IF this discussion is about Foundry quests not giving players the comparable advancement rewards to other aspects of the game, then that is a different discussion.
Right now, I don't feel, as a player, that playing Foundry quests is something that the game wants me to do. Dropping a super-shiny chest that has nothing level-appropriate in it feels like a reinforcement of time wasted. But that, I’m sure, has been noted in many, many threads.
So that Foundry players are more satisfied with their progression as a Neverwinter player I'd like to see:
1. a one-time AD drop at the completion of a new Foundry quest, just to confirm that the player is performing a wanted task of trying a new Foundry quest correctly (yes, a CARROT). 250 AD flat-rate would be dandy.
2. placement of skill/crafting nodes like in the rest of the PvE content. Even if this is generated by map size, that’d be an improvement. I just like finding money on the ground.
3. a reward in the final reward chest similar to an Invocation, with a random shot at some AD and an hour duration game effect boon that is automatically replaced by the next final chest boon. So, one could have two boons up at a time; one from Invoking, one from Foundry. Or some other reward; I’m sure there’s a thread with some **** fine ideas.
Keep the Foundry Daily quest with its AD reward, because players need security and it’s the carrot that is already functioning well. (Yes, players need more than one carrot.)
Keep the Foundry Daily quest with its AD reward, because players need security and its the carrot that is already functioning well. (Yes, players need more than one carrot.)
I don't think it's about players needing more than one carrot, but about EVERY Foundry author having a carrot to reward their players with, instead of just some, as it is now with the current Foundry Daily. Also, the reward discourages anything that is very much longer than the bare minimum requirement, so longer quests need more incentive, or a bigger carrot.
The entire premise behind the carrot on the stick is that the donkey never catches the carrot, he just keeps chasing it. Remove the one time daily reward and just reward players every time for doing a foundry quest. The donkey will continue to chase the carrot if it were that way. Small exploit problem you say? Not if you cannot run the same foundry quest for the reward in the same day. Heck, there are hundreds of foundry quests, let's make that a week. The only limit to the reward is that you cannot run the same quest more than once in a week. You could run twenty different foundries in a day, each with the same reward as the daily.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] NW-DMIME87F5
Awaiting a serious response from the developers on the abuse of the review system by other authors. Video Preview
The entire premise behind the carrot on the stick is that the donkey never catches the carrot, he just keeps chasing it. Remove the one time daily reward and just reward players every time for doing a foundry quest. The donkey will continue to chase the carrot if it were that way. Small exploit problem you say? Not if you cannot run the same foundry quest for the reward in the same day.
Simply genius. Heck, make it so it's a one time reward period, so you can't get a bonus reward the second time you do the same quest. Not only does this give players incentive to try new quests, it gives authors incentive to make new quests.
I agree that making 20 min chapters is probably ideal.
The problem lies in making a mission that can't be speed run in much less time -- anything more complex than 'kill n enemies' or 'run back and forth X times' is going to run into this problem.
I have a mission that can be blitzed through in 20 mins. It'll take most folks 60.
What am I supposed to do? If I cut it in half, average time will fall below 15 mins, so it's not eligible AND regular players will find it takes them 30 mins. That's a one-two kick to the gooblies.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
I agree that making 20 min chapters is probably ideal.
The problem lies in making a mission that can't be speed run in much less time -- anything more complex than 'kill n enemies' or 'run back and forth X times' is going to run into this problem.
I have a mission that can be blitzed through in 20 mins. It'll take most folks 60.
What am I supposed to do? If I cut it in half, average time will fall below 15 mins, so it's not eligible AND regular players will find it takes them 30 mins. That's a one-two kick to the gooblies.
Us having to design our quests around a certain duration because the devs won't fix the biased reward system is a kick to the gooblies imo..
True, people don't like to "experiment" with new quests, but it doesn't have as much to do with play time as your post suggests. Judging from how difficult it is to get people to play quests under fifteen minutes, whether they be two minutes or ten, I would say you need to replace play time with rewards. If people just wanted shorter quests, they wouldn't fuss so much when a quest's duration is 13-14 minutes. It's clearly all about the daily.
The reason not many people play quests below 15 min is partly the reward issue but also a quality issue.
If the average playtime for a quest is 5~min I'm going to assume it's nothing but a poorly designed hack and slash quest. The reason I assume this is because you don't have time to present an interesting string of locations or story related activities. If I want to kill things randomly for 2 minutes then I could go to any zone in the game, why should I bother with the Foundry.
At this point 15min is the gold standard because of the daily but as angrysprite explained 20-30 min would be the top end for most people anyway. Unless I know the author or am pretty sure that a quest is going to have an interesting story and fun things to do I'm not going to bother with 1+ hour quests, the chance that I'll get halfway through and hit horribly stacked encounters or be bored stiff by pacing issues means it isn't worth it.
With shorter quests people get to explore the area and complete it in a reasonable time frame so that if it sucks they haven't lost much. Quests that are too short are just going to be assumed to be trash and skipped as a matter of course.
Do we really live in such an ADD era that 20-30 mins is all "most people" can manage? I simply don't believe it. Take away the 200AD from the Foundry Daily, and Scale the AD Reward based on "Mission Time" and players will soon start playing longer Foundry Quests - the issue is the reward structure is aimed and 2 x 20 to 30 mins Quests. Change that and the playing dynamic will also change.
My first FQ is running at 18 mins.
