Foundry

x0y1 · April 2013

So after watching a few dozen videos/streams about the foundry tool in neverwinter, I still don't get it. Why did Cryptic never introduce it in Champions Online over the years?

When you look at the last Videos about it like:
(english) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH0HTML3j_c
(french) http://www.twitch.tv/perfectworldeu/c/2171312
(german) http://www.twitch.tv/perfectworldeu/b/392531434

You see the tool is far more advanced then the one we got in CoX or the last one in STO (v0.8?). From creating custom indoor maps and place objects, dialog trees, connect rooms, mimic even own houses or simple random autofill in with items.Heck you have even a advanced char/costume builder for the npc (could steal some outfits for CO)...............

nepht · April 2013

x0y1 wrote: »

So after watching a few dozen videos/streams about the foundry tool in neverwinter, I still don't get it. Why did Cryptic never introduce it in Champions Online over the years?

When you look at the last Videos about it like:
(english) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH0HTML3j_c
(french) http://www.twitch.tv/perfectworldeu/c/2171312
(german) http://www.twitch.tv/perfectworldeu/b/392531434

You see the tool is far more advanced then the one we got in CoX or the last one in STO (v0.8?). From creating custom indoor maps and place objects, dialog trees, connect rooms, mimic even own houses or simple random autofill in with items.Heck you have even a advanced char/costume builder for the npc (could steal some outfits for CO)...............

The foundry was designed for STO. CO was never meant to have a foundry. If CO was to get one it would require serious dev time. I dont think an mmo with a medium sized population would get that type of update. You want the foundry get all your friends to play. Spread the word. The more players CO has the more stuff it will get.

scorpagor · April 2013

The foundy has been discussed countless times by now.

Cryptic made it very clear in their last 'Ask Cryptic' that it's not going to happen.

Just forget about it.

tacofoodsolol · April 2013

Just because the Foundry has been delayed doesn't mean we'll never get it.

cellarrat33 · April 2013

tacofoodsolol wrote: »

Just because the Foundry has been delayed doesn't mean we'll never get it.

The Foundry hasn't been delayed because the Foundry has never been approved to be added to CO.

Please show any SotG or 'Ask Cryptic' or any dev, Community Manager or Anybody from Cryptic saying we will get the Foundry.

chaelk · April 2013

we have whatsisnames commetns at Pax, that STO system is now the standard for their games.
3 major updates a year, so we are going to get good stuff

hey I managed to type that without bursting out laughing

jonsills · April 2013

scorpagor wrote: »

The foundy has been discussed countless times by now.

Cryptic made it very clear in their last 'Ask Cryptic' that it's not going to happen.

Just forget about it.

In their last "Ask Cryptic", they made it plain that the Foundry wouldn't be in CO this year.

This is starting to remind me of talking with my son, who's 7 and has ADHD. If it isn't happening now, he starts believing it's never going to happen.

meedacthunist · April 2013

Nobody ever said that it's not possible ever to have Foundry in CO.
In fact their most honest response was that it requires a lot of work, doable, but VERY labor consuming.

So while chances are low, Nepht is right.
If Cryptic will see any benefit in doing it, they will.

Which may or may not be, but nobody said "never".

scorpagor · April 2013

jonsills wrote: »

In their last "Ask Cryptic", they made it plain that the Foundry wouldn't be in CO this year.

Alright, I admit I didn't check my facts before I posted my previous comment.

Still, I have zero faith in Cryptic ever bothering to get the foundy going in CO.

selphea · April 2013

chaelk wrote: »

we have whatsisnames commetns at Pax, that STO system is now the standard for their games.
3 major updates a year, so we are going to get good stuff

So...

Update 1: Bikes and Bleak Harbinger
Update 2: Chariots and Forum Malvanum
Update 3: Aura Slots and... some mission that gives an advantage to characters with Auras?

sistersilicon · April 2013

chaelk wrote: »

we have whatsisnames commetns at Pax, that STO system is now the standard for their games.
3 major updates a year, so we are going to get good stuff

I'll believe Jack Emmert when he spends more time talking about Champions than he does about City of Heroes...

chaelk wrote: »

hey I managed to type that without bursting out laughing

Oh, I see what you did there.

cellarrat33 · April 2013

jonsills wrote: »

In their last "Ask Cryptic", they made it plain that the Foundry wouldn't be in CO this year.

This is starting to remind me of talking with my son, who's 7 and has ADHD. If it isn't happening now, he starts believing it's never going to happen.

