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Foundry Quests: How Do YOU Rate Them? What are Your Criteria?
nimmanu
Member Posts: 250 Bounty Hunter
So, how do you rate foundry quests, Joe Q. NW Public?
What makes you give a 5?
What makes you give a 1?
What leaves you feeling like it was okay, but not great?
Help us authors create content that appeals to you by telling us how you rate and why you rate (or why you wouldn't).
Mod Note:
** This thread is mainly to gain insight from non-Foundry Authors, but all feedback is welcome.
> For a more author-geared discussion, see this thread: "What do you require for a five star rating?"
** Let's talk about foundry quests that aren't exploitative in nature, please.
What makes you give a 5?
What makes you give a 1?
What leaves you feeling like it was okay, but not great?
Help us authors create content that appeals to you by telling us how you rate and why you rate (or why you wouldn't).
Mod Note:
** This thread is mainly to gain insight from non-Foundry Authors, but all feedback is welcome.
> For a more author-geared discussion, see this thread: "What do you require for a five star rating?"
** Let's talk about foundry quests that aren't exploitative in nature, please.
Breaching the Swarm NW-DUXUHQWNP
Pick your side, take a stand, save--or kill--your former allies.
Pick your side, take a stand, save--or kill--your former allies.
Post edited by nimmanu on
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Here's hoping folks will help us improve what we make in the foundry for them to play.
Pick your side, take a stand, save--or kill--your former allies.
Great question, and I hope others will take the time to answer...
I'm sure the criteria for a '5' will vary greatly from player to player and I can only speak for myself.
Duration: I have limited play times, so Foundries are my default playtime destinations. I look for 15-30 minute quests most days, but if I have more time, I will try longer ones. I'm guessing duration might play into it for most folks and for me that sweet spot is around 20 minute duration.
Story: I like knowing why I'm here. Motivation is important to me and I don't usually like the 'cheeky' or 'cheesy' story lines. It is so hard to do comedy. (Bill's tavern is just so good that it is an exception to this criteria) A straight-forward motivational story that makes sense to me is generally required.
Combat: Most Foundry quests are quite doable at low to mid levels. Solo at 50-60 becomes questionable. Use of resources sky-rockets and rewards are, unfrotunately, restricted. Even my CW had trouble before he obtained pretty decent gear. To get a 5 on combat you must present a challenge without erecting a barrier to completion for lesser-geared folks. I also like to do Foundrys with a friend or two on occasion and don't want to walk through all the mobs like gods. Having a combat slider is an amazing asset.
Summary: The only Foundry that I regularly run on every character of every class and every level is "Protect the Caravan". There are many other great foundrys, but this one is the Gold Standard for me. Great motivation/story, 17-20 minute average run time, and an easy to understand/utilize combat slider for difficulty. Note that I did not talk about textures, mood, music, etc. Those things are all cool and do factor into enjoyment of the quest, but it will simply not get played if it doesn't meet the minimum criteria I outlined above. For example, if "Clash of Wills" had a difficulty slider, I would solo it a lot more. I did give it a 5 rating, but I usually run it with a friend. This is one of the most artfully designed Foundrys, but I will be running PTC tonight after work.
Hope this helps you amazing Foundry authors. You guys are the future of this game for me.
Good story
Good plot line
Good writing
Good map with details
If there is a twist, or surprise that is a plus
Length 15-30 minutes, although will play a quest up to an hour if it is really interesting. However if it is long and I play it and it is not good, I will likely be more harsh with my rating as wasting 15 minutes is less annoying than wasting an hour.
Things I dislike:
Spelling/Grammar errors. It makes me feel almost insulted. Like the author just rushed to publish something. If someone expects me to take a half hour of my time to play their quest they can at least spell things correctly/use proper grammer.
Immersion breakers. Unless it is a quest specifically geared around a different genre, I do not want to see Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez as NPC names. Seriously. I do not enjoy NPCs talking about "real life" things. There are occasional exceptions to this, I played a WoW satire recently that was fairly amusing, but it was listed in the description what it was and it was well done.
Just maps filled with mobs. I can play Cryptic dungeons for boatloads of adds and get better experience and drops. If I am going to play a Foundry Quest, I want story line.
Maps that do not work. Please test out your maps prior to publishing and then again as soon as you publish and it is "live". You should run your own quests with several characters of different levels and classes to see if it "works".
I also go out of my way to try new content and new authors. I think the way Cryptic currently runs the Foundry in game is extremely unfair to newer authors so I try my best to give some of those a play.
Don't usually like comedy, though sometimes it's done well. The truth is most of us are pretty nerdy and nerd+humor is usually an embarrassing, cringe-inducing, eye-rolling failure. So just don't try to be funny. No Monty Python references. No Futurama quotes. And so on. Just don't do it.
Don't make modern-day references for comedy or any reason. "Oh, let me check my cell phone!" is not funny. It's immersion breaking, stupid and has been done 1,000 times before.
It's the Forgotten Realms, so take a little time to familiarize yourself with the setting. Thor, Jesus and Bat-Man do not exist in the Forgotten Realms, so I don't want to see them in your module.
Above all, I'm looking for someone who can do something interesting with the limited resources the Foundry offers. Unfortunately, the Foundry pretty much limits you to "Kill 10 Rats" quests and "Click 10 glowy objects" but if the author can come up with something clever within those limitations then you're well on your way to a 5 from me.
Finally, spelling and grammar. Your module will look amateurish and juvenile if you can't be bothered to spend a little time going over the grammar. I realize this is the Internet, and I don't want to go on an old-man rant about kids these days, but honestly folks, please, for the love of the English language, learn the differences between basic stuff like : too/to, you're/your, there/their/they're and so on. English: it ain't rocket science.
That's about par for the course, with anything to do with NW, I suppose.
3 star: this is typically the lowest score I give, and the score that I am most likely to give specific feedback along with. Usually 3 star to me means a quest has some promise, but there's something either missing or in need of changing to make it more enjoyable.
4 star: this is my baseline review, and the one I most often give. If a quest is at least somewhat fun, yet doesn't really jump out as being something special in one way or another, it probably will get a 4 star review from me without a lot of detail in the description. Occasionally I will also use this rating for a quest that would have been a five star except for some particular element, but in that case I will mention the element that I didn't like (or felt was missing) in the review description.
5 star: entirely based on my overall enjoyment level. Any quest where I finish up with the feeling of "Wow, that was cool" gets a 5 star review, though there are a lot of different things that can induce that feeling.
I generally don't give 1 or 2 star reviews. If I finish a quest, it usually means that I enjoyed it at least enough to give it 3 stars -- otherwise I would have probably just abandoned it (which I haven't done often).
Here are some of the things that can win me over in a Foundry quest:
*Good story
*Interesting and unique-looking locations
*Challenging combat, or even better, a difficulty slider. I tend to find combat in most of the Foundries fairly easy, so something that challenges a bit more will get my attention.
*A little bit of trick-jumping or tightrope walking is a lot of fun and a great addition, but I tend to get frustrated if this is the majority of the challenge in a given quest.
*Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles. But if it's a puzzle-heavy quest, please say so in the description (see next point).
*Probably the most important thing to me is an accurate description of the quest. If something is primarily dialogue-based story, please list this in the description so that I don't attempt it when I'm in the mood to stomp face. Likewise, if it's a straight-up hack-and-slash dungeon crawl, state this in the description. I like a lot of different types of quests depending on my mood at the time, so I use the quest description to try and pick one that suits my current mood.
I do try to do this, as well. It's a bit of a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>-shoot, but can really pay off. We should start to share some of our favorite "New" Foundrys with each other in the forums. It might help to get some very necessary visibility to excellent new content.
The factors that tend to go into it for me are:
* Story/lore/writing. Both the plot and the telling of it are important. I also like dialogue trees, if people bother to do them.
* Combat is in sweet spot of challenging but not over the top. Creativity of mob placement, types of mob, settings -- all get points.
* Sense of style and uniqueness rather than cookie-cutter. I like running foundries that are unique, creative, different and interesting, and the more they are like that the higher they are likely to get rated.
Foundries are, to me, the real core of this game, as a Neverwinter game. I'm not quite capped yet, but I don't expect to play this game as a traditional MMO once I am capped and instead to focus on Foundries.
- JailBreak (in development)
2. Dialogue, story, lore are concise (i.e. no walls of text)
3. Balanced battles - less trash and more stronger mobs but not stacked.
4. Beautiful thought-out surroundings
5. Originality, wit
6. Factor of excitement
7. Sense of adventure
8. Little nooks and secrets to discover
There's sort of an undercurrent of thought that "story isn't that important except to us authors, which is a little depressing. Seeing others list it as a worthy goal is helpful and makes me feel a little better about my quest.
It's great to hear others acknowledge the limitations of the foundry, also. Sometimes you get things like, "you should let us pick something!" when it's kind of supremely difficult to do in the Foundry, lol. It's possible, but it takes hours sometimes to get just one thing correct/possible.
Anyway, much gratitude to each of you who took your time to answer this.
Pick your side, take a stand, save--or kill--your former allies.
I am not a Foundry Author, but I will tell you how my review system works. Understand that my review system will be different to any other persons review system. You will never be able to enforce a unified review policy.
1 star is near nigh unplayable map.
2 star, same as 1 but you can see improvements fixing a lot of things
3 stars, well made quest but didn't personally enjoy it.
4 stars, enjoyed the quest but could of been better
5 stars, really enjoyed the quest, look forward to more work from the author.
Now, I will say that if you are looking to get just 5 stars and you are fishing for a means to how to accommodate that, then you are doing it wrong. A good foundry map takes hours and hours to build, it is a labor of love and self indulgence.
That's for sure, lol.
However, sometimes there are ways to do things that can accommodate both. You can easily make a fast track through your quest and add in side quests for the story-lovers, for example.
When any artist creates a work of art, there is joy in sharing it... and there can be pain in hearing negative about it. It's human nature and there's nothing wrong with keeping in the back of your mind, the desires of those who will be enjoying that work of art, I say.
But I agree completely in that, if sacrifice comes in, then what must be sacrificed first is public opinion because the public is fickle, while art is true to itself and its creator.
Pick your side, take a stand, save--or kill--your former allies.
I like humour. I even like humour that's salted with modern references, if they've been incorporated into the story in a believable way. Bonderleaf's Thorough Aggregator has a fantastic Eddie Izzard reference, as an example, but even if you don't know that, it's still funny.
I care about soloability, because I am going to linger over every word and poke in the corners and potentially backtrack a fair bit if I think I've missed something. My preferred gaming habits do not lend themselves to teaming up with people who want to rush through content. Since that appears to be roughly most of them, I'm on my own a lot of the time. Many seem to believe the whole point of Foundry missions is to run Bill4x every effing day. I liked Bill's Tavern well enough, but I've played it... so it's time to explore something that offers me something new.
Adding things where your class matters seems to be somewhat difficult to orchestrate, but it's very nice to see when the author can manage it.
Pretty environments are cool, and add to atmosphere. I have been neglecting Foundry since audio was fixed, but look forward to hearing the improvements in action. I appreciate the care that goes into people's design work.
Puzzles are cool, as are the side objectives of finding X number of hidden things, but neither is primary for me.
As a slow gamer, I am somewhat bummed out by long hallways, though I see why they get used to put the brakes on the rush crowd.
How do I rate them? I'd probably have to really hate your quest to give 1-2 stars. I don't think I've done this, since I avoid playing anything I suspect I'll end up hating. 3 if I thought it was nothing special (I know the author probably worked hard on it, but that doesn't mean their result is much good, sorry). 4-5 if I really enjoyed myself.
I'll play more Foundry when I start a new character/finish official content with existing characters trying to hit all the skirmishes without outlevelling them.
Incidentally, missions taking 45 minutes or more to complete doesn't bother me at all, because I want less XP, not more. I never ever play them during the Foundry event because double XP is not what I want at all, though I might feel differently if I ever start using Foundry as a way to level companions while capped myself.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
And yes, this is STILL occurring. Every Foundry mish I play I have reduced xp earnings, regardless.
Occam's Razor makes the cutting clean.
Then you are punishing those authors for something that they had absolutely no say in. Well done.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I disagree, for it was their outcry that caused Craptic intervention in the first place.
Occam's Razor makes the cutting clean.