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.
There was only one dead body placed and the clue was given. I figured that would be pretty straight-forward. I even moved the body from its original location. Not sure on this point.
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.
If I have more people comment about this, then I will certainly be willing to change that. I tried that fight out and found the first encounter to be the hard one, with the 2nd one being easier due to the nature of the trash vs. the harder mob in the Arias costume. Will certainly keep this in mind.
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 intentional. That set is not fully enclosed as I did not figure there'd be an issue there. I will enclose them to see if it resolves it. Thanks!
Not all fights have to be hard ones. Let the player feel like a bad ***.
Fair enough. I wasn't sure how many of them were effectively hard. I still am not sure. That word seems to vary between players and classes. Something to investigate.
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.
This, sadly, is how that design worked. By me allowing you to choose how to proceed, I was forced to not place objectives within that set of objectives. The NPC tells you to take the portals and the events within the portals have dialogue right up front that guides the encounters. It is disclaimed that most information can be skipped, but that reading at parts is required. I will now add yellow dialogue for each component that says effectively "I couldn't care less about all of this stuff, just tell me what to do" and will give brief info for players of that style.
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.
She is integral to my story, ergo why she shows up so much. You even get to play alongside her if you recall. While I am apt to see where you are coming from, it is just a skin. I could change the mob names and you wouldn't know the difference, especially if you are skimming text... I have gotten this comment before. I am just not sure how or even if to approach this issue any differently.
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?
Fair enough. Average was 37 last I checked. I can see where that is a bit long and might consider splitting the quest. Bear in mind that means it ends at the first Arias encounter. Doing it that way got a lot of feedback that said the quest felt cut too short. This is a strange place to be. Not sure what to do.
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.
Thank you for the detailed feedback and pointing out some of the good. Hopefully I can find a happy balance for all points with this quest because I did spend a lot of time on it, and I did try to make it an enjoyable/challenging encounter. I totally get being burnt out with too much for too long. I run into that a lot when reviewing quests. It is really difficult to author a good quest, I think. I hope I am on that path, but I also understand that "good quest" is extremely subjective as well.
EDIT: Forgot to include, I did not see any info leading to your quest, should you have one you'd like reviewed. Please let me know.
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Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
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.
There are exceptions to any given rant. Some people are extremely busy, which can be obvious or no. Some people try to plan out a means of dealing with an action plan, some not. Communication is usually key. There are those who better fit the confines of this rant because they posted R4R, had few if any replies, were fully willing to accept their review and comment about it, and do nothing outside of that. It is a mentality that is being addressed here, not a particular individual.
I certainly can be labeled guilty of jumping guns. This may be one of those cases, and for that I do apologize. For me, knowing that I might be too busy to handle something means that I communicate ETA as best I can. It means that I try to display my action plan so people know what to expect. It means I disclaim limits where they may exist. For those that do it, I generally don't think twice about it.
What you say is true, but I am also running other people's quests and offering detailed reviews. It takes me twice as long to run most quests because I am scoping out as many details as I can so I can offer a useful review. Most of my reviews (not all) have a lot of thought behind them.
My apologies if my actions have in any way implicated you into this. I certainly am not without fault in some of my actions.
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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.
Please see above post regarding this. In addition, I fully accept your point. It does not negate the value of my argument, which seems to be your intent with your reply. However, I am at fault for having expectations above reasonable in some instances. Authors who are good with communication (which I, as a human, can easily overlook) usually have a list-in-progress and do something to let a reviewer know they aren't forgetting about them. I guess sometimes people just need that reassurance. Petty as it may be.
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boydzinjMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
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...
That would be unrealistic, since that would take either allot of real life money to give you several character slots. 60x5 = 300 Characters and if one leveled... you would need to tweak it. Even if your quest is only 15 minutes... that would also mean 4500 minutes of testing or 75 hours of testing... or 3.125 days of non stop testing (with no sleep).
Even if you had some characters at certain bench marks... it would be unrealistic as well.
So the real problem becomes how do you test it reasonably well?
Know thy classes. Know thy mobs.
Clerics and Guardians will have a much harder time killing encounters than Rogues and Control Wizards. Great Weapon Fighters can handle themselves very well against hordes of weak mobs but not so much against a few harder mobs. Some mobs and encounters become tougher at 30. There are a few ways to approach this. You could ask friends and guild mates to help you test it. However, several people are hitting 60 and staying at 60... and some foundry's are noticing tier 2 people calling them too easy.
