Fantastic. No buts, just fantastic. Thanks for this. It will also help discourage people from starting from ESD all the time (guilty) and add in more of an exploration feel. STO can be very tied to the UI and this is a very welcome change in style. I hope this leads to more sectors being added to add in missing worlds and make up for the list exploration clusters.
Can't wait!
Were pleased to announce an update to the foundry making top-rated missions more easily available for Captains, coming with our new Anniversary update this month!
A great addition which will hopefully give us a reason to go exploring some forgotten sectors.
Perhaps at some future time, UGC missions can go through some sort of basic vetting with simple requirements, such as being a mission and maybe have at least some connection story-wise to the location of the doorway. Then perhaps we can be given the option to investigate any officer reports at a location.
People have already mentioned the oddness of the developer answering questions on Reddit but not on his own forum I know it is toxic here but still
Funnily enough, its far more toxic there on this topic. Mainly because one of the big wigs there absolutely despises the foundry and thinks authors are whiny fanfiction babies who want us to force MLP on him.
I had a side thought about this... have any of you authors mapped out a few of the soon-to-be-deleted Romulan missions? Not all of them will be missed all that much, but combining this new feature with carrying over a few defunct Episodes into the Foundry could be a great way of preserving the better ones.
[EDIT] If you do plan to do so, you might let the folks over here know... the devs would probably appreciate the help.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
If this involves PvP I'm guessing there will be some absolutely amazing bribes to get non-PvP people to show up there and play the role of "target" LOL
These missions can, though some non qualifying missions can appear for now. We will be displaying the average play time for each mission on the list so you can see what you're signing up for before you click the mission.
Fleet Admiral Joseph D. Ridgeway
The Armada
Original join date: Feb 5, 2010
Twitter: @davejl_99, & @STO_BBArmada
Does this system then include the capability to trigger Foundry missions from generic points of entry such as 'Trade with Cargo Ship' or 'Engage Enemy' points? Or Even hinge them off the Red Alert Notifications allowing people to make their own crisis response calls for the top 3 to offer on those situations?
I get why it won't work with interact able objects inside a level (down that path, madness might lie as the entire universe is suddenly drowning in interactable Foundry glowies) but I'm curious if those kinds of generic cases work, even if only sector by sector.
Being able to make the wandering NPCs now operate as entry points to novel content (like good old Mudd?) seems to me to be a major win if this supports it.
The devs would have to add those as foundry doors first. Not that I object to such a thing. But it is an extra step that would make things more difficult.
At last, for once, wholeheartedly and without a trace of sarcasm, I can say it: Thank you, Cryptic! This is awesome and exactly what many people wanted. Me gusta mucho.
Expanding on this in the future, it would be great to have uncharted sector space that you could fly into, and have encounters from specific "exploration" UGC that features unique races, and civilizations.
Having said that, we still need a better system to get new quality content in front of player's eyes.
Can Al or Taco or Bort at least comment on the plausibility of what Im about to suggest. And some of this is straight from Al's mouth on a podcast long ago I remember.
We need an Author following system, something Al said would be good. When your favorite author publishes something new, each of his followers get an alert to his new mission. This would be AFTER the author hit an "Announce" button to his followers. As others have said, its best to actually publish the mission to holodeck for more shakedown testing before giving it your stamp of approval. Then after the author has polished it from holodeck testing, then they'd "Announce" it. A note to authors, just give your mission a "post production" type generic title, so people wont play it early. Then when its really ready, republish with its proper title. Id also like to ask authors to give a decently accurate "Average Playtime" count in the mission description. If you want plays, and followers, we the player need to know if we're getting into a 20 min mission or 1+ hours.
Id like to further suggest something new to go with the Author Following feature, a Reviewer Follower feature. We need other players doing the grunt work and playing all the new stuff too. You could have as many reviewers as you like, and they would write a little review of it, the same size we comment after foundry missions, then hit Announce to your followers as well. Right now authors get 100 max dilithium tip. Id like to see reviewers get 10 dil max per referral, in a referral tip box right under the author tip box. I could have a few good authors I trust and follow, and several good reviewers I trust and follow, and they hunt down mission types I like to play. My ideal Reviewer sends me missions with quality, well written story and some combat. He wouldnt send me crappy clicky grinders or something that needed a ton of spell and grammar checking still. A Reviewer would care about his reputation and his followers too, and have a certain niche type that his followers trusted.
