Currently, I play STO for the roleplaying aspect. I play and write foundry missions for the story content. However, I also play the foundry grinds to earn credits, which I use to help support my fleet, which is not large. All this new change will do is force foundry grinds to find another way around the system.
That said, what is a grind? Just play the STFs over, over, over, and over again to earn credits. I see. Other choice, play the exact same end game content over, over, over, and over again to earn credits. So, yes, the grind in STO is quite horrible. My point, if you want to complain about foundry grinds, if you want to fix foundry grinds, then please, somebody, fix the end game content and daily STF grinds that are designed into the game. STO is a grind, not matter what you choose to do.
If I didn't belong to an RP fleet and have a strong desire to TRY and get it to Tier 3, I'd likely go back to SWTOR full time and say goodbye to STO's grind, be it end game, STF, foundry, and otherwise. Attacking just the foundry treats a symptom, not the actual problem.
Please either revert this change, or lower the fleet mark cost of fleet projects. The dil cost and time limits are horrid enough, but now I just can't justify maintaining my small fleet. Rotating 4 characters was the only feasible way to earn Fleet marks. I could care less about the loot. In all honesty, I hated it when my loot timer reset because then I had to spend extra time recycling everything.
Please either revert this change, or lower the fleet mark cost of fleet projects. The dil cost and time limits are horrid enough, but now I just can't justify maintaining my small fleet. Rotating 4 characters was the only feasible way to earn Fleet marks. I could care less about the loot. In all honesty, I hated it when my loot timer reset because then I had to spend extra time recycling everything.
How did this change affect you farming marks and dilithium? This change only makes it harder to farm energy credits. And by harder I mean you actually have to fight the ships you're looting.
I hate the fact that a few people can complain about the timid NPC in Foundry Grinding missions and get it change if they don't like it then play a different Foundry mission. should be no way that a small few who B*tch about it should change how i play the game i have paid enough money for this game Change the Timid NPC back to how they were. I know that you won't get 100 appoval from all the players but you need to think about how many do the grinds vs how many complain about it before changes are made.
If you only played the foundry to exploit it for drops, no one is going to miss you. As far as this change, the ability to gun down a group of innocent civilians in a KDF mission is now gone. Also, my mission for the Tholian Foundry Challenge was going to involve shooting ships docked in a shipyard. I guess now they'll shoot back, ruining what I had planned.
I think it's a shame that we lost the functionality entirely. I hope that there will be some thought put into how the feature could be put back in.
As far as your problem, you could try using a reskinned targ or mugato ensigns group as your "civilians" and set them to timid. They'll try to fight back when you attack them, but it will be pretty ineffective and they'll go down fast.
Again, have any of you stopped to consider the in game economy and risk vs reward? I will bet you the systems people did, looked at the numbers and went 'yup, this needs to change' Meanwhile I have now lost my best hope at being able to make destructible objects in game...again...
For the record: I don't play foundry missions very often. I did use the EC-grind missions when I could be bothered, but frankly I didn't really care all that much about 500k EC per day. I played Battleship Royal Rumble mostly because it was actually fun, "klingon nebula" and "weapons free" weren't, they were just pure EC exploits.
I'm not quite sure why all these people are complaining and moaning and whining about this very obvious exploit being fixed. Did you really expect anything different? As soon as these started appearing I said to my fleet "Enjoy it while it lasts" because it was plainly obvious that this was an unintended result and very much not what the devs had in mind when it came to the foundry.
It doesn't make sense that you can hit the spacebar once, destroy 24 capital ships, and get loot from them all - with no risk and no fuss. Both from a canon point of view, and a game developer point of view, it was ALWAYS going to get fixed.
Boycotting? Purleeeeeeeese, nobody cares. The devs won't backtrack because all of a sudden 5k people stopped playing foundry exploit missions.
I hope you enjoyed the tens of millions of EC you made before this was fixed, deep down I'm sure you really aren't surprised that it was...
Well only a handful of foundry files are good for storyline play. Most of them are 45+ minutes of steaming TRIBBLE.
