If Dilithium is a "time-based" currency, then my feeling is that we should get at least a little bit of dilithium for nearly everything we do in game that involves some element of gameplay.
(Obviously spending your time at the tailor or selling stuff in the Exchange is its own reward.)
Then Cryptic can adjust the Dilithium rewards based on expected (average) time to complete, and maybe weight it according to the type of content they want us playing the most, or the most challenging content.
Now obviously, Foundry content is one of those things they want people playing because it's good promotion for the game, keeps the game from feeling stale, and it's a way to draw people in who might not be drawn in by the repeatable missions.
Why shouldn't every mission that takes 10 minutes or more grant at least 50-100 Dilithium? And I'm including all of the Cryptic-authored story missions in that, most of which do not grant any Dilithium rewards, afaik.
Now if the Spotlight missions do indeed count toward the Officer Reports wrapper, then I think it's not too unreasonable. People who can do three Foundry missions in a day can do that, and other people who can play a Spotlight mission once a day can complete the wrapper once every three days and do other content besides.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Maybe, just maybe, the reward numbers will get tuned once, they datamined the new system?
Maybe even to the point where each mission rewards dilithium directly based on average playtime?
This would be great and fair i think.
If you consider current time / reward ratios from other missions where you get Dilithium, it should look something like this to make the Foundry Reward a real incentive:
6 - 7 minutes of playtime = 480 Dilithium
But i dont know if they already got working tech for this kind of time measurement (and the will to implement it of course).
The second point would be ideal. I personally have no interest in playing the game as some others here do. How can it be fun to drop your shield just to get pvp over with? Click 3 consoles?
Before season 6, we didn't need any dilithium, so there was absolutely no need to do that, but now, we'll need dilithium everywhere, so that our characters can progress, get a better gear, gets new costumes, new toys, new pets, etc. So the philosophy is: get rid off the farming asap to get the rewards from the content you like to play the content you enjoy.
I do like foundry missions, pvp, STFs, episodes (most aspects of the games actually), when I want to play this specific content, not when a game designer decides it's time for me to do so.
I played a few but now that they are putting a time limit on them to count, unless I play the same ones over and over that I know will count, why would I risk wasting time on one that may or may not count.
And if I have to play the ones I know over and over and over and over every day.... BOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!
Way to kill the Foundry off, Cryptic. You set your phasers on kill and slaughtered the Foundry without mercy. The KDF in me salutes your blood lust.
___________________
"There is no problem in the universe that can't be solved with a bribe, a paid assassin, or an overpowered fighter." - Chubain from Jumpgate Evolution
I want to offer my thoughts on this whole issue aside from the obvious fact that the current time based Foundry reward is lacking.
I say revamp the entire thing, seriously, rework the rewards for the foundry. Keep a Dilithium reward but give additional incentives to play the foundry.
I mean remove the three mission prerequisite, lower the Dilithium earned, but also give additional rewards per mission completion.
You can keep the 480 Dilithium per foundry mission intact, but also add random rare drops that can only be issued via the foundry along with your standard marks & exp. If you need to time gate the thing, take a page from the Eta Eridani sector missions.
The thing is that the Foundry should be a very important part of STO, and by offering an incentive to play them, people have a reason to do them.
Lets get real people, many here play the game to earn something in return - its a simple notion that keeps gamers in the game. Why do you think people love STFs, it's because there was a lucrative return.
Usually places that are ghost towns are areas in the game that give little to no return.
I played a few but now that they are putting a time limit on them to count, unless I play the same ones over and over that I know will count, why would I risk wasting time on one that may or may not count.
And if I have to play the ones I know over and over and over and over every day.... BOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!
Way to kill the Foundry off, Cryptic. You set your phasers on kill and slaughtered the Foundry without mercy. The KDF in me salutes your blood lust.
The UI should tell you which ones count. After all this gets sorted out, if it's in the hot list, it counts for the wrapper most likely.
There are plenty of "legitimate" foundry missions that do not take 20 minutes to complete. So why did zero say that if there is a 20 minute minimum?
There are? Like the "Nagus Dailies"? I can't think of other examples, besides the ones that are made intentionally for quick run-through for the daily wrapper.