Me personally, my 3 Fed alts ONLY live off foundry content. My main's in each faction play the main storyline missions, and screenshots of those missions go into my screensaver photo album, so when it plays back to me, all the captains are seen in different missions like they are having separate careers, not all living the same career in Starfleet. So for me, an Author and Reviewer follower feature would be MUCH appreciated to keep a steady flow of quality content my way, in between waiting for Cryptic to make their rare featured episodes. This would act as a junior spotlighting system, and make it easier for Cryptic staff to get a good consensus on the up and coming top content that deserves official Cryptic Spotlighting.
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
I hope whomever decides which missions are selected really does give this the same care and attention most of the Foundry Authors put into making the missions. Please do not dump it onto the nearest intern's desk and give them a Friday by 5PM deadline.
Delighted to see the missions have to begin in Sector Space. This should take care of the farm-o-matic missions clogging the system all by itself. I would go further and recommend removing these types of missions completely from the Foundry. I would also recommend revoking the Foundry access of authors who make these types of missions. Not gonna happen, I know. But a fella can dream, can't he?
New missions may be a problem. Some may not make the cut because of limited reviews or limited plays. Probably ought to have someone conduct a check before Thursday and then have the ability to add these new missions into the Patch. Means someone on staff will have to actually play the game they're working on. A radical idea which very few game devs are capable of looking at without trepidation or outright fear, I know. But I have never been able to think completely inside the cubicle.
Please do not ever allow objects within a map to become a way to access this. ESD looks too much like Vegas sometimes as it is. Having everything be highlighted with the interact glowies would be mind numbing and may cause seizures, lol. An NPC point of contact would be the best way to do this as so many others have suggested.
Overall, I think this is a great idea. This should add some exploration and random encounters back into the game. Which it has greatly needed for some time now. Please do not fail on the execution side of this idea. This has happened too many times in this game. There are a lot of great concepts within STO which are poorly done and never fully realize their potential for entertainment. Let's not add another, please.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
This is an absolutely fantastic addition to the game. You guys should really be drawing more attention to this, I only just happened to stumble onto the news.
I think the best missions should definitely still be remastered by the devs/ a dev and integrated into the story, because there are some fantastic non-story arc, good missions in there.
This would also be a good way to put in the Romulan story arc missions, instead of removing them entirely, leave them about for a bit of exploration content.
Edit: Expanding the range of points of entry to make use of some of the more interesting things about the universe, could be a stepping point to adding more generic and interesting entry points for authors to use.
Does this system then include the capability to trigger Foundry missions from generic points of entry such as 'Trade with Cargo Ship' or 'Engage Enemy' points? Or Even hinge them off the Red Alert Notifications allowing people to make their own crisis response calls for the top 3 to offer on those situations?
I get why it won't work with interact able objects inside a level (down that path, madness might lie as the entire universe is suddenly drowning in interactable Foundry glowies) but I'm curious if those kinds of generic cases work, even if only sector by sector.
Being able to make the wandering NPCs now operate as entry points to novel content (like good old Mudd?) seems to me to be a major win if this supports it.
Comments
Can't wait!
http://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/2t7ela/foundry_top_three_system/
Looking forward to seeing which Foundry missions get featured in each system.
Now please excuse me.
I have writing to do.
The voices in my head are doing this at the moment in response to this.
http://media.giphy.com/media/BQAk13taTaKYw/giphy.gif
- Hippie
FABULOUS! Now this is great! Thanks!
Master using it and you can have this!
Be black on the right side. Add properly colored Cheron to the game today!
loss of the Exploration Clusters, this is truly the best of both worlds.
Our Foundry authors deserve such a system.
BCW.
People have already mentioned the oddness of the developer answering questions on Reddit but not on his own forum I know it is toxic here but still
Perhaps at some future time, UGC missions can go through some sort of basic vetting with simple requirements, such as being a mission and maybe have at least some connection story-wise to the location of the doorway. Then perhaps we can be given the option to investigate any officer reports at a location.
Funnily enough, its far more toxic there on this topic. Mainly because one of the big wigs there absolutely despises the foundry and thinks authors are whiny fanfiction babies who want us to force MLP on him.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
[EDIT] If you do plan to do so, you might let the folks over here know... the devs would probably appreciate the help.
So another "Ker'rat" outside of DS9?
