"15 minute rule" is killing new Foundry missions

mmotnahp

Ever since the implementation of the "15 minute rule" new Foundry missions simply aren't being reviewed...because you get no reward for it.

A large part of STO being successful is user-created content.

What can be done to fix this?

sollvax

Ask your friends/fleetmates

or hey if desperate (and the mission does not include the borg ) message me at @sollvax and ill run through it when I get a chance (fair warning I am quite busy) but I will give you a fair review.

if its got borg in it I will quit the mission as soon as I see them because Borg annoy me

zorbane

What sollvax says is true, get friends to play. You should get them to in any case because they can help you test it. Also post your mission to the mission database forum

john98837

I have to agree this new qualification system for the officer reports mission is absurd and doing more harm than good. A friend of mine has put tons of work into a 5 map foundry mission, both ground and space, has about half a dozen reviews, even more play throughs, and it takes about 30 minutes to go through it, yet this does not qualify. On the other hand simple space missions that i can blow through in 10 minutes easy does qualify.

I get it they didn't like the clickies, fine, but surely there as to be a more straight forward and open way to make people play real missions and not just 1 clickers inorder to get the reward. This change has only made foundry authors spend there time trying to figure out how to qualify rather than improving there missions or designing new ones. It's long past time for cryptic to seriously rethink how this qualification mechanic works.

zorbane

john98837 wrote: »

I have to agree this new qualification system for the officer reports mission is absurd and doing more harm than good. A friend of mine has put tons of work into a 5 map foundry mission, both ground and space, has about half a dozen reviews, even more play throughs, and it takes about 30 minutes to go through it, yet this does not qualify. On the other hand simple space missions that i can blow through in 10 minutes easy does qualify.

I get it they didn't like the clickies, fine, but surely there as to be a more straight forward and open way to make people play real missions and not just 1 clickers inorder to get the reward. This change has only made foundry authors spend there time trying to figure out how to qualify rather than improving there missions or designing new ones. It's long past time for cryptic to seriously rethink how this qualification mechanic works.

I think it's just a problem with how it's calculating the average time. Once that gets figured out it will be fine.

My theory is that it is including author play time in the equation. So whenever the author tests it (by running through extremely quickly) they are actually sabotaging their own average time. This is even worse if for example they do a very early publish to test just the first map. If that takes 3 minutes only, then they're REALLY hurting themselves.

My solution would be to remove the author play time from the equation. If I get riled up enough I might have to start a thread or write a blog post about it on StarbaseUGC :mad:

drudgy

zorbane wrote: »

I think it's just a problem with how it's calculating the average time. Once that gets figured out it will be fine.

My theory is that it is including author play time in the equation. So whenever the author tests it (by running through extremely quickly) they are actually sabotaging their own average time. This is even worse if for example they do a very early publish to test just the first map. If that takes 3 minutes only, then they're REALLY hurting themselves.

My solution would be to remove the author play time from the equation. If I get riled up enough I might have to start a thread or write a blog post about it on StarbaseUGC :mad:

I couldn't agree more here. I was one of the victims of this as well. There's really nothing about my latest foundry mission that would define it as a simple clicky mission. Hell the script I wrote for it is 15+ pages long and it's 5 maps with multiple objectives. I think where I got shot in the foot is like what zorbane said. I published it a few times to play it and get the paths and wander effects sorted out, which could have screwed me if it counted on the average play time.

Honestly it wouldn't be so bad if the Foundry captains would either be max level with some decent gear, or would scale based on the mission. I personally find it very hard to judge exactly how long the mission is going to play using the Foundry characters I have alone. I often will publish the mission, run though it a few times on a Tac, Eng, and Sci then go back to the drawing board to adjust it for difficulty or whatever. It would be nice if they had some way to exclude our tests much like we can't review our own missions etc.

lordmalak1

The constant bickering about "why aren't people playing my epic mission, instead they're playing quick space shooters instead, boo-hoo" killed my interest in the foundry. I even quit polishing my own, because I don't want to be the next target of rage from the 'epic' mission creators.