Here's the one thing that IMO sucks if the Spotlight Missions count for the Foundry daily and give these 'extra' rewards (no matter how small).
The players will quickly find the fastest (time wise) Spotlight mission, and play it 3 times just to maximize the reward. And if you think that won't be the case, just look at how people do STFs. Hell, they lowered the Dilithium reward for Elite STFs by 200 Dilithium and the playerbase exploded in anger (Even thiough they upped Dilithium rewards for other Fleet events).
My point in relating the above is this: The players using the 1-click missions did so primarily because they wanted to maximize their rewards VS time spent. This new Foundry system will not entice players to try more Foundry missions, as the majority that already do use the Foundry aren't doing it for the reward in the long run.
I really think though, what these changes do most is pretty much ensure that unless/until a mission is on the Spotlight list, it will see virtually no real play by others. Once the list is long enough, we may even see mission having problems getting out of review status; and even those who do enjoy Foundry stuff will go with the mission that in effect have been vetted - and the rewards will, seal the deal as - why risk wasting time on finding a 'diamond in the rough' as it were - when you have a list of vetted missions that also give a better return for time invested?
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 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..."
I'm guessing that this will be tested be enterprising and ingenious individuals with curious minds very soon after the servers go back up.
Of course the obvious solution to people finding ways to exploit the system(whatever its implementation) would be for the devs to play through every mission in the foundry and approve them manually - maybe after a couple of hours they would be willing to acknowledge that the reward/time does not make any sense, or make foundry content more appealing.
This 'dev approval' has already been done. I saw it on Tribble where it states whether it will or WILL NOT cound towards the daily. I am not at home, is that how it is currently in the Live game on Holodeck?
Actually .. instead of these dailies.. 1400 dil for 3 missions per day is not very realistic. I might be able to play 1 mission per day.. but three? Usually I do not have that time.
It would be better if they did more than just spotlight them on the site.
Pick very good written player made episodes and create a season of its own, the Unoffical episodes or whatever.. give rewards to the episode that is on spotlight.. just like you do for the "official" episodes. That way.. the players would actually feel like they get a new episode per week.. just as if it was series on the TV. Then when you have your own episode on display .. take a break from the foundry.
A foundry mission will count towards the daily wrapper mission if its average play time is 20 minutes or longer, not the 30, 45, or 60 minutes that have been suggested by various posts in this thread. So completing three such missions should take a bit over an hour.
Thanks for the clarification, but with the amount of characters that I manage due to the dearth of dilithium and amount of grinding that must be done to enjoy the game, I will be avoiding hour long tales into fantasy now. Sorry.
Well, to be fair, in order to do those exploration clusters in 15 minutes, people warp out of the kill 5/5 space mobs, which take like 20 minutes at least (for me).
This guy speaks the truth. I did that multiple times today with the Btran cluster dual-mission just before the server close with 4 minutes to spare before disconnect. So glad I was able to find those scan the anomoly and find the artifact missions in time.
So, the devs have "listened to feedback" and reversed the dilithium nerf. Will they actually listen to our feedback and either decrease the number of missions required to complete the daily or increase the reward you get? I'm betting no. Why? Because they only "listened to feedback" re dilithium because it was making them look bad. This isnt a big enough issue to do that, so no reason to actually listen. Pity.
I really think though, what these changes do most is pretty much ensure that unless/until a mission is on the Spotlight list, it will see virtually no real play by others. Once the list is long enough, we may even see mission having problems getting out of review status; and even those who do enjoy Foundry stuff will go with the mission that in effect have been vetted - and the rewards will, seal the deal as - why risk wasting time on finding a 'diamond in the rough' as it were - when you have a list of vetted missions that also give a better return for time invested?
How is that different from the way it was before? No one bothered before and they won't now. Business as usual....
So, the devs have "listened to feedback" and reversed the dilithium nerf. Will they actually listen to our feedback and either decrease the number of missions required to complete the daily or increase the reward you get? I'm betting no. Why? Because they only "listened to feedback" re dilithium because it was making them look bad. This isnt a big enough issue to do that, so no reason to actually listen. Pity.