If this involves PvP I'm guessing there will be some absolutely amazing bribes to get non-PvP people to show up there and play the role of "target" LOL
Captain Ariel Trueheart Department of Temporal Investigations
U.S.S. Valkyrie - NCC 991701
=/\= ================================= =/\=
Salami Inferno answered this on Reddit:
The Armada
Original join date: Feb 5, 2010
Twitter: @davejl_99, & @STO_BBArmada
This is an excellent surprise, thank you for at adding this to the game!
My character Tsin'xing
Expanding on this in the future, it would be great to have uncharted sector space that you could fly into, and have encounters from specific "exploration" UGC that features unique races, and civilizations.
Having said that, we still need a better system to get new quality content in front of player's eyes.
Can Al or Taco or Bort at least comment on the plausibility of what Im about to suggest. And some of this is straight from Al's mouth on a podcast long ago I remember.
We need an Author following system, something Al said would be good. When your favorite author publishes something new, each of his followers get an alert to his new mission. This would be AFTER the author hit an "Announce" button to his followers. As others have said, its best to actually publish the mission to holodeck for more shakedown testing before giving it your stamp of approval. Then after the author has polished it from holodeck testing, then they'd "Announce" it. A note to authors, just give your mission a "post production" type generic title, so people wont play it early. Then when its really ready, republish with its proper title. Id also like to ask authors to give a decently accurate "Average Playtime" count in the mission description. If you want plays, and followers, we the player need to know if we're getting into a 20 min mission or 1+ hours.
Id like to further suggest something new to go with the Author Following feature, a Reviewer Follower feature. We need other players doing the grunt work and playing all the new stuff too. You could have as many reviewers as you like, and they would write a little review of it, the same size we comment after foundry missions, then hit Announce to your followers as well. Right now authors get 100 max dilithium tip. Id like to see reviewers get 10 dil max per referral, in a referral tip box right under the author tip box. I could have a few good authors I trust and follow, and several good reviewers I trust and follow, and they hunt down mission types I like to play. My ideal Reviewer sends me missions with quality, well written story and some combat. He wouldnt send me crappy clicky grinders or something that needed a ton of spell and grammar checking still. A Reviewer would care about his reputation and his followers too, and have a certain niche type that his followers trusted.
Me personally, my 3 Fed alts ONLY live off foundry content. My main's in each faction play the main storyline missions, and screenshots of those missions go into my screensaver photo album, so when it plays back to me, all the captains are seen in different missions like they are having separate careers, not all living the same career in Starfleet. So for me, an Author and Reviewer follower feature would be MUCH appreciated to keep a steady flow of quality content my way, in between waiting for Cryptic to make their rare featured episodes. This would act as a junior spotlighting system, and make it easier for Cryptic staff to get a good consensus on the up and coming top content that deserves official Cryptic Spotlighting.
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
Like the reviewers following system on steam? In fact do that, let's have the foundry interface modeled on steam!
Delighted to see the missions have to begin in Sector Space. This should take care of the farm-o-matic missions clogging the system all by itself. I would go further and recommend removing these types of missions completely from the Foundry. I would also recommend revoking the Foundry access of authors who make these types of missions. Not gonna happen, I know. But a fella can dream, can't he?
New missions may be a problem. Some may not make the cut because of limited reviews or limited plays. Probably ought to have someone conduct a check before Thursday and then have the ability to add these new missions into the Patch. Means someone on staff will have to actually play the game they're working on. A radical idea which very few game devs are capable of looking at without trepidation or outright fear, I know. But I have never been able to think completely inside the cubicle.
Please do not ever allow objects within a map to become a way to access this. ESD looks too much like Vegas sometimes as it is. Having everything be highlighted with the interact glowies would be mind numbing and may cause seizures, lol. An NPC point of contact would be the best way to do this as so many others have suggested.
Overall, I think this is a great idea. This should add some exploration and random encounters back into the game. Which it has greatly needed for some time now. Please do not fail on the execution side of this idea. This has happened too many times in this game. There are a lot of great concepts within STO which are poorly done and never fully realize their potential for entertainment. Let's not add another, please.
I think the best missions should definitely still be remastered by the devs/ a dev and integrated into the story, because there are some fantastic non-story arc, good missions in there.
This would also be a good way to put in the Romulan story arc missions, instead of removing them entirely, leave them about for a bit of exploration content.
Edit: Expanding the range of points of entry to make use of some of the more interesting things about the universe, could be a stepping point to adding more generic and interesting entry points for authors to use.