Who loves a story to go with killing everything in sight?

yipykaye · June 2013

I would love some reviews on my foundry quests.

My campaign "A Time Long Forgotten" NWS-DGGPE9B2T
so far contains two quests with the potential for 3-4 more for the story line.

First quest "Whispers in the Forest" NW-DPJGEXZJ8 nice and short will make a good daily I think.
The first three reviews have been really positive.

Second quest just published "A Salty Sailor's Brew" NW-DMOZP625S
A little longer with more combat and tricks.

Hope you enjoy

yipykaye · June 2013

Of course I forgot to mention that I will happily trade reviews for anyone who lists their quest here too. On my way to a third 6o and foundrys are about all I do as endgame at the moment.

Both these quests can be finished in about an hours playtime.

pris23 · June 2013

The servers are going down in a bit so I will have to wait until tomorrow, but I will review at least one of your quests. I will leave comments on your quest(s) here once I have had a chance to run them.

Also, my quest info is in my signature. Part 2 needs some more reviews, but I won't complain if you want to check out the first one as well. Part 2 can be played as a stand alone quest if you don't want to play both. They take around 30 minutes each to complete and Part 1 counts towards the Daily Foundry. Story and combat are involved.

You can leave comments on this thread for me: http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?369081-Now-trading-reviews-for-The-Secret-to-Paradise-Part-2-Into-the-Mist&highlight=pris23

Happy hunting!

yipykaye · June 2013

Sure I will test yours tomorrow.

BTW I play tested " A Salty Sailors Brew" again after publishing and I have a strange bug that I can't work out. I have one or two encounters who after spawning decide that they dont want to walk to the path I have set them but instead they walk half way across the map and try to get out of the exit door. This includes quite a number of steps and a difficult path. Has anyone had this problem? I tested and double checked in editor and it plays fine through there. It only seems once it publishes that they change behavior.
Any ideas would be great.

pris23 · June 2013

yipykaye wrote: »

Sure I will test yours tomorrow.

BTW I play tested " A Salty Sailors Brew" again after publishing and I have a strange bug that I can't work out. I have one or two encounters who after spawning decide that they dont want to walk to the path I have set them but instead they walk half way across the map and try to get out of the exit door. This includes quite a number of steps and a difficult path. Has anyone had this problem? I tested and double checked in editor and it plays fine through there. It only seems once it publishes that they change behavior.
Any ideas would be great.

Are they set as an objective encounter? If so you want to use the layout button to determine the behavior for the entire group. If you try to determine their behavior individually (at least in my experience) it will mess things up and they will not respond as expected. I am not sure if that is what happened, but I just fixed an issue with my quest where monster spawns, fights to submission, and then falls to one knee. Then he wouldn't disappear when the NPC version would so I would have 2 hurt NPCs that were identical. It was really annoying and I fixed it by only using the layout encounter settings and leaving the individual mob settings alone.

pris23 · June 2013

Whispers in the Forest:

- First dialog she refers to me as Sir. This was a little strange since I and my character are female. You may consider leaving that neutral.

- There are several items to investigate that seemingly turn up nothing. There is no dialog or items in my pack. I would have liked some dialog to describe the item that I am looking at and that I found nothing of importance.

- Inside the spider caves you have a few stacked encounters. This is extremely difficult at level 60 to the point of taking some of the fun away from being the hero. I would suggest no more than 2 groups at one time. If you want to add the rest as waves that spawn after the first are dead that would be awesome.

- By the end I had 8 quest items in my bag. I am not sure if all of those were necessary for me to move on in your story. I had like 3-4 bones for example. I would try to limit these so as not to take up too much space in a players limited inventory.

Overall, it was pretty fun. The story was a fun little adventure. I would have liked some music to go along with your environments. I thought the environments were done really well. You had a good eye for details.

I'll move on to your second quest in a few.

pris23 · June 2013

A Salty Sailor's Brew:

- Your dialog for your contact in the cellar was good. I am not sure that my cleric would speak like that, but she is a half orc after all so who knows.

- I think this was done well. I got used to the interact objects that have nothing (dialog, etc.). It certainly made sense in this case.

