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Incredible Foundry Apathy in General Community

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    grimahgrimah Member Posts: 1,658 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    eldarth wrote: »
    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.

    This is what i mean, the UI is just horrendous and hurts the community the most. How do people find quests? featured is the only thing that works because you click the tab and boom a new quest every fortnight, with some guarantee it is worth playing. Everything else is a mess, and "New" is also a joke.

    Why can't i even sort the featured ones by highest rated? even such a basic thing is missing.

    Really needs sorting and filters, and the author should be the one setting the category at the beginning, and then players can flag the foundry if it is not. How many authors here have quests that are lost in the void and stuck under 100 plays?
    Creator of the featured survival horror foundry: "The Silence of Haydenwick" Video Review
    and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
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    imaginaerum1imaginaerum1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 378 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    grimah wrote: »
    list/search problem > reward problem.

    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 like all of your proposals, but the number one reason I hear for why people don't play Foundries is because they don't get any kind of reward for doing so. The daily ADs are a joke for a minimum 60 minute time investment at level 60, and everything else that drops is random clutter. I rarely hear people say that they'd play more if they could find the quest they wanted easier. I have heard it, but the "no reward" group seems to vastly outnumber the "needs better search" group.

    As to Foundry being farmed, what I see being done with the regular content day in and day out is people farming. For the content alone, how many times does one person need to run the same dungeon over and over? Play the same pvp map? Do the same daily? Apparently for some there is no limit, because they only reason they play is to accumulate more rewards which they can then use to either make their character more powerful or sell for a lot of ADs.

    At this point, if having significantly increased traffic is what it takes for Cryptic/PWE to put the resources into Foundry that it deserves, then farmers farming quests the same way they farm the existing content is something I'm willing to accept. It would bring in a bunch of people who would play the quests (not farm, actually play) if there were any real rewards, and if the players are there, maybe we'd see the same kind of support that pvp gets (in other words, "some", which is better than "treat like plague").

    That said, what I'd really like to see is a rewards system *and* a better way to find quests. But they need to do something, because at this point even a lot of the hardcore Foundry proponents are beginning to give up.
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    eldartheldarth Member Posts: 4,494 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    At this point, if having significantly increased traffic is what it takes for Cryptic/PWE to put the resources into Foundry that it deserves, then farmers farming quests the same way they farm the existing content is something I'm willing to accept. It would bring in a bunch of people who would play the quests (not farm, actually play) if there were any real rewards, and if the players are there, maybe we'd see the same kind of support that pvp gets (in other words, "some", which is better than "treat like plague").

    Absolutely. Farmers are going to farm. Period. That's why I soooo strongly fought for "Farming" as one of the category/tags. At the very least it would allow others to search for everything that is NOT "Farming." (Excepth they still need to fix search by tags as "one" person could mark a quest as "Farming" and it would be all over for that quest.)
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    grimahgrimah Member Posts: 1,658 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    i suppose you are right there, if the rewards were good enough you will get a boom of farming ones for the people who are interested in rewards.

    But you will also get people who want the rewards but hate the grind, so will prefer to find story driven ones instead. But they would need a way to find them though.
    Creator of the featured survival horror foundry: "The Silence of Haydenwick" Video Review
    and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
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    bardaaronbardaaron Member Posts: 545 Bounty Hunter
    edited July 2014
    But I agree that if more people are playing foundries that is a good thing. Better Foundry rewards are better for everyone.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    bioshrikebioshrike Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,729 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    Here's what I'd like to see, regarding the foundry:

    1. Add an NPC that provides a daily quest to run Foundry content.

    2. Part of the reward for completing the above quest will include seals of a level appropriate to the character that completed said quest.

    3. Expand the selection of available items in the various seal vendors, and make sure to add some desirable items, (like more belts with offense slots, armor & weapon transmutes, recolors of the white quality companions and mounts, etc). Alternatively, add a special Foundry Seal store and populate it with these items.
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    bardaaronbardaaron Member Posts: 545 Bounty Hunter
    edited July 2014
    Well, the first of those already exists in Rhix, but the rewards are insufficient. I would say it would be better to make the improvements to the way Rhix works than to add a separate NPC.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    hustin1hustin1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 3,460 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    I spent all day yesterday on a Foundry quest idea, but I ran into one fundamental limitation that, if removed, would allow for much more intricate quests. The fact that you can only enter a map once is really problematic.

