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Nobody seems to care about Foundry authors.
wuhsin
Banned Users Posts: 0 Arc User
You can't get a review unless you trade another review for it.
Bad system.
Broken search. To get someone to play they have to write down or c&p a specific short-code.
Bad system.
You can't advertise quests in other forums to normal players who never visit the Foundry board.
Bad system.
You can't advertise quests in the in-game chat without risking a chat-ban.
Bad system.
The Daily Foundry bonus caters to 15-20 minute quests, discouraging people from playing/reviewing/publishing anything much longer or any shorter. 30 minute quests are being written off by people on here as too long. 10 minute ones get written off as too short.
Bad system.
The Foundry's loot nerf basically told all the average players to avoid the Foundry like the plague. Whether or not it's effect on loot was that drastic is irrelevant, what matters is the message sent to the average player.
Bad system.
I could go on. But it's discouraging when my options for sharing my UGC are not nearly as good as they were 10 years ago playing Starcraft Brood War. If I put this much effort into a map back then, I could have a few dozen plays in just an hour or two by hosting games. Don't act like you're content with this system just because the guys with over 10,000 plays on their 15 minute quests say we should be fine with the current situation. I'm tired of seeing everyone act complacent because of some highly contagious social compliance intended to benefit a select few.
Search is broken, the devs aren't doing squat about it. Our sounds have broken, they claimed to have a fix, and didn't implement it because they were too busy handling AH issues. The rules limit us to sharing our quests with only other Foundry authors on here, and only a handful of them are actually reviewing other authors, though just about all of them are in the review trading threads. I don't have time to review a dozen quests, so I'm not gonna promise to in a thread. It's pitiful they expect the Foundry community to cannibalize itself the way they do and everything be okay.
Some of you will come in here and be all like "You just don't want to review other authors!" I shouldn't have to review trade. That is degrading and insulting to me as an artist. That's like saying painters should go buy other painter's works in hope that other painters will buy their work. It's ridiculous. I get the whole doing it for your own enjoyment thing, but I would be better off doing it on pen and paper or with pymapper using actual D&D rules than I am trying to make content for an MMO that I'll lose all rights to. If you want the rights to my characters and stories, give me some tools to SHARE them, Cryptic/PWE. Come on.
Bad system.
Broken search. To get someone to play they have to write down or c&p a specific short-code.
Bad system.
You can't advertise quests in other forums to normal players who never visit the Foundry board.
Bad system.
You can't advertise quests in the in-game chat without risking a chat-ban.
Bad system.
The Daily Foundry bonus caters to 15-20 minute quests, discouraging people from playing/reviewing/publishing anything much longer or any shorter. 30 minute quests are being written off by people on here as too long. 10 minute ones get written off as too short.
Bad system.
The Foundry's loot nerf basically told all the average players to avoid the Foundry like the plague. Whether or not it's effect on loot was that drastic is irrelevant, what matters is the message sent to the average player.
Bad system.
I could go on. But it's discouraging when my options for sharing my UGC are not nearly as good as they were 10 years ago playing Starcraft Brood War. If I put this much effort into a map back then, I could have a few dozen plays in just an hour or two by hosting games. Don't act like you're content with this system just because the guys with over 10,000 plays on their 15 minute quests say we should be fine with the current situation. I'm tired of seeing everyone act complacent because of some highly contagious social compliance intended to benefit a select few.
Search is broken, the devs aren't doing squat about it. Our sounds have broken, they claimed to have a fix, and didn't implement it because they were too busy handling AH issues. The rules limit us to sharing our quests with only other Foundry authors on here, and only a handful of them are actually reviewing other authors, though just about all of them are in the review trading threads. I don't have time to review a dozen quests, so I'm not gonna promise to in a thread. It's pitiful they expect the Foundry community to cannibalize itself the way they do and everything be okay.
Some of you will come in here and be all like "You just don't want to review other authors!" I shouldn't have to review trade. That is degrading and insulting to me as an artist. That's like saying painters should go buy other painter's works in hope that other painters will buy their work. It's ridiculous. I get the whole doing it for your own enjoyment thing, but I would be better off doing it on pen and paper or with pymapper using actual D&D rules than I am trying to make content for an MMO that I'll lose all rights to. If you want the rights to my characters and stories, give me some tools to SHARE them, Cryptic/PWE. Come on.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by wuhsin on
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I agree with most of what you say but this I disagree with. The reason these players dont visit the foundry board much is cause they dont care for the foundry that much. The guy with the 10000 hits on his 15 minute quest is because its only 15 minutes and has plenty of action.
