I just have 2 chars, and now I decided to just play with one to be able to have more time to work on the foundry.I have sharandar and dread ring boons complete, and 4/5 from the icewind ones. for the dailies, I just do the reputation one, till I have enough to get the boons or other stuff I might be interested in, so it doesn 't really take too longn each day.
I think the PVP campaign in IWD could easily be translated into a Foundry Campaign. Have two "tabs" like PVP camp has 3 (IWD, DOm, GG), one for authoring, one for running. Give out boons, achievements, collections, and some AD/refining points.
This will attact people not botters. Most people are min-maxers, give a boon that gives a little power to their toon, and they will do it.
Just keep the existing achievements, and rewards, and move them into a campaign. Add some boons, and some rewards for the community achieves. Bam, people running foundries.
Also, i would recommend a seal reward for running foundries. Moonstar seals sounds right. Let em buy something with em, a cool mount or something. BOP, again, to avoid botters. More seals longer the foundries are, to a cap.
This is something that became appallingly apparent a year ago when this game came out, and is only cemented in my mind since my return within this last week; PWE does not give two ****s about the Foundry, they order Cryptic to work on any and everything other than it because the Foundry does not bring money to their cash shop. It's a shame, it's why i quit a year ago, and the state of the Foundry community is pretty much exactly where i thought it would be around this time, virtually non existent.
Also if anyone reads this and still does do Foundry reviews search author zlainfurry and give me some feedback on my 2 quests! chapter 2 is still in review and I would love real feedback on it!
You are right, they would need to tie real $$ into it. Give out zen coupons maybe? Offer tools/etc to authors that can be bought from zen market? Hell, continue it and offer boss mobs/encounters/maps as drops from pve, and to be bought with glory. Some people will hate that idea, but I like it.
Look at games like Infinity (yes, i have kids), and there is a newer MMO out where you build your homes/etc. The ability to build cool stuff was something you earned.
Here's the problem. Most people are not good authors. Then they write story quests. This is almost painful. Then add the people that don't understand how to setup combat situations and you end up with either too easy or a room with the entire mob allowance in it and not room to dodge the reds because there is no space to stand.
This is why other than some farming maps for getting rp I avoid the foundry unless I'm bored and want to review a quest someone puts up on the forums. Bribes won't work, rewards won't work, because 99% of non-farm maps are badly designed.
I think the PVP campaign in IWD could easily be translated into a Foundry Campaign. Have two "tabs" like PVP camp has 3 (IWD, DOm, GG), one for authoring, one for running. Give out boons, achievements, collections, and some AD/refining points.
This will attact people not botters. Most people are min-maxers, give a boon that gives a little power to their toon, and they will do it.
Just keep the existing achievements, and rewards, and move them into a campaign. Add some boons, and some rewards for the community achieves. Bam, people running foundries.
Also, i would recommend a seal reward for running foundries. Moonstar seals sounds right. Let em buy something with em, a cool mount or something. BOP, again, to avoid botters. More seals longer the foundries are, to a cap.
I had been thinking about this exact thing lately, and had been keeping notes trying to come up with ideas to post. I used to play Foundries often, but eventually felt that I was playing Foundries *instead* of NWO because there was little reward (substantive or imagined) and it was taking away from advancing in the main game. Doing things like making the final chest (at least appear to) drop better loot would be good, along with non-abusable skill nodes.
A Foundry Campaign would really engage people though and put it in their face. I was also thinking of basing it off of the PvP Campaign with rewards for completing certain milestones. The milestones could duplicate some of the achievements, but would give actual rewards. The idea is to make them take a long time, but make them doable by pretty much anyone given enough time. Also, make it clear that (all/most? of) these goals can only be accomplished through Foundries that are rated at 15+ minutes (ie, "Daily Compatible").