- Encounters were more reasonable in the quest that the first one. I noticed a little stacking, but it wasn't too hard. Just challenging. Good job on that.

I liked this quest quite a bit. I also liked that you continued to build on your story from the first quest. I will look for the next part.

Thanks for the fun times.

oortexplorer · June 2013

I do love a good story, so I'll add these to my list, but will probably not be able to get to them until Sunday. My quest info is in sig.

yipykaye · June 2013

Thank for the feedback pris23. Fantastic.

pris23 wrote: »

Whispers in the Forest:

- First dialog she refers to me as Sir. This was a little strange since I and my character are female. You may consider leaving that neutral.

Fixed. I thought later in quest line about generalizing more in regards to gender/character but missed this one.

pris23 wrote: »

- There are several items to investigate that seemingly turn up nothing. There is no dialog or items in my pack. I would have liked some dialog to describe the item that I am looking at and that I found nothing of importance.

- By the end I had 8 quest items in my bag. I am not sure if all of those were necessary for me to move on in your story. I had like 3-4 bones for example. I would try to limit these so as not to take up too much space in a players limited inventory.

This I'm not sure how to address just yet. Now that consume item works better than when I first created this quest I can remove junk items more often but the editor is a little limiting on how much I can remove. Hard to decide to drop more useless items or leave them appearing to do nothing after interaction. Stacking of the bones in the bag would be nice. Hint Hint Devs

pris23 wrote: »

- Inside the spider caves you have a few stacked encounters. This is extremely difficult at level 60 to the point of taking some of the fun away from being the hero. I would suggest no more than 2 groups at one time. If you want to add the rest as waves that spawn after the first are dead that would be awesome.

This was definetly a green mistake. Testing with a low level foundry character made it feel too squishy and easy but yes once I published they can be too hard. Now I have more exp I can easily switch these so it feels like they keep coming at you rather than all at once.

pris23 wrote: »

Overall, it was pretty fun. The story was a fun little adventure. I would have liked some music to go along with your environments. I thought the environments were done really well. You had a good eye for details. I'll move on to your second quest in a few.

I have now worked with sound more in the second quest so I can definetly go back to this and add more ambience.

yipykaye · June 2013

pris23 wrote: »

Whispers in the Forest:

- There are several items to investigate that seemingly turn up nothing. There is no dialog or items in my pack. I would have liked some dialog to describe the item that I am looking at and that I found nothing of importance.

Worked out after reveiwing your quest about getting objects to give some dialog instead of nothing. Now the items in hunting camp have some details. Just swapped over from "Interact with object" to "Inspect object". Easy when you know how.

yipykaye · June 2013

Shameless bump for some more reviews.
They are fun quests come have a look :-)

yipykaye · July 2013

Ok so have given both quests a new update however publishing bug atm and nothing updating. Will post when they are available.

Quest 1 - Whispers in the Forest NW-DPJGEXZJ8 Latest version 1.4a
Quest 2 - A Salty Sailor's Brew NW-DMOZP625S Latest version 1.3

yipykaye · July 2013

New versions now Live! Finally. Only took two days

djaspor23 · July 2013

Ill give one a shot right now.

Please return the favor
NW-DPVY25Z6H
A Nice Bar, A Nice Girl

Also, when you republish, do you keep you stars and reviews? I would hate to get to 20 or whatever and have to restart. Thanks.

djaspor23 · July 2013

Well this is going to upset you, but I finished your story SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO MIGHT PLAY LATER
and after I got the husband ring and said by to scarlet, there was no chest or opportunity to rate your quest, so doubtful it counted as one of your 20. Ill try to run it again tomorrow though.

My thoughts, good and bad:
First I am a bit jealous you know how to do things with the foundry that I do not but now I can try to find them out. These included
1) one of the NPCs (the witch) using my name 2) when I talked with an NPC it said a bit about them not just chat options 3) when scarlet followed me out of the cabin the second time I was there 4) the fact that you had 3 part quests such as do 1 2 and 3, 5) I don't know how to do things out doors lets 6) I like how you used many maps to create various spawn points....I have 3 "maps" but all on one map so only one healing fire.