What's going on with the Foundry?

We would really love to add the Foundry to CO, but it?s a very large undertaking and we're still figuring out if/how we could do it.

They say they would love to add it.

But there is no definitive statement that they will add it.

So it's problematic.

The "if" portion of their answer concerns me.

It could mean they haven't researched the feasibility of adding the Foundry or it could mean that they have researched what it would take, but don't have the resources.

Probably the latter.

If so, when/where are they going to get the resources.

After launch of NW?

The development team will be devoted to post launch patching and adding new content. I expect few, if any, devs will be returned to CO.

I could be wrong. I hope I am. But right now my expectations of major development for CO is low.

bwdares · April 2013

Co was neveThere was no intention to bring the Foundry to CO.

If they were going to bring one over, they would bring it from NWO, which is not completed yet.

If they were going to do that, we would not see it until summer 2014 at least.

They know we want it, but we have no where near the dev team needed to make it now. We will have to wait and see if we get one after NWO is out, even then it will take forever to get it converted for CO, and they have a 4th game planned which will most likely keep devs away.

Perfect World doesnt care about CO, so why would they give cryptic the funds to port the foundry here?

x0y1 · April 2013

cellarrat33 wrote: »

[...]
If so, when/where are they going to get the resources.

After launch of NW?

The development team will be devoted to post launch patching and adding new content. I expect few, if any, devs will be returned to CO.

I could be wrong. I hope I am. But right now my expectations of major development for CO is low.

My info from last year was that some devs would be only temporary work on NW BUT about one month ago the lead designer Zeke Sparkes said here http://www.twitch.tv/lorehound/b/379821497 ~39m30s that the developer team doesn't change post launch, pretty much keep the same size........

Now the question is, do the really need the devs that worked on the foundry? Endgame content, new classes and lockbox stuff is clear. From a other source the do have ~6month planned ahead for NW so ............

bwdares wrote: »

[...], and they have a 4th game planned which will most likely keep devs away.

Perfect World doesnt care about CO, so why would they give cryptic the funds to port the foundry here?

The still do? Jack Emmert said on Pax East the scrap one project because he liked that action combat, that one NW got later. Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2Ncb_RSdVo ~3m8s

sigmaseven0 · April 2013

x0y1 wrote: »

The still do? Jack Emmert said on Pax East the scrap one project because he liked that action combat, that one NW got later. Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2Ncb_RSdVo ~3m8s

Its hard to say. Ive heard conflicting storys on that.

I think its interesting that he mentioned being inspired by DCUO for the NWO combat system...then he mentions COX....its almost as if Cryptic doesn't have its own action based hero MMO.

vikaernes · April 2013

The problem is, with each week/month/year that goes by, the argument for a foundry becomes weaker. Right now, they say they would love to do it, no resources, etc etc. At the game's 5 year anniversary, the argument might look like:

"while we would love to add the foundry to Champions, providing an aging game with such a major feature addition would not be a wise use of the resources we have at our disposal. We would instead, prefer to focus our capital on producing new and exciting products for our players to enjoy."

Nevermind the fact that people have been clamouring for it since... STO was released? Sooner? It's nothing more than a waiting game, and if they wait long enough, their argument against the foundry becomes sound, and our argument for it becomes sadly moot.

crypticbuxom · April 2013

Its pretty simple.

They either haven't bothered trying to see if it will work.

OR

They are afraid that it will take customers from their other games.

The second is more likely yet it makes the least sense. Should it matter if your customers are playing a different game if you are running that game too? They seem to think that when it comes to STO. God forbid some of those players play CO instead.

flyingfinn · April 2013

Call me at 1-800-BULLSIHTE when the Foundry gets to CO.

gerberatetra · April 2013

I want the foundry as much as anyone and more than most...

And I know we're not going to get it. Cryptic stopped seriously supporting this game after STO came out, and if NW succeeds, they will keep the Devs on it, if it fails, it's lay off time; either way we're in standby mode until the game dies.

somebob · April 2013

As I half-joked a while ago:

Cryptic said it would take many months to do without any kind of major updates in order to get the Foundry working with CO.

Well, we just had many months without any kind of major updates (the Lemurian event was the first major patch in like 6 months).

Where's our Foundry?

Personally, I just don't expect to see it. CO is run on a skeleton crew and Cryptic doesn't want to put the resources into CO to 1) Get the population back, and 2) Keep the population they already have.

crypticbuxom · April 2013

If that was the reason why they haven't done anything significant in the past year aside from Until Carrier Defense and Lemurian Invasion (two alerts in the time it took them to do two comic series), then I'm ready for Foundry beta to be announced by this summer.