Examples (keep in mind these would be 'per character', not account-wide like the achievements):
- Complete 100 15+ minute foundries
- Complete 40 30+ minute foundries
- Complete 15 60+ minute foundries
- Complete 50 15+ minute foundries faster than their estimated time
- Review 150 15+ minute foundries
- Review 50 beta foundries
- Donate 25,000 AD to authors (this would also act as a reward/incentive for authors)
- Kill 10,000 enemies in foundries
etc.
Rewards should be unique like Boons, Fashion items, a unique Artifact, unique gear, etc., all of which should be BoP.
I think all of this should also be complimented with an increase in rewards for authors (especially good authors), but I'm just thinking about ways to bring more people into *playing* foundries at the moment.
I've also wondered if it would be helpful to change the Rhix Daily Reward to something unique like giving you refined AD instead of rough AD. This would give the player that has it all (or at least >24k AD to refine per day) an incentive to play daily foundries as well.
I had been thinking about this exact thing lately, and had been keeping notes trying to come up with ideas to post. I used to play Foundries often, but eventually felt that I was playing Foundries *instead* of NWO because there was little reward (substantive or imagined) and it was taking away from advancing in the main game. Doing things like making the final chest (at least appear to) drop better loot would be good, along with non-abusable skill nodes.
A Foundry Campaign would really engage people though and put it in their face. I was also thinking of basing it off of the PvP Campaign with rewards for completing certain milestones. The milestones could duplicate some of the achievements, but would give actual rewards. The idea is to make them take a long time, but make them doable by pretty much anyone given enough time. Also, make it clear that (all/most? of) these goals can only be accomplished through Foundries that are rated at 15+ minutes (ie, "Daily Compatible").
Examples (keep in mind these would be 'per character', not account-wide like the achievements):
- Complete 100 15+ minute foundries
- Complete 40 30+ minute foundries
- Complete 15 60+ minute foundries
- Complete 50 15+ minute foundries faster than their estimated time
- Review 150 15+ minute foundries
- Review 50 beta foundries
- Donate 25,000 AD to authors (this would also act as a reward/incentive for authors)
- Kill 10,000 enemies in foundries
etc.
Rewards should be unique like Boons, Fashion items, a unique Artifact, unique gear, etc., all of which should be BoP.
I think all of this should also be complimented with an increase in rewards for authors (especially good authors), but I'm just thinking about ways to bring more people into *playing* foundries at the moment.
I've also wondered if it would be helpful to change the Rhix Daily Reward to something unique like giving you refined AD instead of rough AD. This would give the player that has it all (or at least >24k AD to refine per day) an incentive to play daily foundries as well.
The only problem I have with this is that most foundries are extremely low quality. There are about 10% or so of authors that get how to make a good video game dungeon. The rest as mentioned don't understand game combat and make it too easy or cram everything into small spaces to inflate challenge. Then you add on those that try to make it like a pnp encounter and include lots of back and forth "story" content with low amounts of fighting. Those don't work either as most authors are not novelists and the stories in general are not good. So a foundry campaign would be a huge negative public relations mistake as it would focus players into an area of the game with no standards on quality which has resulted in overall poor quality adventures.
I disagree, if you want to try a good foundry usually just reading the comments and reviews is a good way to tell the good ones from the really awful ones.
I have played quests that are much more fun than "official" questlines in the main game.
Besides, as with any compaign, it's not obligatory.
I do think that the campaign should be for playing quests, not making them, many people would make crappy quests just to get what they need (which already happens with achievements)
At least in my case, I have no incentive to play the foundry because I don't like it, some foundry quest seems to be mods made by a 8 years old, just some walls and some enemies... nothing more, and I don't like to play quests made by normal playes and not by the devs, unless they are very good quality and entertaining quest that doesn't feel like it was made by a random guy in 30 minutes.
If you ask me what would have to be done:
1- Devs need to discriminate the foundry quests and not to publish those that seems that were made by a 5 year old child.
2- Give some rewards, 4K RAD isn't enough, give some titles (maybe they alredy do it, I don't know), fashion items (dyes, transmute, etc...), increase the 4K RAD to 8K RAD, give better reward in the final chest (maybe some r4, potions and stuff for foundries that last less than 25 min, and shards, r4, r5, and more potions for the ones that last more than 25 min), etc...
