Popular Post Aeoshattr Posted May 17, 2016 Popular Post Report Share Posted May 17, 2016 (edited) Hi all. Since I produced quite a stupendous amount of text, this will come in parts (since I do need time to study and other things too). Please feel free to move, I was not sure if it was appropriate to post this in the "Quests and Contests" subforum. Feedback is more than welcome, please try to stay constructive. If you feel that I missed something, point out where and what you think should be added. Pardon fancy language. I may or may not have been under the influence of beverages at the time of production. Without further ado, here is the first part, about quest design and sponsorships. The part about judging & rewarding is still a work in progress. Text Wall ahead. Questmaker’s Etiquette Guide With various fantabulous tips, tricks, do’s and don’t’s Glorious Introduction Here we shall look at 3 major topics regarding making, holding and rewarding a quest, particularly for the realm of MagicDuel, as follows: Quest Design What is good design? What is bad design? Accessibility. Types of quests. Target audience. Tips for a few types of frequently-held quests. How and when to announce quests. Miscellaneous. Sponsorships Short tips about who and how to approach for sponsorships. List of rough values of certain items and creatures (maybe). Quest Judging and Rewarding Single blinding, Double blinding and other judging paraphernalia. Rewarding: do’s and don’t’s, who and how to approach for help. "How to". Quick guide to help you jumpstart your quest. (This will be a skeleton only! To help you guide your own creativity, not to be used as given!) Case studies (maybe). I shall point to a few quests (mine, unless someone else volunteers their own quests and experience with them) and try to dissect out the good and the bad. One thing to keep in mind is that throughout this guide I shall ask questions. These are to provoke thought rather than to demand an answer. There is no correct or incorrect answer in general (with a few exceptions), but there will be a correct answer for your quest. You just have to think how that question relates to your quest (think about how your quest would answer that question, not about what answer I want to hear, if that helps). Quest Design Briefly put, in MagicDuel there are a few things to keep in mind as a questmaker. Some are obvious, some are not, some are counterintuitive. I will also look at a few specific structures of quests that pop up frequently and suggest tips for them, if they are to be used as templates. I shall also attempt to discuss how to tailor your quest to a target audience while keeping in mind the idea of accessibility, and a few suggestions about how to make announcements regarding quests. What is good design? What is bad design? In a nutshell, a quest that is well designed will run smoothly. It will not need adjustments on the way, it will not need the direct intervention of the questmaker to resolve issues, it cannot be cheated, and there is no unintended interaction between participants (spoiling or sabotaging). It’s vague, unfortunately, and it will vary for each quest types. But here are a few things you can do, or questions you should try to have an answer to: Try and test whatever can be tested. Do your clickables function, if any? Is the quest goal achievable? Does it require very personal information (i.e. specific relations of your character in-game)? Could others effectively know and solve it? Is the amount of heat/resources/whatever obtainable in the time you give? Could you do it? Could someone help you test it? Is the time window feasible? Will the quest take too long or too little time? Does the quest heavily depend on everybody showing up, or on a specific number of participants? Can that become an issue? Can it be avoided? Try and anticipate flaws or issues in your quest. Are there ways to cheat/cheese it? Can it be easily disrupted by a third party (movelock, attacklock, teleporting)? Do you want to change the design to avoid this, or rely on external help? Are there any unintended progress-stoppers? Is there a risk of participants spoiling eachother, or sabotaging eachother? Is it indended? Is it an issue? How could you prevent these issues? Is your quest transparent? Is your judging and rewarding transparent? Can people obtain details about judging and rewarding after the quest? The answers here should be yes! Can you manage the quest by yourself? Do you need assistance with: Scripting clickables? Try the scripting section on the forums Try contacting known scripters for help (please let me know if you want to be named here) Preventing disruptions? Do you know who might potentially disrupt your quest? Diplomacy works (most of the time). Request help from friends, or protection under neutrality (Can MDA offer such help?) Request help from your land leader (if any)? Alter your quest design to avoid or reduce the risk of disruptions (hold it in a nojump location, for instance). Effectively holding the quest? Need a shady character that participants need to chase? Ask around. Need another helping hand with distributing things to players during the quest (information, items)? Need someone to supervise what participants do? Is the quest engaging? Does it feel like an adventure, a continuous process or are there breaks and holes in it? Is it just a series of unrelated trials? Does it relate to MagicDuel at all? You could run a ‘good’ quest without this, but a good quest design will also make the quest enjoyable and fun, not just ‘doable’. One of the best things to do is to try and integrate it with the world of MagicDuel. Try and make it part of the game, rather than just a ‘task’. Accessibility, Target Audience and Types of Quests Though this may be subjective, one fundamental principle of quests is their accessibility. This doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody should be able to complete it, but as many people as possible should be able to begin it. This may refer to restrictions or requirements on: Mindpower Is your quest for a specific Mindpower only, or does it bias for/against a specific Mindpower? How, why, and is it intended this way? Active Days Don’t think I’ve seen this one, but is there a restriction on active days? Why? Is it necessary? Why? Land / Alliance Can only people from certain lands/alliances participate? Why? Does your quest design bias against/for people from certain lands/alliances? Why? Is it necessary? Specific people Obviously, saying “X cannot participate” will immediately be bad. This does not mean you cannot exclude people from your quests, but it should not be baseless (for instance, that person is a judge or a sponsor, or that person has a repeated history of trolling your quests, etc). But excluding people should be considered bad practice, and making such a decision should be taken extremely seriously. Number of participants Does your quest have a restriction on how many questers can begin it? Why? Is it intended or necessary, and if so, why? Talent & Skill Naturally, drawing quests are going to be fundamentally different from tournament quests. Keep in mind though that you can easily put talent into the backseat by adjusting your judging/scoring parameters! Stats Does your quest bias against players with specific stat values? Is this intended / necessary? Does it need adjusting (such as tiering participants)? Keep in mind, many quests will often encounter at least one of those restrictions. These are not to be considered as deadly sins (or things to not do under any circumstance), but rather things that you should be prepared to explain if asked, or changed if not intended. Moving on to the target audience. MagicDuel has a very mottled player base. Some are artists, some are grinders, some are roleplayers, some are coders, some are good with numbers and ciphers, etc. It is very difficult to design a quest for absolutely everybody, so you should at least aim to have a specific audience (whether it is broad or narrow). It is perfectly fine to make a quest for artists or grinders only, but it is good practice to try and make it as broadly available as possible. Think “roleplayers” rather than “that specific type of roleplayer”, if that helps. You could also include multiple, different types of players by introducing multiple stages (have a combat stage, an art stage, etc)! This should be designed very carefully however, or it might discourage people from participating. Maybe make the quest for teams, and thus give them the possibility to include different skill types in their team? Up to you. Quest Types The Arts & Crafts Quest Spoiler Usually has the format: Draw / Build / Sculpt / Craft / Cook X Styles (digital or traditional) / tools (pencil, pen, colour) / ingredients accepted are: X Y Z Number of drawings / photos of your creation required: X Special requirements: X (which can be stuff like a selfie with the creation or making a ritual with it, etc.) Time to complete and submit: X Judging & Rewards. Pros: Very low-maintenance. Doesn’t require the questmaker to be 100% involved, doesn’t require 100% of the questmaker’s attention. Easy to judge (can be a good ‘beginner’ quest to make) with many potential judges available. Easy to relate to MD (such as draw a specific creature or scene), but difficult to integrate or make it a part of MD (such as making participants need to do other things in-game in order to obtain what they need to draw, or why, etc.) Cons: Subject to participant exhaustion. Quest type is fairly common, you might end up with nobody doing it because they have done too many. May be intimidating to some participants who don’t think they’re particularly good at arts (maybe you can adjust this by judging? Value the concept more than the execution? Is this worth it?). Can be very subjective, but single/double blinding can be done very easily. The Tournament Quest Spoiler Usually has the format: Registration to participate Name, ID, Mindpower, Stats?, Active Days?, etc Creature types allowed Can be just about anything, but needs to be mentioned and detailed. Can also refer to creature abilities or auras. Tokens and Stats (influence) Are tokens allowed? What influence slider value should participants use (0-100%)? Spell usage? Outside Interference? Mode of combat Pairing Trials/pair Progression (semifinals, finals, etc etc) Time to be held Judging & Rewards Pros: Judging can be easy (who won vs who lost, does not necessarily need a spectrum or a complicated quantification). Can be more captivating than a drawing quest, and more related to MD. Can be easily given a MD feel (choosing of a champion of a land, or some invasion or something). Can be repeated easily. Objective to judge. Cons: Requires the involvement of the questmaker or a helper to observe the development of the quest. Can be interrupted by spells very easily. Cannot be held in certain