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The ONLY solution to the KDF & Rom "problem"
thetruthurts
Member Posts: 22 Arc User
What "problem" do I mean? For the KDF its obvious; lack of content. The devs have been talking about finishing the KDF since launch, but its almost the 3 year mark and that hasnt happened. Cryptic simply doesnt have the resources.
The stance on a Rom faction has always been that they are going to finish the KDF before starting a new faction. However recently comments have drifted towards adding the Romulans as some type of "sub faction" within the Fed and KDF factions. Again, this is due to them not being able to make enough content to support a new faction. And it is absolutely not what people have been asking for.
There is only ONE solution to these problems: the foundry. But we've had the foundry for a while now, so why hasnt it solved the problem already? Because for this solution to actually work, foundry missions have to reward you equally to official content, and currently they dont. There are already plenty of great KDF missions in the foundry; more than enough to make up for the lack of official missions. But without comparable rewards, there is no measurable incentive to play them.
Yes, they are already planning on giving Spotlight missions rewards in October, and that is good. But there are simply not enough spotlight missions to make up for the content disparity between the factions. They have to make rewards work for ALL foundry missions, and they also have to get the foundry missions out of the dark and dusty corner of the mission journal UI they are currently in and shine a light on them. Then and only then will they solve the content problem. And if they actually pull that off, not only will the KDF have plenty of content, but so will future factions, meaning they wont have to neuter them by making them sub-factions of the Fed and KDF. They can be their own independent faction, which is what people actually want them to be.
I havent played NW yet, but from the interviews I've read and seen it sounds like they are making their foundry missions just as visible as the official content. It also sounds like they are scaling rewards based on mission length, meaning no 1-clickers. Honestly, getting this tech into STO should be the devs top priority. Until they do, they are always going to have the content disparity issue on their back and dragging this game down. The game is approaching the 3 year mark. Its time to solve this problem once and for all.
Folks, this is the only solution. Cryptic simply does not have the resources to develop equal amounts of unique content for multiple factions. They cant do it for 2, and they definitely cant do it for 3. And unless this problem is solved very soon, we are going to wind up with a Romulan faction that isnt really a faction at all. If you want the KDF to ever be "finished", and for the Romulans to be their own independent faction, then support this.
The stance on a Rom faction has always been that they are going to finish the KDF before starting a new faction. However recently comments have drifted towards adding the Romulans as some type of "sub faction" within the Fed and KDF factions. Again, this is due to them not being able to make enough content to support a new faction. And it is absolutely not what people have been asking for.
There is only ONE solution to these problems: the foundry. But we've had the foundry for a while now, so why hasnt it solved the problem already? Because for this solution to actually work, foundry missions have to reward you equally to official content, and currently they dont. There are already plenty of great KDF missions in the foundry; more than enough to make up for the lack of official missions. But without comparable rewards, there is no measurable incentive to play them.
Yes, they are already planning on giving Spotlight missions rewards in October, and that is good. But there are simply not enough spotlight missions to make up for the content disparity between the factions. They have to make rewards work for ALL foundry missions, and they also have to get the foundry missions out of the dark and dusty corner of the mission journal UI they are currently in and shine a light on them. Then and only then will they solve the content problem. And if they actually pull that off, not only will the KDF have plenty of content, but so will future factions, meaning they wont have to neuter them by making them sub-factions of the Fed and KDF. They can be their own independent faction, which is what people actually want them to be.
I havent played NW yet, but from the interviews I've read and seen it sounds like they are making their foundry missions just as visible as the official content. It also sounds like they are scaling rewards based on mission length, meaning no 1-clickers. Honestly, getting this tech into STO should be the devs top priority. Until they do, they are always going to have the content disparity issue on their back and dragging this game down. The game is approaching the 3 year mark. Its time to solve this problem once and for all.
Folks, this is the only solution. Cryptic simply does not have the resources to develop equal amounts of unique content for multiple factions. They cant do it for 2, and they definitely cant do it for 3. And unless this problem is solved very soon, we are going to wind up with a Romulan faction that isnt really a faction at all. If you want the KDF to ever be "finished", and for the Romulans to be their own independent faction, then support this.
Post edited by thetruthurts on
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Comments
For example: If a foundry author wanted to create an encounter with the Borg, why can?t the Borg enemy vessels have a chance to drop Data Chips that can then maybe be later used to purchase things in the STF stores?
Or for example, if the mission reward could be even just a small amount of Dilithium, or heck a couple of Fleet marks etc.
As much as I hate to say it, the data chips would probably be going a bit too far, and would detract from the reward for STFs. We have to remember that the content disparity problem only exists from 1-49. At endgame, everyone has the same amount of content. Therefore the solution to this problem needs to provide all factions a way to level from start to finish with their own unique story based content that is based around their own faction.
If they simply made it so that all foundry missions awarded xp comparable to the official missions, as well as a piece of gear that scaled to your level, this would give KDF players as well as any future factions the ability to level with their own faction specific content. As far as dilithium goes, the weekly spotlight mission could have bonus rewards that the standard ones do not, such as an amount of dilithium.
Even one foundry mission a fortnight added this way would substantially increase the content available.
I disagree. As I said in the OP, its great that they are planning on adding better rewards to the spotlight missions(what you are essentially talking about), but there simply are not enough of them to make up the content disparity between the factions.
Making rewards work for all missions would give people an endless amount of content to experience, and it would also mean you get to do different missions every time you level a new character rather than doing the same ones over and over.
NW has already solved the exploitation problem by scaling rewards based on mission length, meaning no 1-clickers. If there is any concern about people farming the same mission over and over, they can simply put a cooldown on getting rewards from the same mission.
