Just venting

notaurious · May 2013

I am so tired of people saying Review 4 Review, and then you go and review their dungeon and they do nothing in return. There should be some sort of qualifier to validate a reviewer. A status, a feat, a something. You review 30 quests, you get some sort of validation for the type of player you are. You review few to nothing, then you come off as such, and people will avoid reviewing your quest.

I couldn't care less in terms of opinions (save that I want to make a quest people will like). I am just tired of helping boost other peoples' quests to a mainstream status while the one I worked so hard on just sits there dying.

I know I am not the first to feel this way/ say something. And I know some reviewers have their hands tied. But there are a lot of "poor people" in here looking to "trade reviews," and I fall for the scam every time.

I am so glad I could help be a part of you getting 100 plays and 30 reviews. I am so honored to being a part of your success. I fully appreciate the fact that you (whoever you are) refuse to reciprocate.

I don't expect much: I spent up to one hour in your quest. Please spend the 30ish minutes in mine OR QUIT ADVERTISING.

To be fair: I could understand if you get to my quest and see a bunch of 1-star reviews. But you don't. The fact that this is not an excuse lends me to believe only one thing: You aren't returning the favor at all because (bad words here) me.

You, whoever you are, should be ashamed. We are all in this together.

No, wait. We're not.

voidgift · May 2013

Agree with you. I tried your quest, though. And it was way to hard for me. I died three times during the three or four first encounters. Had to give it up.

notaurious · May 2013

voidgift wrote: »

Agree with you. I tried your quest, though. And it was way to hard for me. I died three times during the three or four first encounters. Had to give it up.

That is certainly feedback an author needs to hear. I am just concerned because the encounters as you are stating are as follows:

1) two assassins
2) a mob of easy melee/ranged
3) two assassins
4) same as 2
5) same as 2
6) three assassins
7) standard magma encounter
8) two warlocks and a harder melee
9) maze, VERY CONTROLLED spawns with the hardest being the 2 wights, and later 2 witches.

Please explain where there is a problem so I can look into it. The harder fights aren't until the 20th pull or so...

br0dyman · May 2013

I'll go through your quest right now. You can do mine after you've seen me do yours. :P

notaurious · May 2013

Servers are about to come down... but yes, I will gladly trade reviews. I actively seek out the option, often putting my time up first.

br0dyman · May 2013

Sad, you're right. It's in my subscribed que.

saerrael · May 2013

Noted down and will run it after some sleep (ha!).

My own venting would more entail the strange reviews I'm getting about the story I have up. Without spoiling anything, think along the lines of the story telling you the sky is red and the review I get is a comment about how a sky is supposed to be blue or the question why the sky isn't blue.

I'll note down my own code when I've reviewed yours. That way you can be certain your quest has been reviewed before you review back.

crok2 · May 2013

You could always make a new account and run your own quest if you get too frustrated :P

chili1179 · May 2013

crok2 wrote: »

You could always make a new account and run your own quest if you get too frustrated :P

I do this >.>

This whole review trading is a pretty <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> poor system as it stands.

THE FORGE is an Author Only guild on Dragon and we're trying to get more quests seen and played as we can, but we're a small group currently and can only do so much.

The foundry community is full of selfish authors, this is to be expected as its a new game with new toys to play with but it will thin out the herd over time and only the serious authors will continue to produce quests and the Ogre Farm style quests, and their authors will diminish and be forgotten.

Patience.

almostcool · May 2013

I only did review trading if I saw the OP taking time to document all the quests he had/needed to review. For instance I did the same on my thread; edited the post to show which quests were reviewed and which ones weren't. If they didn't look like they put things in an organized format I didn't bother since there was really no way of being able to tell if they would follow through, it also looked lazy.

chinspinner · May 2013

I try to review everything I have said I will, and suffer from the same problem, I seem to put out more than I receive.

Sometimes quests are so broken/ difficult you just quit and think, have you even played this yourself? Not yours, haven't tried it, just in general. That irritates me, if a player has not played their own quest after publishing, and it is obvious when they haven't, why should I?

voidgift · May 2013

notaurious wrote: »

That is certainly feedback an author needs to hear. I am just concerned because the encounters as you are stating are as follows:

1) two assassins
2) a mob of easy melee/ranged
3) two assassins
4) same as 2
5) same as 2
6) three assassins
7) standard magma encounter
8) two warlocks and a harder melee
9) maze, VERY CONTROLLED spawns with the hardest being the 2 wights, and later 2 witches.

Please explain where there is a problem so I can look into it. The harder fights aren't until the 20th pull or so...

I died to the first two assassins, but I guess I didn't play that one very well. I beat them the second time. I did struggle a bit with two assassins. Had to wait for a long time to get my health up after each encounter.