    I know that we can duplicate maps, but that still only allows linear play. In my particular quest, it would be much more enjoyable for the player if they could enter and leave custom maps at will -- say, from a custom outdoor zone to a tavern (and to various floors), to a guildhall, to a special NPC's house, etc. It seems to me that the point of a "quest" is that the person questing doesn't know in advance what step to take next; players should be able to investigate and choose which actions to perform. While this *might* be possible if everything was on a single map, the experience would be so much better if players could roam.

    Linear quests tend to be boring. I think this contributes to apathy much more than we think.
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    eldartheldarth Member Posts: 4,494 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    hustin1 wrote: »
    I spent all day yesterday on a Foundry quest idea, but I ran into one fundamental limitation that, if removed, would allow for much more intricate quests. The fact that you can only enter a map once is really problematic.

    Indeed. But not impossible. In my Old Magic quest, I allow people to enter into 8 building "interiors." You must hand-build your interiors "below" the terrain (our out of sight above terrain) and use teleporters to enter/exit them.

    But, yes - had this request for many, many months (actually back to beta I believe):
    Ability to transition to previously visited maps
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    grimahgrimah Member Posts: 1,658 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    Yea i doubt the function will come, because the idea of the current system is that a foundry player will only be loading 1 map, if you allow going back to the same map, it means the server much save and keep that previous one running whilst you are in the other, i think the servers would break :P
    Creator of the featured survival horror foundry: "The Silence of Haydenwick" Video Review
    and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
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    zbkoldezbkolde Member Posts: 689 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    As for quest categories, I tried to help the community with that by creating the Neverwinter UGC site. So much talk about something like that, and then no one uses it. It's still there, but hasn't had any quests added in quite awhile. No suggestions on making it better, no new quests showing up, but still comments looking for a better way to find quests. No, it's not perfect, but it's something. I'll be adding my new quest to it as soon as it's ready.
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    reiwulfreiwulf Member Posts: 2,687 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    I think it's a very nice idea, the problem is that people have to access to another site offgame to be able to find quests, there isn't much about it you can actually do, people want to easiest way, an ingame way to find the quests they're interested... :/
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    guitarzan698guitarzan698 Member Posts: 384 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    In reply to the last few posts...
    The problem is not the limitations of the foundry, creative authors can work around these limitations. The problem is that the general community of players have no reason to play these quests, other than for the stories. This is the problem, and one which Cryptic refuses to address. I have spent the last few hours reading the game site reviews of NWO. As I suspected, almost ALL of these reviews point to the foundry as being one of the best features of this game. Too bad this company doesn't care. I guess we all know that this company is only interested in making money. Well... they will get no money from me. Unless they can give the players a reason to play our creations, I, for one, will move on to another game. I also suspect that this will be the trend of this game. I give it another year, maybe two, and this game will be finished. In the meantime, I will be playing DDO, KSP, Rift, Everquest, LOTRO, and a few others. Too bad, Cryptic, you guys almost had a winner here.
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    grimahgrimah Member Posts: 1,658 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    zbkolde wrote: »
    As for quest categories, I tried to help the community with that by creating the Neverwinter UGC site. So much talk about something like that, and then no one uses it. It's still there, but hasn't had any quests added in quite awhile. No suggestions on making it better, no new quests showing up, but still comments looking for a better way to find quests. No, it's not perfect, but it's something. I'll be adding my new quest to it as soon as it's ready.

    Its a nice idea but would need sorting function and scoring list, so i can filter out the best ones.

    Its tiring trying to finding ones of a quality people want.
    Creator of the featured survival horror foundry: "The Silence of Haydenwick" Video Review
    and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
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    anharmonanharmon Member Posts: 175
    edited July 2014
    Foundry is one of the things that drew me (and I'm sure others) to Neverwinter. It's a distinctive feature of this game, and is really quite cool. It breaks up the monotony of AD/gold/whatever farming and makes Neverwinter feel more like a fantasy game. On that line of thought, though, it's really a matter of what you want from the game. If you're here to PvP only, chances are Foundry is not something you really participate in.

    So, perhaps it would be nice for there to be rewards for doing Foundry quests. But at the same time, it's not going to become the most effective AD farming method, so it may not necessarily attract a lot of people. I don't know.
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    bardaaronbardaaron Member Posts: 545 Bounty Hunter
    edited July 2014
    I mean, I personally, while yes it would be nice to make it easier to find good foundry quests, and get better rewards, I still prefer the foundry CONTENT so much more that it's going to keep me around regardless. That's where most of the fun is for me.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    vasdamasvasdamas Member Posts: 2,461 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    While I agree that foundry should be more rewarding, I do understand why general community never does those quests. 17 minutes spent in PK could bring them more profit than 17 minutes in some foundry quest. Of course there should be "fun" aspect but let's say that straight - "Really?" ._. Not many care about "fun" aspect of the game usually. Most find grinding as the way of "fun" nowdays. And with the new modules that "to grind list" just widens more.