This.
There's been talk of it for a while, it'd be an epic answer to the content creation issues in the game. There's some fantastic foundry content out there and it can't be that hard to pull it over...can it?
if you are thinking like i am the Dev to adopt them make them part of the main story line?
then yes i would play them i dont care for rewards all they can really give is lockboxs and dill other then that best stuff will still come from STF's
system Lord Baal is dead
If it werent for the fact that NW has already figured out how to attach rewards to all foundry missions, not just specific ones like our spotlights, then I would probably agree. However since they have done that, it makes no sense to ignore it and only focus on a few missions. There is already a rating system people can search by and only play the highest rated missions if they choose. But people who want to venture out and play missions they have never heard of should be rewarded just as much as someone playing the highest rated mission.
I just don't agree. Firstly, there are already a tonne of "best of Foundry" lists out there which contain as much or more mission content than is in the game outside of the Foundry.
Mission length is not a reward gating method I can see working. What are you judging it on? Number of interactions, mission steps, enemies killed? Or are you using time to completion as a gauge, in which case how do you deal with "two-click" missions where the player waits half an hour between interactions?
The Foundry has a lot of great missions in it, and a tonne of dross. You can't just treat the dross the same as the quality missions.
If it werent for the fact that NW has already figured out how to attach rewards to all foundry missions, not just specific ones like our spotlights, then I would probably agree. However since they have done that, it makes no sense to ignore it and only focus on a few missions. There is already a rating system people can search by and only play the highest rated missions if they choose. But people who want to venture out and play missions they have never heard of should be rewarded just as much as someone playing the highest rated mission.
you know you've hit the nail if I'm agreeing with Sophie on any given topic
make it so
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Why?
Most of those lists are made up of Fed missions, and the Feds are not the ones lacking content.
Simple: rewards scale based on average mission completion length. Note I said average, which means not your own personal time. This means there is nothing you can personally do to exploit the system. And if there is a problem with a single mission being farmed, then all they have to do is put a cooldown on getting rewards from the same mission. Say, a week.
One man's dross is another man's great mission. We're not talking about exploits here(that was covered above). Now we're simply talking about personal taste. Your personal taste should not dictate the rewards someone else gets for playing a mission, nor should theirs dictate yours.
I have to agree with this plus it gives the potential for foundry creators to potentially join the Dev team if Cryptic/PWE are smart and pluck up good developers. Heck they could even run a contest and the person that makes the best mission/Story Arc get's a contract or something along those lines.
Making all foundry missions = to main quest lines is just bad. MMOs and Star Trek in particular aren't cookie cutter FPS maps where everything is the same thing. That's why a lot of MMOs are having problems right now. Sure there's still players and all but with WOW they started to try and cater to the cookie cutter Console crowd and that combined with the advent of P2W vs P2P has lead to a lack of depth in games. Among other issues like the quality of players personalities.
You make a great argument and i completely agree, lets go a little further in your idea and expand this to that of new updated STF's or even Fleet Missions for Fleet Merits, i would even consider allowing new episodes. All Cryptic has to do is set the guidelines to the foundry people and what they can and cant do, choose from those that would be dedicated, to even putting them under an NDA. What i dont understand is why they dont utilize that of the community and the foundry to providing that while it would allow the devs to working on areas that need attention, to expanding the game. The whole purpose is for the foundry to make up that which is lacking, devs cant keep up with it. I hate to say this but there are many great foundry missions that are far better than that of what has been created by the devs. Which they should be flattered, just as modding groups in the past have done to expand on what a dev has done.
Example: http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=661741 (This already shows this)
+1
With this method the number of "content" missions could be multiplied over night.
Unfortunately not. Before any foundry mission could be adopted into the official game canon, not only would it have to be heavily vetted and tested, CBS would have to approve its storyline, plus they would have to make sure the author was in full agreement. All of that would take a decent amount of time, and certainly would not happen over night.
i thot CBS could only tell cryptic what could addid from movie or show not the storys of there mission am i wrong?
system Lord Baal is dead
From what we have been told CBS has complete approval/veto power over all aspects of the game, ranging from the ships to the story.
im ok with the ships stuff from show and so on but the story sould be up to Dev thot this was the main reason for seting the time line in 2409
system Lord Baal is dead
Which is why it would be especially important to make sure the stories of any foundry missions they want to adopt into the game's official story meet those qualifications.
I'm not making the argument that the foundry is better than official content. However it is better than NO official content, and Cryptic clearly doesnt have the resources to develop enough unique content for multiple factions. The game is 2.5 years old and the KDF only have 9 faction specific episodes.
And speaking personally, I have no problem with a bunch of random stories. I actually prefer self contained stories that I can enjoy in 1 gaming secession to something that leaves me hanging when I log off. But thats just me. Either way the point of my previous paragraph is the same.
ok i can get that but we all know if the game end they could pull a Ent it was all a holodeck program for the server is name the holodeck lol
system Lord Baal is dead
i keep seeing Cryptic clearly doesnt have the resources to develop enough so i got to ask with all the lifer money subs and Zstore sells where is the money going ? im sorry but i dont fell most of its going to this game most likely going to NW me wonder if that how they got there better foundry ? just a thought
system Lord Baal is dead
I agree.
Uh, ENT wasn't a holodeck program. Just that one episode was Riker playing a historical program.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
that may be so but then again ive seen shows do entier seasons as a dream
system Lord Baal is dead
Look at NWN and into the pockets of PW. STO finances PWs next top of the line game.
STO is just a cash cow to them.