I think I might have pulled encounter 5 and 6 at the same time? I think I died to five assassins the last time, or maybe it was just three plus some mobs?

It was about when I entered the room. I don't think I went too fast, but I might have. I believe I was careful after the difficult start.

I ran 47 GWF with basic healer comp.

meedacthunist · May 2013

Assassins are overly hard for certain classes after 30 lvl. This is why I'm not using them at all, unless it's only a single assassin with few easy mobs. A "normal" encounter of 2 or 3 assassins, not stacked, can be module breaking.
Repeat those encounters more than once and you will have quest making people spending too much on potions and injury kits, when played at higher level. It may or may not make your quest unpopular - it will be liked by people seeking challenge, but disliked by anybody else.

If you don't want your quest being considered too difficcult, don't use those mobs at all or do it very rarely.

Yet another mob which shows how important is testing modules at higher level.

On the other hand, assassins are great if you do want a higher difficulty. Just use them as adds to any boss.

I have them used in boss fight tested for the future.

Boss has standard cutthroats as his bodyguards when in easy mode, but assasins in hard mode.

kelvedon · May 2013

I just completed your quest, Notaurious, and as I said in my in quest feedback, it's one of the better quests I've done to date. By the way, I ran the quest on my low level test account - Kelv4, not this account. This quest is long, but it's really, really worth while doing. It may not be everyone's idea of a great quest (due to its length), but I enjoyed it immensely. A lot of work and creativity has gone into this quest and I encourage everyone who likes a great adventure, with a different twist and turn around every corner, to do this quest. In my opinion, this quest is what Neverwinter is all about - lots of fun (not just getting to level cap in 5 minutes). I'll certainly run any more quests you author.

By the way, if you've got time to run thru my quest, it would be appreciated. Details in my sig.

Cheers

notaurious · May 2013

crok2 wrote: »

You could always make a new account and run your own quest if you get too frustrated :P

To the moon, Alice.... to the moon!

notaurious · May 2013

voidgift wrote: »

I died to the first two assassins, but I guess I didn't play that one very well. I beat them the second time. I did struggle a bit with two assassins. Had to wait for a long time to get my health up after each encounter.

I think I might have pulled encounter 5 and 6 at the same time? I think I died to five assassins the last time, or maybe it was just three plus some mobs?

It was about when I entered the room. I don't think I went too fast, but I might have. I believe I was careful after the difficult start.

I ran 47 GWF with basic healer comp.

I will admit I have not tested my instance with all the classes, all the levels. That could be the mark of a bad author, and if so, I am sorry. Please do be aware that I did try to set up harder fights with pillars, halls, other places you could run to kite and what not. That may not be how people like to play, and if so, I will certainly have to reconsider my strategy. I will try this out with other toons soon to see where it needs correcting. Thank you for your feedback!

notaurious · May 2013

kelvedon wrote: »

I just completed your quest, Notaurious, and as I said in my in quest feedback, it's one of the better quests I've done to date. By the way, I ran the quest on my low level test account - Kelv4, not this account. This quest is long, but it's really, really worth while doing. It may not be everyone's idea of a great quest (due to its length), but I enjoyed it immensely. A lot of work and creativity has gone into this quest and I encourage everyone who likes a great adventure, with a different twist and turn around every corner, to do this quest. In my opinion, this quest is what Neverwinter is all about - lots of fun (not just getting to level cap in 5 minutes). I'll certainly run any more quests you author.

By the way, if you've got time to run thru my quest, it would be appreciated. Details in my sig.

Cheers

I will check this thread for these returns tonight after work. I can do a few before I work on Sunday

I will do what I can to get this back to you before then.

Thank you for your review.

kamaliicious · May 2013

notaurious wrote: »

I will admit I have not tested my instance with all the classes, all the levels. That could be the mark of a bad author, and if so, I am sorry. Please do be aware that I did try to set up harder fights with pillars, halls, other places you could run to kite and what not. That may not be how people like to play, and if so, I will certainly have to reconsider my strategy. I will try this out with other toons soon to see where it needs correcting. Thank you for your feedback!

This is not your fault so much as it's Cryptic's fault. The expectation if you place a non stacked "normal" encounter is that's it's normal, not module breaking hard.

notaurious · May 2013

chili1179 wrote: »

I do this >.>

This whole review trading is a pretty <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> poor system as it stands.

THE FORGE is an Author Only guild on Dragon and we're trying to get more quests seen and played as we can, but we're a small group currently and can only do so much.

The foundry community is full of selfish authors, this is to be expected as its a new game with new toys to play with but it will thin out the herd over time and only the serious authors will continue to produce quests and the Ogre Farm style quests, and their authors will diminish and be forgotten.