locations (sanctuaries). Cannot be held on certain days (days of tranquility). Can heavily bias for certain players or mindpowers (low MPs might be at a disadvantage due to low numbers of players). The Roleplaying Scenario Quest Spoiler Usually has the format: Description of the scene that will be played. (May be a dinner, a gathering, a fighting scene, etc) Roles available and who is eligible to take them, with a short description (maybe) of what that role is. Date to be held. Order for roleplaying and amount of text allowed / turn. Potential special effects or modifiers (things like making a player skip their turn, swapping roles, etc.) Judging & Rewards. Pros: Can be massively entertaining. Can be made to have a “MD feel”. Can put players into unexpected situations, or take them out of their routines, which is fun (most of the time). Can essentially be held in any location (-no chat scenes). Can be fun for onlookers too. Cons: Can take a huge amount of time. Requires a lot of attention for a long period of time, both from questmaker and quester. Requires logging capabilities (acousticremains). Can be very subjective (and difficult to blind, due to them being public by default). Can be easily interrupted or sabotaged (silvertongue, silence, petrify, teleport spells). Can be disrupted by onlookers. Can be very confusing if orders and turns are not clearly explained. A bit of a difficult quest to manage, in spite of it being very entertaining. Can be biased towards skilled roleplayers. The Clickie Chase Quest Spoiler Usually has the format: Go to clickable item X and insert password Y to begin Receive different bits of puzzles or information and get sent to different clickable items with different passwords. Obtain a final answer. Time and answer are ‘measured’ and judged. Pros: Very versatile, the clickables can essentially contain any type of puzzle you can think of, thus the quest isnn’t intrinsically biased towards a specific group of people, but the puzzles you put in it might bias it. Requires some involvement during the active phase (hints, potential glitches). Can give very objective results (exact time and answers and steps reached). Can be very engaging (if serious code-magic is done, like various mini-games). Generally works as a good substrate for more complex quests. Cons: Requires access to script clickables and knowledge of how to do so. Lots of testing and lots of preparation work needed. Can bug-out and halt progress for everyone. Can bug-out and may allow for cheating/cheesing that you did not predict. Clickables require maintaining every 2 weeks (I think), or they become inactive. Can feel bland and rudimentary (just a window with text). The Cipher / Puzzle Quest Spoiler Usually has the format: Receive a puzzle of sorts (cipher, picture, you name it). Have a specific constraint (time, number of attempts, hints, etc). May or may not have a set goal (such as crosswords which you must complete, or just a text that you need to decipher). Judging & Rewards Pros: Can be a very good component of other quests. Can be scripted into clickables fairly easily. Can be presented as a picture file (if cipher) to avoid copy-pasting into deciphering software. Can be very rewarding to participants (“I FINALLY GOT IT!”) and very engaging. May also be given a MD feel, but it may not be easy. Can be very objective. Is essentially open to everybody. Cons: Require preparation from the questmaker (design the ciphers and puzzles). May potentially be difficult to judge, depending on the format in which the answer is delivered. Require testing to make sure they are solvable. Can be intimidating. Announcements. Miscellaneous Tips about how to announce your quests, where to do so and how. You should announce your quest preferably when you are certain you can hold it (this means you have found sponsorship for rewards, if necessary, or already designed and implemented the bulk of the quest). This is often done on the forums, here. Key elements you should mention in your quest release announcement should be: Description of the quest requirements (registration - optional, only use if 100% necessary, or details you need for an application) The task itself + deadlines Rewards Judging or scoring methods (do not name your judges. Just say if there will be any and give a few details on what you will be giving points for, if applicable). Keep in mind that for some quests it is better to announce later rather than earlier (when you want to prevent people from finding loopholes in your quest, for instance). Try and give a decent amount of time, but do not give a stupendously distant deadline. This means people will have to wait very long for their rewards! Give too short a notice and people won’t participate, as they will fear their effort will be wasted. During the quest, keep in mind that you announcing details about any of the participants (who is participating, if they have any score so far, who is leading, etc) may lead to their sabotaging! Do not divulge information about participants that is not public by quest design, even if you think it’s harmless! Be wary that information leaks. Try to tell as little as possible about the quest prior to its release. You might give details to third parties helping you set the quest up and while said third parties may not participate, they may pass the information further to potential participants. Sponsorships and Rewards Quest rewards can be varied, but can