Neverwinter has some pretty big shoes to fill. More accurately, it has some pretty elaborate shoe-making tools that it needs to allow players to fill. After all, it’s part of a franchise that’s legendary for its player-created content. The Foundry system is aimed at giving players all of the user-generated content they could ask for, all of the tools necessary to make great missions, and all of the possible options to get players into player-made content quickly. How will all of this happen? Why, it’s outlined in this new development blog!
Players will be able to incorporate missions into the overall game world seamlessly or place them in instanced areas depending on the creator’s intent. The system will also give players several means of getting into these missions, both from a UI feature showing off popular player-made missions and NPCs highlighting player-made content in any given area. Creators, meanwhile, will receive all the necessary tools to create new maps and new missions even with a minimum of experience. Time will tell how successful the system is in implementation, but it’s certainly aiming in the right direction.
Player-made content! The bad news, its in an MMO, where the mentality of the playerbase at large is “Exploit your way to cap and endgame”. Architect in CoX was awesome on paper, and even creatively used by some…but by and large it was a continuous tennis match of players trying to make exploitive XP farms and devs trying to stymie the efforts while making the system rewarding and approachable. Color me incredibly skeptical.