...Just sayin'

markhawkman

Rage? what rage?

jnohd

Most of those quick space shooters are being disqualified... several that take less than 10 min are getting red text within days of being "discovered."

hanover

jnohd wrote: »

Most of those quick space shooters are being disqualified... several that take less than 10 min are getting red text within days of being "discovered."

They are urinating into the wind trying to combat free will with this bs about "qualified" missions.

zorbane

hanover2 wrote: »

They are urinating into the wind trying to combat free will with this bs about "qualified" missions.

If they gave complete free will to the players they'd be picking up free boxes of dilithium, oh wait that's what happened!

drudgy

Don't get me wrong, I hated the one click missions as much as the next dedicated Foundry author, but man, this is a little over the top if you ask me. I think it just needs some further adjustments so us authors aren't constantly trying to figure out what the deal is.

atomictiki

drudgy wrote: »

Don't get me wrong, I hated the one click missions as much as the next dedicated Foundry author, but man, this is a little over the top if you ask me. I think it just needs some further adjustments so us authors aren't constantly trying to figure out what the deal is.

It's a perfect case of "Be careful what you wish for."

stardestroyer001

Perhaps what the IOR assignment needs is a two-tiered qualification system. Quick missions are repeatable, but only offer 480 dilithium every two hours or so. Full storyline missions are repeatable every four hours and offer the full 1440 dil like the old system.

twg042370

stardestroyer001 wrote: »

Perhaps what the IOR assignment needs is a two-tiered qualification system. Quick missions are repeatable, but only offer 480 dilithium every two hours or so. Full storyline missions are repeatable every four hours and offer the full 1440 dil like the old system.

Switch the cooldowns around and you might have something to this idea.

I mean, I liked the Nagus Dailies, but as soon as word of the ESD console clicky got around after that podcast about farming dil the space outside of Wolf 359 emptied. Allowing the exploits but limiting their access wouldn't be a bad idea.

twg042370

twg042370 wrote: »

Allowing the exploits but limiting their access wouldn't be a bad idea.

...However!

The current system is wonderful and shouldn't be touched.

nagorak

I'm not sure that the 15 minute rule is why missions aren't being reviewed. I think that has always been a problem. For the past year+ I remember reading posts in the Foundry forums asking people to help get their missions out of review.

markhawkman

IMO, the issue is with players not bothering to look for missions beyond the top page or two. The highest number of reviews on any of my missions is 33.... but the top rated missions might have as many as 33,000 reviews. I suspect that only a small percentage of people who actually play missions actually bother with things that are farther down the list. I used to go and actually look for missions with 1 to 2 digit numbers of reviews just because I wanted to help the poor unfortunates whose missions weren't gettign played.

nagorak

markhawkman wrote: »

IMO, the issue is with players not bothering to look for missions beyond the top page or two. The highest number of reviews on any of my missions is 33.... but the top rated missions might have as many as 33,000 reviews. I suspect that only a small percentage of people who actually play missions actually bother with things that are farther down the list. I used to go and actually look for missions with 1 to 2 digit numbers of reviews just because I wanted to help the poor unfortunates whose missions weren't gettign played.

This is why during the Foundry conference call I advocated for several random missions being selected at a given time that give greater rewards. It would give people reasons to play missions outside of the top rated ones, or those that are spotlights.

Not every mission is going to be the best mission ever made, yet their authors still deserve exposure. In addition, it makes sense to encourage people to make missions, because while their first few attempts may not be that great, perhaps their future attempts would be spotlight worthy.

What I would do is have 5 missions selected randomly at any given time which would be up for say a day each, and provide increased rewards for being played. Or maybe instead of randomly the Foundry could just cycle through the missions in order of when they were published.

zahinder

It'd be nice if there was, perhaps, a better system of entering keywords or tags.

Like, for instance, I was curious if there were any 'fantasy holonovel' type missions in the system. I don't THINK there are... but it's hard to be sure.