As much as I enjoy it (I wrote it afterall) my main issue with is that it is not nearly long enough to a) introduce and set up the story (using dialogue and books etc), b) allow for a bit of exploration and thrashing bad guys (map / combat), and c) introduce elements via combat and exploration that advance the story.
If players really are so stricken by ADD that they can't manage more than 20-30 minutes then they really would be better served by heading out to a World Zone and Hack 'n' Slashing, because I for one have no intention if scrimping on Story and Development just to pander to them.
Each Chapter of my Campaign has a Story to tell and develop, before its time to start to introduce the Story for the next Chapter, if that takes 20 mins then so be it, but if it take 60 mins that is how long that Chapter will be.
RPGs are primarily about Story, they always have been.
Cryptic have done a good job in that department so far, there's always been enough Story to engage with.
The Foundry lets us do that also. I've seen and reviewed some well crafted Quests, with nice environments, and well paced combat, some even had excellent attention to detail - but no matter how good they are they will not be getting more than 3/5 from me if there's no story. Precisely because I can wander in to umpteen already existing zones with (in general better environments, and attention to detail) and go Hack'n'Slash my way through 50 mobs; I don't need the Foundry to provide that for me.
Zahinder's Finding The Fen Wood is a brilliant conceived and executed adventure, took me about 40 mins or so, but apparently I missed out some of the better elements that Zahinder has crafted, so I'm going back in to have another look, and if it takes 60 mins that will be 60 mins well spent.
The "reward" for me is the enjoyment of playing a well crafted Foundry Quest, not the AD / Loot at the end of it.
Cryptic could add a 10,000AD reward to the end of a truly appalling 10 minute quest, but if it was truly appalling I guarantee I'll never see beyond the 3rd minute of it.
Quality Of Quest trumps Quantity Of Loot in my book, every time, all day long.
And I suggest that the same is true for the majority of Foundry Authors, because if all we wanted was Loot we'd be out grinding some of the existing content, not in here making our own.
Do we really live in such an ADD era that 20-30 mins is all "most people" can manage?
No we don't.
But it is the amount of time most people have to see if a foundry mission is okay or not. Most of the Foundry content just isn't good enough to support a longer time investment. Authors with a reputation or featured quests can get around this because they provide a better basis for making a decision about whether the time spent is going to be worthwhile. Your average Joe Q Foundry Author doesn't have that support to reassure players that the quest is going to be worth it and so will get less plays.
Not everyone is going to have the exact same time standards for a quest, some will be willing to put in more time on principle, some will only run the minimum to get the daily. Until an author has made a name for themselves they haven't built up the trust with a lot of players to think that their quest is worth the investment. If the quest is good it isn't an insurmountable problem but otherwise it's going to hurt both the number of reviews and the rating of a quest.
Do we really live in such an ADD era that 20-30 mins is all "most people" can manage? I simply don't believe it.
Consider a few things... first, the foundry is easy to do something simple, but difficult to do anything even remotely complex. The odds of any random foundry being complex are low just due to the difficulty of programming it, although that doesn't mean bad... if there's a lot of attention to detail, you can make a great, yet simple, adventure.
Second, I've never found a foundry without typos or nasty grammar issues. Not a single one! (Even mine still has one, but foundry was crashing on me and I couldn't republish it tonight.) To me, that shows an attention to detail, and longer foundry adventures become a trust issue. How much time am I willing to spend trusting and unknown foundry author? If it's 15 minutes, that's generally not a big deal if it sucks. If it's an expected 1-2 hours, what if I don't like it 30 min through? It's completely wasted, and I don't even get the reward at the end. What if I'm 90 minutes in, and can't complete it due to the author being a *******?
Some people just want to grind out their 3-4 foundry quests for the daily. The daily quest isn't "Play for an hour in the foundry", it's "Complete 3 qualified foundry missions". This immediately removes the audience that simply wants to grind it out as the first priority. And when the hourly bonus comes up, people want to do all 3 or 4 during that time.
Lastly, some games are designed for longer, epic fights. This isn't one of them. Mostly gone are the days of camping an 18-hour world spawn, with calling circles to get your 40-man raid together to go fight it in the middle of the night. People expect to be able to play for shorter amounts of time, and it's pretty common to have 30 minutes to play, but not as common to have 2 hours, and not nearly as common to have 4. You will simply have a much wider audience if your foundry is under 30 minutes. Imagine if you wrote it in Yiddish... I'm sure a few people would love to play it, but your audience would be much smaller.
When you make a long adventure, you risk a smaller available audience and fewer people willing to trust the author (unless he's well-known), and lose some incentive of the daily foundry bonuses. It's not necessarily from ADD.
Simply genius. Heck, make it so it's a one time reward period, so you can't get a bonus reward the second time you do the same quest. Not only does this give players incentive to try new quests, it gives authors incentive to make new quests.
That would give incentive to make crappy quests. That's not an incentive this game needs.
Not everyone is going to have the exact same time standards for a quest, some will be willing to put in more time on principle, some will only run the minimum to get the daily. Until an author has made a name for themselves they haven't built up the trust with a lot of players to think that their quest is worth the investment. If the quest is good it isn't an insurmountable problem but otherwise it's going to hurt both the number of reviews and the rating of a quest.
So if an Author doesn't already have your trust, you won't play his/her quests; but until you play his/her quest there is no opportunity for him/her to build that trust?
So if an Author doesn't already have your trust, you won't play his/her quests; but until you play his/her quest there is no opportunity for him/her to build that trust?