The rest were for farming. Now that the limp wristed noodle yankers have cried rivers and are getting them nerfed, the foundry will slow to a crawl. These are the same clowns that keep the chinese gold farmers in business.
i am kind of glad they did something about the farming issue. so now i can't farm for ec toi save up to pay 88millon for a ship box now. isn't that price farming in it's own right, with out farming how would u get that much money, o yah multiple characters well thats farming 2 so nerf that MAKE IT SO U CAN"T TRANSFER MONEY< ITEMS<AND DILITHUM , then maybe i wouldn't have to spend 88 mill for something on the exchange, and u should nerf the exchange 2 if something is worth 20000 in the decription then the most u should be able to sell it for is 30000 50% more then it's worth, and the big thing ships bind them to charcater
Actually, Cryptic hasn't really done much to make its "unpaid content editors" happy.
The fact is, people who just want to farm resources as fast as possible shouldn't be being channeled into the Foundry at all. The only reason you're playing the grind missions is because you get fleet marks and other rewards faster than doing other content. It's not because you think the grind missions are so amazing, or you'd have been playing them before when there were few if any rewards. If tomorrow the rewards for running something in Tau Dewa were better than the Foundry, the interest in these missions would dry up overnight.
The actual truth is that the Foundry isn't for what you're using it for. It's actually nothing but a failure of the incentive structure of the Foundry that has resulted in it being flooded by people who want to do nothing but grind.
You guys may be right that only a small portion of the STO player base is actually interested in stories, but they are the ones who should be coming to the Foundry. Right now, those who want stories have trouble even finding them because people have discovered that the Foundry is an efficient tool for grinding marks.
If the Foundry is supposed to be about making stories, and that is what Cryptic claimed, then it needs to cater to authors who do that, and players who want to play stories. If it's just going to be about being exploited or used in a way to gather resources faster than other game methods, then they might as well just pull the plug on the whole thing.
Either way, this is going to have to be sorted out in STO soon, or it's going to end up being the case in NW as well. Somehow I don't imagine the Foundry was envisioned in NW as being a way for people to slaughter 25 goblin groups as fast as possible. They're putting a lot of effort into the features for it to only be used for such limited purposes.
And on the topic of the grind based game play, I think it's terrible. I'm not sure why anyone even bothers with it. So, you definitely have my sympathies, but turning the Foundry into a non-stop grind session is not going to fix that aspect of the game.
I think it's a shame that we lost the functionality entirely. I hope that there will be some thought put into how the feature could be put back in.
As far as your problem, you could try using a reskinned targ or mugato ensigns group as your "civilians" and set them to timid. They'll try to fight back when you attack them, but it will be pretty ineffective and they'll go down fast.
Doesn't fix my problem of not being able to shoot a bunch of unmanned ships in drydock, however. Guess I'll make the ships a really weak mob and hope to hell the player kills it quick. I'll put a small interference effect on the ship so that it won't have shields.
"Stoopid cops keep arresting me when I drive drunk cuz of whiners!"
Yeah I'm not sure how these people can't see that they're complaining because they can't easily exploit the foundry again. "I'm going to boycott the foundry because I can't easily exploit it"....and?
Anyway, hopefully this is just a temporary fix to the exploit until a better one can be devised.
Meh. To hell with em. Foundry is useless now. Just convert dilith into zen, buy keys, sell em on the exchange. Or if you got real $$ to toss, there are dozens of websites around that you can buy EC per dollar a bit cheaper than Zen > Keys per dollar.
We'll be watching for feedback about this change. In the end, players shouldn't expect to get "epic loots" from enemies that are not a challenge -- that just doesn't fit in with the spirit of the game.
However! One of the Foundry authors who follows me on Twitter sparked an interesting conversation about how this change will allow players to create a Borg mission where the Borg don't attack you until they feel they are threatened. I can think of a couple missions I've played where this could fit in quite nicely. :cool:
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
This change has just killed the STF Simulator/Test mission project I've been working on since Season 7 launched.