The loot nerf destroyed the foundry it gave the average player no reason to play through someones elven fan fiction.
The "true authors" screamed nerf this the average player said lets not. Things were nerfed people lost interest. "The authors" got their nerf shouldn't there be happiness now?
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
I wouldn't be raging if I could make a couple of posts, get five or six reviews, and go do something else. But in the time I have spent advertising, I could have published two or three more awesome quests, watched some movies/cartoons, took a nap, went out, had some fun... Seriously. If every one of us Foundry authors has to spend days pushing our work on here to get a handful of plays, something needs fixed. There aren't near as many of us as there are average players. We just need a TOOL to get our work to regular players other than Foundry authors. If you make them all look for it with a wonky, lagged up search tool, only the ones at the top from the start are ever going to get noticed.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
But why forfeit my rights to all my work if I don't get any special tools to share it? I can make even better stories and dungeons with notepad and pymapper. Then I can design and sell trading card games, or board games, based on those stories/characters with more success than I have had getting people to play Foundry missions. Seriously. Publishing companies at least give you the tools to find an audience. Most other games with UGC do the same. This one seems totally against that, and it bugs me. I don't think I'm the only artist who finds fulfillment out of sharing their work with others.
See this is one of the reasons I just dont bother publishing they had this problem in STO and haven't fixed it yet people have been saying till they are blue in the face and making foundry missions there can cost ZEN. If the search situation improves then I might publish. If the loot is unnerfed then I might publish ( keep the exp nerf :> ). But this is Cryptic and they go all hell for leather to make sure their playerbase cant have nice things.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
I just want plays/reviews. If people aren't going to enjoy all this work I'm doing, why do it? I'm not painting in my closet because the paint fumes make me happy like that afro dude on TV years ago. I'm a Dungeon Master. I make Dungeons, for other people to explore. I make Quests, for other people to go on. I make Characters, for other people to interact with. Why type all these dialogue trees if no one is going to read them? Granted, I've got a handful of plays, but I could count them all without taking off my socks, and I've been harping on here like crazy for a couple of days just to get them.
2.) The search system for for-review quests is extremely laggy.
3.) I'm glad this rule is in effect. There's enough "review my quest" advertisements here for the entire forum.
4.) People don't like super long quests. Give em what they want if you want your quest to be popular. If you're making a quest for your own entertainment or for a niche group, don't be surprised when it isn't run a gazillion times.
That being said, there should be an AD incentive for running a quest for the first time, and for running a "for review" quest. This would encourage people to try new quests, and to move quests out of "for review" and into the "eligible for rewards" section.
5.) There was no loot nerf, this has been confirmed by the devs. And on a personal note, my own experience confirms this. Foundry quests are still the best place to stock up on runes and enchants, altars, kits, potions and scrolls.
I dont know I think there was a ninja loot nerf. Any foundry mission Ive run only drops greens or whites. What the devs say and what they actually do can be different things. Many authors suspect a ninja loot nerf.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
1. Same here, just about all of mine came from General Discussion, the problem is I can't make threads there just for my quest, and if a thread gets derailed for someone talking to me about my quest they move it. Basically the community manager is hasslling me to keep me from getting the word out about my quests, and it makes me want to just about quit the game.
2. Yes, way too laggy. It's caused me to just restart my comp a few times when I was actually wanting to review other peoples' quests that were in the For Review section.
3. All the daily "Review my quest" posts put together aren't a hundredth as much as what gets posted in General Discussion daily. I see no reason why they should not be allowed there, as it gets way more views, and many players there are interested in playing Foundry missions but not so much in the Foundry board because they aren't authors themselves.
4. Yes, new incentives are necessary, but won't solve the problem alone due to the broken search.
5. Yes, I am aware, but most players THINK there was, and it is devastating to us Foundry authors.
What set it apart is that it is good, very good and word of mouth spread quickly.
Yes there was an xp and loot nerf that has drastically reduced the number of people playing foundry content, but by no means is that the only reason you aren't getting plays. It's all relative, everything you've said and done, the length of the quest you made, your attitude that any suggestion you get is automatically wrong, it simply all adds up to a toxic situation that most people want nothing to do with.
Of all the quests being published, how many are going to get featured? Is that the only way to succeed besides harping on the forum day and night? What good are the NPC harpers in the game if I have to do my own harping?
Yes, those are the only ones that WILL EVER SUCCEED the way you are expecting.. I'm sorry.. that is life. How many singers ever make it big? You are just one more author among tons trying to be heard right now and all the rest of what I said applies.. you are chasing away your own fans.