Do you see the problem here?
Hint: It isn't the Author that is the problem.
All The Best
Actually no.
Two ways to get around it are being a popular and well thought of quest on places like the Foundry sub-forum or by the author making a range of quests, some short, some long.
If people are gushing about the quest on the forum and it has a lot of plays then that works against the assumption that foundry quests are of poor quality. If an author has quests that fit into the 15-30min paradigm then those quests can be used to attract an audience. Length then becomes less of a barrier as you're dealing with a known quantity (the quality of their shorter quests). Without some indication that a particular author knows what they're doing playing a quest is a risky proposition which is naturally going to encourage people to be conservative in their decision to play one foundry quest over another.
If you want to make long and involved quests you are creating a barrier to casual players, as an author you need to keep that in mind and plan around that.
Two ways to get around it are being a popular and...
This is actually a problem I have with a lot of Foundry authors on here. They act like the preppy kids I went to high school with.
"lol I'm popular! R U popular? U R NOT POPULAR!!! HAHAHAHA! SNUB!"
Then when you kick some guy's teeth out a couple days later they all of a sudden want to be your friend. Screw everyone with that herd mentality. I don't deal with sheep.
So if an Author doesn't already have your trust, you won't play his/her quests; but until you play his/her quest there is no opportunity for him/her to build that trust?
Author who asks me about playing his hour+ long quest, but has no reputation, asks too much. Especially since not so long ago I tried to complete certain incredibly poorly made, overlong quest, twice, and couldn't even suffer to complete it only to 1-star this junk to the ground. And it was after playing it nearly for hour. This experience made me extremely wary about any time investments made to untested authors.
If I see god reviews on forum, or in review tab - I may try it.
Just like I did it yesterday, though quest was long, but divided between few maps and I could play it in few sessions. But it was worth it.
Otherwise? No, I'll tray to play and review some shorter and more manageable quests instead.
And I really couldn't care less if it's just or not. Gaming time is a precious thing.
Author who asks me about playing his hour+ long quest, but has no reputation, asks too much. Especially since not so long ago I tried to complete certain incredibly poorly made, overlong quest, twice, and couldn't even suffer to complete it only to 1-star this junk to the ground. And it was after playing it nearly for hour. This experience made me extremely wary about any time investments made to untested authors.
If I see god reviews on forum, or in review tab - I may try it.
Just like I did it yesterday, though quest was long, but divided between few maps and I could play it in few sessions. But it was worth it.
Otherwise? No, I'll tray to play and review some shorter and more manageable quests instead.
And I really couldn't care less if it's just or not. Gaming time is a precious thing.
If I have time I don't mind trying someone else's map, especially if they've reviewed mine. The only time I'm wary is when their post has poor spelling/grammar. Reputation is not always a good indicator, neither are reviews. Certain people come on here with alts to bump their own threads with false praises, and give themselves a ton of five stars on alts. A lot of the popular people here are only popular because they kiss so much butt and try their best to hide behind a shield of political correctness. The moment they lose their cool and slip up all their PC buddies drop them like a sack of potatoes. Meanwhile my buddies will still like me, because they're used to my abrasiveness.
In other words, there's no motivation for players to actually run Foundry quests. The Daily Bonus is more of a discouragement than an encouragement for about three out of four quests. You know, those quests that are under or way over fifteen minutes. Getting plays can be really tough, as I'm sure most of you have already discovered. I don't think it's a fair solution to expect us Foundry authors to all produce the exact same kind of content. The devs could give us a more enticing carrot, but that would mess up their gear treadmill that they're so worried about. I for one am sick of being marginalized for the sake of OCD WOW-gen MMO grinders. What about you guys?
Ok I'll bite.
What is your proposed solution?
No time constraint? We'll get loads of meaningless click-here-and-win 'quests'.
Rewards proportional to time spent in quest? Sounds good on paper, but we'll get filler quests, designed to let players just AFK or run around for whatever time to maximize loot.
Rewards proportional to time spent, WITH constraints? We're back to authors having to work with constraints now, aren't we?
IMHO, 15 mins and a flat reward is not ideal, but it's probably the simplest to implement and communicate, and most resistant to abuse.
The gear treadmill you dismiss so readily IS important, not to the Foundry, but to the core game - whether we like it or not.
A lot of the popular people here are only popular because they kiss so much butt and try their best to hide behind a shield of political correctness. The moment they lose their cool and slip up all their PC buddies drop them like a sack of potatoes. Meanwhile my buddies will still like me, because they're used to my abrasiveness.
I haven't been around here long enough to class anyone as a buddy yet; but I do know this, I'd rather have an honest appraisal of my work with justifiable and explained criticism than a "butt kissing" review any day.
No time constraint? We'll get loads of meaningless click-here-and-win 'quests'.
Rewards proportional to time spent in quest? Sounds good on paper, but we'll get filler quests, designed to let players just AFK or run around for whatever time to maximize loot.
Rewards proportional to time spent, WITH constraints? We're back to authors having to work with constraints now, aren't we?
IMHO, 15 mins and a flat reward is not ideal, but it's probably the simplest to implement and communicate, and most resistant to abuse.
The gear treadmill you dismiss so readily IS important, not to the Foundry, but to the core game - whether we like it or not.
Well one way would be to have a score system.
1 Pt for an easy encounter, 2 for a Standard, 5 for a hard.
Then add in Pts based on the number of meaningful interactables (ones that least to extended dialogue - not just a "continue").