In the mission, I've had to use the 'timid creature' behaviour on enemy NPC groups to simulate generators/transformers/gates, because in an actual STF these items do not fight back and need destroying using the players weapons (in an ideal situation I'd have used destructible objects, but they're not in the foundry?).
There are many other mission/story scenarios I can imagine where we need NPCs that can be destroyed using player weapons that don't fight back. Should killing those pacifist NPCs drop loot? No, but the option needs to be there.
To be honest we need a range of behaviours that cover aggressive, neutral and pacifist that can be applied to NPC contacts and groups.
We also, desperately need destructible objects! In space and on ground, with a range of healths, or an author definable one.
Lastly, invisible targetable objects wouldn't go amiss. One scenario where these would come in handy is for firing warning shots, or shot where the player is meant to miss.
I want to be a foundry user, both as a player and author. I have so many ideas for missions I want to make, but when I go into the editor, 99% of the time I leave frustrated, because the assets/resources/tools I need to bring my missions to life are not there.
The few missions I was making progress on all involved the timid creature behaviour in some way, and now I'm back at square one :mad:
Reading this thread I just quickly logged back in and gave Battleship Royale Rumble a go. Absolutely nothing has changed in this mission, and for 16 minutes of enjoyable blow stuff up (that fights back) action I received:
960 Dilithium
60 Fleet Marks (includes Fleet Mark Bonus Pool)
3600 Expertise
350,000 EC worth of dropped loot.
So... why all the complaining? Even sorting the loot out before selling it I still had 10 minutes to burn before the cooldown was done. So I should be easily able to run three toons through this an hour for
2880dil / 180 FM / 10800 EXP / 1,050,000 EC
Is this not enough?
How much is enough to stop this incessant whining?
At this rate there is going to be a severe cheese shortage.
A lot of this would end if they had someone on staff looking at these things and a TOS that said, "No space pinata missions."
lol.... Space pinata's I like it. Should make that a mission, except when you destroy the pinata it spawns dozens of fighters....turns out that was a well decorated bee hive.
As a time traveller, Am I supposed to pack underwear or underwhen?
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
We've already established using the foundry as provided by Cryptic is not an exploit. Foundry missions, their creation, and replay have no relation with any design flaw of duty officers and that interaction with ship components and bridge officer skills. No amount of opposite spin you place on this will make the spin true. Cryptic made a development decision to fundamentally change a mechanic of their own design to avoid a walkout by their unpaid content editors. Plain and simple.
You've argued that, but it has not been established. The argument that "the system allows for this behavior so therefore it must be all right" is a non-argument.
Players find ways to exploit loopholes all the time; devs have to play catch-up to close said loopholes. Using a flaw in the system to gain rewards 'way above and beyond normal gameplay is called an exploit by just about every MMO developer out there. That's not spin, it's a fact.
What Cryptic did with the timid ships is fix a bug, nothing more.
Reading this thread I just quickly logged back in and gave Battleship Royale Rumble a go. Absolutely nothing has changed in this mission, and for 16 minutes of enjoyable blow stuff up (that fights back) action I received:
960 Dilithium
60 Fleet Marks (includes Fleet Mark Bonus Pool)
3600 Expertise
350,000 EC worth of dropped loot.
So... why all the complaining? Even sorting th loot out before selling it I still had 10 minutes to burn before the cooldown was done. So I should be easily able to run three toons through this an hour for
2880dil / 180 FM / 10800 EXP / 1,050,000 EC
Is this not enough?
How much is enough to stop this incessent whinning?
At this rate there is going to be a severe cheese shortage.
They don't like the prey fighting back to get that easy money.
...by the way, can I appropriate those last two lines for my sig?
It's funny. I have played Foundry stories whenever I'd have time, also as a main source of dill, usually would mix with the few dill missions here-and-there but don't usually have the time for 9 stories each day (I don't really play more then hour, maybe two) usually more then an hour... so I used one of the quick farming missions. I didn't use it for EC (although you do get it as a by product, I wouldn't personally mind if it to be removed), have tons of these and there's much easier ways of amassing it anyway, although I now have no relatively fast way of getting the dill. The way I see it this is to force us into buying zen and turning to dill for us casual players that can't grind the 8k daily cap. Well, I gladly pay for zen for ships, but I'll never buy dilly. I was putting the boring PvP farming aside for so long, but no alternatives.