I wish I had a simple answer for you. My only suggestion is to test it and go the way you want it. Do not cater to everyone, because that is mot possible. If a few trust worthy people say a specific thing (good or bad) trust them and listen to only those few that you can count on and trust. Otherwise, you will find yourself changing your foundry for no good reasons other than what a random person thinks and the next random person may give you a different or opposite advice. Most non Foundry Makers have no idea how the foundry works or how to give good advice to us Foundry creators.... so take them with a grain of salt and go with your instinct.
What I will give as an advice is this:
Try never to stack Hard Encounters unless you tell people upfront AND if you can provide a mechanism that can kill or despawn (make disappear) about half your mobs. That way, if someone thinks it is too hard - they can change the number of mobs they face. A crappy geared level 60 will have a harder time than a tier 2 geared level 60 versus someone who is level 15 who has no gear but thinks its too easy.
Boss encounters can be anti-climatic unless you are sneaky about it and provide allot of subterfuge and smoke and mirrors to trick the player... alternatively... guards and minions can help that - but still make the main boss appear weak.
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br0dymanMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
Ahh, whoops. Here you go. Should take about 20 minutes.
That would be unrealistic, since that would take either allot of real life money to give you several character slots. 60x5 = 300 Characters and if one leveled... you would need to tweak it. Even if your quest is only 15 minutes... that would also mean 4500 minutes of testing or 75 hours of testing... or 3.125 days of non stop testing (with no sleep).
Even if you had some characters at certain bench marks... it would be unrealistic as well.
So the real problem becomes how do you test it reasonably well?
Know thy classes. Know thy mobs.
Clerics and Guardians will have a much harder time killing encounters than Rogues and Control Wizards. Great Weapon Fighters can handle themselves very well against hordes of weak mobs but not so much against a few harder mobs. Some mobs and encounters become tougher at 30. There are a few ways to approach this. You could ask friends and guild mates to help you test it. However, several people are hitting 60 and staying at 60... and some foundry's are noticing tier 2 people calling them too easy.
I wish I had a simple answer for you. My only suggestion is to test it and go the way you want it. Do not cater to everyone, because that is mot possible. If a few trust worthy people say a specific thing (good or bad) trust them and listen to only those few that you can count on and trust. Otherwise, you will find yourself changing your foundry for no good reasons other than what a random person thinks and the next random person may give you a different or opposite advice. Most non Foundry Makers have no idea how the foundry works or how to give good advice to us Foundry creators.... so take them with a grain of salt and go with your instinct.
What I will give as an advice is this:
Try never to stack Hard Encounters unless you tell people upfront AND if you can provide a mechanism that can kill or despawn (make disappear) about half your mobs. That way, if someone thinks it is too hard - they can change the number of mobs they face. A crappy geared level 60 will have a harder time than a tier 2 geared level 60 versus someone who is level 15 who has no gear but thinks its too easy.
Boss encounters can be anti-climatic unless you are sneaky about it and provide allot of subterfuge and smoke and mirrors to trick the player... alternatively... guards and minions can help that - but still make the main boss appear weak.
We do technically have the ability to engineer all (or most, I am guessing not the pay-for classes) classes at 6ish level ranges. Maybe the way to approach this is to look at level 50 for all classes. I certainly do not know much about the other classes, so there will be a learning curve, but that might well remedy a lot.
Until I understand what is hard/not hard to whom, it will be tricky to know when to install such devices. But once I do have that info down, I will better plan (and perhaps revise this quest) those options in, including sliding scale. Perhaps something else that could be done is to try and identify what level range a quest works best for. There's no reason that a quest should be made exclusively for a level 60. Though, most people will eventually be at that level. If anything, it sounds like the developers need to add tools to allow us to create boss-type encounters, and they need to do a better job of scaling content so it is proportionate at any level. Ideals that are probably way more difficult than my comment may suggest.
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boydzinjMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
We do technically have the ability to engineer all (or most, I am guessing not the pay-for classes) classes at 6ish level ranges. Maybe the way to approach this is to look at level 50 for all classes.
When you respec, do you get the gear for that level?
Personally, play it with the class you play with and go from there. Knowing that Clerics and Guardians that solo have a harder time killing encounters versus Rogues and Control Wizards. Likewise, a Great Weapon Fighter can deal better damage and easily kill standard to easy minions in close quarters. Let me know how to balance an encounter for a level 15 rogue versus a level 30 rogue versus level 60 t2 rogue then balance it for a cleric with the same levels...
