Let us make a pact concerning Foundry and its rating system.

[gillrmn]

That's very nice of you but I don't think that you should limit your creativity/plans because of me. The Foundry should be big enough for an alleged army of basements full of rats.

hmm... I guess I will sneak a few then - without telling anyone

[lordthrud]

Exploit missions will always be in UGC and pact or no pact there will always be players who want to grind out toons to max level the quickest way possible.

If those players want to do it by repeating the same rat pit mission over and over that is their call and to be honest it doesn't bother me how they want to spend their game time.

Everyone is different and everyone's opinions and likes and dislikes hold equal merit, as well they should.

There are now time walls and drop limits on zerg missions in STO UGC for instance which do a bit to mitigate the exploits but there will always be a demand for them and so there will always be a supply.

I know it can cause the real creative foundry mission creators an amount of frustration that a zerg mission put together in 20 minutes is getting thousands more hits and tips than their carefully and lovingly crafted mission which has taken weeks to create.

But remember a player who wants to slay and grind for quick xp/loot would most likely not appreciate a long story driven mission to begin with.

I hasten to add I am not putting those players down at all its just the way they like to play.

The tech systems which are coming in NWN will allow a community of foundry creators and players to keep tabs on their favourite authors so much easier.

Also in game foundry Chat channel would be a boon to keeping us up to date with great UGC content and spread the word.

Foundry forum pages can also spread the word and for those of us into the story of a mission we can easily pass over the exploit ones.

I would imagine that the NWN devs will include a featured UGC mission on a regular basis so everyone can see cool missions these will be the cool story and action missions and not just high rated zerg fest ones.

By hook or by crook the cream will rise and I would much rather have the thumbs up from fellow foundry authors and players for a job well done.
Than just be near the top of a general list anyway.

In essence the best way to look at it is let people play how they like grind or story in truth does it really matter as long as people enjoy the ride.

[visionstorm01]

Honest people will be honest without the need of any pact. Dishonest people will be dishonest. Also, most people playing the game won't visit the forum or do so only to complain when something doesn't work ("Server down!! Fail!!!!", "Rogue OP!!! Nerf! Nerf!! Fail!!!").

Pretty much this^

Most people that will play this game won't even know this thread ever existed and its unrealistic to expect that making a pact will solve anything (or will be required for those that are honest regardless).

I don't plan on abusing the Foundry.I also plan on doing one "Kill ten rats in the basement" quest and be very secretive about its real content...

lol, I'm guessing it won't really be as simple as "kill ten rats" once we go in

While I don't personally like Quoforgeds play style, he is just as entitled as we are to playing the game in a fashion he finds enjoyable. The idea of blacklisting someone is pretty harsh. What I find a bit disheartening is the fact that Quo makes his desire clear, and also asks that you call out the type of quest you've made in the description, so he can avoid it; a reasonable request, and a way to avoid a down vote. He's not trashing anyone's dungeon that way. Yet people here are saying they will simply down vote what they feel is an exploitative quest, no matter what, just because they don't like it. I don't know, but to me witchhunts, and book burnings are bad things.

I'd rather have a couple hundred really bad quests given 5 stars by the power gamers, than have any of the foundry's tools disabled in an attempt to fight exploiters. Instead of a blacklist of "undesirables", how about we look beyond the in game rating system, (which will always be dominated by EZ Mode quests), and think about an unofficial rating system working in tandem with the official one. Heck, lets get a stickied topic in a foundry specific forum here, and as a community, keep a ratings list there.

Just some early morning thoughts.

I can also agree with this^ concern

What exactly constitudes an "exploitative" quest can be pretty subjective.

[zaphtastic]

Man... this is a subject I could rant about for pages and pages.

TLDR: 'farming' and non-story content WILL be there, and its creators / players are not the enemy (talking about stuff that isn't an obvious gameplay exploit here, of course). The challenge is letting everyone find the type of content they want. And I say this as an author who has always made (and will make) story/plot-heavy content and doesn't play farming content at all.


Longer version:
I don't have much STO experience, but I have a lot of experience with the Mission Architect of COH (which was also made by Cryptic, sort of) which is basically the same setup. In the end the in-game interface for viewing player-made content was almost completely dominated by missions (or 'arcs' for 'story arcs') designed to get as much reward with as little risk as possible. There were plenty of story-focused arcs as well as challenge-based arcs in the system, but the search tools (and in part, player attitude) were just not up to the task when someone was trying to find them. So you'd see pages upon pages upon pages of similar content against the same enemies that were all rated 5* (people were incentivized to create new ones because there was some kickback to the author of the arc if people played/rated them), but finding any but the most aggressively-marketed story arcs (this meant using every bit of your online / forum presence to advertise it, or even holding contests / paying people to play the arcs) was a lost cause because even a five-star story arc was completely buried under hundreds of pages of farm arcs. And even if an arc got visibility for a few minutes, all it took was a single 4-star vote to sink it back down again (the same thing applied to non-story arcs too, of course -- but they're admittedly easier to create than story-focused arcs). So unless you got in VERY early when the system was still new and everyone was trying it out (spring of '09) or your arc was so absolutely awesome it was picked up by multiple fansites or hand-picked by the devs, it probably didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever being played by people you didn't explicitly ask. The "solution" was maintaining ingame channels and forum posts that recommended good arcs to people who searched for them, but understandably this only works for the really tiny minority of the playerbase who reads forums or joins custom channels in the first place.

