As there were a few discussions on linearity of official quests and I claimed that non-linear foundry quests are possible, I come back again with proof! :)

Campaign:- Maiden in the Moon

Quest:- The Wild Moon(mote) Chase

... is a non-linear quest. The campaign will be non-linear too. Infact next part will be much more "sandbox" than previous quest. For now, this much should do.

Hence my argument that cryptic could have easily made "sandbox" or non-linear quests(even now they can) but due to storytelling purposes they kept the quests linear.

Nonlinear quests also bring with them

"Its too confusing", "I am stuck", "It is undoable", "Can not progress"

complaints as soon as players hit the Puzzle or Explorer part. This also shows that "sandbox" type quests cannot become popular among mainstream MMO players.

Is this a Foundry quest that you made gillrmn??

This is very interesting and makes a very valid point... Thanks for posting this.

Nevermind I found your forum post on it man.

This looks very cool...  Good job, Ill play it this weekend.

The quest can be done solo.

Lots of puzzle, infact people think they can't progress and do not realize that it is a puzzle :(

There is one puzzle which you can actually fail, but it will not stop your progress as there is another fight-and-kill way to reach where the other puzzle is supposed to take you.

You cannot get stuck, if you feel you are stuck, its explorer or a puzzle.

EDIT:- There are fewer puzzles now. I had to remove a few puzzle and make some simpler. This was because of complaints that they get stuck whenever they face puzzles. I will add them later quests when people are weaned away from linear quests and get used to nonlinear quests.

I can't wait

---

Originally posted by gillrmn
As there were a few discussions on linearity of official quests and I claimed that non-linear foundry quests are possible, I come back again with proof! :)

 

Campaign:- Maiden in the Moon

Quest:- The Wild Moon(mote) Chase

 

... is a non-linear quest. The campaign will be non-linear too. Infact next part will be much more "sandbox" than previous quest. For now, this much should do.

 

Hence my argument that cryptic could have easily made "sandbox" or non-linear quests(even now they can) but due to storytelling purposes they kept the quests linear.

 

Nonlinear quests also bring with them

"Its too confusing", "I am stuck", "It is undoable", "Can not progress"

complaints as soon as players hit the Puzzle or Explorer part. This also shows that "sandbox" type quests cannot become popular among mainstream MMO players.

 

---

Originally posted by Allacore69

I can't wait to show off my foundry mission this weekend. Was told I cant speak about it because it was not in beat last weekend. If you want to play it just search @mandodo69 in the catalog tab.

NDA was revised. You cannot talk about inner workings of foundry. Other than that you can do anything - even paste screenshots of your quests in progress. The screenshots should not have any UI of foundry or discussion of "HOW" things are getting done in foundry.

Originally posted by gillrmn

The quest can be done solo.

 EDIT:- There are fewer puzzles now. I had to remove a few puzzle and make some simpler. This was because of complaints that they get stuck whenever they face puzzles. I will add them later quests when people are weaned away from linear quests and get used to nonlinear quests.

And now you understand why companies make their games dumb-proof and console-like?

I for one wish you had never "nerfed" your dungeon, but you're just being a mini-EA to please the masses. And if you could makemoney out of it, you'd have nerfed them even further so even complete idiots could play it and leave their cash on your pocket.

Lesson learned, I hope.

Originally posted by Alber_gamer

Originally posted by gillrmn

The quest can be done solo.

 EDIT:- There are fewer puzzles now. I had to remove a few puzzle and make some simpler. This was because of complaints that they get stuck whenever they face puzzles. I will add them later quests when people are weaned away from linear quests and get used to nonlinear quests.

 

And now you understand why companies make their games dumb-proof and console-like?

 

I for one wish you had never "nerfed" your dungeon, but you're just being a mini-EA to please the masses. And if you could makemoney out of it, you'd have nerfed them even further so even complete idiots could play it and leave their cash on your pocket.

 

Lesson learned, I hope.

What's the view like from up there on your high horse?

The long term survivabillity of this game heavilly relies on the foundry, if they can make the tooling at such level that it allows people to add their own graphics and have total freedom in creation, this might quickly become a very very interesting game.

if you allow true creativity, and make it so that people can sell their adventures and make real money, it will be even better, and the developers can do the apple trick, taking 30 cents of every dollar people make.