Well, this is just an opinion from a guy who plays foundry in extremely rare ocasions .
I think it would be great if I could add my own rewards to my foundry quests. That is, spend astral diamonds from my account to give as rewards. Maybe even get rid of normal loot drops altogether.
This would eliminate 'farming' quests i'm sure, while giving authors a way to give incentives to players.
I'd love to see some sort of reward tokens for completing foundries, which then could be traded for unique items from a vendor. Something like Glory or Seals in mechanics. Maybe only have them be awarded on longer foundries, to get people to play and write more involved ones.
Even if the things you can buy are just green pets/mounts, T1 epic, or transmutables I think it would bring a lot more interest to the game. And it could be a viable path for leveling a character too, if you don't want to repeat the same quests over and over.
Right now you can get epic gear by running the PVP, running dungeons, or playing one of the campaigns (Dread Ring being the easiest to get gear from). Why not add foundry as another option?
I just want a better search engine/database/review system. The current one is HORRENDOUS!.
It needs a complete overhaul.
I want to see not just "Subscribe author", but "Subscribe to reviewer" or "follow reviewers" and then you can get results based on people who also have similar tastes or opinions, and people can see all the foundrys I gave 5 stars to.
I want to be able to list in 20+, I dont need a big fat banner, just a list + stars.
Better category system, If i could just filter only the ones with heavy narrative/story driven, if i want to sink myself into an immersive story.
Authors/player profiles You can see author or friends recommendations, each persons personal "Top 10" list.
A new rating system, an option to toggle all ratings to ignore all 1 star votes for example (self only)
I'm sure theres alot of other things, these are just ones i thought up as i was posting.
Also you have to take note, that most MMO players do not play other games, and foundry is like that. They would only play them if they got paid to do it (ADs/seals etc).
If you gave them a free game (single player game, like watch dogs, zelda etc) they probably will let it collect dust unless you paid them to play them. Because all they want to do is grind/mmo stuff.
There seem to be 2 groups that play foundries, 1) people who use it as a quick/easy way to farm xp/cash/drops/AD, and 2) those that want interesting new stories to enjoy.
Group 1 is much larger and plays them faster, so those quests often dominate the charts and Group 2 has a hard time finding appropriate quests. They have the Featured Quests to help, but really they need to separate the quests somehow to make it easier for the makers and consumers in group 2. I'd rather see that than see some way to try to bribe Group 1 into playing Group 2 quests. That won't ever really happen. Any incentive system will just cause Group 1 makers to come up with the quickest/easiest quests to satisfy the requirements.
1. The rewards are garbage. Until they allow for excellent rewards (think Dread Ring daily lair quality) to be in those end chests - forget it. Every foundry quest should allow that scale of reward for the first time played only. Foundry should allow for profession nodes as well with limits - hard for Cryptic to program those limits? figure it out.
2. Without fail the foundry quests I've played have nothing to do with the original game - they yoink you out of the lore and drop you in some odd and oddly put together out-take from the author's home campaign. Make foundry quests that are woven in with the game's current lore and implement them in the Exact Same Way as the adventures you see leveling up - make zones with multiple quest hubs and rest points with merchants. It may be that this is impossible to do in the current foundry - if that's so - then it needs to be fixed.
Am I being unreasonable? Perhaps - but this is what I need to see to care about Foundry. Basically authors should have the capacity to create 100% equivalent alternative zones to the leveling up zones. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you want this to take off really well - allow one or more authors to work together and create campaigns equivalent to sharandar, dread ring. Sure they can't create original gear (or could they - why can't Cryptic create multiple themed sets of Foundry-unique gear?) but let the authors create everything else, including customizing existing gear (name only).
Foundry could be the biggest asset to Neverwinter if they came up with appropriate mechanisms for dealing with cheaters and let loose the reins significantly.
I gave up on Foundry after obvious lack of interest on Cryptic's part. It needs a good search engine. Everything else is secondary -- people aren't going to play Foundry if they can't find what they want, and people aren't going to make good missions if nobody plays them.