I thought it was a cute and simple story which flowed pretty easy. I also thought the final boss looked also. The queen spider was a nice custom skin too.
I also like that you used various creates but it made since. Spider and undead, classic D&D.

The only criticism I would make would be there were a few spots (no biggy) that I did one thing and the next thing lacked presentation. An example was when the witch appeared. Give me some text (if you can) when I kill the people that suddenly out of no where a witch appears and beacons me or something. Also there were a ton of quest item drops. I don't really need 10 quest items filling up my inventory :P

I did enjoy it though, and will attempt to run it again tomorrow so that you get credit. Hopefully this was a one time bug, as I am sure you don't want to republish with the long ques.

Again, if you have a chance, please return the favor
NW-DPVY25Z6H
A Nice Bar, A Nice Girl

yipykaye · July 2013

Yes the ending was a foundry bug. I attempted to tie in protector's enclave to join the first two quests together however with the bug when you re-enter the enclave it drops the quest. when you relog the quest is there to finish. I play tested it myself and didnt like the feel so i revised with v1.5 and deleted the last part of quest. You should again have a chest.

yipykaye · July 2013

djaspor23 wrote: »

My thoughts, good and bad:
First I am a bit jealous you know how to do things with the foundry that I do not but now I can try to find them out. These included
1) one of the NPCs (the witch) using my name

When creating dialog the first text box shows to the right "Mission info" and "out of character" and a second tab that says "nickname" if you use the nickname they will quote the players name. Easy

djaspor23 wrote: »

2) when I talked with an NPC it said a bit about them not just chat options

This is where the mission info and out of charater comes in. "Mission Info" gives you Yellow text and the "Out of Character" gives Blue text. This allows you to give some detail on them outside just chat options.

djaspor23 wrote: »

3) when scarlet followed me out of the cabin the second time I was there

When talking to Scarlet the second time I set her behavior to "follow" instead of "contact" and I give it a dialog prompt so that she stays still until we speak then follows. In my second quest I have a point where the NPC runs to me as soon as I enter the room. Which works perfectly for the scenario (You might have to play it to see ;-) This is achieved by tell them to "follow" immediatly.

djaspor23 wrote: »

4) the fact that you had 3 part quests such as do 1 2 and 3,

Two ways you can do this.
1) In the story where investigating the camp I actually put the inspect objects side by side in the story tab. If you look when you drag an option you can put them above or below or to the side. This gives you the there tiers of having to do something. Some people do it but name it the same which can look poor.
eg. kill wolf pack
kill wolf pack
kill wolf pack
I renamed mine so although they list down they are threee seperate pieces
eg.. Investigate the Hunting camp
Search for Clues
What happened here?

2) The other way is to add components to the details tab. Instead of just on per interact object add multiple.
So clear the caves becomes 0/6 and search spider sacks is 0/2. Hope that explains it.

djaspor23 wrote: »

5) I don't know how to do things out doors lets

Not sure what you mean here.

djaspor23 wrote: »

6) I like how you used many maps to create various spawn points....I have 3 "maps" but all on one map so only one healing fire.

One trick with making maps that you revist I found was design one completely first with all the details then duplicate them including same name (i rename my version number so i can keep track 1.0.1, 1.0.4 etc) Oeverall I tried to keep the map flowing without feeling like you run here then back again so forth.

Thanks again for playing my quest I will be doing yours tonight.

oortexplorer · July 2013

Played your quest, it's a solid adventure. Logical maps and encounters, especially liked the cave setting. House was fine but could perhaps use a little more decorating. Nice timing with the first Deathjump Spider. Also very good use of sounds.

Not a lot to critique, but one thing: when you enter the Spider Cavern, it takes you back to the overmap where you have to select the Cavern right next to the place you're at. There's no benefit to having that, just send them directly into the cave. Also agree that there may be a few too many items to pick up, I like doing that myself but also always have limited bag space, so you may wish to have the player inspect the bones, but not keep them.