usually be broken down into 5 major categories: Wishpoints. Arguably most valuable. Coins (Gold or Silver). Arguably most versatile. Creatures. Can vary from extremely valuable and rare, to very mundane. Items or Resources. Some can be valuable and usable (spellstones), other are for RP purposes only. Some resources can be used to create other items or creatures. Other rewards. This may include things such as nightmode, dreams, melodic charm, medals, group memberships or spelldocs. These can perhaps be some of the rarest rewards, but their value will vary wildly on the perception of the receiver. For 1-4, you can approach the Treasure Keepers (namely Eara Meraia in-game). You can also ask for sponsorships from just about any player! However, by the time you ask you should already have: A clear quest structure in mind An idea of how difficult the quest would be An idea of what sort of rewards would be suitable for it For 5, you should approach the players responsible for those rewards (for instance, myself for nightmode - Aeoshattr in game) Players who can give special rewards (in their own quests and/or as sponsoring): Nightmode - Aeoshattr Dreams - Jubaris (?) Melodic Charm - Burns (debated currently, I believe) Spelldocs - lashtal, *Nimrodel*, Intrigue You can always award part of your own items or creatures. If you want to be able to award Wishpoints on your own, you will need to obtain Wishpoint Reward Codes, which you can get from the permanent Drachorn Quest, but are sometimes awarded to questmakers by admins for particularly good quests. Keep in mind that rewards should scale with quest difficulty! There is no “here are some average rewards” guide. You should be able to assess the difficulty of your quest and have a rough idea of the type of rewards that should be given. You can always use past quests that you can find on the forums here as a reference. If you are unsure of the value of a specific item or creature, you can consult past prices by searching the forum here. Make sure you look at the time and date of the transaction! Prices change in time! If still in doubt, you can always ask veteran players in-game or post on the forums. Quest Judging and Rewarding While I cannot provide direct instructions as to how to judge each and every quest, I can provide some principles that are good to follow when thinking about how you select your judges, how you send the quest information to those judges, and subsequently how to distribute rewards. Luckily, some IRL principles can be applied here very successfully! Without further ado… Judging Principles Single Blinding. This means that your questers do not know who your judges are. This is extraordinarily simple to implement and I dare say it is something that you must do in all of your quests. How? Ask for judges publicly, but ask for applications to be sent to you privately. Go directly to someone you know does judging and ask privately. Make sure you ask them not to divulge their judge status. Do not accept judge applications that are made publicly. Why is this good practice? Think about questers potentially influencing judges. Telling them “look for a submission like this one, see if you can give it extra points”, etc. If your questers are unaware of who judges your quest, then that is much more difficult to achieve. Always try and go for reliable, reputable players, whenever possible. Double Blinding. This means, like single blinding, that your questers do not know who their judges are, but it also means that the judges do not know whose quest entry they are judging! This may sound a bit trickier, and it is, but nevertheless it is not very difficult to achieve. What this means is that you need to take these steps, in order: You apply all the principles above when selecting your judges Ask for quest entries to be sent to you privately (forum PMs?) Make sure you keep a record of which entry belongs to whom (privately). Microsoft Excel (or Google Spreadsheets) is great for this. Anonymise each entry (remove player names or revealing details, such as titles, ID, etc). Replace them with “Participant X”, where X is a number you assign so you can undo the anonymisation later. Send each anonymised entry to your judges. Therefore, the questers will not know who judges them and the judges won’t know whose entry they are judging. This is one of the fairest things you can do. This also ensures that the only one who knows whose entry belongs to who is you. Obviously, this can be cheated, but it is much more difficult than if you don’t do it at all. For the more visually inclined, here is an example of what you would receive by forum PMs and what you should send to your judges (using real player names, for the sake of it): Spoiler What you receive: AeoshattrMy answer to the quest is somewhere “Inside the Drachorn Lair”, because Aeo found the last clue there and the trail seemed to end. *Syrian*I think the treasure was hidden outside the Drachorn Lair. MaGoHiMaGoHi says the treasure is inside the Drachorn’s belly and that it must be turned into bacon to retrieve it. Turn into: Participant 1My answer to the quest is somewhere “Inside the Drachorn Lair”, because Participant 1 found the last clue there and the trail seemed to end. Participant 2 I think the treasure was hidden outside the Drachorn Lair. Participant 3 Participant 3 says the treasure is inside the Drachorn’s belly and that it must be turned into bacon to retrieve it. Also, for you (and