But this has been said since release and nothing has gotten better. It's a huge shame.
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 played a few foundries I loved twice, even if they were long. First time to try them out. Second time with my guy. I liked them so much I wanted him to experience them too.
Foundry needs to offer advancement to be viable. If it doesn't contribute to my character's advancement in Neverwinter, then it is like a different game in itself. And I'll choose a single player game, not a Foundry, in that case. I think the campaign suggestion is great. I would definitely play more foundries if that was implemented.
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imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
Implement them in the Exact Same Way as the adventures you see leveling up - make zones with multiple quest hubs and rest points with merchants. It may be that this is impossible to do in the current foundry - if that's so - then it needs to be fixed.
It's impossible to do in the current foundry.
We are allowed one rest point per map. We are not allowed merchants, skill nodes, or anything else that gives an item that can be used outside of that specific quest. In addition, we have a limit to the number of objects we can place on the map, from the smallest tuft of grass to the largest cliff. As a result, unless we use their premade maps (which in Foundry are often glitchy, with invisible walls in weird places, gaps in the architecture, floating details, etc), anything large is often going to look a bit barren, as we'll need to use our budget to add the things that are actually important instead of the details that would really flesh out the map.
So, the big maps with multiple quest hubs, rest points, and merchants? Yeah, not going to happen.
HOWEVER... there is the campaign system. Authors can link together quests to form one larger campaign. While it makes the progression linear (quest a, then quest b, then quest c), much of the game content is also linear, so this shouldn't be an issue. True, there still aren't any real rewards, and no merchants, skill nodes, or chests other than the end-of-quest chests. However, if your complaint is about quests being snippet-sized instead of the user-created-zones you apparently want, you might consider trying some of the campaigns.
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited July 2014
I used to play foundries quite a bit in the beginning, but I have mostly stopped - this is for two reasons.
1) I like foundries with real stories that fit into the Forgotten Realms lore - but good foundries are too hard to find. I can avoid the ones made to get achievements (kill X foulspawn) or items like purse drops, but for the "story" foundries, there is the problem that it is just too hard to find good ones - and even worse when I find one which looks promising, but after 20 minutes I get stuck on some bug.
2) The foundries are just not sufficiently rewarding - I don't really need more AD or purple items - I have millions of AD and pretty much top-notch equipment, but it's just the "why bother" feeling when I get nothing of interest to me.
Now here is what would make a big difference for me:
1) Allow adding resource nodes (but, to avoid exploiting, their contents should depend on number/difficulty of mobs killed since the last node was accessed....no kills..no loot. You would have to work for it.
2) Have the final chests drop some tokens (we have so many currencies - why not one more), and again, make the quantity depend on number and difficulty of mobs killed. Then allow us to buy something for those tokens - cosmetic items, dyes, companions or mounts.
3) Give an extra bonus for playing a foundry you have never played before (instead of just doing the same one over and over).
Basically we need some some sort of reward for playing foundries - the current system just doesn't cut it, and I think my 3 suggestions are quite reasonable.
1) Allow adding resource nodes (but, to avoid exploiting, their contents should depend on number/difficulty of mobs killed since the last node was accessed....no kills..no loot. You would have to work for it.
2) Have the final chests drop some tokens (we have so many currencies - why not one more), and again, make the quantity depend on number and difficulty of mobs killed. Then allow us to buy something for those tokens - cosmetic items, dyes, companions or mounts.
Agree... been suggested many, many, many times since beta.
Well... It's not like Cryptic isn't aware of this issue. People have been bringing this up since the very beginning. The real question is why isn't Cryptic doing anything about it? Well?
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matiagronxMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 251Arc User
Cryptic prefers on focusing efforts on new material. It looks cool, makes great marketing and ad copy, and most people don't have the attention span to be annoyed that none of the games' features ever get finished or fixed.
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?
