Not much to add other than I hope for people that reviews my mission (soon to be missions yay!) that they give me good feedback as to why they would rate it low. If they just rate it and don't say too much as to why... it's opportunity lost for me to either correct what they didn't like or learn from what they do like.

I created content for lots of games. Whole worlds in NWN2. If I learned anything: Never let it get to your heart.

1. There is criticism and there is the usual trolls. Ignore the trolls, look if the criticism is warranted. If so, make changes.

2. Stay true to your concept: If the majority likes pew-pew only, it doesn't mean you have to make pew-pew missions. There are tons of them out there. Find your own public. Sames goes vice versa of course. You like pew-pew? Damn, do it!

One example I can give you that really drags missions down is people complaining that a mission was written in a non-English language. In my case German.

Now, I would greatly like to put an English translation into the missions, making them dual-language... No problem. It is just a feature that is not there yet and I happen to write for my friends mainly - who happen to be Germans.

So, look at point number one above: Trolls who give you one star, drag your mission down, but you should keep your spirits up. Tons of ways to make them popular outside that ranking system.

I've just played through my latest mission on holodeck.

seems NPC contacts can be killed if combat is happening around them. in my mission it was non-targetted AoE damage that caused it. (curse you, plasma grenades!)

I'd had it happen before in someone else's mission, and mentioned the problem in my review to that author.


I'd like to think this is a bug, as killing NPC contacts you need to speak to/interact with kinda breaks the whole mission..

(actually had to re-run one of my maps twice because of this.. i think i'll be moving that NPC to somewhere a little safer ASAP!)

I think its something that, until fixed or confirmed as "working as intended", foundry authors need to be aware of.

this.


basically dont let it affect you. people have given me very low scores simply because they found an encounter too tough in space and could not complete it. i know for a fact its pretty easy to do and one of the largest complaints is the space part was too easy (again something i cant do much with because the mobs are set to a specific level and are no tougher than what cryptic use in their missions).

there is simply no way i could please that person who marked me down other than making space even easier to the point of it being boring and making the vast majority who think the space was too easy even more annoyed. i am very concious of getting the right balance between fun and difficulty and i cant let one persons low mark make me ruin the mission balance.

the other person who marked me down because the mission offered no rewards like im meant to be able to fix that.

or the person who simple gave me one star and simply said 'terrible' as a review, sandwiched in between all the others telling me the mission was awesome.

if the average score is decent then your doing it right. you cant please all of the people all of the time and whilst you should pay attention to what people say, dont try and fix every problem just because of one persons personal opinion.

Out of 40 reviews, my first mission is averaging 4 1/2 stars. Yet, I still have a few two-star reviews and one one-star review. But at least the one-star said the mission was fine, but not something that interests him.

Negative reviews come with the territory.



This is funny. I had two reviews hit at almost the exact same time a couple days ago. One said the mobs were too hard and the other said the mobs were too easy.

I've been hit by the obligatory one star reviews from people reporting that the Helna NPC is missing, or Brell is missing. It makes me mad, because I often think "Now really, was that worth rating the ENTIRE THING a 1 over?"

But To Helna and Back also tries to do a lot of things you can't do with the Foundry yet, and in doing so a side effect is that if you don't play the mission exactly the way I expect you to, you could run into problems. For instance, the Gorn needs to attack Helna at a certain time, and you need to talk to her afterwards. But you can't have combative NPC contacts, so the way I handle it is there's an NPC waypoint you have to reach where she's standing, and once you approach, a popup window for her will trigger. But if Helna dies in combat, people may never think to walk to the center of the room to trigger the waypoint, so that gets a little iffy. But for the most part, 90% of everyone who plays the mission is doing that part right.

I got a review just yesterday that said this --

"painfully bad dialog. no captain would search a system base on incoherient rambles, damage reports on ship that was undamaged, no captain would leave an ensign behind, neat idea, terribly executed.... cut out 90% of the dialog, just not needed for plot.."

Cut out the dialog? People like this can't be pleased by any mission for this matter. And the obligatory 3 star ratings with a review that's nothing but "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" get on my nerves. It kind of makes me wish there was a button where we could just delete reviews and ratings that are clearly dumb and invalid, but then we'd all just stat pad, wouldn't we?

I think it may be related to an issue with the Foundry missions I've been seeing recently. Even when i'm testing my missions before they are published, I find that the NPC's just disappear for some reason or another. I can return to the editor and go back in and everything works fine. I've also seen this on the Holodeck with several missions created in the Foundry. Exit the mission go back in and it is correct.

Just something odd I think is happening. I've even seen it with intractable objects where it's invisible and you cant click the interact button to make it viable.

So I don't think it's you or your mission, but just an odd bug. Unfortunately this can result in a bad review or two but for the most part it doesn't happen very often from what I can tell.