I don't know. I'm hopeful. The general philosophy of dstahl's approach to dilithium was about making sure that things are balanced. He told us:
any player should be able to earn 8000 Dilithium per day if they focus on Dilithium based missions for about 4 hours.
That's not really possible if a player chose to focus on the wrapper as a primary source of dilithium. It would take me around 3 hours to play three popular missions, given the time of sector space travel to various doors. Sure, if I really tried I might be able to do three in an hour and a half. But then it would be a mad, mad dash to make up the difference with other tasks. Sure it's possible. I could spend 3 hours doing the wrapper, turn in some contraband, grind some elite stfs, etc. I'd be handicapped by the wrapper's time requirement.
Make Dilithium rewards balanced and consistent. No specific content should be aberrantly more efficient than others. We will be removing or adjusting reward tables anytime we find missions that are allowing players to earn Dilithium at an aberrant rate.
As it stands, official Cryptic content is far, far more efficient in granting dilithium with time invested than is the foundry wrapper. Even if you can somehow do 3 real missions in one hour... compare that to any other combination of things that you could do in an hour to get more than 1440 dilithium.
The wrapper's low reward violates Dstahl's over-arching philosophy here.
So, I'm hopeful that he see that. Maybe they're just waiting to see if the anti-exploit tech works. They certainly can't believe that 1440 dilithium should = over an hour of play time.
And it's got to be an easy fix to change either the reward amount or the number of missions to be played to earn the reward.
Comments
(Obviously spending your time at the tailor or selling stuff in the Exchange is its own reward.)
Then Cryptic can adjust the Dilithium rewards based on expected (average) time to complete, and maybe weight it according to the type of content they want us playing the most, or the most challenging content.
Now obviously, Foundry content is one of those things they want people playing because it's good promotion for the game, keeps the game from feeling stale, and it's a way to draw people in who might not be drawn in by the repeatable missions.
Why shouldn't every mission that takes 10 minutes or more grant at least 50-100 Dilithium? And I'm including all of the Cryptic-authored story missions in that, most of which do not grant any Dilithium rewards, afaik.
Now if the Spotlight missions do indeed count toward the Officer Reports wrapper, then I think it's not too unreasonable. People who can do three Foundry missions in a day can do that, and other people who can play a Spotlight mission once a day can complete the wrapper once every three days and do other content besides.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
If you consider current time / reward ratios from other missions where you get Dilithium, it should look something like this to make the Foundry Reward a real incentive:
6 - 7 minutes of playtime = 480 Dilithium
But i dont know if they already got working tech for this kind of time measurement (and the will to implement it of course).
system Lord Baal is dead
Before season 6, we didn't need any dilithium, so there was absolutely no need to do that, but now, we'll need dilithium everywhere, so that our characters can progress, get a better gear, gets new costumes, new toys, new pets, etc. So the philosophy is: get rid off the farming asap to get the rewards from the content you like to play the content you enjoy.
I do like foundry missions, pvp, STFs, episodes (most aspects of the games actually), when I want to play this specific content, not when a game designer decides it's time for me to do so.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
And if I have to play the ones I know over and over and over and over every day.... BOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!
Way to kill the Foundry off, Cryptic. You set your phasers on kill and slaughtered the Foundry without mercy. The KDF in me salutes your blood lust.
"There is no problem in the universe that can't be solved with a bribe, a paid assassin, or an overpowered fighter." - Chubain from Jumpgate Evolution
I say revamp the entire thing, seriously, rework the rewards for the foundry. Keep a Dilithium reward but give additional incentives to play the foundry.
I mean remove the three mission prerequisite, lower the Dilithium earned, but also give additional rewards per mission completion.
You can keep the 480 Dilithium per foundry mission intact, but also add random rare drops that can only be issued via the foundry along with your standard marks & exp. If you need to time gate the thing, take a page from the Eta Eridani sector missions.
The thing is that the Foundry should be a very important part of STO, and by offering an incentive to play them, people have a reason to do them.
Lets get real people, many here play the game to earn something in return - its a simple notion that keeps gamers in the game. Why do you think people love STFs, it's because there was a lucrative return.