Patience.

I am usually a patient person. But I am a "fair" and "just" person before that. It just boils me alive to see people being rude like this. I want to play your quests, but I would also like to think that people would like to play mine. If you get into my quest and see one room with 20 mobs, or just a really good example of a really poorly made dungeon, I can certainly understand.

However, I doubt authors who really weren't trying to make a good quest will go to great lengths to advertise their wares on a serious note. However, I am probably very wrong on this philosophy.

Speaking of Ogre Farm... I am really tempted to make one.

On the alt account thing... okay, I can see that now. I really didn't want to do that, but yeah, it makes sense.

notaurious · May 2013

kamaliicious wrote: »

This is not your fault so much as it's Cryptic's fault. The expectation if you place a non stacked "normal" encounter is that's it's normal, not module breaking hard.

I thought assassins were standard encounters. I tried to put hard encounters solely on their own. Grrr, so much to consider with these things.

slaidz · May 2013

I think as time goes on people continue to suffer from this and it drives them away from reviewing. After someone's reviewed like twenty quests and has only gotten two reviews I doubt they'll continue to review quests. They'll be in the same boat you are.

However, people have to keep going with trading reviews. If they stop then no one's playing our quests.

notaurious · May 2013

slaidz wrote: »

I think as time goes on people continue to suffer from this and it drives them away from reviewing. After someone's reviewed like twenty quests and has only gotten two reviews I doubt they'll continue to review quests. They'll be in the same boat you are.

However, people have to keep going with trading reviews. If they stop then no one's playing our quests.

Fortunately, I am one of those people who will try to find a solution to the problem. I will not give up even when it seems I should. My ultimate request here is that there is some means to credit those in the community who are trying to make a good community, while letting the bad apples be seen as (not bad apples, but) "unproductive." If you want me to play your quest for review, just prove that you are a person of honor. Better yet, devs should create a system that validates this.

This is my opinion, and I know it's not a big problem for devs.... but people like me are only playing this game right now for the foundry aspect. If they want to keep me playing, then they should do something to encourage it. While I get a lot out of making my own quests regardless of reviews, I am not spending 100 hours to make a dungeon just for the sake of doing it. Just as they didn't spend 100s of thousands of hours making this game for the sake of doing it, either.

saerrael · May 2013

I'm afraid I did not complete your quest. More due to how hard the combat is for a lvl 45 Cleric then anything else.
My biggest problems would have been the maze (not enough room to evade) and the summoners in the first room inside the dream.

As I thus did not review in-game, I'll not post my own quest for you. Seems only fair.

almostcool · May 2013

I believe you're the same guy who complained about someone else not trying your quest when you tried theirs, even though said person had a monumental list of quests to try and you were no where near the front. You talk about bad apples but you contribute to the negativity.

br0dyman · May 2013

Playing through now.

The bit where you find the key, I'm not too much of a fan of it. It may just be me, so take it with a grain of salt, but I hate wandering aimlessly in a task. Maybe something to lead me near the area, and then I find it would be nice.

Your arias fight, when you kill the hulking dude and his minions, give the player a brake for a second, maybe if its interact or talk. You have no time to heal, or figure out what to do before you're immediately smashed. I normally enjoy hard encounters, but thought it was too sudden, because of the skillset the arias dude has.

Not sure if this intentional, but your ambient stuff up top that is fighting each other. One of them has a cone and it hits the ground where the player is. Not sure if that's on purpose, just causes confusion.

Not all fights have to be hard ones. Let the player feel like a bad ***.

Getting no feedback, aside from kill the souls is kinda frustrating / annoying. I am gonna be your majority, I don't read all text, sadly that's the case in these type of games. Don't make it easy, but it's long.

Killing Arias 1000000000 times was super frustrating. I get you want to show that there's different forms, but over and over was kinda rough.

I think most people don't review it because of the time. They see average duration 45 minutes and they say, oh, nope. I honestly felt fatigued by the end of it. I was super tired and ready to be done. Also, I moved when the review screen went up, which dropped the review screen, so I didn't even get to review it... sjhdjashdjashdjhsadjh. Is there anyway to review a quest you've played?

With the bad, I give you the good. I enjoyed the massive depth the story and levels you had. It felt epic in scale, and as someone who has put one together on a smaller scale. it's impressive.

You spent a good amount of time on detail of characters and world. It made you want to go to the next area, so that was nice.

A lot of the combat fights were fun and interesting. Like I was saying before, I just felt fatigued by the end.

drakesigar · May 2013

The first rule of review trading is you should only expect to get back half of what you put in.

notaurious · May 2013

saerrael wrote: »

I'm afraid I did not complete your quest. More due to how hard the combat is for a lvl 45 Cleric then anything else.
My biggest problems would have been the maze (not enough room to evade) and the summoners in the first room inside the dream.

