undecided whether it would be a good idea to allow people to favorite their own creations (probably not a good idea).
Example: Jane wants to try out a good quest from the Foundry, but she's already played the top 10 ones (which are the only ones everyone on the forums talk about), and there are hundreds of thousands of barely-played quests in the Foundry. Luckily, her friends have a lot of quests they like -- both popular and obscure ones. Jane looks at her friends' favorite lists and plays the quests from them that she hasn't tried yet. While doing so, her "recommendation list" (see next suggestion) gets populated as well.
Potential exploit: Authors making alt accounts and mass-favoriting their own stories. However, these alt accounts would not get on friends lists, so the effect would be really limited. Spam advertising stories through favorites lists is possible, but would probably backfire... still, it's probably a good idea to keep the scope of this to friends and guildmates.
Auto-generated quest recommendations
Suggestion: Implement a "You might like..." / "You might want to try..." function in the Foundry quest browser. This function would contain a separate list of (10/25/50) quests the player has NOT yet played that fulfill either of the following requisites:
- Highly-rated quest that was liked by players who liked the same quests the player has previously played and liked
- Unknown quest that shares many keywords and/or tags with quest(s) that were highly rated by the player before, and has at least a 3.0 rating average (if it is rated at all)
This list would be recalculated every time the player finished a quest for the first time and 'liked' it.
Exact details (how many people is 'many', whether 'liked' means '4-5 stars', '5 stars', 'favorite', 'donated to author', whether 'unknown' means '0 plays' or '0-5 plays') could be either customizable per-player, or set in stone. Also, the algorithm could probably be improved a lot.
Example: Bob completes "The Endless Hunger", a story-heavy quest involving vampires. He really likes it and gives it 5 stars. His "recommendation" list changes to include several story-heavy quests involving vampires that don't have many plays, but have a generally good rating, as well as several highly-rated quests that were played and enjoyed by people who also played and enjoyed "The Endless Hunger". In the end, authors whose stories aren't in the limelight get (potential) recognition, and Bob can find quests that he is more likely to enjoy. Win-win.
Potential exploit: Not really. Maybe someone could go to a lot of trouble to get their quest to show up in the "related" field for popular quests? It'd probably be downvoted in short order and disappear from the lists.
Improved rating system
Suggestion: Add functions to the Foundry that protect against people gaming the rating system, or help people find ratings that are more relevant for them. Some possibilities based on real-life systems like Amazon:
- friendly rating: Give players an option to view ratings by their friends, guildies, and possibly 'people who match their taste' (this is probably not really feasible to implement) and sort Foundry content based on that.
- rating weighting: All players have a (hidden?) 'reliability' stat that weights all the ratings they make. This stat starts out at 100% and increases or decreases based on how many people agree with the player's rating -- this "meta-rating" would also be weighted, of course.
- helpfulness: All comments have a "was this helpful? yes/no" button next to them. If a comment is deemed helpful, it increases the rating weight of the comment and the commenter; if it was deemed unhelpful, it decreases it. Apply diminishing returns as needed.
- mandatory comment: Ratings below 4 are not accepted unless the player leaves a comment (even just a single character). This would show the player's @name to the story author, and possibly to everyone (depending on whether it's possible to set comments as private). If the rating adjustments are used, this would expose the voter to upvotes/downvotes.
Example: This'd be way too long to describe here... and not very exciting either.
Potential exploits: It's supposed to protect against them in the first place. Obviously there are some things like an author making hundreds of alts to upvote 5stars and downvote 1stars on his quest; these'd need some system-level protection / anomaly detection techniques to deal with. The actual techniques would need a bit more work to be functional in the Foundry context, though.
Getting good content to players in the Foundry - challenges and solutions
Handle: @zaphtastic
To many people, the whole reason to buy warcraft 3 was the player-made content. The more expansive a "Map Editor" is, the more popularity Neverwinter Online can get from the cheapest and most skilled employees, player-fans!
I dont really have any specific suggestions but in this case, I believe more is always better
Oh, and cryptic compleatly rewrote the Controll Mage several times based on fan-feedback. Check the podcast advertised in this forum for info. So if we state what we would like to see, odds are they will be considered. So good clear descriptions, and good arguments for what it would allow (example) could sway their minds into prioritizing some idea or another.
Outlandish wishes, like I want to be able to add my own sound, my own 3d-models, manipulate textures, room-layout, rewright code, or the like is not feasible. But things they can add that has a large enough impact on potential quality of content as opposed to effort/money needed to implement can find it's way into the game for sure.
So once again, keep it coming. Help us define what we want in an editor
Example: You have to get a doorman to let you in. Upon entry the dialogue will be set to detect player race. If you're X race, he'll be friendlier to you. You can diplomatically get him to open the door for you and avoid a fight by choosing a sequence of conversation options, or if choosing the wrong options, you will trigger an encounter.