ALL negativity in lack of content would be understood in a heartbeat.

lafury001200 · April 2013

It's been years and throwaway commentary. Leave it.

cellarrat33 · April 2013

crypticbuxom wrote: »

If that was the reason why they haven't done anything significant in the past year aside from Until Carrier Defense and Lemurian Invasion (two alerts in the time it took them to do two comic series), then I'm ready for Foundry beta to be announced by this summer.

ALL negativity in lack of content would be understood in a heartbeat.

It occurred to me that they could announce they were adding the Foundry and therefore no further updates to CO (except lockboxes) would be made until it was done.

As time passed they could issue status updates and then just when they are about to release it to PTS, CO reaches the end of it's shelf life of 3-5 years (per their business plan) and "Oh too bad, we are closing CO! We were so excited about reviving the game, but we just released Project X! Try it instead!"

Yeesh! I'm such a 'bittervet'!

:

crypticbuxom · April 2013

The problem is, when it comes to systems that aren't on the brink of full realization and ready to be tested when they announce it, they usually crumble on promises too big. It happened with things like the Moon and Destroyer Island and even a Comic Series 3. They feel they are better off not announcing anything until its too late to do anything about it for fear of making the situation any worse.

At least when it comes to Champions Online.

x0y1 · April 2013

After reading this:

Raising the budget in future is a priority for devs. However, a lot will depend on how things work out during launch. But the words of devs are:-

"You cannot create a complete city now, though you can create a village. But letting authors create their own cities is definately on our priority list".

As for technology, they can raise the budget limit to as much as they want, there is no limitation. Problem is that they dont want players to feel any kind of lag in the game. So once they sort it out, they will do something.

Another problem is that their detection of budget limit is not optimal. E.g. using same object over and over is no problem, however adding dynamic light increase the strain on the objects. These kind of calculation are not yet implemented. They are fguring out a better mre comprehensive way t decide budget limits.

Yes persistent zones from foundry is being worked on. But it is something quite tough to implement so it will take time.

A lot. Its being updated a lot. Last 3 months, foundry has changed in everything and is a comletely new beast. one month after launch, a lot of revolutionary features are going to be implemented. So I won't worry about updates.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/382816/Foundry-missions.html
Player can talk about the beta-foundry, so it seems even the foundry devs will stay with NW. In a other interview the said something about to use the foundry in the future to create pvp zones and the have some other ideas.

Oh and there was a Interview with Lead Producer Andy Velasquez

So what are some of your priorities post-launch?

[...] If you've seen what Cryptic's done with Champions and Star Trek, those games are years old and still get regular, significant updates. We want Neverwinter players to know that that will be the same here too.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/04/20/massively-exclusive-neverwinter-pre-launch-interview-part-two/

So I guess CO is out.

jonsills · April 2013

Andy Velasquez wrote:

If you've seen what Cryptic's done with Champions and Star Trek, those games are years old and still get regular, significant updates. We want Neverwinter players to know that that will be the same here too

So, once NWO gets going, most of its devs will be reassigned to another project, just like CO and STO?

(That's actually good news for us, because unless that mysterious and possibly mythical "Project X" is still on the schedule, that leaves a 50% chance they'd be sent here...)

crypticbuxom · April 2013

An MMO getting regular "significant" updates until its shutdown should be mandatory. MMOs are an ongoing game system. STO has had Foundry, two major expansions ,including the coming Ramulan update but not including their new planet zones to explore.

Champions had a single zone in its run, which is debatable as something that should have been included at launch. Can Adventure packs and comics be counted? Certainly events don't. On Alert was the closest that Champions has had to an update and that was just a mechanic build overhaul. STO got one too for their FtP update.

So the score*:

CO - Vibora Bay, 3 Adventure Packs, 2 Comics, Hideouts, On Alert update

1 zone, 5 episodes, 1 mechanic update, 0.5 Hideouts

STO - Multiple Episodes, Foundry, Ground Revamp, More Episodes, Max Level content added, Fleet Update, New Series of Zones for Romulus update, Max Level content added again

X zones, 12 episodes, Foundry, Fleet Bases, 3 mechanic updates, X level cap increases, 2 max level updates

*Events and new items that do not enhance the core game play are not included.

Why does Cryptic staff keep going on about "significant updates" to Champions Online when this generally isn't true?

Foundry

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