Usually places that are ghost towns are areas in the game that give little to no return.
The UI should tell you which ones count. After all this gets sorted out, if it's in the hot list, it counts for the wrapper most likely.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=6487631#post6487631
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=6524831#post6524831
There are plenty of "legitimate" foundry missions that do not take 20 minutes to complete. So why did zero say that if there is a 20 minute minimum?
There are? Like the "Nagus Dailies"? I can't think of other examples, besides the ones that are made intentionally for quick run-through for the daily wrapper.
The players will quickly find the fastest (time wise) Spotlight mission, and play it 3 times just to maximize the reward. And if you think that won't be the case, just look at how people do STFs. Hell, they lowered the Dilithium reward for Elite STFs by 200 Dilithium and the playerbase exploded in anger (Even thiough they upped Dilithium rewards for other Fleet events).
My point in relating the above is this: The players using the 1-click missions did so primarily because they wanted to maximize their rewards VS time spent. This new Foundry system will not entice players to try more Foundry missions, as the majority that already do use the Foundry aren't doing it for the reward in the long run.
I really think though, what these changes do most is pretty much ensure that unless/until a mission is on the Spotlight list, it will see virtually no real play by others. Once the list is long enough, we may even see mission having problems getting out of review status; and even those who do enjoy Foundry stuff will go with the mission that in effect have been vetted - and the rewards will, seal the deal as - why risk wasting time on finding a 'diamond in the rough' as it were - when you have a list of vetted missions that also give a better return for time invested?
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..."
This 'dev approval' has already been done. I saw it on Tribble where it states whether it will or WILL NOT cound towards the daily. I am not at home, is that how it is currently in the Live game on Holodeck?
2-hours Foundry mission premier 5. Dec. Real movie feeling, and story.
ST XX PROVENANCE
Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIxl4KjQWRE&feature=plcp
It would be better if they did more than just spotlight them on the site.
Pick very good written player made episodes and create a season of its own, the Unoffical episodes or whatever.. give rewards to the episode that is on spotlight.. just like you do for the "official" episodes. That way.. the players would actually feel like they get a new episode per week.. just as if it was series on the TV. Then when you have your own episode on display .. take a break from the foundry.
It must be broken because I pulled up the Foundry and nothing came up. So yes, S7 killed the Foundry. Both literally and figuratively.
"There is no problem in the universe that can't be solved with a bribe, a paid assassin, or an overpowered fighter." - Chubain from Jumpgate Evolution
It's disabled right now while all the missions are being republished
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
Thanks for the clarification, but with the amount of characters that I manage due to the dearth of dilithium and amount of grinding that must be done to enjoy the game, I will be avoiding hour long tales into fantasy now. Sorry.
This guy speaks the truth. I did that multiple times today with the Btran cluster dual-mission just before the server close with 4 minutes to spare before disconnect. So glad I was able to find those scan the anomoly and find the artifact missions in time.
My character Tsin'xing
What story? I mean the foundry in general. I have played it once in a while. I have failed to find anything worthwhile.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
I don't know. I'm hopeful. The general philosophy of dstahl's approach to dilithium was about making sure that things are balanced. He told us:
That's not really possible if a player chose to focus on the wrapper as a primary source of dilithium. It would take me around 3 hours to play three popular missions, given the time of sector space travel to various doors. Sure, if I really tried I might be able to do three in an hour and a half. But then it would be a mad, mad dash to make up the difference with other tasks. Sure it's possible. I could spend 3 hours doing the wrapper, turn in some contraband, grind some elite stfs, etc. I'd be handicapped by the wrapper's time requirement.
As it stands, official Cryptic content is far, far more efficient in granting dilithium with time invested than is the foundry wrapper. Even if you can somehow do 3 real missions in one hour... compare that to any other combination of things that you could do in an hour to get more than 1440 dilithium.
The wrapper's low reward violates Dstahl's over-arching philosophy here.
So, I'm hopeful that he see that. Maybe they're just waiting to see if the anti-exploit tech works. They certainly can't believe that 1440 dilithium should = over an hour of play time.
And it's got to be an easy fix to change either the reward amount or the number of missions to be played to earn the reward.