I'm not allowed to make posts to appeal to my fans. I'm only allowed to make posts advertising my quests to other authors like you who are trying to get heard, and most of them are all too willing to put another author down to build themselves up.
Oh and fyi, you're not the genius you think you are.
I'd trade runs, but I'm generally late to these run-trading parties and don't really trust that they'd really review mine after I did theirs, so I'd be another one of the "I'll review yours AFTER you do mine" people and I find those people annoying, so I just haven't asked for reviews. I prefer to be able to do everything myself, not having to rely on other people at all for anything, but with the foundry search sucking to hard, nobody will ever just stumble upon my quest and think... "hey! that sounds like a good one" and just run it for their foundry-running achievement. I can't even find my own quest through normal search methods!
I don't know if the daily quest discourages players from playing quests that are longer or shorter than fifteen minutes. It may instead merely encourage players to play at least the fifteen minutes quests, and they would play nothing else if not for the AD that they get for doing so.
If people only play quests for the reward, they will never put more time and effort into the task than the absolutely required minimum to get the reward. If people only do it for the payment and turn to PvP or dungeons for fun (well, dungeons also do award rewards), then what's the value in forcing these people to play longer quests by stepping up the rewards for those? They would still only do it for the reward, not for the experience, not for the art and not for the fun of it.
I don't disagree with what you say, though. I'm currently working on a story-driven quest that doesn't actually require any combat at all. It's all about the story and the characters. But I know that a large portion of the player base expects some fighting, so I'm tagging on encounters and a small dungeon to make sure the quest takes 15 minutes even if people click through all the dialogue (I hope they won't, but ...).
However, the reason I want to get plays for it and make it eligible for the daily quest is not chiefly because I am trying to appeal to those drive-through players. I don't write for an audience that doesn't want to read. The reason is that if they play it and it gets plays, it may actually be seen by the folks who don't mind reading text and who might appreciate the short story aspect of my quest (I hope to have it done in a week or two).
Most of them will never see it unless those who do quests for different reasons (XP, AD) play it.
Quest Title: Don't "Count" on it - Ch. 1
Short Code: NW-DQ3H4MXKG
Duration: 15-20 minutes
DAILY FOUNDRY ELIGIBLE? Yes!
Indeed, it is a problem, and I'm too cynical to have any faith in a review trader actually reviewing my quest. From what I've observed on here a lot of them just don't get around to it.
The foundry forum is not for Authors only. That is one of MANY fallacies in your assumptive complaints. The world is not out to get you. But the world is also not filled with people who can sit and play a video game for 2 hours in a single sitting to play your quest. Most of the people with that kind of free time for video games don't have the attention span for a 2 hour long narrative. Your fellow authors are not trying to rip you down, they are trying to give you advice on how to change what you are doing to a more consumable UGC that will attract plays not just from them and your fans but from other players. There is a band, awesome music, has dedicated fans that drive 4-12 hours to go to a gig to see this band. I guarantee you've never heard of them because they've never hit it big. When other bands stop and talk to them, they listen so they can get better, not because they want to hit it big but because it's important to them to be a better band. Maybe you should figure out why being successful is so important to you. Then you need to decide if your story or being successful is more important.
+1 on this. I've spent a ton of time on my add-on content and, yes, I make them for myself, but it's still an amazing kick to see others playing them.
3.) But you're essentially preaching to the choir. Over on the Grimrock forums (I'm SpiderFighter there), it occurred to me that no one was really playing any of the terrific mods that the community was developing. Why? Because the developers were too busy with their own projects! Once we started promoting (via a single thread listing completed mods) on the general forum, suddenly mods were getting played, devs were getting feedback, and the overall quality improved. Meaning, EVERYBODY benefitted! This needs to happen here, imho.
5.) I jumped into the deep end after the supposed nerf, but I have to agree with you that I get tons of runes, enchants, and pots. Besides, it's just more fun to play user-created content as, many times, they come up with things the original devs never intended.
Didn't EQ2 do this as well? I know I'm not an established presence here, but charging me Zen to create add-on content to keep your game fresh is pretty ballsy, imo, and a definite deal breaker.
Forrest, Grump (Part One of "The Legend of Nona Sequitur")
It would certainly benefit the Foundry authors if they could advertise on a board with the kind of views General Discussion has. I can't think of ANY topic getting discussed in General Discussion that is more important or relevant to the game than advertising a Foundry mission you worked hard on. A lot of those people DO have more time to play quests. You can get a LOT of views on a thread there in a very short amount of time. But it's against the rules. Thus crippling us along with our broken search feature, and they hand us a crutch in the form of short-codes.
I'm pretty sure most people who view this board on a regular basis are authors.
Good idea.