Overall, good quest. I will play Part 2, just may take me a couple of days to get to it.

yipykaye · July 2013

Thanks for the play will return the favor shortly.

On the dropped items, there are a few but if you notice they get consumed quickly to leave only the items that are important. Two rings and the orb which are needed across the campaign. I will retest to confirm the consume is working. I guess I like picking stuff up, adds to the feel rather than all text.

oortexplorer · July 2013

Yeah, I agree with you on that. It's not a particularly big deal.

yipykaye · July 2013

djaspor23 wrote: »

Again, if you have a chance, please return the favor
NW-DPVY25Z6H
A Nice Bar, A Nice Girl

I did try your mission and I looked for a forum thread to post my thoughts but sorry i couldn't see one.
I'm sorry to say but I did not complete your mission to give a review due to the stacked encounters at the end. Even as my 60 cleric there was way too much damage coming from the 20 people attacking to survive. Died twice but with spawning at the start and having to run the entire map again to complete i decided i had seen enough.
Things I saw, well where to start. Lots of missing details. At quest start it just tells me to go to next map. The ladders to teleport between areas just looked out of place. A boss encounter in the first room without knowing why. It felt like you selected a map and then just populated with encounters without testing the feel and flow of it. Early levels it might be fine but stacking at 30+ is terrible. I would suggest if you want tougher fights to have one mob spawn after the other so it can be a long fight but not overwhelming. This is an ok start to foundry work but I would be going over the details to just give it that immersing feel. If you have any questions than please feel free to ask.

yipykaye · July 2013

Bump! I hit my head when I fell out of bed.

yipykaye · July 2013

Thanks to visigoth18 for the video review. Check out his thread for all his videos.

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?326602-I-ll-do-a-video-review-of-your-quest-in-trade

oortexplorer · July 2013

Played Salty Sailor's Brew, and it's definitely an interesting follow-up to Part 1. Thought it felt just a little long, perhaps cutting down slightly on the # of encounters would do the trick. Liked the "castle" map.

Re: grammar, I didn't notice anything major, a couple of "your" when it should be "you're" early on. There was a collect 6 chickens part, which I thought was quite well-executed. But when they are placed in the pen, I think there were only 5 there. One thing that confused me, there is a portal early on which we can't use without a portal key. I found this key much later in the quest, and at one point I guess we get near a portal. I wasn't sure if we had doubled back near the original one, or if this was the second part. But it never actually comes into play. We leave another way. I'm not sure if that is there for a side mission or if I missed something there.

The biggest problem is the ending, which may be out of your control, but it got a little weird. So after finding what I was looking for, I was to head back to Protector's Enclave. Once I got there, there was no squiggly, and the mission wasn't listed in my journal. I thought I had lost it, but decided to check out the Moonstone Mask just in case. (You may want to remind players to return to the MM, just in case the quest is dropped from their journal). Was able to pick up the quest, and then was sent back to PE (to Collect Reward). I was led to a chest, but all it said was "Goodbye" and the quest was once again missing from my queue. Went back to the MM, walked around for a while, then went back to PE and this time the chest worked. I know that mapping to PE in quests is a little wonky, so I'm not sure exactly what happened there, or if there's anything you can do to fix it. But it was a little frustrating. If this is a recurring issue for others, I'd definitely recommending ending the quest in MM, rather than sending them back to PE again.

All in all, I agree with visi that this quest is quite solid, but could use a little polish. I feel like maybe the story information is doled out just a little too slowly. (This is just a thought, not necessarily a strong recommendation.) I am wondering if providing a little more information (say about the Red Witch in part 1, about the Brotherhood in part 2), might make the story just a little more engaging as you're going through it. But I did feel like part 2 was quite good overall.

yipykaye · July 2013

Thanks for the review. I love getting detailed feedback on what you find as every play is different.

After the first map I wanted something with a bit more combat in the quest hence the length of this one. You are right originally there was only 5 chickens but i added one just because 6 sounded better but didn't pop him in the cage. Well seen.