Then add in a number of points based on basic geometry (rooms etc).
Then something similar based on number of details.
Have the total number of points, in relation to the average run-time, be used to derive the AD reward scale for the Quest.
Require a Quest to have 10 runs before it can deliver a reward.
Yeah, it will require some clever math (too clever for me probably) but then I'm not a paid game designer.
Then have a "Report Abuse" button so that any Quest that had 5 such reports loses the ability to grant AD until reviewed by Cryptic.
If they wanted to press Community Engagement a bit further Cryptic could appoint an Author led Review Panel to assist in this task.
Taken with my point earlier about each account only being able to use any given Foundry quest a limited number of times to earn their AD reward this could work quite well.
There are many, many ways that any reasonably professional game company should be able to use to reward player for engaging in foundry content with just handing out a couple of thousand AD for running the same 2 quests every day.
The Key here is not to corral people in to playing longer quests, but to incentivise them to play different quests.
There's a certain quest that has become the go-to quest for almost everyone's Foundry Daily, and with good reason, it is a brilliantly crafted quest, one very much deserving of the plaudits it has received.
But a system of diminishing returns on playing the same Foundry Quest over and over again wili, in my opinion, be a necessity if Cryptic are to incentivise players to make more wide-ranging use of the Foundry.
PS: I know my idea isn't perfect, it would need refining and then seeing if it at all workable; but in all honesty its better than the current system - anything is better than the current system.
This is actually a problem I have with a lot of Foundry authors on here. They act like the preppy kids I went to high school with.
"lol I'm popular! R U popular? U R NOT POPULAR!!! HAHAHAHA! SNUB!"
Then when you kick some guy's teeth out a couple days later they all of a sudden want to be your friend. Screw everyone with that herd mentality. I don't deal with sheep.
That's nice but I don't mean author popularity, I mean quest popularity.
If you have a really well designed quest people are going to talk about it. If you don't have a well designed quest try and get feedback on how to improve it. Obviously if people think well of you on the forums it'll sway them to trying your quest but as long as your forum presence doesn't actively discourage people from checking it out it shouldn't hurt your quests.
Complaining about sheeple isn't going to get your quest more plays, if you want lots of people to play your quests then the time would be better spent making another quest or polishing your existing ones. The more quests you have published the more likely people are going to find something they like about one of them. In a lot of cases this will encourage them to check out other quests you have published.
You're not going to change how people view user created content because there are a lot more people out there publishing absolute drek and if they don't know an author they have no way of knowing whether they're a good or bad author. Sure you can try to incentivise longer quests by suggesting changes to the daily rewards but that's unlikely to change in the near future. Your best bet is to be aware of people's playing habits and try to design some quests that appeal to a broad demographic of players and use those quests to encourage them to play the longer quests you like to design.
summerspamMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 16Arc User
edited June 2013
This might take just a smidge of work on the dev's part but what about Foundry Coins just like seals or glory points that players could buy gear with. Might just be handy blue gear and have different lvl categories so it would be a great way to get some half decent lvl'ing gear. For 60's they could offer gear on par/below t1's. Not like the dev's aren't fans of re-using skins so it wouldn't be too hard to implement and would be a great incentive for players and wouldn't really matter too much if it was 'exploited' as the gear is just for lvl'ing/new 60 purposes anyway.
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cipher9nemoMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited June 2013
I look at the problem and possible solutions to this from a different perspective.
But first, let's acknowledge a foundation: we don't necessarily want power levelers to play our quests. Those are the types who leave one-star reviews with complaints of not enough loot or XP. Those are the types who 1,2,3,whatever their way through dialogs without reading anything. Those are the types who don't care about the reasons why we spend so much time building rich and entertaining quests.
With that said, what can we do to...
1.) Encourage the players who are seeking quests like ours?
2.) Grow that user base?
3.) Get Cryptic to help us with those two goals?
We absolutely need a better carrot. As much as I enjoy running Foundry quests for just the enjoyment of it, there does need to be an better incentive for completing them. Perhaps Cryptic could add a new construct to recognize and reward Foundry authors and players for their participation that's not tied to existing game currency or XP. And may be Cryptic needs to spend more time promoting quality quests and authors?
Let me reiterate that we should separate these type of players and authors from the typical power levelers that hop from one MMO to the next.
I don't know what might be the best solutions to this, but I do know the questions and I know it will need to be addressed. Within any MMO community, doing something just for fun will only take us so far with so many people. Like the OP mentioned, there still needs to be a pretty tasty carrot at that end of the stick eventually.
I think a lot of the solutions will depend on search functionality.
It should be easier (and actually WORK) to follow an author. I should be able to look up missions with keywords I like. I should be able to list 'all missions I've played before' with my ratings of them. Campaigns should work.
The barriers of bugs and poor ui nudge people to find four easy daily missions and do the same ones daily.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
I think a lot of the solutions will depend on search functionality.
It should be easier (and actually WORK) to follow an author. I should be able to look up missions with keywords I like. I should be able to list 'all missions I've played before' with my ratings of them. Campaigns should work.
The barriers of bugs and poor ui nudge people to find four easy daily missions and do the same ones daily.
That's a good point. A barely functional search is probably one of the reasons why players are simply falling back to what's familiar.
I don't know what might be the best solutions to this, but I do know the questions and I know it will need to be addressed. Within any MMO community, doing something just for fun will only take us so far with so many people. Like the OP mentioned, there still needs to be a pretty tasty carrot at that end of the stick eventually.