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.
1) "Once I was an adventurer like yourself" (until I took an arrow to the knee)... random thought, not related to review.
2) I like the design from the first encounter room. A little rough, but different.
3) You have a couple of places where archers are right around the corner. Not super effective use of ranged mobs. I would advise putting them in strategic places that make them a nuisance and reserve sharp turns for melee (or mixed) types.
4) good placement of the floor trap on the archers. Totally missed it. Though traps are kind of meh.
Overall a decent hack/slash. You do seem to have a story to spread out and define. I'd like to see you explore that more. There is room for some more challenging encounters. All-in-all, good design in map, never boring, even some opportunity to have to pull mobs carefully to avoid getting railroaded. 4 stars in-game, 4.25 actual. Would prefer more detail in story and some challenges with pulls. Good start!
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Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
At first, your short code read to me as DJ STANKY. Don't ask me why. Just random thought.
1) Interesting placement with spiders in water. Tricky.
2) Nice work with the side-rooms. Overall, I like your sewer. Generally, I dislike them.
3) Good placement of mobs around corners
4) You lose the echo/sewer sound for characters in the room just south of the 2nd clear threat room
5) I would probably take the waypoint out of "find talon's hideout" so that players might have to engage all mobs in that room.
5a) I liked the look of Talon.
6) Interesting twist at the end, although it is "too convenient" and very short in explanation. Might flesh that out a bit more
7) Not sure I understood why I had to go to sewer to get to the kidnappers, but then came back into the house after I saved the wife. I am guessing that has something to do with the husband arranging the kidnapping.
8) Ending story was very abrupt on a "well that escalated quickly" kind of way. I would flesh that out more so it feels more like a story and less of a convenient ending.
Hmm. I had the same problem. I looted the chest and it did not give me a review option...?? Wait, after I came here to report this (tabbed windows), I went back to game and the review option appeared. Not sure if that triggered it or if it was delayed. And then it went away again when I came back to type that... GRRRR... glitchy game.
in-game 5 Stars
Actual 4.5 stars
You did well with layout and placement. Some fights were a little tricky, but not too bad. Not a 5 because story elements felt rushed and broke the immersion a bit.
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saerraelMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
1) "Once I was an adventurer like yourself" (until I took an arrow to the knee)... random thought, not related to review.
2) I like the design from the first encounter room. A little rough, but different.
3) You have a couple of places where archers are right around the corner. Not super effective use of ranged mobs. I would advise putting them in strategic places that make them a nuisance and reserve sharp turns for melee (or mixed) types.
4) good placement of the floor trap on the archers. Totally missed it. Though traps are kind of meh.
Overall a decent hack/slash. You do seem to have a story to spread out and define. I'd like to see you explore that more. There is room for some more challenging encounters. All-in-all, good design in map, never boring, even some opportunity to have to pull mobs carefully to avoid getting railroaded. 4 stars in-game, 4.25 actual. Would prefer more detail in story and some challenges with pulls. Good start!
1. It actually came from there, yes, but slightly altered due to Copyright.
2. Thank you.
3. That is a good point. (They also tend to end up in walls now and then. But nothing I did changed that, they just run there and hide, I suppose.)
4. Thank you. And, yes, they are kinda meh (unless they bug out and root you for ever...), but it's more the thought of the trap than the trap itself. I hope traps will get looked at.
And, nope, more story won't be given in that part. *grins* It's all very vague and thin and I'm still waiting for someone to say '...that Lord is simply nuts, nothing more.'
The rest of the story will be addressed in coming quests.
I also designed it with higher level players in mind. I just got to level 50 on my cleric, for one, and I do like to be able to review my own quests life *laughs* So, yes, pulls should be 'easy' and encounters spaced at least somewhat so you don't pull 2-3 groups on accident.
Some suggestions and feedback, since I was tired and forgot to not move at the end when the review window came up.
As a note, this is running through with a level 60 CW, but the feedback about combat issues are more universal as some issues (AE, lack of crowd control) are not CW issues.
When you start, there's a teleport that's not in line of sight in one of your pillars.
