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Foundry Sunset, April 11th, 2019

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  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,569 Arc User
    First they came for Exploration Clusters, and I did not speak out—because I did not run Exploration Clusters.

    Then they came for Featured Episodes, and I did not speak out— because I did not care.

    Then they came for the Foundry, and I did not speak out— because I did not create or run Foundry Missions.

    Then they came for PVP, and I did not speak out— because I did not PVP.

    Then they shut the game down—and there was no one left to speak for me.
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,569 Arc User
    This Thread is loaded with enough Dissertations as it is, we could use less full requotes of them all.

    'Electrons are a terrible thing to waste.'

    :)
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • pendra37#5088 pendra37 Member Posts: 29 Arc User
    ltminns wrote: »
    This Thread is loaded with enough Dissertations as it is, we could use less full requotes of them all.

    'Electrons are a terrible thing to waste.'

    :)

    OK
  • zorky63zorky63 Member Posts: 19 Arc User
    [quote] @koihimenakamura said:

    > The Foundy served well, for how long it was around. But I can fully understand them going 'this is consuming more resources than it needs to, and we don't have the resources or people left to fix it.' Speaking as a hobbyist programmer, it's far too easy to fall into code debt and no longer have the ability to redeem it. [/quote]

    Yeah, this whole game is the definition of 'code debt' ... , from it's initial implementation as a quick "strap on" onto their engine (with a partial re-skin if Champions under the hood) , to the long string of abandoned systems that could have been worked on, but got jettisoned or a abandoned instead .

    Hell, I find the "Genesis Torpedo" award to be ... rather fitting, as it combines two existing elements : the patch of greenery coming from an already utilized Anniversary award ... -- but the more interesting part , the Genesis Device ... , that I suspect was something "laying around" on the 'virtual shelf' , yet again long abandoned from a previous classic movies based idea ... , perhaps from the infomous "Children of Kahn" STF that never got made ... .
    (one that had assets made for it drip-driped into the game) .

    STO was made using shortcuts in around 18 months, and we've been paying for that decision ever since ... in more ways than one .
    On one hand you had Cryptic playing the eternal "catch up" to their initial rushed game launch, and on the other hand you had the shunting of funds & personell -- essentially us paying for something else not involving STO content .

    We payed for Neverwinter (especially Neverwinter's Foundry's foundational development . We payed for converting the game to Free to Play (all the while being told that we're not going F2P) , and now we're offering up the Foundry as the sacraficial lamb to the development cycle of their new mmo , Magic the Gathering .

    And all the while we got nonsensical projects going, like redesign after redesign of UI elements , or power setup tables .
    At times I could have sworn that they came up with projects just to keep Al's systems team employed from date x to date y ... , while at different times they clearly dropped projects half finished into the game (hello crafting revamp) and rushed on to other things before finishing all that they had in mind for the system .

    I have no regrets from becoming a lifetime subscriber ... (a month before The Year of Hell started) any more then subbing before that for months and months .
    My first regret was finding out that my LTS (as well as subsequent ingame purchases) went towards something that Cryptic's CM denied that they were doing (F2P conversation) .
    Coming full circle, I have the feeling that my last regret in STO is seeing the Foundry get flushed down the toilet .
    And as I'm not a Discovery fan ... , STO will have nothing for me come next month .
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,231 Arc User
    edited March 2019
    thanatos9t wrote: »
    The only good ones I've seen were ones where it was used very carefully, most importantly? No attempt at randomized stories.
    They do still seem to have some procedural content in STO as certain TFO's randomize certain elements of the mission. Day's of Doom seems to randomize the enemies attacking the starbase, along with the nebula's visuals, and on the Battle of Procyon V the enemies seem to be random.