Perhaps not. There needs to be carrot on the stick that makes player play low-review quests that would make quests. However there is no need for any bigger carrot on the stick for quests eligible for reward. It will only encourage people which doesn't want to play foundry quests to do them. Therefore - more 1 star reviews.
What I think of, could be minor soution: author browsing (only by names), sorted by number of reviews, average stars (not per quest, per review), perhaps number of tips recieved, average length of quests etc. Sorting by tips would surely promote authors for being succesful with the plot (cause mainly those bad reviewers would give no feedback and give 1 star, even if he liked -no tip).
Perhaps not. There needs to be carrot on the stick that makes player play low-review quests that would make quests. However there is no need for any bigger carrot on the stick for quests eligible for reward. It will only encourage people which doesn't want to play foundry quests to do them. Therefore - more 1 star reviews.
What I think of, could be minor soution: author browsing (only by names), sorted by number of reviews, average stars (not per quest, per review), perhaps number of tips recieved, average length of quests etc. Sorting by tips would surely promote authors for being succesful with the plot (cause mainly those bad reviewers would give no feedback and give 1 star, even if he liked -no tip).
What do you think?
Your suggestion would miss an entire group of players who might enjoy quality Foundry quests: the casuals.
We have no problem appealing to the dedicated here, willing to try people's quests, and wanting people to try theirs, but that's a very small portion of the entire Neverwinter user base. If we filter out the hardcore/powerlevelers we're left with the small core group and a much, much larger group of casuals.
Most casuals won't read the forums here.
Most casuals won't do all of the sorting in their Foundry searches.
Most casuals won't spend even a few seconds thinking about this.
But, most casuals would probably enjoy entertaining Foundry quests.
Unfortunately there's no real incentive for casuals to sift through the rubbish to find quality quests, let alone bother if the in-game rewards are weak. They rely upon Cryptic's featured quests, if any at all.
So where does that leave Foundry authors? Left trying to frantically promote their own quests to the point of looking like marketing sell outs. Word of mouth only carries so far in the Neverwinter community, with an even slimmer chance of going viral online.
To accommodate for that it's up to either the community or the developer to enact a better system to reward authors who make the quests and players who play them.
Let's be honest, has any author ever said they've received "enough reviews" who didn't make it into Cryptic's featured category? You guys and gals will have to answer that one as I'm still in the process of making my first one, which is quite large.
That's a good point. A barely functional search is probably one of the reasons why players are simply falling back to what's familiar.
I think another reason people are running the same quests every day is they get the same reward for it, so basically these quests that barely make it over 15 minutes and aren't challenging are the ideal AD farming tool. If the devs would make it so you can only be rewarded for playing a quest once, then it would literally force all the casuals to look for new quests to play on a daily basis. Every Foundry author would be getting a hundred plays or so within a week of publishing their quest without having to advertise all over the forums if they would just limit the daily bonus to once per quest.
If the devs would make it so you can only be rewarded for playing a quest once, then it would literally force all the casuals to look for new quests to play on a daily basis. Every Foundry author would be getting a hundred plays or so within a week of publishing their quest without having to advertise all over the forums if they would just limit the daily bonus to once per quest.
I think just once is harsh, I play some of the foundry stuff more than once just to see what I missed.
We need to encourage that, especially with the more complex (geographically speaking) maps.
I would suggest having plays 1-5 be normal, then a 10% reduction rewards for each subsequent play, so that by the time someone has played a Quest 15 times they are getting nothing from it (XP included, after that you replay something because you like it).
Comments
Right now, I don't feel, as a player, that playing Foundry quests is something that the game wants me to do. Dropping a super-shiny chest that has nothing level-appropriate in it feels like a reinforcement of time wasted. But that, I’m sure, has been noted in many, many threads.
So that Foundry players are more satisfied with their progression as a Neverwinter player I'd like to see:
1. a one-time AD drop at the completion of a new Foundry quest, just to confirm that the player is performing a wanted task of trying a new Foundry quest correctly (yes, a CARROT). 250 AD flat-rate would be dandy.
2. placement of skill/crafting nodes like in the rest of the PvE content. Even if this is generated by map size, that’d be an improvement. I just like finding money on the ground.
3. a reward in the final reward chest similar to an Invocation, with a random shot at some AD and an hour duration game effect boon that is automatically replaced by the next final chest boon. So, one could have two boons up at a time; one from Invoking, one from Foundry. Or some other reward; I’m sure there’s a thread with some **** fine ideas.
Keep the Foundry Daily quest with its AD reward, because players need security and it’s the carrot that is already functioning well. (Yes, players need more than one carrot.)
I don't think it's about players needing more than one carrot, but about EVERY Foundry author having a carrot to reward their players with, instead of just some, as it is now with the current Foundry Daily. Also, the reward discourages anything that is very much longer than the bare minimum requirement, so longer quests need more incentive, or a bigger carrot.
NW-DMIME87F5
Awaiting a serious response from the developers on the abuse of the review system by other authors.
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Simply genius. Heck, make it so it's a one time reward period, so you can't get a bonus reward the second time you do the same quest. Not only does this give players incentive to try new quests, it gives authors incentive to make new quests.
The problem lies in making a mission that can't be speed run in much less time -- anything more complex than 'kill n enemies' or 'run back and forth X times' is going to run into this problem.
I have a mission that can be blitzed through in 20 mins. It'll take most folks 60.