    As for me, I do foundry quests sometimes as I've achieved most of the things in this game and don't really want to jump for those over 100m AD achievements. I will never, probably, create my own foundry quests due to lack of literacy, experience and time though.
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    zbkoldezbkolde Member Posts: 689 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    grimah wrote: »
    Its a nice idea but would need sorting function and scoring list, so i can filter out the best ones.

    Its tiring trying to finding ones of a quality people want.

    The problem, right there, is that there really is no such thing as "the best ones" for everyone. Everyone's taste is different. There are quests that everyone else loves that make me sick to my stomach, and vice versa. Each of us foundry authors have players that love our quests and give us 5 stars, and then others that hate it and give it 1 star. There is no way to decide what's "best" for everyone. They way I set up the UGC site lets players look for what they like to play, so they're happier with what they find. Thus, as long as the authors who post their quests are honest in choosing their categories, they get higher ratings. If they aren't honest and accurate, they could get lower ratings.

    And yes it's out-of-game. Maybe I'm just weird, but I have yet to choose a quest from the in-game catalog, I always find quests to play on either Scribes' Enclave, the Neverwinter UGC site, or these public forums. I'm not sure I've ever played a featured quest after it was featured, though there have been several quests I've played that eventually became featured. If Cryptic comes up with a better system, then great, I can take the site off my plate. But until then, would be nice to show them what we want, help give them some ideas. Zebular liked the idea enough to sticky my thread, but then it just sat there. So the message being sent to Cryptic now is that the authors really don't care.
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    eldartheldarth Member Posts: 4,494 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    zbkolde wrote: »
    So the message being sent to Cryptic now is that the authors really don't care.

    I don't think it's that authors don't care -- I think it's absolute laziness. I'm guilty of it as well. It's easy to update description and details right in the foundry, but having to actually visit a seperate website, and re-enter (cut-n-paste, yeah, but still) descriptions, and then figure out categories which should have been set by authors IN foundry anyway that they chose to (poorly) provide tags to the users. Most users don't even fill in the tags - they don't even know what that dropdown is, or they only choose one tags, etc. It's pretty poor UI design.
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    sugarliessugarlies Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 99
    edited July 2014
    grimah wrote: »
    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.

    Well, I'm subscribed to you. And when you sent the e-mail to play your new foundry, I did, even though I hadn't played foundries in a very long time (I was actually pretty excited about it). So you may be right. But still, if people don't want to touch foundries, they won't.
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    wininoidwininoid Member Posts: 534 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    I pushed Robobo in beta to link the foundry to the Gateway, so quest info and such could be accessed outside of game. An API would be great so other sites could form and pull info from the game, and you could accept a quest when you find one you like on the web.
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    mrgiggles651mrgiggles651 Member Posts: 790 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    So much apathy that I mentioned I spent five million AD to promote the foundry, and not one person asked how/where/when/what or even why. Other than the one other person who knows those thing, I mean.
    I wasted five million AD promoting the Foundry.
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    dragoness10dragoness10 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 780 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    I wouldn't be paid to play a foundry personally since it sounded like "Hey I'll pay you to play my foundry, you spend your time, and I get the Book Imp even if my work isn't good."

    This is a statement in general not specifically directed at the person whom started this thread. There are too many "exploit foundries" out there designed just to get reviews, AD, and the Book Imp without much effort on the part of the Author OR the player.

    On with the constructive suggestions:

    1) Remove any foundries as "Featured" that are over 6 months old. The foundry itself can stay as playable, just DON'T put it back on the initial page when you press L, or on the Catalogue tab.

    Honestly - how old is "Tired of Being the Hero"? Not that it's a bad foundry by any means (a little cheesy perhaps) just that if it wasn't featured it'd give the rest of us a chance to get up there in the bazillion star rankings.

    2) The Foundry cloaks are nice, but not the greatest. Perhaps make them as free transmutes if you're going to keep them in?

    3) "Get 10 Foundry achievements and earn a BoP Coupon for any set of Fashion Clothes." Something similar to that anyhow indicating variety in rewards, but something you can get from the Zen market with a BoP coupon. Not the "30% off" stuff, but ONE FREE ITEM.

