Pure XP Foundry Quests

lordstrooder · May 2013

Are these going to be nerfed/changed? I personally like it cause I can get to the end faster on alts, but just curious.

sljppers1 · May 2013

It would be nice if these are going to remain that they can get their own tag and category outside of the quests people attempt to put some effort into.

apocrs1980 · May 2013

You guys do understand that it's exploits like this that basically make any other authors not want to produce anymore content right? It's doing a disservice to the community as a whole as is discourages anyone even bothering to make good content for other's to play. This is a sad day STO all over again

zaphtastic · May 2013

It reminds me of the COH Mission Architect, and how 'playing MA' was the equivalent of 'running optimized powerlevelling missions' for 99% of the populace (not an exaggeration).

Let me say one thing, though. The guys creating and playing those missions? THEY ARE NOT THE ENEMY. They just want to powerlevel to 60, and they've found an optimal way of doing it. If the devs nerf things, they'll find another way. Etc etc. Trying to fight this is pointless. Especially when they outnumber the entire 'story' Foundry community of players and authors 10 to 1 (and that's a very, very favorable estimate).

What needs to happen is a proper content qualification system (like... tagging) that allows farmers/powerlevelers to find their quests, and allow story enthusiasts to find theirs. Everyone is happy, the community isn't splintered, and life goes on.

drakedge2 · May 2013

apocrs1980 wrote: »

You guys do understand that it's exploits like this that basically make any other authors not want to produce anymore content right? It's doing a disservice to the community as a whole as is discourages anyone even bothering to make good content for other's to play. This is a sad day STO all over again

I agree, I was excited as Planescape started climbing the ladder, and then today a bunch of these ridiculous farm quests with nothing more than a map, a buncha ogres, and a treasure chest show up and suddenly I am at the bottom of the list again after spending the better part of a week in the foundry to make my quests.

Seeing how I get a consistent 4 star rating (which I am proud of) on these quests and some random 5 stars, and some low ratings too, but then a quest that has nothing but 40 Ogres, and literally nothing else, gets thousands of plays, and thousands of 5 star ratings?

I mean really people? This map that took maybe 2 - 3 minutes to make gets 5 stars? What a bunch of disheartening, discouraging HAMSTER. Half tempting to pull down the real content out of protest until they fix this.

nezroy123 · May 2013

zaphtastic wrote: »

Let me say one thing, though. The guys creating and playing those missions? THEY ARE NOT THE ENEMY.

I agree. I actually don't have a problem with the quests, and hope they don't get changed. It is what it is and nothing is ever going to change that except to add continually burdensome and artificial limitations that ultimately screw us all over.

I think all any of use are asking for is that the rating/best/featured/star/labeling system for quests is updated to reflect the needs of those trying to produce original, "non-farm" content. Ideally I just want to be able to go to my foundry list, uncheck the "farm/grind/whatever you want to call it" tag, and never see that content again.

More subjectively, I would argue that tag should be unchecked by default so people start out seeing the "real" stuff, because the problem right now is all the "real" content is being buried by pages of farm stuff. If you want to find farm stuff, it's not hard to find, but the opposite is not necessarily true, and that's the real problem. I have no problem with the farm content existing, but it shouldn't be pushing the "real" content off the listings. (real in quotes all the way through because I am absolutely not trying to argue that the farm stuff is less valid/real, I just don't have a good label in my head for the opposite category).

EDIT: and this isn't a one-sided request. If all you want to do is farm, then it's to your benefit to be able to check ONLY the farm tag and be able to find that content quickly too. Everyone wins.

apocrs1980 · May 2013

nezroy123 wrote: »

I agree. I actually don't have a problem with the quests, and hope they don't get changed. It is what it is and nothing is ever going to change that except to add continually burdensome and artificial limitations that ultimately screw us all over.

I think all any of use are asking for is that the rating/best/featured/star/labeling system for quests is updated to reflect the needs of those trying to produce original, "non-farm" content. Ideally I just want to be able to go to my foundry list, uncheck the "farm/grind/whatever you want to call it" tag, and never see that content again.

More subjectively, I would argue that tag should be unchecked by default so people start out seeing the "real" stuff, because the problem right now is all the "real" content is being buried by pages of farm stuff. If you want to find farm stuff, it's not hard to find, but the opposite is not necessarily true, and that's the real problem. I have no problem with the farm content existing, but it shouldn't be pushing the "real" content off the listings. (real in quotes all the way through because I am absolutely not trying to argue that the farm stuff is less valid/real, I just don't have a good label in my head for the opposite category).

Agree 100%

zaphtastic · May 2013

Yeah, a tag system has been suggested many, many times. Unfortunately, it couldn't be implemented right now, so it'll take a few weeks/months until we have one.

Until then, it's ogres all the way down!

drakedge2 · May 2013

This is my sad panda face. Maybe if I want people to play my content I should make "LoL TrollFace Grind Fest 2013!!!!!11!" and place 2013 Trolls inside a blank map? It would certainly give me a lot more free time.

senjax · May 2013

This is the way I view this whole thing after reading this thread. I will focus on putting out quality adventures that I, my family, and my friends will enjoy playing and have fun with it. If other folks want to come play them that's cool and I welcome it. I originally came into the foundry thinking I was going to try and get in on the spotlight stuff. Now I don't care as long as it's enjoyable for the people I love and those others who want to have fun in them as well.

veei · May 2013

If we pull down the real content until its fixed reminds me of this scene from Liar, Liar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk7fYBw6PfQ

drakedge2 · May 2013

veei wrote: »

If we pull down the real content until its fixed reminds me of this scene from Liar, Liar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk7fYBw6PfQ

Haha I really do love that movie. I know it wont be fixed, my statement about pulling my content was more of a deep sigh with my face in my palm. The Foundry is the most exciting part of this game, but not if I am being buried in a sea of trolls.

Jim Carrey's words are mine from this video though lol.

zovya · May 2013

What surprises me is how quickly this happened. I knew it was coming, CoH and STO were prophetic if anything. I just thought I'd have more time to enjoy it before it happened.

drakedge2 · May 2013

zovya wrote: »

What surprises me is how quickly this happened. I knew it was coming, CoH and STO were prophetic if anything. I just thought I'd have more time to enjoy it before it happened.

Same here, looks like we only had the headstart to enjoy it.

bobcat1313 · May 2013

Hmm I havn't played any of them yet. I been really busy and when I do play I always pick one from the forums. 50 ogres grazing in an empty field. Thats the title of me next quest

tilt42 · May 2013

zovya wrote: »

What surprises me is how quickly this happened. I knew it was coming, CoH and STO were prophetic if anything. I just thought I'd have more time to enjoy it before it happened.

It's happening quickly because these quests are far quicker to make. Hopefully the real quests, which take longer to make, will start to push these down again once they start appearing.

It's not all doom and gloom though. These XP quests will never be featured. That's something that will be reserved for the quality quests out there, something that should keep everyone's hopes going. The effect I've seen from being featured is absolutely insane. I have hundreds upon hundres of pages of reviews for A Hidden Blade right now, and I've earned almost half a million AD in tips. This is for a heavily story-based quest where there isn't any combat at all in the first half. The sequel, which is not featured, is being played a lot too and is getting stellar reviews, far more 5-stars than 4-stars. This goes to prove that there is an audience for this kind of thing out there. It just takes a bit of effort and luck to make them notice us.

mikelove9 · May 2013

in a game where you can buy anything with real money off the auction house (through a series of steps) I just dont really feel like fighting the good fight against maps like this. People are gonna play how they wanna play.

zovya · May 2013

If there is anything you can't buy with Gold AD or Zen, it's a good quest that gets featured. That takes hard work, clever story-telling and dedication. There is something to shoot for. For this, I'm glad. And I'll keep trying to impress the devs with each chapter I release.

narathkor · May 2013

I just wanted to publish something I would enjoy and hope others will to. I could have put a bit more effort into the first trial but its my first working with the foundry tool and after 3 solid days of getting things right I just wanted to publish it. I hope people like it, if not its ok I will still continue to finish my campaign set.

shiinchan01 · May 2013

I do not care if there are XP grind quest, thats fine. I am still making a queality quest, the first one I am working on I am making it so it has twist, red herrings (hopefully) and a story line to follow. In fact it wont have a ton of encounters because encounters to me are trivial, its about the story and IF I can figure out how to have "choose your path" (meaning 2 dialog options side by side and one branch goes bye bye if you pick the other so you have to play multiple times) I will have that as well, a false and positive ending if you have it...

I can not wait.

zaphtastic · May 2013

zovya wrote: »

If there is anything you can't buy with Gold AD or Zen, it's a good quest that gets featured. That takes hard work, clever story-telling and dedication. There is something to shoot for. For this, I'm glad. And I'll keep trying to impress the devs with each chapter I release.

Featuring will not solve the problem of story quests being lost among hundreds of farms -- and it's not intended to. Featuring selects the best of the best, meaning you have to make better content than celebrated vets from NWN and other communities, sometimes with 10+ years of experience in creating UGC. Most authors also won't have what it takes to create a featured quest -- and I'm not just talking about experience (which is probably the most important factor) or storytelling or game design ability, but also time. Creating a very good quest that has a chance of getting featured takes an absolutely insane amount of free time that most authors don't want to invest. And that's fine. Most authors don't want to be the best of the best, they just want their stories to be played. I don't have any delusions of grandeur myself; I'll admit that I'm not a "best of the best" author, nor do I want to be.

That doesn't mean stories made by those authors are necessarily inferior to DCs -- I've played plenty of 5-star-quality storyarcs in COH that didn't have a prayer of getting a Dev's Choice ever. Also, quite a few early DCs in COH were really not very good, especially when compared to some of the better 'unsung' story arcs that came later.

Ultimately, to get a spotlight, you need to fulfill ALL of these requirements:

Make a good quest (hard)
Get a lot of feedback to really polish your quest (VERY hard)
Match the devs' specific tastes that makes them pick between two top-tier 5-star quests (probably not hard, once there are 5 or so featured quests)
Most importantly, actually get the quest played by the devs, which means
- Submit quest for featuring (easy)
- The devs actually must get to your quest in the queue. Based on the volume of quests reported by sominator a few days ago and the fact that submitting for featuring is a process that only has benefits for the author, I'll say there are enough quests in the 'submitted for featuring' pipeline right now for several months, even if they have multiple people doing nothing but playing foundry quests. (VERY hard)

OR

Win an official Foundry contest (we don't know how often these'll come around, but I doubt there'll be more than 1/month, or even 1/3 months).

I say this as someone who had his own quest featured (Dev's Choice) in COH. As you can guess, I got a DC by winning a contest -- all the other routes were basically impossible for an unknown author. I didn't win a contest with my first, second, third or fourth quest either... it was #5, with several years of experience and many reviewer comments under my belt.

Also, the quests you see featured right now were made in alpha. Alpha had a really tiny amount of (proven) authors, a very small number of quests, and no 'quest noise' at all -- so it was actually a really good situation for the devs to play through a lot of them and pick their favorites. Even then, we still don't know if they played all of the silverstar quests even in that favorable environment... I'll go ahead and guess 'no'.

zovya · May 2013

You're right. I still agree with you. I've been harping on this since open beta day. The search has to be fixed/improved.

nepht · May 2013

apocrs1980 wrote: »

You guys do understand that it's exploits like this that basically make any other authors not want to produce anymore content right? It's doing a disservice to the community as a whole as is discourages anyone even bothering to make good content for other's to play. This is a sad day STO all over again

Sad but true fact. The average Naruto fan cares only for EXP not for the stories people want to tell.

zaphtastic · May 2013

zovya wrote: »

You're right. I still agree with you. I've been harping on this since open beta day. The search has to be fixed/improved.

