How long does it usually take for a foundry to get its five reviews?

shrapevil · May 2013

I created my first foundry quest a few days ago, (NW-DNOZIRKG2) and it still hasn't garnered a single review! It's really disheartening to see something I've put so much time into get ignored.

So, to others who have published foundry quests and campaigns, how long has it taken you to get out of this stage? A week? A month?

tilt42 · May 2013

You shouldn't sit and wait for the reviews to come in on their own. You might be lucky, but most likely won't be. You have to work for those early reviews, and that means recruiting people to play your quest. Whether they be friends or random strangers you manage to convince to play it, you need to get someone. There isn't much of an incentive for regular players to play those new beta quests, and they are hard to find to begin with. You can't wait for the players to come to you. You have to come to the players.

kamaliicious · May 2013

tilt42 wrote: »

There isn't much of an incentive for regular players to play those new beta quests

What he means OP is that the system actively discourages it.

thegodporing · May 2013

I've made a couple of quests now, none of them have had much attention from anyone but to be honest I'm fine with that.
I made them because I enjoy making them and want to play through them with friends.
And have done so.

Perhaps you should asses the reasoning behind your motivation for creating them.
If it's for attention you will probably not reach your desired goal.

wininoid · May 2013

kamaliicious wrote: »

What he means OP is that the system actively discourages it.

How are they actively discouraging it? They made a tab with only those quests in it. They put in achievements for playing "beta" quests that haven't hit the mark. What else do you suggest they do to encourage or what should they change to stop discouraging it?

But really the onus is on the author to promote their work. It is true for every creative endeavor. Fortunately there are a lot of authors in the same boat. Look in this forum. There are tons (or at least more than 5) of people offering to swap a review for a review. Get in the /foundry or /nw_foundry channels in game and chat with other authors. There are lots of friendly folks and lots of folks looking to trade reviews to get out of the beta list. With a little effort, it shouldn't take long. That's what I did.

kamaliicious · May 2013

wininoid wrote: »

How are they actively discouraging it? They made a tab with only those quests in it. They put in achievements for playing "beta" quests that haven't hit the mark. What else do you suggest they do to encourage or what should they change to stop discouraging it?

I've played 20 of these beta quests (publicly providing feedback here in these forums), most with less than 5 plays, much less reviews. When I played this one last night I was the first play. I max tip these beta authors if I like the quest at all and am under the daily tip limit, tips is why my character doesn't have any AD currently.

There is one achievement for beta quests, "Become a Beta reviewer". You do not have to play any beta quests to get this achievement, only accept the "i'm willing to review beta quests" popup. The rest of the Foundry community achievements can be done with any Foundry quest. My achievement board shows no other beta related achievements earned or to be earned, so if it's tracking this it's doing it silently.

Someone posted that you get double credit for beta reviews. This is not true in my testing. I've played three "known" Foundries and 20 beta Foundries, reviewing each. The achievement board shows I have 23 reviews.

Foundry search is broken for all quests released after some date. This is a well known problem preventing people from even finding quests, as you must know the shortcode of the quest, you can't search by author name or keyword for these quests. Like this thread. This means lots of quests are functionally invisible unless you are a friend/guildie of the author or they post it here. If you go to the beta search tab, it is painfully laggy, why would people scroll up and down that?

The foundry daily and it's rewards also discourage playing these quests.

fugln · May 2013

kamaliicious wrote: »

I've played 20 of these beta quests (publicly providing feedback here in these forums), most with less than 5 plays, much less reviews. When I played this one last night I was the first play. I max tip these beta authors if I like the quest at all and am under the daily tip limit, tips is why my character doesn't have any AD currently.

There is one achievement for beta quests, "Become a Beta reviewer". You do not have to play any beta quests to get this achievement, only accept the "i'm willing to review beta quests" popup. The rest of the Foundry community achievements can be done with any Foundry quest. My achievement board shows no other beta related achievements earned or to be earned, so if it's tracking this it's doing it silently.