    Whether or not these are done in a similar way to the old Exploration missions is another question.
    No, not even close. I wish I could remember which episode it was, but in one of the Foundry Roundtable dev interviews we got to ask about that. Genesis is a dev tool, and not part of the game, at ALL. For example, and because I love sharing these old pics:

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,231 Arc User
    If I check other games who tried procedural content, I can't really tell one where it worked well. They ended up as boring, bland, shallow, repeating. For any good result, you have 100 bad ones. Now if someone test plays all the of them, take the better ones out, and then add the final touches by hand, well, that would work.
    The only good ones I've seen were ones where it was used very carefully, most importantly? No attempt at randomized stories.
    This. I have championed a procedurally generated exploration system, and everyone keeps thinking I am talking about STORIES. And NOTHING I say will get it through their heads that I am talking about maps and events that need to occur. the STORIES would be ours to make. Once generated, a sector block would remain persistent, with whatever elements that are part of it playing into the rest of the game, with colonization and industrialization options.
    I actually made a tutorial on how to create branches in Foundry missions:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vDZxxK1KI4&list=PLY5hPGi2f0fteHE9KxBSLB2JRB011bpQV&index=15&t=0s
    Basically any story stuff that isn't part of the main quest objectives can be tied to triggers that show/hide things based on factors the player can't see. Possibly things the player has no control over.
    Cryptic's biggest problem with approaching systems like exploration and the Foundry is that they seem to have a "fire and forget" mentality. They throw a system out there and never seem to revisit it later. It is what it is and on to the next thing.
    Not true. They did revamp and improve Foundry multiple times. But they spent more time bug fixing it.
    Imagine if Foundry also let us create Admiralty and Duty Officer assignments. Imagine if we could set up PvP events. Imagine if it had hooks into most if not all of the other systems.
    This is the sort of stuff the devs had discussed as "possible future improvements" BUT, they didn't have time to add new stuff and fix the Foundry at the same time.

    How broken is the Foundry as-is? Building complex maps in the editor is an exercise in guesswork since you can't see where you're placing things. Attempting to play a mission in preview mode is problematic because Foundry characters can't change maps. Foundry characters also can't claim doffing, admiralty, or R&D rewards. I know because doffing and Admiralty are a big part of how I got my Foundry character to Level 65.

    Yes, really, THAT is my Foundry character. Currently the only repeatable source of Rep Marks for Tetin is the daily race in the summer event. Every other method is unusable because of bugs, or excluded by design(TFOs).
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,569 Arc User
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • pomonagrange#3097 pomonagrange Member Posts: 112 Arc User
    you know that terrible feeling you're feeling? the emptiness, the apathy? that is the feeling when you see something you care about being run off a cliff.

    it's that feeling that makes you scream at the screen during a horror flick "NO! don't split the party!!"

    THAT is the feeling some of us have been getting when Cryptic makes these major changes. some of us have been getting it many times over the last nine years.

    it has not, thus far, impacted Cryptic Studios in the least. They appear determined to push their way from near greatness to utter mediocrity, and nothing will dissuade them. I've watched a lot of the best, most creative, involved and supportive players get disgusted and leave over the years. I think the last major exodus was right after Delta Rising dropped.

    like then, this too will not be the final straw that gets their attention, because the metrics and their focus on an ever narrowing majority conspire to tell them things are just fine-this is because, like your Romulan character, you and I as players are the most easily replaced assets in the game.

    I remember a year or two ago, saying to myself, "I think I can finally start saving up money for a lifetime subscription to STO." I actually wanted to, after only spending $50 back in Fall 2012 (and nothing since then). But then I thought, "What's the point?" There is almost no dynamic (i.e., at least a slight randomness) to any of the missions. Enemies always start in the same location. And the characters? You might as well choose the same race for each character in whichever faction it's a member of, since each mission mostly doesn't seem to care whether your character is human, Romulan, Vulcan, Klingon, Andorian, etc. I guess the game engine (unlike the one that SWTOR uses) isn't set up for that sort of thing. I just try to imagine that NPCs know my character's correct rank, what race I am, etc. As if I were in a TV series, not in an online game.