And here's the thing -- the farmers are not the enemy. Heck, I'll even say there's no such thing as a "pure farmer", there are people who may decide that they want to play something quick and easy to wind down, or be at least moderately entertained while grinding currency_du_jour_01. Keep in mind that there'll ALWAYS be people who try to maximize rewards while minimizing risk, and I'm 99.99% sure they'll be better at this than the devs. If there's a particular map/enemy/whatever combination, they WILL find it. Trying to fight this is completely pointless, and will only alienate players.

What needs to happen (which, unfortunately, never came for COH) is to have a really robust search engine that allows ALL kinds of players to find the type of content they enjoy by using categories, "my friend liked x" lists and public reviews intelligently, kinda like Amazon or other large sites. Farmers would find the (non-exploiting!) adventures that get maximized rewards with minimized risk, challenge-seekers would find arcs with really tough custom enemies, story enthusiasts would find story arcs that fit their particular tastes, and everyone would find arcs that their friends enjoyed / rated highly. That way there's no need to build grudges and have sniping / griefing wars between various "factions" of the community (which is a bit silly in my eye to begin with -- we're all players!).


Edit: as a bit of a tangent, I also think very negatively of voting cliques and such. There were a few of them in COH too (though their presence was overshadowed by the interface issues), and it's really disheartening for a budding storyteller to get their work downvoted by a gang of people because important_personage_01 thought it wasn't up to snuff -- or worse yet, because the creator was targeted by forum trolls who then go and one-star the adventure. This also highlights the weaknesses of an unweighted rating system, but that's a rant for another day.

[doctorcomics]

This was illuminating, zaph. Thanks for posting.

[ragnarlawl]

Gil already said it but-- vowing 'Not' to do something is not going to address it. Other people will still do it and they would easily outnumber us.

Instead why don't we sign up to be the 'reviewers' that check the map before it is posted and then adhere to a code of ethics not to rubber stamp that garbage?

[gillrmn]

Man... this is a subject I could rant about for pages and pages.

TLDR: 'farming' and non-story content WILL be there, and its creators / players are not the enemy (talking about stuff that isn't an obvious gameplay exploit here, of course). The challenge is letting everyone find the type of content they want. And I say this as an author who has always made (and will make) story/plot-heavy content and doesn't play farming content at all.

...

Only read tl;dr because am drunk after party - hope you dont mind.
But it does not adresses the main issue. The main issue here is exploiting - not farming,. Both are very different. Exploiting is defined as playing the game as it is not intended to be. It is like a crime.

Farming is like unethical but legal thing to do.

[jedidethfreak823]

While I understand the sentiment of "death to the exploiter!," what you guys don't seem to get is that nobody'd exploit the Foundry system in CO/STO if Cryptic would just MAKE SOME FRIGGEN' CONTENT!

It's only an issue because Cryptic expects the players to make the content themselves, so Cryptic doesn't have to.

[rackhamgreg74]

Thoughtful discussion here. To be honest, it never occurred to me that the Foundry could be exploited in that way, but having seen this discussion I now see that distinct possibility.

My immediate reaction would be to categorize the rating system or provide the option of qualitative feedback. Provide a rating on several categories such as story, difficulty, and reward/incentive. That way if you have a low story rating yet a high reward rating, then you can safely assume the quest's purpose.

Conversely, adding comments would allow for a qualitative response like an App store. The trick here however would be to avoid spoilers.

In any case, I trust that there are enough dedicated players such as myself that will speak up if the Foundry system does get abused.

[syberghost]

While I understand the sentiment of "death to the exploiter!," what you guys don't seem to get is that nobody'd exploit the Foundry system in CO/STO if Cryptic would just MAKE SOME FRIGGEN' CONTENT!

It's only an issue because Cryptic expects the players to make the content themselves, so Cryptic doesn't have to.

Yeah, that's not even remotely true. Sorry, I'm not buying that people would stop playing low risk/reward ratio, low time/reward ratio content in the Foundry, if only Cryptic had more high risk/reward ratio, high time/reward ratio content outside it. If that were true, they'd be seeking out the analogous content in the Foundry.

Not even plausible, sorry.