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

The long term survivabillity of this game heavilly relies on the foundry, if they can make the tooling at such level that it allows people to add their own graphics and have total freedom in creation, this might quickly become a very very interesting game.

 

if you allow true creativity, and make it so that people can sell their adventures and make real money, it will be even better, and the developers can do the apple trick, taking 30 cents of every dollar people make.

 

 

They are allowing people to donate Astral Gems to content creators, but I'm not sure if there will be an option to sell the quests for such as they want as much good content as possible to be available for everyone.  Like you said, it is what will keep the game afloat months after it's release, and if people log in to see the sand box part of the game for sale (even if it's not done by the developers themselves, people who don't do research and instantly judge... I.E. 95% of the MMO community it seems today... will spread rumors that all the best stuff is for sale and there's no use in playing the game).

Starcraft II had this idea of allowing people who make fantastic maps using their powerful engine to be able to sell them in the arcade, but too many people complained about it.  It was supposed to be a feature of Wings of Liberty, but the Arcade wasn't ready then and was pushed back toe Heart of the Swarm.  Though now it's just a free feature for everyone.  It may be prudent to say that the whole Diablo Player selling to Player auction house was to test the waters for this, and it is no longer viable in Blizzard's eyes as the backlash can be too great (They even made it so the console versions no longer have these mechanics from what I've heard; it may just be that they no longer require an internet connection, but at the same time the internet was one of the requirements to help the auction house along presumably).

The idea of selling something you make on a third party, or using another engine that allows you to do such and then on another third party, is not new.  It has occurred before Apple and Steam, but when it started to happen again in MMOs people went crazy without understanding the fundamentals that went along with it.  Before MMOs became "mainstream" stuff like this happened on a daily basis unless prohibited by a game in general.  Indeed, I still remember how much houses and real estate sold for on Ultima Online.  People who made their houses from scratch when that system was implemented also made some pretty fantastic stuff that must've costed them hundreds of millions of gold.  Accounts and said real estate sold for tens of thousands on games such as Ultima Online, Second Life and Eve (although in different ways with Eve).  

Ultimately how can we say something that you take time to create in game (I.E. a map or campaign that plays for at least 20 hours, and took you hundreds of hours to make) is any different than an account we spend hundreds of hours maxing a character or building a house with in game tools (and spending hundreds of millions of gold on it) or grinding to find that perfect weapon that someone might be interested in buying?  It's the time you're basically selling, as you used a third party device somewhere in the equation.  Yet there is such great and outstanding resistance to any form of selling anything, even time, in games that a F2P game would practically commit MMO suicide to implement it as a feature when they already have a cash shop to support them.  People just wouldn't care about the implications, and a bad reputation would form from those who just judge it harshly without understanding, and the massive who then believe them without looking into it themselves.

Note:  The following will be controversial, but I urge one to read the final paragraph before yelling at me.  It is not rhetoric, so I expect people to disagree, so please do so in amicable way as we all -should- be friends here, or at least colleagues of the MMO genre that seems to be getting a bad reputation for people with horrid manners.

Personally I've always looked at MMOs with the saying "Time is money"; those who have the ability to stay in their bedroom for 18 hours a day to play their games and get superpowerful before anyone else should be able to sell that time to anyone who is willing to pay for it.  Likewise, someone who has to support a spouse or kids and needs to work 50+ hours a week and only has time to play a few hours on the weekend should be allowed to use the time they spent making money to get to a point where they are able to play what they deem to be the "fun" parts of a game, and thus sell their time making money to those who spent their time leveling characters.  

As a whole, this is the only true balance there is; it always seemed a bit ridiculous to me how people say it's fair and balanced when people who work for a living play against those who play 18 hours a day.  When time is always a factor of money, in that you could at this moment be making money in some way, people who play 18 hours a day are sacrifice 18 hours of income; it is little different, and indeed it helps them make money in the long run, if someone who spends those 18 hours making money wants to use said money to pay those who play for 18 hours.  There is the whole argument "oh, you should earn this or that yourself," or "I worked this hard, I should be able to own those newbs any time I want!".  But is this true when it comes down to the hard core matter of it all?  Is having the time to play this long in itself not an unfair advantage?  If one could play a game at even footing, providing one player did one thing, and the other did another (with no influence from the developers), is that the Arc de Triomphe of balance and not just one wanting their time stomp people out, and not their actual player skill?  Indeed, with a game that's constructed right, those who spent time building something could do it again, and play it with maximum efficiency, so they're still ahead of the game to one who has to spend weeks or months learning how to play at the top tier.  