0
imaginaerum1Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 378Arc User
Cryptic prefers on focusing efforts on new material. It looks cool, makes great marketing and ad copy, and most people don't have the attention span to be annoyed that none of the games' features ever get finished or fixed.
In theory, Foundry is nothing but new material. An endless supply of new material, that the company doesn't have to pay one cent to produce. If they really wanted to satisfy the craving of players for new things to do that still advance their characters, they'd have added a viable reward system to Foundry months ago.
I'm about convinced that the company is run by people who don't actually play MMOs themselves, and are basing their decisions on where the game goes semi-randomly based on "industry advisors". It's the only way to explain some of the truly bone-headed things they've done, such as introducing such a wonderful tool as Foundry, then treating it like it has the plague.
Atleast in my opinion, setting up any rewards will just spawn a new breed of farming ones. And if its "first time only reward" it will spawn copies of that map.
better accessibility = more traffic.
As i said before The first improvement i want to see is if I could subscribe to reviewers/players, and players can favourite their best foundry experiences for others to take notice.
oh and atleast have some categories. Storyline, Grind (combat with little story), farming (including achievement hunting)
I personally almost always find Foundry quests drastically more interesting than the "Kill 5 Hellfire Warlocks" or "Punch Holes in 5 rowboats" drivel that the Official content pumps out en masse.
Comments
This will attact people not botters. Most people are min-maxers, give a boon that gives a little power to their toon, and they will do it.
Just keep the existing achievements, and rewards, and move them into a campaign. Add some boons, and some rewards for the community achieves. Bam, people running foundries.
Also, i would recommend a seal reward for running foundries. Moonstar seals sounds right. Let em buy something with em, a cool mount or something. BOP, again, to avoid botters. More seals longer the foundries are, to a cap.
Also if anyone reads this and still does do Foundry reviews search author zlainfurry and give me some feedback on my 2 quests! chapter 2 is still in review and I would love real feedback on it!
Look at games like Infinity (yes, i have kids), and there is a newer MMO out where you build your homes/etc. The ability to build cool stuff was something you earned.
This is why other than some farming maps for getting rp I avoid the foundry unless I'm bored and want to review a quest someone puts up on the forums. Bribes won't work, rewards won't work, because 99% of non-farm maps are badly designed.
A Foundry Campaign would really engage people though and put it in their face. I was also thinking of basing it off of the PvP Campaign with rewards for completing certain milestones. The milestones could duplicate some of the achievements, but would give actual rewards. The idea is to make them take a long time, but make them doable by pretty much anyone given enough time. Also, make it clear that (all/most? of) these goals can only be accomplished through Foundries that are rated at 15+ minutes (ie, "Daily Compatible").
Examples (keep in mind these would be 'per character', not account-wide like the achievements):
- Complete 100 15+ minute foundries
- Complete 40 30+ minute foundries
- Complete 15 60+ minute foundries
- Complete 50 15+ minute foundries faster than their estimated time
- Review 150 15+ minute foundries
- Review 50 beta foundries
- Donate 25,000 AD to authors (this would also act as a reward/incentive for authors)
- Kill 10,000 enemies in foundries
etc.
Rewards should be unique like Boons, Fashion items, a unique Artifact, unique gear, etc., all of which should be BoP.
I think all of this should also be complimented with an increase in rewards for authors (especially good authors), but I'm just thinking about ways to bring more people into *playing* foundries at the moment.
I've also wondered if it would be helpful to change the Rhix Daily Reward to something unique like giving you refined AD instead of rough AD. This would give the player that has it all (or at least >24k AD to refine per day) an incentive to play daily foundries as well.
The only problem I have with this is that most foundries are extremely low quality. There are about 10% or so of authors that get how to make a good video game dungeon. The rest as mentioned don't understand game combat and make it too easy or cram everything into small spaces to inflate challenge. Then you add on those that try to make it like a pnp encounter and include lots of back and forth "story" content with low amounts of fighting. Those don't work either as most authors are not novelists and the stories in general are not good. So a foundry campaign would be a huge negative public relations mistake as it would focus players into an area of the game with no standards on quality which has resulted in overall poor quality adventures.