(I'm working on a fantasy-like holoadventure series, think 'John Carter' but not exactly the same)

markhawkman

nagorak wrote: »

This is why during the Foundry conference call I advocated for several random missions being selected at a given time that give greater rewards. It would give people reasons to play missions outside of the top rated ones, or those that are spotlights.

Not every mission is going to be the best mission ever made, yet their authors still deserve exposure. In addition, it makes sense to encourage people to make missions, because while their first few attempts may not be that great, perhaps their future attempts would be spotlight worthy.

What I would do is have 5 missions selected randomly at any given time which would be up for say a day each, and provide increased rewards for being played. Or maybe instead of randomly the Foundry could just cycle through the missions in order of when they were published.

I have to say that that idea sounds quite appealing.

zorbane

I've suggested this before but a bonus for playing a mission that the player hasn't played before would be nice

ajstoner

I think the negitive unintended consequences of this would outweigh any benefit. It would just be seen (and rightly so in this case) as another attempt to make you play the game in a certain way. It's backhanded gated content.

What missions will and won't end up eligible for inclusion; absolutely anything? No, there is way too much garbage out there. It would just turn people off. I am as big a supporter of the Foundry as they come and I would never use this feature.

Some missions might be 15 minutes and some 3 hours with no way of knowing let along controlling that when you start? Suppose you like diplomatic and dialogue heavy missions? There are very few out there, you would never get one. When most people DID get such a mission they would just 1 bomb it into oblivion because they want to blow stuff up.

Set rewards based on average time played without the intrusion of any wrapper mission. That's the way to go.

zorbane

ajstoner wrote: »

...
Set rewards based on average time played without the intrusion of any wrapper mission. That's the way to go.

I think this is the best too.

There are some issues with the average time calculation right now though with some missions not counting for the repeatable. I would also not be surprised other missions are given too much time as well, because I have a short mission which takes me 30 minutes but is listed under the 2hr + category

thedukeofrock

zorbane wrote: »

I think this is the best too.

There are some issues with the average time calculation right now though with some missions not counting for the repeatable. I would also not be surprised other missions are given too much time as well, because I have a short mission which takes me 30 minutes but is listed under the 2hr + category

There are definitely some issues with the search tool as far as mission times are concerned. My Spawn of Medusa series average a little over an hour each, but they too are in the 2+ hour range in the search box. It needs refinement for sure. As far as establishing the mission time average, I have no clue how it is getting determined. It seems any new mission is shown as disqualified at the moment. Do they rank it's qualifications based on 5 reviews, like the review/general release system, or is it more.
Does anyone actually know the answer?

zahinder

I really wish there was more reward for people testing ineligible missions. I realize that sounds like a contradiction, but... heck, maybe an accolade, I dunno.

But it's a little hard to expect a lot of people to test my mission for... nothing but a warm handshake.

markhawkman

Well, I know that SOME of the current challenge missions qualify.... SOME....

thedukeofrock

markhawkman wrote: »

Well, I know that SOME of the current challenge missions qualify.... SOME....

And I think the reason some don't is the way the missions are rated as far as the time to complete. I think every mission shows as ineligible until it gets a certain amount of plays. Again, I have no idea how they determine it, but I would sure like to know.

nenfis

Good.

This is a very used for some time, but I think the first thing to be removed are the stars, only two options, I like or do not like.
Then remove the need of 5 puntaciones for the mission to be valid does that it used for. Do I have to force people to my clan play nice at all?. Mission play, mission you have to give rewards.
On the issue of the missions reward five minutes and is solved by preventing a mission that you have played the play again until several days.

This way you force people to play around a number of missions and not just cast the list above.

This tells you a creator of missions in a language that is not English, what a nightmare continues.

A greeting.

markhawkman

The problem there is that the list is long enough that they could simply cycle through the stuff on the first page and never play anything else..

ajstoner

One thing that I think will end up helping is the fact that the spotlighted missions always top the list, even in the open search. This is good because once a certain number of them accumulate EVERYTHING will be buried and people will be forced to search around a bit and not just 5 star quickies to put them up top.