    What do I miss most in STO, though? The friends I've made over the years (since Fall 2012). The ones who made doing missions together fun (like in the Defera Invasion Zone, or space patrols, etc.) and there was usually time to chat during or before and after missions. We weren't the hyper-competitive types. We didn't take the game overly seriously. We just wanted to hang out, have fun, explore, goof off, do some Foundry missions every so often (not necessarily the action missions, but sometimes Risa Hotel or Beach House on Risa), or whatever. It made you happy to be part of a pair or trio or group. Hope that some of those folks are still playing STO (even if less frequently, maybe using different accounts, and maybe we're on at different times in different time-zones). Hope this made sense.
  • ichaerus1ichaerus1 Member Posts: 986 Arc User
    ltminns wrote: »
    Actually, Lord of the Rings Online handles two versions of one area in the game, namely Isengard. One is pre destruction and the other post flooding. What you interact with depends on the context of how you get there.

    In a way we sort of have that kind of thing already in-game with Defera and Risa. Here you just beam down into the different context Instances. In a more limited sense we have a different view of part of New Romulus in 'Blood of the Ancients'.

    LOTRO handles a third, with the Riders of Rohan expansion that came after Rise of Isengard expansion. That was the last that I knew, as I left that game in 2012.

    Dungeons & Dragons Online does this with at least one quest pack(Attack on Stormreach), as well as the tutorial for Korthos Island(the atmosphere of the town changes once you complete the tutorial missions, or you leave the island). I haven't yet explored every quest and quest pack yet for DDO, but I know of both of those for sure. The former was as a result of "flagging" for the final quest in the Attack on Stormreach pack, and resets after you finish that quest and turn it all in.
  • ichaerus1ichaerus1 Member Posts: 986 Arc User
    patrickngo wrote: »

    you know that terrible feeling you're feeling? the emptiness, the apathy? that is the feeling when you see something you care about being run off a cliff.

    it's that feeling that makes you scream at the screen during a horror flick "NO! don't split the party!!"

    THAT is the feeling some of us have been getting when Cryptic makes these major changes. some of us have been getting it many times over the last nine years.

    it has not, thus far, impacted Cryptic Studios in the least. They appear determined to push their way from near greatness to utter mediocrity, and nothing will dissuade them. I've watched a lot of the best, most creative, involved and supportive players get disgusted and leave over the years. I think the last major exodus was right after Delta Rising dropped.

    like then, this too will not be the final straw that gets their attention, because the metrics and their focus on an ever narrowing majority conspire to tell them things are just fine-this is because, like your Romulan character, you and I as players are the most easily replaced assets in the game.

    To the bolded part, yep. Experienced it ever since finding out that the Foundry is getting flushed down the porcelain throne like a goldfish burial.

    To the italicized, not the final straw that gets Cryptic's attention, but it is the final straw for a number of players. Like Goodman @mattjohnsonva, I, as well as a number of those I lead in my fleet, have been spending more time and money in another MMORPG(for us, it's DDO), and less of both currencies in STO. I'll still pop in to STO, but it'll be to shunt refined dilithium to my fleet holdings, or keep track of the zen stipend I get each month, before I pop over to DDO.

    To the bolded, italicized: Reminds me of the WWF/WWE when ECW and WCW went under(old professional wrestling fan here) and were bought up by WWF/WWE in the early 2000s. There's no real competition to ignite that spark to innovate and put out bleeding edge quality. Neverwinter has DDO(Dungeons&Dragons Online) to compete with for which D&D MMORPG is better, and DDO is getting ready to launch a new expansion.
  • nrobbiecnrobbiec Member Posts: 959 Arc User
    edited March 2019
    Response to moderated post redacted. -- WingedHussar
    Post edited by wingedhussar#7584 on
  • wingedhussar#7584 wingedhussar Member Posts: 436 Community Moderator
    Guys? I get that you're mad about the Foundry shutdown -- truth be told, I share that opinion -- but advertising for other games isn't allowed.
    Spamming
    You may not create posts which contain:
    • Advertisements that have not been authorized by PWE.
    latest?cb=20171202101458

    ...THEN THE WINGED HUSSARS ARRIVED!
    Volunteer community moderator for the Star Trek Online forums. Not a Cryptic Studios or Perfect World employee.
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,569 Arc User
    edited March 2019
    Oy, vey.
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • thanatos9tthanatos9t Member Posts: 96 Arc User
    No, not even close. I wish I could remember which episode it was, but in one of the Foundry Roundtable dev interviews we got to ask about that. Genesis is a dev tool, and not part of the game, at ALL. For example, and because I love sharing these old pics

    I was replying to the topic of procedural content rather than the Foundry itself.