    I'd have more ideas, but my coffee mug just went empty.
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    imaginaerum1imaginaerum1 Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 378 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    ...
    1) Remove any foundries as "Featured" that are over 6 months old. The foundry itself can stay as playable, just DON'T put it back on the initial page when you press L, or on the Catalogue tab.

    Honestly - how old is "Tired of Being the Hero"? Not that it's a bad foundry by any means (a little cheesy perhaps) just that if it wasn't featured it'd give the rest of us a chance to get up there in the bazillion star rankings.
    ...

    ToBtH is at the top of the list not because it was featured, but because it has the highest overall rating (due in part to the weighted score mechanic they use, where the quest's very high number of plays gives it an advantage over other quests with a similar true star rating).
    Featured quests (on the Featured tab) are listed in the order in which they were featured, with the newest ones listed first, and the older ones lower on the list. On that list, ToBtH is way down near the bottom, because it was one of the earlier quests to be featured.

    Removing foundries listed as "Featured" that are older than a certain date really does nothing, as the "Best" list would remain unaffected. No, scratch that, it would do something, it would make the Featured tab pretty much useless.
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    charononuscharononus Member Posts: 5,715 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    Honestly - how old is "Tired of Being the Hero"? Not that it's a bad foundry by any means (a little cheesy perhaps) just that if it wasn't featured it'd give the rest of us a chance to get up there in the bazillion star rankings.
    Hey don't mock Tired of Being the Hero, it's one of the very few foundries I liked. Not to mention doesn't everyone want to massacre the people of Neverwinter? Now if only Knox didn't pay me so well. Undone by my own greed I guess.
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    hercooles130uscghercooles130uscg Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    Not good, not good at all.

    I took a year off hoping PWE would get with the act and work on the Foundry. I still have the second act of my quest 3/4th done, but have no motivation to finish it. I came here hoping to hear good news. Eldarth is still here, and if he is not happy then I won't be. I had high hopes for the Foundry back in alpha, the core community back then were turning out some amazing stuff. Then the exploiters came, the griefers, the lazy, and mostly the typical F2P crowed that can't sit in one spot for more than a paragraph of dialogue.

    And to top it off, PWE completely abandoned the Foundry. Sure they give it a token nod once in a while, but that just makes it worse. The signs were all there of course, when during game breaking bugs that were reported in alpha were still breaking foundries almost a year later. And they would give up these BS excuses "we are waiting for more changes before we push a build out" but they could push builds out for the core game several times a week to fix things that...you guessed it...caused problems with the profit side of the house (the market).

    I applaud you still being here Eldarth, I think your the last bastion left. But PWE has forsaken you, all of us. Soon the game will release for Xbox one, and I doubt it will include a Foundry at all, and will be even more reason for them to just keep ignoring it.

    At this point Project Spark is a far better way to use my creative juices, or just finishing my book.
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    mrgiggles651mrgiggles651 Member Posts: 790 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    If you look at old threads, you can see a quote from Panderous (quoted by eldarth) from November 6, 2013. To paraphrase, he said he would try to negotiate for foundry dev time before mod 3.

    Mod 4 comes out in two days.

    CW's are still running around on the Preview server with their at will one-shot-anything power.
    I wasted five million AD promoting the Foundry.
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    bardaaronbardaaron Member Posts: 545 Bounty Hunter
    edited August 2014
    My cw hasn't learned any "one-shot-anything" attacks as yet, but I can one-shot minions a pack of minions if I time it right. I will admit, with my CW I can pretty much mop the floor with things that would slaughter my HR
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    wininoidwininoid Member Posts: 534 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    The current tool is much easier to use than in beta. It still has limitations, but if you design your quests to fit the limits, rather than trying to force the tool to meet your vision of what you want to do, it works well.

    My latest quests don't get nearly the number of plays my old ones did, but they still get plays, and the players still commend me for story and lore tie ins. So there are people there who appreciate a good foundry.
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    grimahgrimah Member Posts: 1,658 Arc User
    edited August 2014
    I just wish there was a dev or 2 working on foundry like they have with class balances/bug fixing and such. refining and tuning the tools and working on the database. If they made accessibility of foundry easier and the tools better with more options. it could be the thing they need to keep players interested, instead of churning out dailies upon dailies.

    I've been wanting to make episode 2 for my foundry for ages but I can't because i want enemy paladins/clerics that dont shout for the nashers or other strange battlecries.
    Creator of the featured survival horror foundry: "The Silence of Haydenwick" Video Review
    and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
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