The portal originally was there for my play testing because of the distance that you have to run to the back. Then it occured to me that had you died in the last room catching the portal would make it so much better . I played one quest that I dropped simply because dying on the boss fight meant re running the whole quest and that was just painful. Maybe using them differently will match the story better.

The ending has become a bother due to the bug with dropping the quest. If he could portal directly to MM would be awesome but I don't think that is available. I will try to word the quest text better so that you can continue without seeing the trackers. I missed the quest reward box in MM and the other one seemed the closest to me at the time. Will definetly change that so the end is in the MM.

Thanks again for your feedback

yipykaye · July 2013

A bump before bed because they crashed my creative mojo!

yipykaye · July 2013

Time for a bump.
Whispers in the forest is half way there toward becoming a daily!

varkhus2013 · July 2013

Hi, I just played Part 1 and overall enjoyed it. I'm going to agree with pris23 that the undead hulks are a bit much; I was on a level 47 great weapon fighter, so for a level 60 that part might get annoying. Other than that, the combat balance feels perfect. I don't like foundry quests where every other mob has knockdown, or ever other fight feels like a boss. Yours avoids this problem, good job!

I liked the combination of indoor and outdoor locations - very nice getting to ride my mount.

I'll play part 2 sometime this weekend. My first Foundry is up now, it is called Bandit's Legacy, NW-DCU88SMBQ and I'd appreciate it if you have a chance to try it. I also tried to add story elements and not just combat. Thanks in advance.

yipykaye · July 2013

varkhus2013 wrote: »

My first Foundry is up now, it is called Bandit's Legacy, NW-DCU88SMBQ and I'd appreciate it if you have a chance to try it. I also tried to add story elements and not just combat. Thanks in advance.

Played your quest and it was quite good. A few little details that could enhance the immersion. I myself am learning more of this the better I get with foundry editor.

When you are talking to Miri's Brother(I forget names really easy) at the camp with the other people around. When they head back to her it would be nice to see them wander off back up the sewer rather than just disappearing. Some of them are also floating slightly.

With the portals I would have liked to hear them. All that magic and no sound effects. I did hear music later at important parts so just adding some more will help.

Some of the details in the sewers felt like. Mmm ill put 6 chests here and three things there and ...
it just didn't quite feel right for me . Personal opinion though and I myself need to play with details better.

Overall good job. Nice to play something that didn't feel like I was scraping my fingers down the blackboard.

varkhus2013 · July 2013

yipykaye wrote: »

Played your quest and it was quite good. A few little details that could enhance the immersion. I myself am learning more of this the better I get with foundry editor.

When you are talking to Miri's Brother(I forget names really easy) at the camp with the other people around. When they head back to her it would be nice to see them wander off back up the sewer rather than just disappearing. Some of them are also floating slightly.

With the portals I would have liked to hear them. All that magic and no sound effects. I did hear music later at important parts so just adding some more will help.

Some of the details in the sewers felt like. Mmm ill put 6 chests here and three things there and ...
it just didn't quite feel right for me . Personal opinion though and I myself need to play with details better.

Overall good job. Nice to play something that didn't feel like I was scraping my fingers down the blackboard.

Thanks friend. I actually have sound FX on the two shard/altar thingies but I'm not sure I hear it in the live version. I tested a couple of sounds on the portals but did not think they really worked, but I will revisit that idea. I love the suggestion of having the camp NPC's walk away, I didn't know we could do that. I'll look into it but if you have a moment, I'd like some tips on getting that to happen.

I'll play your next quest this weekend, thanks for the review.

yipykaye · July 2013

varkhus2013 wrote: »

I love the suggestion of having the camp NPC's walk away, I didn't know we could do that. I'll look into it but if you have a moment, I'd like some tips on getting that to happen.

Sure its actually easier than you might think. All you need to do is stack a copy of the NPC thats behavior is set to a one way patrol. I find that i use snap to grid and make sure they are one a defined point then stacking is really easy.Have them spawn as you finish talking to the guy. That way the stationary ones still fade away and the new versions will walk off to wherever you plot the points. I have done alot of this work in my Third installment and its coming together beautifully. Hope this helps

Who loves a story to go with killing everything in sight?

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