I have played quests that are much more fun than "official" questlines in the main game.
Besides, as with any compaign, it's not obligatory.
I do think that the campaign should be for playing quests, not making them, many people would make crappy quests just to get what they need (which already happens with achievements)
If you ask me what would have to be done:
1- Devs need to discriminate the foundry quests and not to publish those that seems that were made by a 5 year old child.
2- Give some rewards, 4K RAD isn't enough, give some titles (maybe they alredy do it, I don't know), fashion items (dyes, transmute, etc...), increase the 4K RAD to 8K RAD, give better reward in the final chest (maybe some r4, potions and stuff for foundries that last less than 25 min, and shards, r4, r5, and more potions for the ones that last more than 25 min), etc...
Well, this is just an opinion from a guy who plays foundry in extremely rare ocasions
This would eliminate 'farming' quests i'm sure, while giving authors a way to give incentives to players.
Even if the things you can buy are just green pets/mounts, T1 epic, or transmutables I think it would bring a lot more interest to the game. And it could be a viable path for leveling a character too, if you don't want to repeat the same quests over and over.
Right now you can get epic gear by running the PVP, running dungeons, or playing one of the campaigns (Dread Ring being the easiest to get gear from). Why not add foundry as another option?
It needs a complete overhaul.
I want to see not just "Subscribe author", but "Subscribe to reviewer" or "follow reviewers" and then you can get results based on people who also have similar tastes or opinions, and people can see all the foundrys I gave 5 stars to.
I want to be able to list in 20+, I dont need a big fat banner, just a list + stars.
Better category system, If i could just filter only the ones with heavy narrative/story driven, if i want to sink myself into an immersive story.
Authors/player profiles You can see author or friends recommendations, each persons personal "Top 10" list.
A new rating system, an option to toggle all ratings to ignore all 1 star votes for example (self only)
I'm sure theres alot of other things, these are just ones i thought up as i was posting.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
If you gave them a free game (single player game, like watch dogs, zelda etc) they probably will let it collect dust unless you paid them to play them. Because all they want to do is grind/mmo stuff.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Group 1 is much larger and plays them faster, so those quests often dominate the charts and Group 2 has a hard time finding appropriate quests. They have the Featured Quests to help, but really they need to separate the quests somehow to make it easier for the makers and consumers in group 2. I'd rather see that than see some way to try to bribe Group 1 into playing Group 2 quests. That won't ever really happen. Any incentive system will just cause Group 1 makers to come up with the quickest/easiest quests to satisfy the requirements.
1. The rewards are garbage. Until they allow for excellent rewards (think Dread Ring daily lair quality) to be in those end chests - forget it. Every foundry quest should allow that scale of reward for the first time played only. Foundry should allow for profession nodes as well with limits - hard for Cryptic to program those limits? figure it out.
2. Without fail the foundry quests I've played have nothing to do with the original game - they yoink you out of the lore and drop you in some odd and oddly put together out-take from the author's home campaign. Make foundry quests that are woven in with the game's current lore and implement them in the Exact Same Way as the adventures you see leveling up - make zones with multiple quest hubs and rest points with merchants. It may be that this is impossible to do in the current foundry - if that's so - then it needs to be fixed.
Am I being unreasonable? Perhaps - but this is what I need to see to care about Foundry. Basically authors should have the capacity to create 100% equivalent alternative zones to the leveling up zones. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you want this to take off really well - allow one or more authors to work together and create campaigns equivalent to sharandar, dread ring. Sure they can't create original gear (or could they - why can't Cryptic create multiple themed sets of Foundry-unique gear?) but let the authors create everything else, including customizing existing gear (name only).
Foundry could be the biggest asset to Neverwinter if they came up with appropriate mechanisms for dealing with cheaters and let loose the reins significantly.
But this has been said since release and nothing has gotten better. It's a huge shame.
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?