I've never bought an account before, but I have sold plenty back in the day.  It helped me through some times, and I still beat people on second or third accounts without relative ease due to knowing the game in depth.  Though one thing I noticed people saying, which has died in popularity due to the ridiculous nature of it, is that people don't want the rich to come out ahead.  But what they didn't realize at the time, is that these people are in part some of those who are able to play for these amounts of time.  There is no doubt that even if a game has rules against it, they could just buy 40 new accounts, multibox on several supercomputers, and pay someone to play on those computers without anyone knowing any better as it's still the same IP ( I've actually met someone who has done this).  Then use 40 accounts worth of dailies to pay for runs by High Tier Guilds to get them Heroic gear and the like.  The rich have nothing to do with buying power, it's those who work for a living and don't have time that usually partake in this; if it's allowed, sure, people with a lot of money might partake (again a plus for those who are selling), but if there's rules against it, the only people that are hurting are the middle class as there's always a way for those with money to get away with things.  It's probably not announced, but every day, in every game those with money get an advantage in some way.  In your game, in his game, in her game, in their game and in my game.

But as a whole for as long as this anti player versus player transaction exists, there can never be this type of community; it will unlikely be the case that we'll ever have a fluroushing Sandbox community with simply incredible and frequent content by people who can do such and earn a little extra money on the side.  There will be great maps, immersive campaigns and memorable stories... but the frequency will be lackluster.  Indeed, there will even be problems in that people try to make crap maps and sell them and new restrictions put in place such as having pre-existing maps of high ratings before such, but that's a thought for when such could actually be viable to the gaming community.

There are many games were player to player transactions may actually ruin the game and the developers honestly put rules against it for the sake of their games.  That's awesome, I'm not advocating careless implementation of player to player economics in every possible game.  Though games where this might be interesting, such as Neverwinter and sandbox games where content creation is possible, I feel that we're missing out what could be a great era for gamers -- perhaps a new golden age of sandbox where player control is absolute and the devs just take our ideas on the forums and expand our creation tools in expansions -- might be possible.  Will it be possible without the beforementioned thoughts and opinions?  Quite possibly.  Though imagine the excitement and the great community that could spew forth from people who could make spare money and perhaps even make it a job (such as the fine people who are on youtube or twitch entertain many of us) and provide us with unlimited content in ways the developers could never dream of.

Originally posted by SlickShoes

Originally posted by Alber_gamer

Originally posted by gillrmn

The quest can be done solo.

 EDIT:- There are fewer puzzles now. I had to remove a few puzzle and make some simpler. This was because of complaints that they get stuck whenever they face puzzles. I will add them later quests when people are weaned away from linear quests and get used to nonlinear quests.

 

And now you understand why companies make their games dumb-proof and console-like?

 

I for one wish you had never "nerfed" your dungeon, but you're just being a mini-EA to please the masses. And if you could makemoney out of it, you'd have nerfed them even further so even complete idiots could play it and leave their cash on your pocket.

 

Lesson learned, I hope.

What's the view like from up there on your high horse?

My high horse is named hipocrisy, and I enjoy being on top of it. I ride it against the double-standards and convenient moralities that plague the lands of the internet.

Originally posted by Yaevindusk

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

The long term survivabillity of this game heavilly relies on the foundry, if they can make the tooling at such level that it allows people to add their own graphics and have total freedom in creation, this might quickly become a very very interesting game.

 

if you allow true creativity, and make it so that people can sell their adventures and make real money, it will be even better, and the developers can do the apple trick, taking 30 cents of every dollar people make.

 

 

 

They are allowing people to donate Astral Gems to content creators, but I'm not sure if there will be an option to sell the quests for such as they want as much good content as possible to be available for everyone.  Like you said, it is what will keep the game afloat months after it's release, and if people log in to see the sand box part of the game for sale (even if it's not done by the developers themselves, people who don't do research and instantly judge... I.E. 95% of the MMO community it seems today... will spread rumors that all the best stuff is for sale and there's no use in playing the game).