The section of the quest that is all enclosed areas, triggered spawns (with at least one that can be spawned infinitely -- the reskinned Shadar-kai witches) and traps needs an improvement in design. Sure, having the respawn point before it is good, but you need to include one AFTER it as well. At level 60, some of the encounters can easily hit for 11k+ damage if you don't dodge in time or have to dodge too many things. Having to run back through the section again because of a mis-timed dodge and re-fighting of the re-skinned Shadar-kai witches each run in the really skinny corridors is highly likely to make some people give up out of sheer annoyance. And if there's no room to dodge, people can get frustrated. Also, stacking two Deathlock Wights on the required path can easily cause things to spawn out of control if the player going in has bad AE options that are on cooldown. In addition, some of the encounters your selected and re-skinned use incredibly irritating AEs. Shadar-kai witches teleport around and can teleport where you can't see them and then get hit by their purple daze cloud that comes from nowhere (because of the limited viewing area).
When the wolf is explaining things to you in the caves, you typo'd emotion by dropping an o (I forgot which one) if that bothers you.
Some suggestions and feedback, since I was tired and forgot to not move at the end when the review window came up.
As a note, this is running through with a level 60 CW, but the feedback about combat issues are more universal as some issues (AE, lack of crowd control) are not CW issues.
When you start, there's a teleport that's not in line of sight in one of your pillars.
The section of the quest that is all enclosed areas, triggered spawns (with at least one that can be spawned infinitely -- the reskinned Shadar-kai witches) and traps needs an improvement in design. Sure, having the respawn point before it is good, but you need to include one AFTER it as well. At level 60, some of the encounters can easily hit for 11k+ damage if you don't dodge in time or have to dodge too many things. Having to run back through the section again because of a mis-timed dodge and re-fighting of the re-skinned Shadar-kai witches each run in the really skinny corridors is highly likely to make some people give up out of sheer annoyance. And if there's no room to dodge, people can get frustrated. Also, stacking two Deathlock Wights on the required path can easily cause things to spawn out of control if the player going in has bad AE options that are on cooldown. In addition, some of the encounters your selected and re-skinned use incredibly irritating AEs. Shadar-kai witches teleport around and can teleport where you can't see them and then get hit by their purple daze cloud that comes from nowhere (because of the limited viewing area).
When the wolf is explaining things to you in the caves, you typo'd emotion by dropping an o (I forgot which one) if that bothers you.
The portal you speak of is the portal that links to the end boss of that map. I could not find a way to add said portal without adding a room and a bunch of other things so I opted for the pillars to be there (and subsequently move) until you reached the end of that map so you did not have to run back through the dungeon. I can revise that a little better should it prove an issue.
Not sure about things spawning infinitely. The quest advances if you trigger the mark, which I would think most people would avoid doing until X encounter is done. The next encounter triggers with the previous encounter has been defeated.
I am confused about what you are talking about the first few sentences. You start off in the 2nd map (I presume because that is the all enclosed area, unless you are referring to the maze) and then make points of other areas. I will check where there are 2 wights, I meant for there to only be 1 summoning wight and may have overlooked this issue in my testing (though I do recall getting a lot of adds and wondering what happened there).
I will gladly change the witch encounter out. It does play a little weird as I recall. I can put easier melee in the fights in the corridors, which was how I had been trying to design that overall (with the exception of the wrong-way spawned ice elemental (troll) and the reskinned ogre).
I appreciate typo feedback. As you know, there is a ton of dialogue and it can be hard to catch all the things.
Thanks for checking it out. Please advise me of a quest you'd like reviewed, if any exists.
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Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
I am referring entirely to the maze in that entire paragraph, yes. The infinite respawning witches are in the maze. I only noticed it because I died to boulder throws in the encounter after the maze a couple of times and had to run back -- if I wasn't a CW, the witches would have really annoyed me running back. If you're looking for a melee equivalent, maybe re-skin Deathpledged Gnolls? They do have the annoying charging attack, but the circle should be small enough to get off of without it feeling unavoidable.
The troll was annoying, but he was close enough to the maze entrance that I could drag him to the entrance for room to dodge his AEs.
I do have a (private) foundry quest and it is an eternal WIP, but I'll PM you the code if you wish to take a look. I won't require a review since I fudged at the end.
I am referring entirely to the maze in that entire paragraph, yes. The infinite respawning witches are in the maze. I only noticed it because I died to boulder throws in the encounter after the maze a couple of times and had to run back -- if I wasn't a CW, the witches would have really annoyed me running back. If you're looking for a melee equivalent, maybe re-skin Deathpledged Gnolls? They do have the annoying charging attack, but the circle should be small enough to get off of without it feeling unavoidable.