What am I supposed to do? If I cut it in half, average time will fall below 15 mins, so it's not eligible AND regular players will find it takes them 30 mins. That's a one-two kick to the gooblies.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Us having to design our quests around a certain duration because the devs won't fix the biased reward system is a kick to the gooblies imo..
The reason not many people play quests below 15 min is partly the reward issue but also a quality issue.
If the average playtime for a quest is 5~min I'm going to assume it's nothing but a poorly designed hack and slash quest. The reason I assume this is because you don't have time to present an interesting string of locations or story related activities. If I want to kill things randomly for 2 minutes then I could go to any zone in the game, why should I bother with the Foundry.
At this point 15min is the gold standard because of the daily but as angrysprite explained 20-30 min would be the top end for most people anyway. Unless I know the author or am pretty sure that a quest is going to have an interesting story and fun things to do I'm not going to bother with 1+ hour quests, the chance that I'll get halfway through and hit horribly stacked encounters or be bored stiff by pacing issues means it isn't worth it.
With shorter quests people get to explore the area and complete it in a reasonable time frame so that if it sucks they haven't lost much. Quests that are too short are just going to be assumed to be trash and skipped as a matter of course.
Part 1: Death comes to Neverwinter - NW-DL8EPHRAT
My first FQ is running at 18 mins.
As much as I enjoy it (I wrote it afterall) my main issue with is that it is not nearly long enough to a) introduce and set up the story (using dialogue and books etc), b) allow for a bit of exploration and thrashing bad guys (map / combat), and c) introduce elements via combat and exploration that advance the story.
If players really are so stricken by ADD that they can't manage more than 20-30 minutes then they really would be better served by heading out to a World Zone and Hack 'n' Slashing, because I for one have no intention if scrimping on Story and Development just to pander to them.
Each Chapter of my Campaign has a Story to tell and develop, before its time to start to introduce the Story for the next Chapter, if that takes 20 mins then so be it, but if it take 60 mins that is how long that Chapter will be.
RPGs are primarily about Story, they always have been.
Cryptic have done a good job in that department so far, there's always been enough Story to engage with.
The Foundry lets us do that also. I've seen and reviewed some well crafted Quests, with nice environments, and well paced combat, some even had excellent attention to detail - but no matter how good they are they will not be getting more than 3/5 from me if there's no story. Precisely because I can wander in to umpteen already existing zones with (in general better environments, and attention to detail) and go Hack'n'Slash my way through 50 mobs; I don't need the Foundry to provide that for me.
Zahinder's Finding The Fen Wood is a brilliant conceived and executed adventure, took me about 40 mins or so, but apparently I missed out some of the better elements that Zahinder has crafted, so I'm going back in to have another look, and if it takes 60 mins that will be 60 mins well spent.
The "reward" for me is the enjoyment of playing a well crafted Foundry Quest, not the AD / Loot at the end of it.
Cryptic could add a 10,000AD reward to the end of a truly appalling 10 minute quest, but if it was truly appalling I guarantee I'll never see beyond the 3rd minute of it.
Quality Of Quest trumps Quantity Of Loot in my book, every time, all day long.
And I suggest that the same is true for the majority of Foundry Authors, because if all we wanted was Loot we'd be out grinding some of the existing content, not in here making our own.
Well, that's just my opinion.
All The Best
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No we don't.
But it is the amount of time most people have to see if a foundry mission is okay or not. Most of the Foundry content just isn't good enough to support a longer time investment. Authors with a reputation or featured quests can get around this because they provide a better basis for making a decision about whether the time spent is going to be worthwhile. Your average Joe Q Foundry Author doesn't have that support to reassure players that the quest is going to be worth it and so will get less plays.
Not everyone is going to have the exact same time standards for a quest, some will be willing to put in more time on principle, some will only run the minimum to get the daily. Until an author has made a name for themselves they haven't built up the trust with a lot of players to think that their quest is worth the investment. If the quest is good it isn't an insurmountable problem but otherwise it's going to hurt both the number of reviews and the rating of a quest.
Part 1: Death comes to Neverwinter - NW-DL8EPHRAT
Consider a few things... first, the foundry is easy to do something simple, but difficult to do anything even remotely complex. The odds of any random foundry being complex are low just due to the difficulty of programming it, although that doesn't mean bad... if there's a lot of attention to detail, you can make a great, yet simple, adventure.
Second, I've never found a foundry without typos or nasty grammar issues. Not a single one! (Even mine still has one, but foundry was crashing on me and I couldn't republish it tonight.) To me, that shows an attention to detail, and longer foundry adventures become a trust issue. How much time am I willing to spend trusting and unknown foundry author? If it's 15 minutes, that's generally not a big deal if it sucks. If it's an expected 1-2 hours, what if I don't like it 30 min through? It's completely wasted, and I don't even get the reward at the end. What if I'm 90 minutes in, and can't complete it due to the author being a *******?
Some people just want to grind out their 3-4 foundry quests for the daily. The daily quest isn't "Play for an hour in the foundry", it's "Complete 3 qualified foundry missions". This immediately removes the audience that simply wants to grind it out as the first priority. And when the hourly bonus comes up, people want to do all 3 or 4 during that time.
