How do I get traffic on a quest?

zaforous · December 2013

I've posted in the quest database a few times without much success. I'm trying to get some more mileage on the foundry I created a while back. Is the quest database section just dead? Or are people turned off by hack 'n' slash? I've posted a few times without good results.

I've also submitted to have the quest count as a daily, but I haven't gotten that yet. I wonder if there is anything additional I need to do.

Thanks in advance!

Here is the quest info in case someone would like to play!

It's a dirty job by @zaforous
Short Code: NW-DLDKYKIJP
Mission Type: Dungeon
Average Duration: 40 min (Grp of 3)
Amount of Combat: Heavy combat
Starts at: Map
Mission Summary:

In this quest you're charged with cleaning up the sewers underneath Protector's Enclave. There is a growing stench and people aren't very happy about it. You're sure this will be an easy, and typical sewer clean-up job, but something else strange is going on.

Author tips/hints:

This is my first foundry quest. I like heavy combat, and I usually play with two friends in a group of 3. So this dungeon is fairly challenging for a group of 3 if you aggro too many monsters at once. In the big sewer room I added a bunch of objects you can climb onto to get a tactical advantage on some of the mobs.

The map is fairly simplistic, but I think still fun to have a look. I haven't really gotten good at side quests yet so the quest line is fairly linear as well.

I think it's a little funny, and entertaining while having some fun combat. I hope you all enjoy!

Be sure to review! Thanks!

izatar · December 2013

Right now, the only real way to get plays is to be featured. The new list does not show new quests, but instead shows the 'best list', which barely changes. We are banned from posting in the main forums about foundry quests.

I do not understand what Cryptic is thinking on this. Either they don't understand the damage this state of affairs is causing foundry authors, players and the game itself, or they are doing this on purpose to discourage foundry. Both possibilities bother me.

antonkyle · December 2013

The way to get plays is to trade them until you have 20 which will make your quest available for Daily. After that it is just a case of hoping that some of these 20 will pass it on to their friends and maybe get some plays through word of mouth.

Other than that you can keep advertising it on the forum or in game. Maybe join a large guild.

But unless you get an adjusted rating above 4.17 you will not get any plays through the search tab.

angrysprite · December 2013

There is nothing you can do except join a guild or something and ask them to play it. The state of Foundry (for authors) is absolutely flat. Seriously, just build it and forget it. I built my little three quest campaign and have since all but forgotten about it. I don't even care any more (there's no reason to pull them, so they just sit there and stagnate).

The same thing happened three years ago over at STO. And now the Foundry over there is a pitiful mess. The Foundry over here is on the way to being that, too. A million Foundry Quests, where only 1% of those are actually worth playing (for each person's personal likes). Good luck finding the ones you'll really like.

-shrugs-

kithlis · December 2013

antonkyle wrote: »

But unless you get an adjusted rating above 4.17 you will not get any plays through the search tab.

Even then... I made it to 4.18 last night. Add anonymous 1-stars, and back down off the Best List...

Build because you like building... hoping for an audience (while possible) is a hard deal to strike.
Sounds like you built something that you and your friends can enjoy - that's great!

Other notes:
Group quests are harder to get plays
Quests longer than 30 minutes are harder to get plays

antonkyle · December 2013

kithlis wrote: »

Even then... I made it to 4.18 last night. Add anonymous 1-stars, and back down off the Best List...

Build because you like building... hoping for an audience (while possible) is a hard deal to strike.
Sounds like you built something that you and your friends can enjoy - that's great!

Other notes:
Group quests are harder to get plays
Quests longer than 30 minutes are harder to get plays

Sadly I think some authors are to blame for this. I honestly think that some down rate quests for this very reason. The fact that yes one 1 star is the same as over five 5 stars in effect for adjusted rating is terrible.

I have seen it happen with almost every quest that has made the jump to the best tab. It is very sad.

zahinder · December 2013

It just boggles my mind that the problems came up over and over for 2-3 years on STO... and they apparently went into NW Foundry blissfully unaware of any of them.

I... I literally can't conceive of how that happened.

mrgiggles651 · December 2013

Make your guild play your foundry and five star you no matter what. Right or wrong, that is pretty much the only way to do it.

melinden · December 2013

Whoa. I get that indignant anger feels really good, but consider the circumstances:

-you made this quest very recently
-a new module just came out
-it is a busy time of year: students are taking finals, some of us are grading them. Other people are getting ready to travel soon.

I have this quest in my quest log but since I need to catch 2 guildmates who are free to run it, I haven't yet. Also, have you been racking up the plays for other people's quests and posting reviews here? Work in good faith with the foundry community (especially here on the forums) and you'll get to know people who will help you. But you need to make the effort to start.

kellnaforian · December 2013

I also would like more reviews. However, I really enjoyed the act of building the quests. I've easily put well over 100 hours into my campaign (5) quests and only have a total of 25 reviews over the last couple of months. The enjoyment of creating, in and of itself, should be where a lot of the satisfaction comes from. Yes, people actually playing it and giving reviews and enjoying the content is part of it. In time that may come, or it may not. But, did you enjoy making the quest?