The troll was annoying, but he was close enough to the maze entrance that I could drag him to the entrance for room to dodge his AEs.
I do have a (private) foundry quest and it is an eternal WIP, but I'll PM you the code if you wish to take a look. I won't require a review since I fudged at the end.
Troll was at least optional. He only spawns if you go the wrong way. I will check out other options and dont mind reviewing yours.
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Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
Comments
There was only one dead body placed and the clue was given. I figured that would be pretty straight-forward. I even moved the body from its original location. Not sure on this point.
If I have more people comment about this, then I will certainly be willing to change that. I tried that fight out and found the first encounter to be the hard one, with the 2nd one being easier due to the nature of the trash vs. the harder mob in the Arias costume. Will certainly keep this in mind.
Not intentional. That set is not fully enclosed as I did not figure there'd be an issue there. I will enclose them to see if it resolves it. Thanks!
Fair enough. I wasn't sure how many of them were effectively hard. I still am not sure. That word seems to vary between players and classes. Something to investigate.
This, sadly, is how that design worked. By me allowing you to choose how to proceed, I was forced to not place objectives within that set of objectives. The NPC tells you to take the portals and the events within the portals have dialogue right up front that guides the encounters. It is disclaimed that most information can be skipped, but that reading at parts is required. I will now add yellow dialogue for each component that says effectively "I couldn't care less about all of this stuff, just tell me what to do" and will give brief info for players of that style.
She is integral to my story, ergo why she shows up so much. You even get to play alongside her if you recall. While I am apt to see where you are coming from, it is just a skin. I could change the mob names and you wouldn't know the difference, especially if you are skimming text... I have gotten this comment before. I am just not sure how or even if to approach this issue any differently.
Fair enough. Average was 37 last I checked. I can see where that is a bit long and might consider splitting the quest. Bear in mind that means it ends at the first Arias encounter. Doing it that way got a lot of feedback that said the quest felt cut too short. This is a strange place to be. Not sure what to do.
Thank you for the detailed feedback and pointing out some of the good. Hopefully I can find a happy balance for all points with this quest because I did spend a lot of time on it, and I did try to make it an enjoyable/challenging encounter. I totally get being burnt out with too much for too long. I run into that a lot when reviewing quests. It is really difficult to author a good quest, I think. I hope I am on that path, but I also understand that "good quest" is extremely subjective as well.
EDIT: Forgot to include, I did not see any info leading to your quest, should you have one you'd like reviewed. Please let me know.
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
You win. I should have seen that coming.
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
There are exceptions to any given rant. Some people are extremely busy, which can be obvious or no. Some people try to plan out a means of dealing with an action plan, some not. Communication is usually key. There are those who better fit the confines of this rant because they posted R4R, had few if any replies, were fully willing to accept their review and comment about it, and do nothing outside of that. It is a mentality that is being addressed here, not a particular individual.
I certainly can be labeled guilty of jumping guns. This may be one of those cases, and for that I do apologize. For me, knowing that I might be too busy to handle something means that I communicate ETA as best I can. It means that I try to display my action plan so people know what to expect. It means I disclaim limits where they may exist. For those that do it, I generally don't think twice about it.
What you say is true, but I am also running other people's quests and offering detailed reviews. It takes me twice as long to run most quests because I am scoping out as many details as I can so I can offer a useful review. Most of my reviews (not all) have a lot of thought behind them.
My apologies if my actions have in any way implicated you into this. I certainly am not without fault in some of my actions.
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
Please see above post regarding this. In addition, I fully accept your point. It does not negate the value of my argument, which seems to be your intent with your reply. However, I am at fault for having expectations above reasonable in some instances. Authors who are good with communication (which I, as a human, can easily overlook) usually have a list-in-progress and do something to let a reviewer know they aren't forgetting about them. I guess sometimes people just need that reassurance. Petty as it may be.
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
That would be unrealistic, since that would take either allot of real life money to give you several character slots. 60x5 = 300 Characters and if one leveled... you would need to tweak it. Even if your quest is only 15 minutes... that would also mean 4500 minutes of testing or 75 hours of testing... or 3.125 days of non stop testing (with no sleep).
Even if you had some characters at certain bench marks... it would be unrealistic as well.
So the real problem becomes how do you test it reasonably well?
Know thy classes. Know thy mobs.