So, a fleet had a discussion and clearly, we are all boycotting the Foundry from now on. About a hundred less players will be playing Foundry missions.
Appereantly, we are forced into PvP farming. Boring, but at least much faster then 2 hour missions for us that actually have to take care of our families and can't play more then an hour, or two on a lucky day. Still works, just the foundry suffers. I'm sorry but no time for everything.
While I'm not totally against this change, it does limit some things that authors could do with the Foundry. I think that Cryptic should do all they can to make sure that any changes like this don't take away options from authors.
For example, I've found that 'timid creature' starships don't move unless you get extremely close to them. I'm using this to make some targetable space station hardpoints in an upcoming mission. While them shooting back isn't that hard to fit into the mission, I'd be extremely disappointed if they lost their default 'immobile'-ness.
So, while we very much need an 'immobile' NPC group behavior in case the timid behavior ever changes to let ships move more, we could also use a 'destructable object' in the Foundry. If this object could be skinned as a ship, it could fill in the 'non-combat target' fine, but wouldn't provide loot. We have single-unit 'groups' on the ground (neutral targ), so why not invent a group in space that doesn't shoot back but doesn't give loot?
So Cryptic, please make sure you don't throw any babies out with the bathwater, and make sure there are behaviors for all of these foundry uses
Take a look at my Foundry missions! Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
Meh. To hell with em. Foundry is useless now. Just convert dilith into zen, buy keys, sell em on the exchange. Or if you got real $$ to toss, there are dozens of websites around that you can buy EC per dollar a bit cheaper than Zen > Keys per dollar.
The foundry isn't worthless now, it wasn't created to be farmed. It was created to tell stories.
It's funny. I have played Foundry stories whenever I'd have time, also as a main source of dill, usually would mix with the few dill missions here-and-there but don't usually have the time for 9 stories each day (I don't really play more then hour, maybe two) usually more then an hour... so I used one of the quick farming missions. I didn't use it for EC (although you do get it as a by product, I wouldn't personally mind if it to be removed), have tons of these and there's much easier ways of amassing it anyway, although I now have no relatively fast way of getting the dill. The way I see it this is to force us into buying zen and turning to dill for us casual players that can't grind the 8k daily cap. Well, I gladly pay for zen for ships, but I'll never buy dilly. I was putting the boring PvP farming aside for so long, but no alternatives.
So, a fleet had a discussion and clearly, we are all boycotting the Foundry from now on. About a hundred less players will be playing Foundry missions.
Appereantly, we are forced into PvP farming. Boring, but at least much faster then 2 hour missions for us that actually have to take care of our families and can't play more then an hour, or two on a lucky day. Still works, just the foundry suffers. I'm sorry but no time for everything.
You're boycotting the foundry because they made the enemies shoot back? You can still farm it for EC, this change hasn't even affected the ability to farm marks/dilithium. Nothing has changed to how the foundry is supposed to be used. So keep telling us how you like the story missions but you're boycotting it over a minor inconvenience in using it against how it was intended. Take your hundred players, we don't want players who would boycott it over an exploit.
...I take what I said at the beginning back about how only the pro-grinders would start baring fangs. Looks like we're back to Square One with the debate portion of this issue. :rolleyes:
Comments
That said, what is a grind? Just play the STFs over, over, over, and over again to earn credits. I see. Other choice, play the exact same end game content over, over, over, and over again to earn credits. So, yes, the grind in STO is quite horrible. My point, if you want to complain about foundry grinds, if you want to fix foundry grinds, then please, somebody, fix the end game content and daily STF grinds that are designed into the game. STO is a grind, not matter what you choose to do.