I also find enjoyment in running my quests and tweaking things here and adding detail there so that if traffic does pick up, or it does get noticed, it is well received.

Kell

Lands of Mirent Tusk

eldarth · December 2013

...and you can always help out by bumping/signing/commenting-on any of these you like...

Requests/Suggestions

mrgiggles651 · December 2013

izatar wrote: »

We are banned from posting in the main forums about foundry quests.

There's a foundry quest that is stickied in the main forum, with two separate community mods and a pw emloyee posting in the sticky.

zaforous · December 2013

melinden wrote: »

Whoa. I get that indignant anger feels really good

Not sure if this was directed at me, but I am not angry. Just trying to figure out the best way to share what I think is a fun quest I created. Which I published initially over the summer.

I will keep trading reviews, I just hadn't seem much activity in the other forum so I was honestly trying to figure out if (or what) I am doing wrong.

eldarth · December 2013

mrgiggles651 wrote: »

There's a foundry quest that is stickied in the main forum, with two separate community mods and a pw emloyee posting in the sticky.

...and "we" didn't post it there -- got moved/stickied by mods. I've been working on an arena to try and out-arena the Wolf Pit and politely inquired if Sominator and Team Fence Bane would mind starring as a challenger wave. Never hurts to ask. :cool:

mrgiggles651 · December 2013

eldarth wrote: »

...and "we" didn't post it there -- got moved/stickied by mods. I've been working on an arena to try and out-arena the Wolf Pit and politely inquired if Sominator and Team Fence Bane would mind starring as a challenger wave. Never hurts to ask. :cool:

Exactly. Whether or not you requested it is irrelevant to the point. This is the sort of differential treatment that some posters to these forums were banned for complaining about. The policy is no foundry promotion in general discussion, and if that's the policy then it should apply to everyone. Your thread got additional special trearment in that it doesnt appear in the Foundry forum at all, unlike other moved threads shere they appear as threads in the forum they were moved to, but also appear in their original forum with the "moved" forum icon/thread name. This furthers the perception, whether true or not, implied by Kithlis and outright stated by antonkyle, that there's something funny going on with foundry promotion. Mod's winning screenshot of the week doesnt help either (there's an inherent conflict of interest there).

So you may be proud of it, but even with your entire innocence in it, it's indicative of one of the problems here.

antonkyle · December 2013

mrgiggles651 wrote: »

This furthers the perception, whether true or not, implied by Kithlis and outright stated by antonkyle, that there's something funny going on with foundry promotion. Mod's winning screenshot of the week doesnt help either (there's an inherent conflict of interest there).

I wasn't implying that the mods or developers were in any way involved.

My comment was more to point out that the adjusted rating system doesn't work. Some authors may use this to their advantage. I don't know, but I have heard accusations.

I would like to know how many ratings you need for your adjusted rating to catch up with your average rating. I have over 300 ratings for one quest and the average rating is 4.4, but the adjusted rating is 4.23

Do they expect most quests to get well over 300 plays then? I honestly don't understand. It's a system that is designed to keep the Best tab (which means the new tab also) the same. It needs to change, share the wealth.

If a quest has 10, five star reviews in a row. It should be on the best tab, as a player I want to try it and see why. If it's poor, I will rate it as poor. Thus making sure that it is soon off the best tab. If everyone did this you would have a nice, ever changing, best list to choose from.

It would be much better than the same 20 quests getting 98% of the player plays. Most because they happened to be published during the official release of the games insuring they got many more plays than can usually be expected. Most players will not go and look for new quests.

dzogen · December 2013

zaforous wrote: »

I've posted in the quest database a few times without much success. I'm trying to get some more mileage on the foundry I created a while back. Is the quest database section just dead? Or are people turned off by hack 'n' slash? I've posted a few times without good results.

I've also submitted to have the quest count as a daily, but I haven't gotten that yet. I wonder if there is anything additional I need to do.

Thanks in advance!

Here is the quest info in case someone would like to play!

It's a dirty job by @zaforous
Short Code: NW-DLDKYKIJP
Mission Type: Dungeon
Average Duration: 40 min (Grp of 3)
Amount of Combat: Heavy combat
Starts at: Map
Mission Summary:

In this quest you're charged with cleaning up the sewers underneath Protector's Enclave. There is a growing stench and people aren't very happy about it. You're sure this will be an easy, and typical sewer clean-up job, but something else strange is going on.

Author tips/hints:

This is my first foundry quest. I like heavy combat, and I usually play with two friends in a group of 3. So this dungeon is fairly challenging for a group of 3 if you aggro too many monsters at once. In the big sewer room I added a bunch of objects you can climb onto to get a tactical advantage on some of the mobs.

The map is fairly simplistic, but I think still fun to have a look. I haven't really gotten good at side quests yet so the quest line is fairly linear as well.

I think it's a little funny, and entertaining while having some fun combat. I hope you all enjoy!

Be sure to review! Thanks!