Foundry needs to offer advancement to be viable. If it doesn't contribute to my character's advancement in Neverwinter, then it is like a different game in itself. And I'll choose a single player game, not a Foundry, in that case. I think the campaign suggestion is great. I would definitely play more foundries if that was implemented.
It's impossible to do in the current foundry.
We are allowed one rest point per map. We are not allowed merchants, skill nodes, or anything else that gives an item that can be used outside of that specific quest. In addition, we have a limit to the number of objects we can place on the map, from the smallest tuft of grass to the largest cliff. As a result, unless we use their premade maps (which in Foundry are often glitchy, with invisible walls in weird places, gaps in the architecture, floating details, etc), anything large is often going to look a bit barren, as we'll need to use our budget to add the things that are actually important instead of the details that would really flesh out the map.
So, the big maps with multiple quest hubs, rest points, and merchants? Yeah, not going to happen.
HOWEVER... there is the campaign system. Authors can link together quests to form one larger campaign. While it makes the progression linear (quest a, then quest b, then quest c), much of the game content is also linear, so this shouldn't be an issue. True, there still aren't any real rewards, and no merchants, skill nodes, or chests other than the end-of-quest chests. However, if your complaint is about quests being snippet-sized instead of the user-created-zones you apparently want, you might consider trying some of the campaigns.
1) I like foundries with real stories that fit into the Forgotten Realms lore - but good foundries are too hard to find. I can avoid the ones made to get achievements (kill X foulspawn) or items like purse drops, but for the "story" foundries, there is the problem that it is just too hard to find good ones - and even worse when I find one which looks promising, but after 20 minutes I get stuck on some bug.
2) The foundries are just not sufficiently rewarding - I don't really need more AD or purple items - I have millions of AD and pretty much top-notch equipment, but it's just the "why bother" feeling when I get nothing of interest to me.
Now here is what would make a big difference for me:
1) Allow adding resource nodes (but, to avoid exploiting, their contents should depend on number/difficulty of mobs killed since the last node was accessed....no kills..no loot. You would have to work for it.
2) Have the final chests drop some tokens (we have so many currencies - why not one more), and again, make the quantity depend on number and difficulty of mobs killed. Then allow us to buy something for those tokens - cosmetic items, dyes, companions or mounts.
3) Give an extra bonus for playing a foundry you have never played before (instead of just doing the same one over and over).
Basically we need some some sort of reward for playing foundries - the current system just doesn't cut it, and I think my 3 suggestions are quite reasonable.
I think the problem with this is that it further encourages combat-oriented foundries. I'd propose:
12-10-2013 Non exploitable author placed Skill Nodes
...and to further encourage (or at least allow the option for) non-combat experience:
08-22-2013 Foundry Doubloons - awarding experience/rewards for non-combat objectives
Agree... been suggested many, many, many times since beta.
or also something like...
04-03-2014 Request: Fix for foundry Rhix and daily rewards
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
I have so many companions I want to upgrade, just imagine how many Foundries I would play.
Just an update so that we dont forget this.
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?
In theory, Foundry is nothing but new material. An endless supply of new material, that the company doesn't have to pay one cent to produce. If they really wanted to satisfy the craving of players for new things to do that still advance their characters, they'd have added a viable reward system to Foundry months ago.
I'm about convinced that the company is run by people who don't actually play MMOs themselves, and are basing their decisions on where the game goes semi-randomly based on "industry advisors". It's the only way to explain some of the truly bone-headed things they've done, such as introducing such a wonderful tool as Foundry, then treating it like it has the plague.
Atleast in my opinion, setting up any rewards will just spawn a new breed of farming ones. And if its "first time only reward" it will spawn copies of that map.
better accessibility = more traffic.
As i said before The first improvement i want to see is if I could subscribe to reviewers/players, and players can favourite their best foundry experiences for others to take notice.
oh and atleast have some categories. Storyline, Grind (combat with little story), farming (including achievement hunting)
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
We do already have "Categories" aka "Tags" -
Very few people actually use them however due to the UI and way they are prompted during the end review dialog.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics