Thank you cryptic for taking out the exploit maps.

nightskysxz · May 2013

It was very disheartening to see exploit maps that take no time or effort to make get thousands of plays, while good foundry maps that take skill and thought never get touched. I would just like to say thanks and you earned a +1 in my book.

ixoth · May 2013

Do you refer the maps which give ton of exp by killing mobs, with little effort? or what do you mean by these exploit maps?

If you do refer to ones I described afaik they're been reuploaded daily to the foundry even they've been marked as banned what I've read.

nightskysxz · May 2013

well farming =/= exploit. exploit maps are the ones where you just kill stuff and they cant move or do anything. I was watching a streamer play this and I was disgusted. He then went and played a farming map with like 40 ogres and he got killed in like 1 hit. that made me laugh.

I still dont like the idea of farming maps but you cant stop them. They are not "exploiting"

ixoth · May 2013

Ok, now I understand what you mean.

Yes I've found one of such map you described. But it was removed from foundry and I've never seen it again.

ambisinisterr · May 2013

ixoth wrote: »

If you do refer to ones I described afaik they're been reuploaded daily to the foundry even they've been marked as banned what I've read.

That's the band aid.
The cure is to patch the exploited features which is in the works.

fugln · May 2013

ambisinisterr wrote: »

That's the band aid.
The cure is to patch the exploited features which is in the works.

... Or just ban those few doing this.

kamaliicious · May 2013

ambisinisterr wrote: »

That's the band aid.
The cure is to patch the exploited features which is in the works.

I remember when we were told this exact exploit wasn't possible in the first place...

wuhsin · May 2013

It sort of angers me seeing exploit/farm maps get thousands of plays when most serious Dungeon Masters are struggling just to get one or two reviews. I guess people would rather get fast, easy exp than try indulging in a quest's storyline. What really bugs me though is that a lot of us are wanting more freedom in the Foundry, for example, dragons/bosses, more terrain, etc. However, people using exploits is going to make the devs focus more on limiting the Foundry's capabilities than on expanding it. This may very well ruin the game if the devs don't handle it cautiously.

maddllama · May 2013

wuhsin wrote: »

It sort of angers me seeing exploit/farm maps get thousands of plays when most serious Dungeon Masters are struggling just to get one or two reviews. I guess people would rather get fast, easy exp than try indulging in a quest's storyline. What really bugs me though is that a lot of us are wanting more freedom in the Foundry, for example, dragons/bosses, more terrain, etc. However, people using exploits is going to make the devs focus more on limiting the Foundry's capabilities than on expanding it. This may very well ruin the game if the devs don't handle it cautiously.

Welcome to MMO's today. IF you want to stand out, create a superb story and dungeon then submit it for featuring. Regardless of reviews, Robo and Som are good at picking the good from the bad.

mconosrep · May 2013

A simple suggestion is to check the total XP a player gets per minute doing a Foundry map. If any player manages above a certain XP/min then map gets removed from the pool and flagged until it is reviewed/fixed.

With a reasonable setting for the XP/min I can't see any issues with this. First player to discover / exploit on a Foundry map would also be the last.

thunderspanker · May 2013

I am in.. I wrote the most compelling and awesome quests in the foundry.. They blow all competition away.. sure i have an ego, but I can back it up.lol.. I wrote Galstaff Adventures Presents:
If you play it I guarantee that it will blow you away. Yet, with all this effort, skill, and love put into it, for a very long time, it is shunned to the abyss. Not only by people that put out the quests you consider to be exploits (which they are not, as you still have to actually kill the monsters), but by the people picking featured quests. I am blown completely away that I am not featured. Really?

kamaliicious · May 2013

maddllama wrote: »

Welcome to MMO's today. IF you want to stand out, create a superb story and dungeon then submit it for featuring. Regardless of reviews, Robo and Som are good at picking the good from the bad.

In the Blacklake contest during Foundry beta, Cryptic listed all the eligible quests (which included mine) in two separate posts. They didn't play the quests. Foundry helpfully tells you the number of plays, my contest quest submission got one play, and that person reviewed it so I know it wasn't Robo or Som.

Now you're saying they're going to be playing all the thousands of quests?

wuhsin · May 2013

thunderspanker wrote: »

I am in.. I wrote the most compelling and awesome quests in the foundry.. They blow all competition away.. sure i have an ego, but I can back it up.lol.. I wrote Galstaff Adventures Presents:
If you play it I guarantee that it will blow you away. Yet, with all this effort, skill, and love put into it, for a very long time, it is shunned to the abyss. Not only by people that put out the quests you consider to be exploits (which they are not, as you still have to actually kill the monsters), but by the people picking featured quests. I am blown completely away that I am not featured. Really?

Getting featured is going to be hard, simply because there are THOUSANDS of publishers, and not all of them are going to be publishing this exploit/farm <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. This game has attracted a lot of Dungeon Masters, and they've been writing stories, designing dungeons, and creating characters for many years. They've just been waiting for a game like this to give them the tools to create. What you see under Featured is like less than one percent of one percent in the grand scheme of things here. They can't possibly feature all the greatest quests.