Lastly, some games are designed for longer, epic fights. This isn't one of them. Mostly gone are the days of camping an 18-hour world spawn, with calling circles to get your 40-man raid together to go fight it in the middle of the night. People expect to be able to play for shorter amounts of time, and it's pretty common to have 30 minutes to play, but not as common to have 2 hours, and not nearly as common to have 4. You will simply have a much wider audience if your foundry is under 30 minutes. Imagine if you wrote it in Yiddish... I'm sure a few people would love to play it, but your audience would be much smaller.
When you make a long adventure, you risk a smaller available audience and fewer people willing to trust the author (unless he's well-known), and lose some incentive of the daily foundry bonuses. It's not necessarily from ADD.
Foundry name: Vuelherring (with an extra 'R', matey)
"Bring out yer Dead" NW-DAI945C2G #humor #story #solo
That would give incentive to make crappy quests. That's not an incentive this game needs.
Foundry name: Vuelherring (with an extra 'R', matey)
"Bring out yer Dead" NW-DAI945C2G #humor #story #solo
So if an Author doesn't already have your trust, you won't play his/her quests; but until you play his/her quest there is no opportunity for him/her to build that trust?
Do you see the problem here?
Hint: It isn't the Author that is the problem.
All The Best
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Actually no.
Two ways to get around it are being a popular and well thought of quest on places like the Foundry sub-forum or by the author making a range of quests, some short, some long.
If people are gushing about the quest on the forum and it has a lot of plays then that works against the assumption that foundry quests are of poor quality. If an author has quests that fit into the 15-30min paradigm then those quests can be used to attract an audience. Length then becomes less of a barrier as you're dealing with a known quantity (the quality of their shorter quests). Without some indication that a particular author knows what they're doing playing a quest is a risky proposition which is naturally going to encourage people to be conservative in their decision to play one foundry quest over another.
If you want to make long and involved quests you are creating a barrier to casual players, as an author you need to keep that in mind and plan around that.
Part 1: Death comes to Neverwinter - NW-DL8EPHRAT
This is actually a problem I have with a lot of Foundry authors on here. They act like the preppy kids I went to high school with.
"lol I'm popular! R U popular? U R NOT POPULAR!!! HAHAHAHA! SNUB!"
Then when you kick some guy's teeth out a couple days later they all of a sudden want to be your friend. Screw everyone with that herd mentality. I don't deal with sheep.
What he said.
If I see god reviews on forum, or in review tab - I may try it.
Just like I did it yesterday, though quest was long, but divided between few maps and I could play it in few sessions. But it was worth it.
Otherwise? No, I'll tray to play and review some shorter and more manageable quests instead.
And I really couldn't care less if it's just or not. Gaming time is a precious thing.
If I have time I don't mind trying someone else's map, especially if they've reviewed mine. The only time I'm wary is when their post has poor spelling/grammar. Reputation is not always a good indicator, neither are reviews. Certain people come on here with alts to bump their own threads with false praises, and give themselves a ton of five stars on alts. A lot of the popular people here are only popular because they kiss so much butt and try their best to hide behind a shield of political correctness. The moment they lose their cool and slip up all their PC buddies drop them like a sack of potatoes. Meanwhile my buddies will still like me, because they're used to my abrasiveness.
Ok I'll bite.
What is your proposed solution?
No time constraint? We'll get loads of meaningless click-here-and-win 'quests'.
Rewards proportional to time spent in quest? Sounds good on paper, but we'll get filler quests, designed to let players just AFK or run around for whatever time to maximize loot.
Rewards proportional to time spent, WITH constraints? We're back to authors having to work with constraints now, aren't we?
IMHO, 15 mins and a flat reward is not ideal, but it's probably the simplest to implement and communicate, and most resistant to abuse.
The gear treadmill you dismiss so readily IS important, not to the Foundry, but to the core game - whether we like it or not.
I haven't been around here long enough to class anyone as a buddy yet; but I do know this, I'd rather have an honest appraisal of my work with justifiable and explained criticism than a "butt kissing" review any day.
Honesty is always best IMO.
All The Best
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Drop By Scribe's Enclave & Meet Up With Volunteer Reviewers.
Well one way would be to have a score system.
1 Pt for an easy encounter, 2 for a Standard, 5 for a hard.
Then add in Pts based on the number of meaningful interactables (ones that least to extended dialogue - not just a "continue").
Then add in a number of points based on basic geometry (rooms etc).
Then something similar based on number of details.
Have the total number of points, in relation to the average run-time, be used to derive the AD reward scale for the Quest.
Require a Quest to have 10 runs before it can deliver a reward.
Yeah, it will require some clever math (too clever for me probably) but then I'm not a paid game designer.
Then have a "Report Abuse" button so that any Quest that had 5 such reports loses the ability to grant AD until reviewed by Cryptic.
If they wanted to press Community Engagement a bit further Cryptic could appoint an Author led Review Panel to assist in this task.
Taken with my point earlier about each account only being able to use any given Foundry quest a limited number of times to earn their AD reward this could work quite well.
There are many, many ways that any reasonably professional game company should be able to use to reward player for engaging in foundry content with just handing out a couple of thousand AD for running the same 2 quests every day.
The Key here is not to corral people in to playing longer quests, but to incentivise them to play different quests.
There's a certain quest that has become the go-to quest for almost everyone's Foundry Daily, and with good reason, it is a brilliantly crafted quest, one very much deserving of the plaudits it has received.
But a system of diminishing returns on playing the same Foundry Quest over and over again wili, in my opinion, be a necessity if Cryptic are to incentivise players to make more wide-ranging use of the Foundry.