    Space missions similar to the old removed exploration missions could still be implemented by Cryptic (not by users.)

    Using mechanics that are currently being used in certain TFO missions, for example enter a system, visuals are picked from a series of nebula types (like Days of Doom), scan x anomalies then face enemies from a random set of enemies (like Battle of Procyon v or Days of Doom).

    I am not sure apart from using the Genesis tool, how those missions are created/implemented.

    "I walked away from the last great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained. No time, no space. Just me!"
  • crypticarmsmancrypticarmsman Member Posts: 4,101 Arc User
    ...
    @sirsitsalot Try again, and try not to troll next time. Watch the video. Read the transcript. Get some knowledge. Kael has already stated that the programmers are working on several new things that will benefit all of Cryptic's games. Ignoring that fact and making such ignorant statements is willful trolling.

    LoL… I see my sarcasm was completely missed. If they had a developer to work on the foundry, they would be working on the Foundry... And come ON people... Changing a user interface happens on the code level. It's not something that someone can just sit down and change on a whim.

    I want to clarify my position here. I understand that the foundry has to go away due to the reasons explained in detail. I accept that. What I have a hard time accepting is that this is being done with what seems like no regard for the individuals who have relied on the Foundry to provide them with the content which the developers are unable to produce based on the direction of focus. Namely exploration-themed missions, and missions designed to facilitate faction-specific missions.

    Unless the devs will be changing their focus and intend to begin developing continuing exploration-themed and faction-specific missions, then I believe that a smaller, but no less important segment of the player community will be neglected, and I see the loss of the Foundry as a lost opportunity for Cryptic to service that segment.

    This is the second system being removed from this game which fell into an unmanageable state due to long-term neglect. Had the explorations system been improved and expanded upon rather than abandoned, it likely would have drawn a lot more people to it, but it wasn't so it didn't and new players got lost in a square room that had only one door, and that was the reason we were given for its removal.

    The Foundry also would have had a far larger following, had it been improved and maintained from its beginning. Bugs had been reported for years that went unfixed. The Foundry listings in the game only showed a drop in the ocean of content. These alone made people not want to bother producing content because they never knew when it would be broken, or if people would even be able to find it. Not to mention, every time big changes were made to the core game, the Foundry went down for long periods of time. These are all issues that Cryptic caused and seemed to never attempt to resolve.

    So while I accept the decision, I find it disappointing that it had to come to this. It was a part of the game, like Exploration was part of the game, they both should have been treated as such given as much of a priority as any other feature. That they were not is terribly sad.
    The facts are:

    - They couldn't find a way to successfully monetize the Foundry.

    - They have limited full/actual programmer resources spread across 4 game (3 launched, 1 MtG still in development)

    - To Upper Management, the tangible ROI on having programming resources allocated to fix (or expand) the Foundry for each major update across the two game that have it, is too low compared to using those same programming resources to new features that both assist in better monetization of the games in general; and that they also feel will attract NEW players and get those new players to open their wallets.
    ^^^
    IMO - It sucks for people who liked the opportunity the Foundry gave to those that used it; but it's business 101 in that if you have limited resources, you direct them to things that in your opinion give the best tangible return on investment (ROI).

    The above said, it MIGHT come back to bite them in the A$$ because of a number of intangibles that won't fully take effect until the Foundry is sunsetted. But in Business you prioritize on the tangible stuff you can quantify first and foremost if you want to survive.

    Personally, I do think they;re making a bigger mistake with sunsetting the Foundry then they realize, but I understand the decision from a Business perspective, and time will tell.

    Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012
    TOS_Connie_Sig_final9550Pop.jpg
    PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
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