So yeah, I'm sure you're great, I might even give your quest a try if I get bored later. Just don't get too discouraged if you don't make the Featured list anytime soon. They're gonna update it like once a week, and in a week's time thousands of colorful adventures can be published. I'll be happy if I can just share the quests I make with a few of my D&D buddies, I'm sure they'll love seeing their tabletop adventures come to life in this game.

wuhsin · May 2013

kamaliicious wrote: »

In the Blacklake contest during Foundry beta, Cryptic listed all the eligible quests (which included mine) in two separate posts. They didn't play the quests. Foundry helpfully tells you the number of plays, my contest quest submission got one play, and that person reviewed it so I know it wasn't Robo or Som.

Now you're saying they're going to be playing all the thousands of quests?

This is the point I was trying to make in case you couldn't decipher my incoherent rambling. They don't have enough testers or enough time to play all the eligible quests.

maddllama · May 2013

kamaliicious wrote: »

In the Blacklake contest during Foundry beta, Cryptic listed all the eligible quests (which included mine) in two separate posts. They didn't play the quests. Foundry helpfully tells you the number of plays, my contest quest submission got one play, and that person reviewed it so I know it wasn't Robo or Som.

Now you're saying they're going to be playing all the thousands of quests?

Firstly, the Blacklake Contest was based off of BW4 plays and reviews, which I placed second in. "Secret" got third, and we were told we would be eligible for eventual screenshots or featuring. I received both, so I think it worked out. Now at early launch, Blacklake Gold launched with a total of 7 alpha plays. It worked it's way up from almost nothing and now it is featured with I Am Slayer and A Hidden Blade. So, from my experience, yes, it seems to be working as intended.

Did the Devs play it? I would hope so. Why would you feature a broken quest w/o making sure it works first? Once submitted they have their own copy to play. They can also log in and play your server-side copy, as we have seen with Robo chatting it up in our Foundry channel.

Anyways, this thread has been officially derailed. If you would like to continue this convo make a new thread or dig up one of the 100 old ones.

kamaliicious · May 2013

maddllama wrote: »

Firstly, the Blacklake Contest was based off of BW4 plays and reviews, which I placed second in. "Secret" got third, and we were told we would be eligible for eventual screenshots or featuring. I received both, so I think it worked out. Now at early launch, Blacklake Gold launched with a total of 7 alpha plays. It worked it's way up from almost nothing and now it is featured with I Am Slayer and A Hidden Blade. So, from my experience, yes, it seems to be working as intended.

Did the Devs play it? I would hope so. Why would you feature a broken quest w/o making sure it works first? Once submitted they have their own copy to play. They can also log in and play your server-side copy, as we have seen with Robo chatting it up in our Foundry channel.

Anyways, this thread has been officially derailed. If you would like to continue this convo make a new thread or dig up one of the 100 old ones.

It was you who were saying badbot and som would pick out the wheat from the chaff for featuring, so as far as "off the topic" goes... Why would you think they would play the thousands of published quests when as I said, I can prove they never even played all the entries in their own contest (irrespective of whether they would vote or not).

tilt42 · May 2013

kamaliicious wrote: »

It was you who were saying badbot and som would pick out the wheat from the chaff for featuring, so as far as "off the topic" goes... Why would you think they would play the thousands of published quests when as I said, I can prove they never even played all the entries in their own contest (irrespective of whether they would vote or not).

Prove? The devs probably don't even play the quests on the same servers as us!

Also, they don't have to play every single quest out there. They only need to play those that are submitted for featuring. Somehow I suspect this number is quite a bit lower.

kamaliicious · May 2013

tilt42 wrote: »

Prove? The devs probably don't even play the quests on the same servers as us!

Also, they don't have to play every single quest out there. They only need to play those that are submitted for featuring. Somehow I suspect this number is quite a bit lower.

Considering they hung out with us during the special access we got as Foundry beta people, I'm pretty sure they do.

zaphtastic · May 2013

Featuring is basically Dev's Choice from COH... with all of the issues that came with that.

One of those issues is indeed the fact that this process simply does not scale to the amount of content in the Foundry (or even 1/10 or 1/100 of the content in the Foundry). There's no downside to submitting your quest for featuring, so why not do it?

edit: IMO the only 2 realistic ways of getting a DC/feature are the same as they were in COH, and both of them revolve around your quest only being "one out of a hundred" instead of "one out of a hundred thousand":

Have your quest in the running for featuring when only a really tiny number of quests is in the system (alpha, beta, headstart).
Win a contest.

