Elegant Solution to Foundry XP/Loot Exploitation: Max XP/Items Per Minute

gtdcarthage · May 2013

It seems as though the whole incidence of nerfing drops and XP from the Foundry has had rather bad effects on the Foundry to the point I feel players are actually reporting featured quests for copyright violations or inappropriate content merely because of having had little luck in leveling and receiving item awards.

I personally have no opinions on the matter as I don't play Foundry quests for XP. I play them for story. Note: I haven't actually progressed my L23 character's main quest line ever since the crown being stolen from the Hall of Justice vaults. But, I do agree it now takes more Foundry quests to level up as well as taking longer to find the next upgrade. Worth noting, I was able to receive a constant stream of upgrades pre-nerf from constant playthroughs of different Foundry quests.

So here, I am suggesting to the community and perhaps to some extent, Cryptic or PWE, a solution to stopping the exploitation of Foundry quests for loot and XP without having to nerf reward values:

Implement a maximum XP/items recieved per minute. The idea here is simple - players cannot receive more XP or quality loot for a certain amount of time than what is indicated based on a rate-per-minute value that adjusts per player level and party size.

What are the benefits of this? FIRST-OFF, adventurers who like pummeling through groups of 20 ogres don't have to lose their favorite munchkin quests. They will fight hard and largely obtain XP just as fast as everyone else. At the same TIME, quests more focused on story and generally offer less XP due to sparser fight encounters have equal opportunity to provide experience to adventurers who like reading up on the story and checking out the customized scenery more (like myself).

SECOND, this now opens up a completely new avenue for Foundry creators - a better regulated rule for allowing authors to place extra ITEM CHESTS and ITEM CONTAINERS inside the levels that offer players random items, in the same way regular monster drops do instead of simply having a single reward chest at the end of the quest.

I believe this is inherently anti-powerleveling so I'm not sure how people who like powerleveling will react. I do believe, however, this is something that doesn't ruffle anyone's feathers. Placing 20 ogres in a map gives you the same opportunity as playing any other quest - encouraging you to play other quests that perhaps don't have 20 ogres. You will receive the same amount and quality of items as any player would. Having 20 chests in a map does not guarantee 10 random white items, 8 green items, 2 blue items, etc. in one minute and instead offer you largely the same amount of items per minute as if you were playing a more balanced or an actual official story quest.

What do you guys think?

For those who believe this is seemingly difficult to implement or just not right for Neverwinter, I'd like to point at the in-game Professions system as an already-existing example of rewards-per-minute gameplay features.

thesabotender · May 2013

Good post and good solution. I really like your idea with a XP/min solution, it would also encourage new Quest designers to space out encounters a little

As for placing chests, in one of my posts somewhere i suggested that there is a limit to the number of chests per map (say, 5?)
And then that the chest reward has some sort of formula:
(quest duration * number of plays) / (number of encounter * number of chests) = chest reward value
and o.c. if the quest is or has been featured that reward value will be higher

clcmercy · May 2013

gtdcarthage wrote: »

Implement a maximum XP/items recieved per minute. The idea here is simple - players cannot receive more XP or quality loot for a certain amount of time than what is indicated based on a rate-per-minute value that adjusts per player level and party size.

Sure, as long as Cryptic does the very same thing for non-Foundry content, which one could burn through as fast as they want and get no reduction or penalty in xp/loot drops at the moment. What you suggest is applying a double standard when it's already been said by developers that the Foundry is and always will be an "equivalent or better game experience than standard content".

enct · May 2013

This is what they've already done. This is what people already don't like.

It's not dynamic like your suggestion, but it's still there.

thecain · May 2013

Here's a better solution: Report exploit maps, have devs/admins play said map after it's reported, see that the map is or isn't an exploit, look at the list of players who have played it past 3 - 4 times (It shouldn't take more than 3 or 4 playthroughs to test a map for exploits), start handing out bans for people farming exploit maps, and/or the people who created them.

Set in place new changes in the AI's behavior that can counteract the exploiting, either by giving all enemies ranged attacks, or letting them teleport through terrain to attack an enemy. It takes dedicated devs to figure out a solution, not a turn-key operation that supposedly runs itself and is "exploit proof". There's no such thing. I learned this lesson through FPS games: Admins that caught cheating got rid of far more bad players than Punkbuster ever did.

diekao · May 2013

It truly amazes me how many of these supposed ideas pop up everywhere on how to "fix" the foundry. Here's the thing: The Foundry never need fixing, it was the best feature of the game and cryptic gutted it. The "solution" isn't even that hard:
1. Fix the exploitable AI so people can still do farmquests, but you have to actually fight the mobs
2. Make a "Farming Quests" Category in the Foundry Catalog so the serious business dungeon masters stop whining that their grandiose story quests get buried in the system.

There, "fixed" it.
Stop regulating how people want to play the game. Stop basing your own enjoyment of the game by how OTHERS enjoy the game. You think xp farming is stupid? Don't do it, but don't whine about it either. In return, players who don't care for lore, wont whine about your preferences. Is that really too much to ask from today's society?

Elegant Solution to Foundry XP/Loot Exploitation: Max XP/Items Per Minute

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