Starcraft II had this idea of allowing people who make fantastic maps using their powerful engine to be able to sell them in the arcade, but too many people complained about it.  It was supposed to be a feature of Wings of Liberty, but the Arcade wasn't ready then and was pushed back toe Heart of the Swarm.  Though now it's just a free feature for everyone.  It may be prudent to say that the whole Diablo Player selling to Player auction house was to test the waters for this, and it is no longer viable in Blizzard's eyes as the backlash can be too great (They even made it so the console versions no longer have these mechanics from what I've heard; it may just be that they no longer require an internet connection, but at the same time the internet was one of the requirements to help the auction house along presumably).

The idea of selling something you make on a third party, or using another engine that allows you to do such and then on another third party, is not new.  It has occurred before Apple and Steam, but when it started to happen again in MMOs people went crazy without understanding the fundamentals that went along with it.  Before MMOs became "mainstream" stuff like this happened on a daily basis unless prohibited by a game in general.  Indeed, I still remember how much houses and real estate sold for on Ultima Online.  People who made their houses from scratch when that system was implemented also made some pretty fantastic stuff that must've costed them hundreds of millions of gold.  Accounts and said real estate sold for tens of thousands on games such as Ultima Online, Second Life and Eve (although in different ways with Eve).  

Ultimately how can we say something that you take time to create in game (I.E. a map or campaign that plays for at least 20 hours, and took you hundreds of hours to make) is any different than an account we spend hundreds of hours maxing a character or building a house with in game tools (and spending hundreds of millions of gold on it) or grinding to find that perfect weapon that someone might be interested in buying?  It's the time you're basically selling, as you used a third party device somewhere in the equation.  Yet there is such great and outstanding resistance to any form of selling anything, even time, in games that a F2P game would practically commit MMO suicide to implement it as a feature when they already have a cash shop to support them.  People just wouldn't care about the implications, and a bad reputation would form from those who just judge it harshly without understanding, and the massive who then believe them without looking into it themselves.

 

Note:  The following will be controversial, but I urge one to read the final paragraph before yelling at me.  It is not rhetoric, so I expect people to disagree, so please do so in amicable way as we all -should- be friends here, or at least colleagues of the MMO genre that seems to be getting a bad reputation for people with horrid manners.

 

Personally I've always looked at MMOs with the saying "Time is money"; those who have the ability to stay in their bedroom for 18 hours a day to play their games and get superpowerful before anyone else should be able to sell that time to anyone who is willing to pay for it.  Likewise, someone who has to support a spouse or kids and needs to work 50+ hours a week and only has time to play a few hours on the weekend should be allowed to use the time they spent making money to get to a point where they are able to play what they deem to be the "fun" parts of a game, and thus sell their time making money to those who spent their time leveling characters.  

As a whole, this is the only true balance there is; it always seemed a bit ridiculous to me how people say it's fair and balanced when people who work for a living play against those who play 18 hours a day.  When time is always a factor of money, in that you could at this moment be making money in some way, people who play 18 hours a day are sacrifice 18 hours of income; it is little different, and indeed it helps them make money in the long run, if someone who spends those 18 hours making money wants to use said money to pay those who play for 18 hours.  There is the whole argument "oh, you should earn this or that yourself," or "I worked this hard, I should be able to own those newbs any time I want!".  But is this true when it comes down to the hard core matter of it all?  Is having the time to play this long in itself not an unfair advantage?  If one could play a game at even footing, providing one player did one thing, and the other did another (with no influence from the developers), is that the Arc de Triomphe of balance and not just one wanting their time stomp people out, and not their actual player skill?  Indeed, with a game that's constructed right, those who spent time building something could do it again, and play it with maximum efficiency, so they're still ahead of the game to one who has to spend weeks or months learning how to play at the top tier.  