Clerics and Guardians will have a much harder time killing encounters than Rogues and Control Wizards. Great Weapon Fighters can handle themselves very well against hordes of weak mobs but not so much against a few harder mobs. Some mobs and encounters become tougher at 30. There are a few ways to approach this. You could ask friends and guild mates to help you test it. However, several people are hitting 60 and staying at 60... and some foundry's are noticing tier 2 people calling them too easy.
I wish I had a simple answer for you. My only suggestion is to test it and go the way you want it. Do not cater to everyone, because that is mot possible. If a few trust worthy people say a specific thing (good or bad) trust them and listen to only those few that you can count on and trust. Otherwise, you will find yourself changing your foundry for no good reasons other than what a random person thinks and the next random person may give you a different or opposite advice. Most non Foundry Makers have no idea how the foundry works or how to give good advice to us Foundry creators.... so take them with a grain of salt and go with your instinct.
What I will give as an advice is this:
Try never to stack Hard Encounters unless you tell people upfront AND if you can provide a mechanism that can kill or despawn (make disappear) about half your mobs. That way, if someone thinks it is too hard - they can change the number of mobs they face. A crappy geared level 60 will have a harder time than a tier 2 geared level 60 versus someone who is level 15 who has no gear but thinks its too easy.
Boss encounters can be anti-climatic unless you are sneaky about it and provide allot of subterfuge and smoke and mirrors to trick the player... alternatively... guards and minions can help that - but still make the main boss appear weak.
Misplaced Elf
@Br0dyman
NW-DJNTSJAKY
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?277941-Misplaced-Elf
We do technically have the ability to engineer all (or most, I am guessing not the pay-for classes) classes at 6ish level ranges. Maybe the way to approach this is to look at level 50 for all classes. I certainly do not know much about the other classes, so there will be a learning curve, but that might well remedy a lot.
Until I understand what is hard/not hard to whom, it will be tricky to know when to install such devices. But once I do have that info down, I will better plan (and perhaps revise this quest) those options in, including sliding scale. Perhaps something else that could be done is to try and identify what level range a quest works best for. There's no reason that a quest should be made exclusively for a level 60. Though, most people will eventually be at that level. If anything, it sounds like the developers need to add tools to allow us to create boss-type encounters, and they need to do a better job of scaling content so it is proportionate at any level. Ideals that are probably way more difficult than my comment may suggest.
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
When you respec, do you get the gear for that level?
Personally, play it with the class you play with and go from there. Knowing that Clerics and Guardians that solo have a harder time killing encounters versus Rogues and Control Wizards. Likewise, a Great Weapon Fighter can deal better damage and easily kill standard to easy minions in close quarters. Let me know how to balance an encounter for a level 15 rogue versus a level 30 rogue versus level 60 t2 rogue then balance it for a cleric with the same levels...
1) "Once I was an adventurer like yourself" (until I took an arrow to the knee)... random thought, not related to review.
2) I like the design from the first encounter room. A little rough, but different.
3) You have a couple of places where archers are right around the corner. Not super effective use of ranged mobs. I would advise putting them in strategic places that make them a nuisance and reserve sharp turns for melee (or mixed) types.
4) good placement of the floor trap on the archers. Totally missed it. Though traps are kind of meh.
Overall a decent hack/slash. You do seem to have a story to spread out and define. I'd like to see you explore that more. There is room for some more challenging encounters. All-in-all, good design in map, never boring, even some opportunity to have to pull mobs carefully to avoid getting railroaded. 4 stars in-game, 4.25 actual. Would prefer more detail in story and some challenges with pulls. Good start!
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
At first, your short code read to me as DJ STANKY. Don't ask me why. Just random thought.
1) Interesting placement with spiders in water. Tricky.
2) Nice work with the side-rooms. Overall, I like your sewer. Generally, I dislike them.
3) Good placement of mobs around corners
4) You lose the echo/sewer sound for characters in the room just south of the 2nd clear threat room
5) I would probably take the waypoint out of "find talon's hideout" so that players might have to engage all mobs in that room.
5a) I liked the look of Talon.
6) Interesting twist at the end, although it is "too convenient" and very short in explanation. Might flesh that out a bit more
7) Not sure I understood why I had to go to sewer to get to the kidnappers, but then came back into the house after I saved the wife. I am guessing that has something to do with the husband arranging the kidnapping.