only you) to keep privately, until the judging is done: Participant 1 = Aeoshattr Participant 2 = *Syrian* Participant 3 = MaGoHi Other bits and details, in no particular order. Google Spreadsheets is a great tool to be used for judging. Here are a few things that it can do (automatically) to make your life easier: Maths. It can calculate averages and just about any other formulas you might need just from values you input. Easy Sharing. Just send a link to your judges. Make sure you set the document to request permission to view from you by e-mail, don’t let everybody with the link see it! Hiding. You can hide certain parts of a sheet, or certain sheets from your judges, so they don’t see either your own scores (if you give any) or they don’t see the totals and rankings so far, so that it will not influence their judging! Think of it this way, if one judge sees that he can make the difference between 1st and 2nd place by his choice, it might influence him in the scores he will give in order to put one participant in front of the other. Selective Editing. Google Spreadsheets can be set-up to allow each user to edit only a specific portion of the entire spreadsheet. This means you can have a single sheet for everybody, and each judge can edit only his own little section. No changes in the formulas you put in or in the layout, etc. This works very well for quests where specific score break-downs are needed (such as an arts & crafts quest, where the total score is composed of many little scores awarded for different criteria). You should post your score break-downs, where there are any. This is for transparency. You may or may not want to reveal the judges at the end, and if you do not want to reveal their names (also ask them if they want their names out or not), then simply use Judge X, Y, Z, 1, 2, 3, etc. You should double check your scores and calculations. I know it’s very tempting to just take what Google Spreadsheets gives you, but at least look over it once to make sure there are no blatant errors. You should aim for two judges for most quests. If you apply double blinding by default you cannot be a judge, unless someone else does the anonymisation for you (which I don’t recommend, I would prefer depending on myself only for this kind of thing). Each judge should have an equal weighting in the final score. This means you can’t have 3 judges, but in total their opinion is worth 10% and yours is worth 90%. Each judge should have an equal weighting. Make sure your ranking criteria are defined at the beginning. This means if your quest isn’t a simple hierarchy of scores but has some sort of tiers or thresholds, you define those clearly from the very beginning and maintain them at the end of the quest, regardless of how many people ranked in each tier (or didn’t). You should always consult your sponsors, if you think there is a problem with how many people ranked (or didn’t) in a certain position. Make sure you provide the judges with your marking scheme. This means be sure that you send them the entries you get from the questers, but also exactly what they should be giving points for, how many and how! If the quest is a puzzle, you might need to send them the puzzle solution. If it’s an arts & crafts quest, you might need to send them the criteria (such as creativity, originality, design, relevance to quest, etc). Always send marking schemes after the quest is finished and when no further entries can be submitted. Just to be extra-safe so your answer doesn’t get leaked before judging starts. Edited May 30, 2016 by Aeoshattr Added Judging Tips DARK DEMON, AmberRune, Ivorak and 14 others 17 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivorak Posted May 17, 2016 Report Share Posted May 17, 2016 This is great! One thing I might note, perhaps under accessibility, is that while registrations are necessary or helpful for some types of quests, they should be avoided for others, since often many people cannot commit to things in MD ahead of time (because of things like changing work schedules, childcare needs, etcetera). Aeoshattr 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeoshattr Posted May 30, 2016 Author Report Share Posted May 30, 2016 Added section about Quest Judging. Also included Ivorak's tip and added a short list of players who can provide special rewards, whether in their own quests or as sponsoring. If anyone can provide any unusual quest reward, please let me know if you want it included here. Ungod and Ivorak 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivorak Posted December 20, 2017 Report Share Posted December 20, 2017 I'm about to start gathering documentation stuff for the the topic below and it reminded me of this post. Wondering if you, @Aeoshattr, would mind if I suggested adopting this guide as official documentation? Would make it easier for players to find it when it becomes relevant to them, and would also allow the community to maintain it if you should ever disappear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeoshattr Posted December 20, 2017 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2017 (edited) If it is deemed suitable to be official documentation, I would be honored, that was how it was initially intended. May I ask it to be credited to me wherever it is added though? Edited December 20, 2017 by Aeoshattr Ivorak 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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