PS: I know my idea isn't perfect, it would need refining and then seeing if it at all workable; but in all honesty its better than the current system - anything is better than the current system.
All The Best
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That's nice but I don't mean author popularity, I mean quest popularity.
If you have a really well designed quest people are going to talk about it. If you don't have a well designed quest try and get feedback on how to improve it. Obviously if people think well of you on the forums it'll sway them to trying your quest but as long as your forum presence doesn't actively discourage people from checking it out it shouldn't hurt your quests.
Complaining about sheeple isn't going to get your quest more plays, if you want lots of people to play your quests then the time would be better spent making another quest or polishing your existing ones. The more quests you have published the more likely people are going to find something they like about one of them. In a lot of cases this will encourage them to check out other quests you have published.
You're not going to change how people view user created content because there are a lot more people out there publishing absolute drek and if they don't know an author they have no way of knowing whether they're a good or bad author. Sure you can try to incentivise longer quests by suggesting changes to the daily rewards but that's unlikely to change in the near future. Your best bet is to be aware of people's playing habits and try to design some quests that appeal to a broad demographic of players and use those quests to encourage them to play the longer quests you like to design.
Part 1: Death comes to Neverwinter - NW-DL8EPHRAT
But first, let's acknowledge a foundation: we don't necessarily want power levelers to play our quests. Those are the types who leave one-star reviews with complaints of not enough loot or XP. Those are the types who 1,2,3,whatever their way through dialogs without reading anything. Those are the types who don't care about the reasons why we spend so much time building rich and entertaining quests.
With that said, what can we do to...
1.) Encourage the players who are seeking quests like ours?
2.) Grow that user base?
3.) Get Cryptic to help us with those two goals?
We absolutely need a better carrot. As much as I enjoy running Foundry quests for just the enjoyment of it, there does need to be an better incentive for completing them. Perhaps Cryptic could add a new construct to recognize and reward Foundry authors and players for their participation that's not tied to existing game currency or XP. And may be Cryptic needs to spend more time promoting quality quests and authors?
Let me reiterate that we should separate these type of players and authors from the typical power levelers that hop from one MMO to the next.
I don't know what might be the best solutions to this, but I do know the questions and I know it will need to be addressed. Within any MMO community, doing something just for fun will only take us so far with so many people. Like the OP mentioned, there still needs to be a pretty tasty carrot at that end of the stick eventually.
Hammerfist Clan. Jump into the Night: NW-DMXWRYTAD
It should be easier (and actually WORK) to follow an author. I should be able to look up missions with keywords I like. I should be able to list 'all missions I've played before' with my ratings of them. Campaigns should work.
The barriers of bugs and poor ui nudge people to find four easy daily missions and do the same ones daily.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
That's a good point. A barely functional search is probably one of the reasons why players are simply falling back to what's familiar.
What I think of, could be minor soution: author browsing (only by names), sorted by number of reviews, average stars (not per quest, per review), perhaps number of tips recieved, average length of quests etc. Sorting by tips would surely promote authors for being succesful with the plot (cause mainly those bad reviewers would give no feedback and give 1 star, even if he liked -no tip).
What do you think?
Siegebreaker - NW-DGDPWV2U5 - story about the ambush, escape and great rescue of the city.
I'm a streamer and I know it!
Your suggestion would miss an entire group of players who might enjoy quality Foundry quests: the casuals.
We have no problem appealing to the dedicated here, willing to try people's quests, and wanting people to try theirs, but that's a very small portion of the entire Neverwinter user base. If we filter out the hardcore/powerlevelers we're left with the small core group and a much, much larger group of casuals.
Most casuals won't read the forums here.
Most casuals won't do all of the sorting in their Foundry searches.
Most casuals won't spend even a few seconds thinking about this.
But, most casuals would probably enjoy entertaining Foundry quests.
Unfortunately there's no real incentive for casuals to sift through the rubbish to find quality quests, let alone bother if the in-game rewards are weak. They rely upon Cryptic's featured quests, if any at all.
So where does that leave Foundry authors? Left trying to frantically promote their own quests to the point of looking like marketing sell outs. Word of mouth only carries so far in the Neverwinter community, with an even slimmer chance of going viral online.
To accommodate for that it's up to either the community or the developer to enact a better system to reward authors who make the quests and players who play them.
Let's be honest, has any author ever said they've received "enough reviews" who didn't make it into Cryptic's featured category? You guys and gals will have to answer that one as I'm still in the process of making my first one, which is quite large.
Hammerfist Clan. Jump into the Night: NW-DMXWRYTAD
I think another reason people are running the same quests every day is they get the same reward for it, so basically these quests that barely make it over 15 minutes and aren't challenging are the ideal AD farming tool. If the devs would make it so you can only be rewarded for playing a quest once, then it would literally force all the casuals to look for new quests to play on a daily basis. Every Foundry author would be getting a hundred plays or so within a week of publishing their quest without having to advertise all over the forums if they would just limit the daily bonus to once per quest.
I think just once is harsh, I play some of the foundry stuff more than once just to see what I missed.
We need to encourage that, especially with the more complex (geographically speaking) maps.
I would suggest having plays 1-5 be normal, then a 10% reduction rewards for each subsequent play, so that by the time someone has played a Quest 15 times they are getting nothing from it (XP included, after that you replay something because you like it).
All The Best
Looking For Reviews For Your Foundry Quest?
Drop By Scribe's Enclave & Meet Up With Volunteer Reviewers.