Someone posted that you get double credit for beta reviews. This is not true in my testing. I've played three "known" Foundries and 20 beta Foundries, reviewing each. The achievement board shows I have 23 reviews.

Foundry search is broken for all quests released after some date. This is a well known problem preventing people from even finding quests, as you must know the shortcode of the quest, you can't search by author name or keyword for these quests. This means lots of quests are functionally invisible unless you are a friend/guildie of the author or they post it here. If you go to the beta search tab, it is painfully laggy, why would people scroll up and down that?

The foundry daily and it's rewards also discourage playing these quests.

The biggest problem is still the search function. It Works as soon as you got 5+ reviews and are added in "New". But if it takes you too long to make those first 5 reviews it seems to just og down the drain. So yeah, they should add something extra for those who use hours testing maps "just" to be kind. Totally agree.

seanc84 · May 2013

I posted a thread in the Foundry Spotlight forum, added a signature, asked in guild, asked in game, asked in the Foundry channel, and got 2 reviews.

Once I started a review trading thread I finally started to get some plays. As of last night I was sitting at 10 plays with 9 reviews... so nothing earth-shattering, but enough to make me happy that at least some people got to enjoy the quest I made.

If you're just using the Foundry to get a bunch of plays, it'll take a lot more work than just making a quest. If you're using Foundry because you like it and enjoy making quests even if no one plays them, carry on!

wininoid · May 2013

The foundry daily encourages people to play foundry missions that are out of beta. It doesn't discourage you from playing beta quests any more than anything else in the game or out of the game does. I disagree with your wording, but I understand your point: players only have so much free time so they are more likely to play something else.

I agree the beta tab is bad with lag and no searching. Have you all sent in bug reports?

Double check your Journal. About a week or so ago, I got an achievement for having played 10? 20? beta quests. Now I have one in progress for playing 100 beta quests. It is under Foundry Community. Also, it increments when you do a quest on any character. I found that many beta quests have poor balance (i.e. they've stacked encounters or done too many hard encounters). That isn't a problem on my low level alts, but on my main, I burn through all my potions and die a lot. So I've switched to using alts for beta testing. There were several I couldn't finish on my main due to the encounters, and thus I couldn't leave feedback. I did send email however.

Along the same lines, when I can't finish a quest, I can't easily leave feedback so they can fix it. I wonder how many beta quests are languishing because they are unplayable? Having some sort of bug report function that was feedback for the author's eyes only would help. Getting rid of the extra step of sending email should help get more info to the authors.

I think the main problem with playing beta quests is the number that are bad/unplayable/untested by the author. I've run into a lot. If an author engages the community, they can say, "Hey, I've run this through 20 times and haven't been able to break it, can someone else please check it?" I'll test something if the author shows they've put in their time to polish it and get it right. I don't want to play someone's first draft. It is unfair to the testers (who are going through all the pain of the Beta tab) to give them something that is broken. It goes with the limited time argument. I can only play so many beta tests each day. I'll play the ones where the author is around and talking about it before I pick a random one with no plays.

slaidz · May 2013

There's just so much being released that everyone that isn't on the front page is getting buried. It's impossible to find any quest that you don't have the code for.

kamaliicious · May 2013

wininoid wrote: »

Double check your Journal. About a week or so ago, I got an achievement for having played 10? 20? beta quests.

This is my Foundry Community achievements. When I said 20 beta plays, they've all been ones posted here requesting play/review and I've reviewed ingame and here (except for one that I never got the review box ingame for some reason, and another where I accidentally moved which closes the ingame review window). In many I'm in the first 5 plays, and in several I'm the very first play.

Not sure how we are supposed to know these achievements were missing either, the official wiki doesn't list any achievements, only that they exist.

wininoid · May 2013

Here is what I see in mine:

kamaliicious · May 2013

wininoid wrote: »

Here is what I see in mine:

Early Access does not appear for me, even in the grayed out "you haven't done this yet" state. As I've got the Into the Wilds achievement, Early Access should appear as an earnable achievement.

How long does it usually take for a foundry to get its five reviews?

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