I'd like to have some control over non-combat NPCs as well. It would even be nice for an NPC to be able to attack another NPC.
Having completed pre-requisites would be a nice touch. That way we could make a series of quests. Even if it's only required for 1 person to have completed it so they can group up with others without repeating the entire chain again.
Being able to flag any item for interaction. Example: Using a book or crystal ball as a doorway. Or hey, maybe even a big closet. (Narnia :P)
Environment interaction. Example: Legend of zelda style where the fires flicker on as you walk past. Or ya know, inception where everything is moving around.
I'm extremely weary about being able to create custom-made and persistent items. I think, even if they go down the route of a "Chinese take-out menu" as it was mentioned in an interview, that there are just way too many ways to potentially exploit that system. It isn't that I'm against the idea in theory, because I think creating a "glass sword" or quest-relevant item brings a lot to the table, but being able to take something like that out of the quest and not designing it appropriately from the get-go will forever diminish the loot system in the game.
Thats all for now, as I plan out some content in my head I'm sure I'll come up with more.
On the subject of exploitability, that is something that Cryptic is thinking hard on, and there will be feed-back, changes and such as the game evolves in beta, and after release. No need to discuss it in general terms. Offer obvious exploitation to your idea/want for the foundry. But general discussion just fills the pages.
Look who is talking, shuttup spellwarden
Also to place flags on Players characters that have the same attributes as those items. Like if a player in a previous adventure clicked on something or destroyed something having a flag that you can use in a future adventure that is keyed off that action for both dialog options and triggers.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
Doesn't say used as triggers in adventures, this is all just dialog options. I want to be able to use it as triggers in a dungeon. Like say traps will not go off on someone carrying a specific item or if someone is carrying an item a specific monster will spawn in a module but won't if the item or flag is not there as well as dialog options. But thanks for the info.
Example: You meet a DUDE, he gives you a quest and a gizmo. you have to choose between 3 different places (perhaps 3 shrines or something). There you activate something (enter an area, activate a shrine, drop a penny in a pool), you recive some other quest-item. Perhaps an equipable sword with HAMSTER-stats, but cool model. You take this item item (sword) use it to attack some NPC. This destroyes the item (sword) but reveals the NPC to be some deamon/evil wizard/marketing exec. Depending on which shrine you whent to in the begining, something tied to that shrine happens (perhaps that diety comes and nullifies an attack, or you are transported to a particular realm for the fight)
Exploit: Perhaps this should be better titled; Forseable problem: Coding-time. If we cannot decide on the stats, the item just having HAMSTER stats, then there would be no exploit.
The only risk involved here is that some players may end up making confusing quests where it's hard to figure out where to go, but I don't see that as a big problem.
Yeah but you are limited to 3 adventures saved per account.
-Campaign style quest chaining
-Cinematic cut scenes (let us add some simple emotes in during script)
-Triggers for cut scenes ( I would like to control triggers pre/mid encounter [ie boss mob at 10% hp sez something cliche and vanishes] and when the party hit a specific marks for grand entrances, exits, or ambushes from my npcs/mobs)
-Master maps (I'd like to be able to create a small city [campaign hub] with multiple indoor quest on same map. I'd like to see the doors unlock after certain quests are progressed. In addition I'd like to see npc on that map have a simple way to update their new dialog thru progression. Also I'd like to be able to edit triggers like ambushes on this master map thru progression.)
-Control over night/day and weather conditions including fog.
-Addition of simple sound effect on a map for immersion (eg whispering, church bells, wings flapping, snickering, tavern music, howling, etc..)
-Addition on clickable objects with flavor text for immersion and gathering clues.
-Control over npcs on map (if I want my npcs to sweep, drink, dance, patrol, meditate, fight amongst each other, sneak around and follow players, I can)
-Let player be able to bribe npcs for desired results in dialog/quest updates.
-Robust library of mobs.
If Foundry players can't have tools just as good or better than current MMO's to tell their story and immerse players, then I foresee a flop.
Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.
I would also like to see a mechanic that when an npc do spot you, instead of going into combat a cutscene plays where showing that you are captured (TSW mission style) and you automatically load back to a spawn point (like where you started or the prison hold).
I think that both of those built in mechanics would be amazing to make good stealth missions wich would add a whole new dimension to questing.
Also I would like to see (as mentioned above in another post) the ability to script encounters like big boss fights.
Another thing on my wishlist is the ability to get a henchman that you get and are tied to a speccific quest making it so you can have dailoges and also recieve and deliver quests, wich would add depth to the story of the quest.
Another thing I would like to see is interaction with items in the world than needs to be activated in a certain order to trigger the next event in the quest. Probably is allready in the foundry but I still want to mention it as something I hope to see.
These are amazing ideas, and really well written-up! I hope they implement this stuff. Especially the playstyle tags, that's just brilliant (and seems like it would be easy to do).
Is that confirmed?
I thought I saw that it was 8, not 3. I hope so.