If you pay me 1M Ad I will put up an ad for your quest in the #1 spot on the best list for a week. That should get you a lot of plays.

mrgiggles651 · December 2013

antonkyle wrote: »

I wasn't implying that the mods or developers were in any way involved.

My comment was more to point out that the adjusted rating system doesn't work. Some authors may use this to their advantage. I don't know, but I have heard accusations.

I would like to know how many ratings you need for your adjusted rating to catch up with your average rating. I have over 300 ratings for one quest and the average rating is 4.4, but the adjusted rating is 4.23

Do they expect most quests to get well over 300 plays then? I honestly don't understand. It's a system that is designed to keep the Best tab (which means the new tab also) the same. It needs to change, share the wealth.

If a quest has 10, five star reviews in a row. It should be on the best tab, as a player I want to try it and see why. If it's poor, I will rate it as poor. Thus making sure that it is soon off the best tab. If everyone did this you would have a nice, ever changing, best list to choose from.

It would be much better than the same 20 quests getting 98% of the player plays. Most because they happened to be published during the official release of the games insuring they got many more plays than can usually be expected. Most players will not go and look for new quests.

You can see how ratings get calculated in the following thread, look for the post by groshie on page 4.
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?436731-Question-about-Reviews
Authors calculated ratings for their quests and they tended to agree, except for some outliers like a quest that reached the best list with only around 20 plays. The calculation methos was stated by a dev, though I cant find the post. If that is truly the method, it should be impossible to get on the best list with 20 plays due to the way the calculation method works.

koboldfang · December 2013

mrgiggles651 wrote: »

You can see how ratings get calculated in the following thread, look for the post by groshie on page 4.
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?436731-Question-about-Reviews
Authors calculated ratings for their quests and they tended to agree, except for some outliers like a quest that reached the best list with only around 20 plays. The calculation methos was stated by a dev, though I cant find the post. If that is truly the method, it should be impossible to get on the best list with 20 plays due to the way the calculation method works.

I saw it happen, dude. Screenshots were made, but that was on my old laptop. I had that many five star reviews in a row before and didn't have an adjusted rating near as high. As much as part of me wants to create the next installment of my campaign, I feel like it would be wasted with the broken new list, rigged snowball effect rating system that only affects some, and the rapidly dying community..

koboldfang · December 2013

dzogen wrote: »

If you pay me 1M Ad I will put up an ad for your quest in the #1 spot on the best list for a week. That should get you a lot of plays.

Disregard all the gloom and doom in my last post. It seems Dzogen has beaten the system. :cool:

boomba66 · December 2013

Biggest challenge for everyone.

1. Foundry's general don't get a ton of plays for three reasons.
A. Faster Exp in quest Zones.
B. Lack of Rewards at End Game.
C. They are hard to find, some of the best ones get no plays and bad ones get a ton and give a bad rap..
2. Fixes.
A. End Game Rewards
B. Unique options for promotion. Maybe place a quest up like "The Final prophecy" as a feature on the front page.
C. Fix the new column so new authors can have their work looked at.
3. What's really needed to get Foundry played.
A. PvP maps, we are all bored of the same ones.
B. Boss encounters with boss rewards
C. Party Scaling.

Good Luck on getting plays.

mleger · December 2013

yeah see here is the thing

It's a dirty job by @zaforous
Short Code: NW-DLDKYKIJP
Mission Type: Dungeon
Average Duration: 40 min (Grp of 3)
Amount of Combat: Heavy combat
Starts at: Map
Mission Summary:

i dont want to spend 40 minutes with a group, for a crappy end treasure reward. when i can spend 40 minutes solo and do my dread ring, and shandar dailies.

as an author myself, i know it sucks.

reiwulf · December 2013

As long as the "new" tab isn't fixed, new foundry quests will keep having a really hard time getting plays.

kellnaforian · December 2013

reiwulf wrote: »

As long as the "new" tab isn't fixed, new foundry quests will keep having a really hard time getting plays.

Has a reason been given as to why this has not been fixed? On the surface it would not seem like a difficult thing to do. I can only assume they have a specific reason for not taking care of this.

kithlis · December 2013

Has anyone submitted a but report (either in-game or in the bug forums) about the New tab?
I know I'm guilty of not doing so yet.

If there is a thread over there, let me know and I'll add to it.

mrgiggles651 · December 2013

kithlis wrote: »

Has anyone submitted a but report (either in-game or in the bug forums) about the New tab?
I know I'm guilty of not doing so yet.

If there is a thread over there, let me know and I'll add to it.

Its been a known bug since around module 1 release. Eldarth made a bug report thread on 10 November. It was reported before that, thats only the easiest to find bug report forum thread for it

kithlis · December 2013

mrgiggles651 wrote: »

Its been a known bug since around module 1 release. Eldarth made a bug report thread on 10 November. It was reported before that, thats only the easiest to find bug report forum thread for it

Can you provide the Link to that one?

I added a post to the Dev thread about Feywild Foundry Issues, but figure it's worth a blitz to get it noticed wherever we can.

How do I get traffic on a quest?

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