Heh, I've been trying to get the devs' ears about this during the entire Silverstar beta, as well as my own mad bomber manifesto. I wish I could post the stuff from those forums... but, anyway, the gist of it is that the Foundry producer guy did agree with the need for better search/browse tools, and said that they were already in the works, but couldn't be pushed out for OB due to technical difficulties. As an aside, F2P games are silly with their entire "we'll call our release open beta so we can deflect most cricitism with 'it's beta!' while still working the cash shop and raking in money from the players" thing, but this is actually the norm, so I don't fault Cryptic for that.

So... we'll have a working tag system eventually. Whether that 'eventually' means weeks or months depends on the devs' inner prioritization. And if you look at it from a player side, I'd say they already have a handful of good quests to play in the foundry (the 'Best' list is still mostly story quests... though this is changing pretty fast). I'll say this, though: if we get any new feature (with the exception of DM notes, as those are probably close to being finished anyway) implemented in the Foundry before improvements to the search/browse system, I'll be sad.

tilt42 · May 2013

In any case, I'd really recommend that those of you who care about this situation do like I've been doing for the last few days: Play Foundry quests from the For Review section of the catalog. Forget about the Daily Foundry quest thing. Go in there and help those authors out who are stuck on that page and let them get to where they deserve to be. I've seen everything from completely useless quests in there (kill 3 encounters, and yes that's all of them, in the cloak tower, where one is friendly and unkillable. The entire tower is filled with teleporters that teleport you to your death outside the map) to real gems with awesome storytelling. It takes a bit of luck, but keep at it. There's even a series of achievements for playing these quests to keep you encouraged.

grux · May 2013

It shouldn't be hard to throttle these types of quests. Limit XP gains in foundry missions to a certain amount.

I'm sure there are other, creative ways to ensure people don't want to play nor make these types of maps.

angpeasant007 · May 2013

grux wrote: »

It shouldn't be hard to throttle these types of quests. Limit XP gains in foundry missions to a certain amount.

I'm sure there are other, creative ways to ensure people don't want to play nor make these types of maps.

The downside to this is that if you limit XP on Foundry missions, it will put the limit on ALL Foundry missions including the well made ones. If the devs nerf the Foundry (say you only get XP for the first 3 Foundry missions you do daily) and you get jack squat afterwards, you're still stuck in the same boat: People will still play the farming missions for those three and still ignore the story driven ones. All limiting the Foundry XP does is screw the "good" authors in the end. People will be less inclined to invest their time in ANY sort of campaign that lasts for more than three missions.

Bedsides, after the first play through of the main game, people will want to flock towards the Foundry for leveling up their Alts. Limiting XP in the Foundry will really decrease the replayability of Neverwinter itself, in my opinion; ESPECIALLY since the main story is so very linear at this time. I have five characters and I'm already tired of landing on the same beach where Officer Red Shirt greets you.

raphaeldisanto · May 2013

senjax wrote: »

This is the way I view this whole thing after reading this thread. I will focus on putting out quality adventures that I, my family, and my friends will enjoy playing and have fun with it. If other folks want to come play them that's cool and I welcome it. I originally came into the foundry thinking I was going to try and get in on the spotlight stuff. Now I don't care as long as it's enjoyable for the people I love and those others who want to have fun in them as well.

This was always my attitude. I make quests for me, for my friends, for my guild mates. I don't care who plays them. I don't care how well they're reviewed. I don't care if they get featured as long as the people I care about like 'em. I don't care about being popular, or successful, or any of that HAMSTER.

I just want to make cool story-driven adventures for my friends to enjoy. If others happen to stumble upon them as well, then happy day. If they don't, they don't. I won't be losing any sleep over it.

The reason I want better searching in the Foundry is to make it easier for my friends to find my quests.

Pure XP Foundry Quests

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