8) Ending story was very abrupt on a "well that escalated quickly" kind of way. I would flesh that out more so it feels more like a story and less of a convenient ending.
Hmm. I had the same problem. I looted the chest and it did not give me a review option...?? Wait, after I came here to report this (tabbed windows), I went back to game and the review option appeared. Not sure if that triggered it or if it was delayed. And then it went away again when I came back to type that... GRRRR... glitchy game.
in-game 5 Stars
Actual 4.5 stars
You did well with layout and placement. Some fights were a little tricky, but not too bad. Not a 5 because story elements felt rushed and broke the immersion a bit.
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
1. It actually came from there, yes, but slightly altered due to Copyright.
2. Thank you.
3. That is a good point. (They also tend to end up in walls now and then. But nothing I did changed that, they just run there and hide, I suppose.)
4. Thank you. And, yes, they are kinda meh (unless they bug out and root you for ever...), but it's more the thought of the trap than the trap itself. I hope traps will get looked at.
And, nope, more story won't be given in that part. *grins* It's all very vague and thin and I'm still waiting for someone to say '...that Lord is simply nuts, nothing more.'
The rest of the story will be addressed in coming quests.
I also designed it with higher level players in mind. I just got to level 50 on my cleric, for one, and I do like to be able to review my own quests life *laughs* So, yes, pulls should be 'easy' and encounters spaced at least somewhat so you don't pull 2-3 groups on accident.
Thank you for the review!
[SIGPIC]http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/image.php?type=sigpic&userid=98570189&dateline=1372572330[/SIGPIC]
NW-DCJV53UTU
[Open for play, link to spotlight thread]
As a note, this is running through with a level 60 CW, but the feedback about combat issues are more universal as some issues (AE, lack of crowd control) are not CW issues.
When you start, there's a teleport that's not in line of sight in one of your pillars.
The section of the quest that is all enclosed areas, triggered spawns (with at least one that can be spawned infinitely -- the reskinned Shadar-kai witches) and traps needs an improvement in design. Sure, having the respawn point before it is good, but you need to include one AFTER it as well. At level 60, some of the encounters can easily hit for 11k+ damage if you don't dodge in time or have to dodge too many things. Having to run back through the section again because of a mis-timed dodge and re-fighting of the re-skinned Shadar-kai witches each run in the really skinny corridors is highly likely to make some people give up out of sheer annoyance. And if there's no room to dodge, people can get frustrated. Also, stacking two Deathlock Wights on the required path can easily cause things to spawn out of control if the player going in has bad AE options that are on cooldown. In addition, some of the encounters your selected and re-skinned use incredibly irritating AEs. Shadar-kai witches teleport around and can teleport where you can't see them and then get hit by their purple daze cloud that comes from nowhere (because of the limited viewing area).
When the wolf is explaining things to you in the caves, you typo'd emotion by dropping an o (I forgot which one) if that bothers you.
The portal you speak of is the portal that links to the end boss of that map. I could not find a way to add said portal without adding a room and a bunch of other things so I opted for the pillars to be there (and subsequently move) until you reached the end of that map so you did not have to run back through the dungeon. I can revise that a little better should it prove an issue.
Not sure about things spawning infinitely. The quest advances if you trigger the mark, which I would think most people would avoid doing until X encounter is done. The next encounter triggers with the previous encounter has been defeated.
I am confused about what you are talking about the first few sentences. You start off in the 2nd map (I presume because that is the all enclosed area, unless you are referring to the maze) and then make points of other areas. I will check where there are 2 wights, I meant for there to only be 1 summoning wight and may have overlooked this issue in my testing (though I do recall getting a lot of adds and wondering what happened there).
I will gladly change the witch encounter out. It does play a little weird as I recall. I can put easier melee in the fights in the corridors, which was how I had been trying to design that overall (with the exception of the wrong-way spawned ice elemental (troll) and the reskinned ogre).
I appreciate typo feedback. As you know, there is a ton of dialogue and it can be hard to catch all the things.
Thanks for checking it out. Please advise me of a quest you'd like reviewed, if any exists.
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
The troll was annoying, but he was close enough to the maze entrance that I could drag him to the entrance for room to dodge his AEs.
I do have a (private) foundry quest and it is an eternal WIP, but I'll PM you the code if you wish to take a look. I won't require a review since I fudged at the end.
Troll was at least optional. He only spawns if you go the wrong way. I will check out other options and dont mind reviewing yours.
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R