I've never bought an account before, but I have sold plenty back in the day.  It helped me through some times, and I still beat people on second or third accounts without relative ease due to knowing the game in depth.  Though one thing I noticed people saying, which has died in popularity due to the ridiculous nature of it, is that people don't want the rich to come out ahead.  But what they didn't realize at the time, is that these people are in part some of those who are able to play for these amounts of time.  There is no doubt that even if a game has rules against it, they could just buy 40 new accounts, multibox on several supercomputers, and pay someone to play on those computers without anyone knowing any better as it's still the same IP ( I've actually met someone who has done this).  Then use 40 accounts worth of dailies to pay for runs by High Tier Guilds to get them Heroic gear and the like.  The rich have nothing to do with buying power, it's those who work for a living and don't have time that usually partake in this; if it's allowed, sure, people with a lot of money might partake (again a plus for those who are selling), but if there's rules against it, the only people that are hurting are the middle class as there's always a way for those with money to get away with things.  It's probably not announced, but every day, in every game those with money get an advantage in some way.  In your game, in his game, in her game, in their game and in my game.

But as a whole for as long as this anti player versus player transaction exists, there can never be this type of community; it will unlikely be the case that we'll ever have a fluroushing Sandbox community with simply incredible and frequent content by people who can do such and earn a little extra money on the side.  There will be great maps, immersive campaigns and memorable stories... but the frequency will be lackluster.  Indeed, there will even be problems in that people try to make crap maps and sell them and new restrictions put in place such as having pre-existing maps of high ratings before such, but that's a thought for when such could actually be viable to the gaming community.

There are many games were player to player transactions may actually ruin the game and the developers honestly put rules against it for the sake of their games.  That's awesome, I'm not advocating careless implementation of player to player economics in every possible game.  Though games where this might be interesting, such as Neverwinter and sandbox games where content creation is possible, I feel that we're missing out what could be a great era for gamers -- perhaps a new golden age of sandbox where player control is absolute and the devs just take our ideas on the forums and expand our creation tools in expansions -- might be possible.  Will it be possible without the beforementioned thoughts and opinions?  Quite possibly.  Though imagine the excitement and the great community that could spew forth from people who could make spare money and perhaps even make it a job (such as the fine people who are on youtube or twitch entertain many of us) and provide us with unlimited content in ways the developers could never dream of.

I disagree that people refuse to pay for stuff ingame...  Its just that the typical MMORPG.com crowd refuses so, but more casual players are bound to play, F2P games are a succesfull thing because of this.

The Iphone/istore proves people are prepared to pay for virtuall things as long as the price is low enough.

Originally posted by gillrmn
Just to clear up a few things. The puzzles have been reduced because players were just giving up at the end. As this is the first quest in the campaign, I understood that level and complexity of puzzles should increase gradually. As users found too many puzzles, too confusing, I decided to reduce them. Another reason was that beta is short - just a weekend. In limited time, people would like to cover a lot of content. Hence that was another reason to make it a bit simple. However do not mistake "a bit simple" to mean simple. It is still tough nut to crack and long too! Though it shortens the length significantly, it is still 45+mins at least. And it is still quite formidable.

I will make sure to play it.

Still I wish you hadn't nerfed it :)

Just completed the sub quest. Im out of the house again. Wow you put a lot of work into it. Kudos to you. It was a really fun, varied and great quest. And this is only the beginning. I expect great things further in the quest^^ I was like "holy crap" when the monster appeared in the basement lol. If this keeps up I will rate it 5 stars.

I will continue tomorrow. Gotta sleep right now. Good job!!

Originally posted by Alber_gamer

Originally posted by SlickShoes

Originally posted by Alber_gamer

Originally posted by gillrmn

The quest can be done solo.

 EDIT:- There are fewer puzzles now. I had to remove a few puzzle and make some simpler. This was because of complaints that they get stuck whenever they face puzzles. I will add them later quests when people are weaned away from linear quests and get used to nonlinear quests.

 

And now you understand why companies make their games dumb-proof and console-like?

 

I for one wish you had never "nerfed" your dungeon, but you're just being a mini-EA to please the masses. And if you could makemoney out of it, you'd have nerfed them even further so even complete idiots could play it and leave their cash on your pocket.

 

Lesson learned, I hope.

What's the view like from up there on your high horse?

My high horse is named hipocrisy, and I enjoy being on top of it. I ride it against the double-standards and convenient moralities that plague the lands of the internet.

 lol......a crusader of sorts huh?