My personal foundry wishlist

I am well versed at both NWN and NWN2 editors so I'm familiar with how a proper D&D game editor works. Unfortunately this is not NWN and the foundry will never be an editor of that caliber.

(I am spoiled)

That said I am very impressed at how easy it is to create quests and campaigns in Neverwinter... even if they are all basically the same 3 objective types chained together with different dialogs and costumes attached.



So, here is my personal list of wishes for the foundry - please be gentle as I'm still learning much of what it has to offer. If something below already exists, please school me.

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3D editing mode enhancement - flight mode to make this powerful feature more useful - not being able to fly above and look down at the objects you are moving around (instead of your point-of-view being stuck on the ground) makes all but the simplest of 3D editing very painful


Map detail and encounter groupings - grouping details together into single moveable, translatable objects - technically difficult depending on how it is implemented


Saved or shared presets - similar to the above groupings, I want to be able to (more-easily) re-use details, rooms, etc that I've already customized and used elsewhere in other quests


Custom encounters - not really custom per-se but at least let me preconfigure my own customizations to the existing encounters (costumes, names, etc) - yet another preset concept that would allow me to more quickly design combat portions of quests


Better UI for finding details and other objects - add more descriptive wording to every object available and make the search feature search the descriptions - also, more categorization wouldn't hurt... and perhaps being able to mark certain objects as 'favorite' or a category for 'used in current quest' or allow me to categorize the objects how I need them grouped


Multi-floor rooms - there is at least one room that is supposed to have a Door on both a first and second level - but as far as I can tell it doesn't actually work - give maps more of a 3d feel with a sense of depth by providing just a few of these types of vertical rooms. I supposed it would be acceptable to still prevent rooms from actually stacking as I understand the problems that introduces


Bosses - yea, we all want this. I would even settle for every boss just be another "manage the Adds" fight like the official quests. An alternative would be to provide the encounters list in a more generic way. If it were organized by pure difficulty rather than costumes, it would make creating quest progression more fun... start with the trash and end with the toughies...


Documentation - right now it's all about exploring the objects lists available.. never quite knowing if there are objects that fill your needs.. sometimes that opens the doors of creativity.. but sometimes I just want to find objects like XYZ because my story calls for it. Along the same lines would be example mini-quests showcasing the various special triggers, quest types, and special tips/tricks and how to use them in real-world scenarios (and please don't make me watch another 'video' tutorial that explains the obvious stuff like 'this is how to add an enounter' or 'you can name your quest here!' )


More sounds and visual effects - a maybe make them work as expected I believe that music and sounds effects can make or break the atmosphere of a quest... building to crescendo as you work your way to the end boss or encounter. Fade in and out and other visual effects can really take a quest from a good one to a great one.


Stop nerfing functionality to prevent exploits... you won't win against those idiots. Let me create cool stories for you with neat effects and wonderful puzzles! Oh, ok so someone levels up to max in a day and has 150K gold from running the same module over and over... eh.. why should I care? It doesn't affect me. Protect the in-game economy you say? Haha!
(oh wait, scratch this one... if they can't control the rate of player progression that means they can't control the rate at which they charge real money for stuff - and exploits definitely affect that bottom line)


More scripting - I know this will never be as powerful as NWN but just a few more options would open up so many possiblities... the 'hide when/appears when' feature is a great tool and can be twisted to accomplish some neat tricks but I would hope for a little more. With some design focus on this, people could start making more dynamic quests instead of the linear ones we get now.


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