As I thus did not review in-game, I'll not post my own quest for you. Seems only fair.

Feel free. You tried and advised me where you had an issue. I am unsure how/if I can resolve it. It seems that some classes can handle content much better than others. Clerics keep coming up as the class least likely to get through tight spots. If one balances their quest for all classes, it stands to reason that the quest could be boringly quite easy for some/most other classes.

This is something, again, I am unsure if I have the right grasp on or can avoid. I will still be happy to review your quest.

notaurious · May 2013

kelvedon wrote: »

I just completed your quest, Notaurious, and as I said in my in quest feedback, it's one of the better quests I've done to date. By the way, I ran the quest on my low level test account - Kelv4, not this account. This quest is long, but it's really, really worth while doing. It may not be everyone's idea of a great quest (due to its length), but I enjoyed it immensely. A lot of work and creativity has gone into this quest and I encourage everyone who likes a great adventure, with a different twist and turn around every corner, to do this quest. In my opinion, this quest is what Neverwinter is all about - lots of fun (not just getting to level cap in 5 minutes). I'll certainly run any more quests you author.

By the way, if you've got time to run thru my quest, it would be appreciated. Details in my sig.

Cheers

Review of your quest (for lack of better place to put it):

1) I would have the girl offer a return dialogue option such that if player goes through the spiel and decides to "not do quest" to see what happens (as I did), a dialogue option appears when they revisit her that will take them back to the end of that particular thread.

2) It's probably the best that could be done with the given resources, but the "blue tower" looked really tiny :P

3) LOL @ Tower Receptionist. Thought of that chick from office space for some reason.

4) LOL @ ogre named Princess.

4 Stars (4.25 actual). I only docked you because the story was fairly straight-forward, not too deep. That may well have been intended, so my rating is slanted with bias. Overall good dungeon design. I never really had any struggles. I would certainly like to see some harder encounters, but that is also a me thing.

saerrael · May 2013

notaurious wrote: »

Feel free. You tried and advised me where you had an issue. I am unsure how/if I can resolve it. It seems that some classes can handle content much better than others. Clerics keep coming up as the class least likely to get through tight spots. If one balances their quest for all classes, it stands to reason that the quest could be boringly quite easy for some/most other classes.

This is something, again, I am unsure if I have the right grasp on or can avoid. I will still be happy to review your quest.

Maybe an idea to add it to your quest's OOC notes that clerics may have a hard time soloing? (Pretty sure it's just a dps thing.)

And my code would be NW-DJS69CYZ9
It's a simple quest and the epilogue to my campaign, so not a lot of story.

coanunn · May 2013

I'll be blunt. I posted a review trade post. About a third of the people who posted asking to trade have not reviewed my quest now several days later. I have to take the time to run theirs, update mine based on feedback, send thank you notes, reply to questions and all of that comes out of the little time I get to spend with the game. I spend more time in game than most players mind you! If I post up a review trade thread and you comment into it, it costs you 30 minutes to run my quest. It costs me 30 minutes for every person who posts to that thread to run theirs not to mention everything else I listed above. For every person who comments in my thread.

I'm sorry if you feel I didn't get to you in a timely manner. I'm sorry if my life got in the way of me reviewing your quest. There are worse things in the world than having someone fail to hold up their end of a review trade, and in the future when they post again asking for a trade you have the freedom to not just avoid doing it but warn others away if you are this upset about it.

kelvedon · May 2013

notaurious wrote: »

Review of your quest (for lack of better place to put it):

1) I would have the girl offer a return dialogue option such that if player goes through the spiel and decides to "not do quest" to see what happens (as I did), a dialogue option appears when they revisit her that will take them back to the end of that particular thread.

2) It's probably the best that could be done with the given resources, but the "blue tower" looked really tiny :P

3) LOL @ Tower Receptionist. Thought of that chick from office space for some reason.

4) LOL @ ogre named Princess.

4 Stars (4.25 actual). I only docked you because the story was fairly straight-forward, not too deep. That may well have been intended, so my rating is slanted with bias. Overall good dungeon design. I never really had any struggles. I would certainly like to see some harder encounters, but that is also a me thing.

Thanks for the review.
1) Good point, I'll look at that
2) It's the tardis

Quest depth: This was my first quest and I was really working out how to use the Foundry. Now I have a better handle on that and now I've played quite a few other author's quests I have a better idea of what would be a reasonable quest depth.

Encounter difficulty: I have actually scaled the difficulty down quite a bit due to the desire to make it playable by high level characters. It would be great if Foundry quests scaled better. In the future, I will look at putting in options for the player to scale the quest himself.

Thanka again

Just venting

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