Of course, you also need to create a good quest that matches the tastes of the judges, is polished / playtested like crazy... and yeah, you need a bit of luck.

maddllama · May 2013

Kama you are sounding pretty bitter about something. Have a chat with the judges, or find a way to get access to Som or Robo and ask them the question.

mrfalrinth · May 2013

Implement "report farm map" button and when it gets enough votes its being sent to GM dedicated to that job, he examines the map and then bans it forever and the author's foundry access (both creating and playing) is banned for 2 months.

wuhsin · May 2013

I honestly believe they need to fix the music before worrying about exploiters. The people wanting to make legitimate quests are discouraged from showing off their maps when they're dead silent. We've basically been robbed of the atmospheres we worked so hard to craft. And all the devs care about now is these little farm maps. Fix music, then we can worry about exploiters. As of now, there's not even much point in publishing anything but an exploit map, since an exploration quest is going to be boring as <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> without music.

ambisinisterr · May 2013

fugln wrote: »

... Or just ban those few doing this.

That's the band aid.

kamaliicious wrote: »

I remember when we were told this exact exploit wasn't possible in the first place...

It shouldn't have been. Exploits are...well...exploits. They got around certain limitations.
Those exploits are being fixed.
Problem solved.

tenaciouzd · May 2013

You people crying about" farm maps" are annoying as hell. there's no difference between these maps, and quest in the game already to kill x amount of mobs. not everyone who plays this game is going to play it to read the lore or is into lore like the people crying about their maps not getting played. this is not to be confused with the exploiting maps where they are using knock backs etc. if I want to kill 50 ogres with no bull**** rp inbetween them then so be it. who are you to tell me I should play your map because it has a story I could care less about.

tilt42 · May 2013

wuhsin wrote: »

I honestly believe they need to fix the music before worrying about exploiters.

Do you honestly think it's the same people working on that fix that are banning exploiters, hmm? Cryptic isn't an organization that can only work at one thing at a time. They've got specialists and different departments that have different responsibilities. Let them handle their priorities, because they are the ones who know how they work in the first place. Not you. Not me.

wuhsin · May 2013

tilt42 wrote: »

Do you honestly think it's the same people working on that fix that are banning exploiters, hmm? Cryptic isn't an organization that can only work at one thing at a time. They've got specialists and different departments that have different responsibilities. Let them handle their priorities, because they are the ones who know how they work in the first place. Not you. Not me.

I just kind of assumed Cryptic was made up of some preppy guy, a hot chick, a nerdy chick, a stoner, and a talking dog, and they only worked at one thing at a time. I got this impression from the fact all their games seem to run off one server. >.>

zaphtastic · May 2013

wuhsin wrote: »

I just kind of assumed Cryptic was made up of some preppy guy, a hot chick, a nerdy chick, a stoner, and a talking dog, and they only worked at one thing at a time. I got this impression from the fact all their games seem to run off one server. >.>

Zoinks!

Anyway, getting rid of the exploit (and exploiters) is a good thing. Getting rid of farming, however... I hope Cryptic is not going down that road. It's been tried several times, and the outcome was always the same.

wuhsin · May 2013

zaphtastic wrote: »

Zoinks!

Anyway, getting rid of the exploit (and exploiters) is a good thing. Getting rid of farming, however... I hope Cryptic is not going down that road. It's been tried several times, and the outcome was always the same.

I can live with farming maps, but they should at least try to be a tiny bit creative. Maybe have an NPC all like, "Jinkies! 50 ogres are about to ambush you from behind at the same time!

iratusdespero · May 2013

nightskysxz wrote: »

well farming =/= exploit. exploit maps are the ones where you just kill stuff and they cant move or do anything. I was watching a streamer play this and I was disgusted. He then went and played a farming map with like 40 ogres and he got killed in like 1 hit. that made me laugh.

I still dont like the idea of farming maps but you cant stop them. They are not "exploiting"

Technically farming maps are "exploiting" as they're using the system in a clearly unintended fashion for largescale gains quickly.

The real problem is the foundry itself, it's a fantastic tool but... with all that freedom it's inevitable that people will exploit and continue to exploit the hell out of it. Because you can, games like CoX and EQ2's player content generators don't allow you to go down and build the levels brick by brick like neverwinters to prevent this type of activity. However this also makes them much less flexible, and you won't see the quality of content we have here with the neverwinter foundry.

Honestly, worry about yourselves and enjoy the game, if you want the exploiting to stop you have to get rid of most of what makes the foundry unique, which means you might as well get rid of it altogether. It's nearly impossible for gm's to police this kind of thing continually throughout the life of the game, right now they're getting on top of it, but the problems not going to go away (especially when the games free 2 play). So deal with it or don't, just make sure you aren't partaking in the activities your starting threads on.

Oh and btw, the foundry is really the best part of this game, the actual gameplay, combat and graphics are substandard at best.

tilt42 · May 2013

wuhsin wrote: »

I just kind of assumed Cryptic was made up of some preppy guy, a hot chick, a nerdy chick, a stoner, and a talking dog, and they only worked at one thing at a time. I got this impression from the fact all their games seem to run off one server. >.>

Ouch, gutshot!

wuhsin · May 2013

tilt42 wrote: »

Ouch, gutshot!

Still waiting on you guys to unmask the villain who stole my quest's music... No more scooby snacks until you do!

Hint: It's probably the guy in the mask.

Thank you cryptic for taking out the exploit maps.

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