If I didn't belong to an RP fleet and have a strong desire to TRY and get it to Tier 3, I'd likely go back to SWTOR full time and say goodbye to STO's grind, be it end game, STF, foundry, and otherwise. Attacking just the foundry treats a symptom, not the actual problem.
How did this change affect you farming marks and dilithium? This change only makes it harder to farm energy credits. And by harder I mean you actually have to fight the ships you're looting.
I think it's a shame that we lost the functionality entirely. I hope that there will be some thought put into how the feature could be put back in.
As far as your problem, you could try using a reskinned targ or mugato ensigns group as your "civilians" and set them to timid. They'll try to fight back when you attack them, but it will be pretty ineffective and they'll go down fast.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
I'm not quite sure why all these people are complaining and moaning and whining about this very obvious exploit being fixed. Did you really expect anything different? As soon as these started appearing I said to my fleet "Enjoy it while it lasts" because it was plainly obvious that this was an unintended result and very much not what the devs had in mind when it came to the foundry.
It doesn't make sense that you can hit the spacebar once, destroy 24 capital ships, and get loot from them all - with no risk and no fuss. Both from a canon point of view, and a game developer point of view, it was ALWAYS going to get fixed.
Boycotting? Purleeeeeeeese, nobody cares. The devs won't backtrack because all of a sudden 5k people stopped playing foundry exploit missions.
I hope you enjoyed the tens of millions of EC you made before this was fixed, deep down I'm sure you really aren't surprised that it was...
Kirk's Protege.
The rest were for farming. Now that the limp wristed noodle yankers have cried rivers and are getting them nerfed, the foundry will slow to a crawl. These are the same clowns that keep the chinese gold farmers in business.
The fact is, people who just want to farm resources as fast as possible shouldn't be being channeled into the Foundry at all. The only reason you're playing the grind missions is because you get fleet marks and other rewards faster than doing other content. It's not because you think the grind missions are so amazing, or you'd have been playing them before when there were few if any rewards. If tomorrow the rewards for running something in Tau Dewa were better than the Foundry, the interest in these missions would dry up overnight.
The actual truth is that the Foundry isn't for what you're using it for. It's actually nothing but a failure of the incentive structure of the Foundry that has resulted in it being flooded by people who want to do nothing but grind.
You guys may be right that only a small portion of the STO player base is actually interested in stories, but they are the ones who should be coming to the Foundry. Right now, those who want stories have trouble even finding them because people have discovered that the Foundry is an efficient tool for grinding marks.
If the Foundry is supposed to be about making stories, and that is what Cryptic claimed, then it needs to cater to authors who do that, and players who want to play stories. If it's just going to be about being exploited or used in a way to gather resources faster than other game methods, then they might as well just pull the plug on the whole thing.
Either way, this is going to have to be sorted out in STO soon, or it's going to end up being the case in NW as well. Somehow I don't imagine the Foundry was envisioned in NW as being a way for people to slaughter 25 goblin groups as fast as possible. They're putting a lot of effort into the features for it to only be used for such limited purposes.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Bah! Thinking is hard! I wish I had a convenient console on a wall somewhere that I could click on to do all of the work for me.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Doesn't fix my problem of not being able to shoot a bunch of unmanned ships in drydock, however. Guess I'll make the ships a really weak mob and hope to hell the player kills it quick. I'll put a small interference effect on the ship so that it won't have shields.
Yeah I'm not sure how these people can't see that they're complaining because they can't easily exploit the foundry again. "I'm going to boycott the foundry because I can't easily exploit it"....and?
Anyway, hopefully this is just a temporary fix to the exploit until a better one can be devised.
Translation: "You nerfed Foundry missions! Set price limits on the Exchange to a couple thousand K to make up for it!"
...really? :l
This change has just killed the STF Simulator/Test mission project I've been working on since Season 7 launched.
In the mission, I've had to use the 'timid creature' behaviour on enemy NPC groups to simulate generators/transformers/gates, because in an actual STF these items do not fight back and need destroying using the players weapons (in an ideal situation I'd have used destructible objects, but they're not in the foundry?).
There are many other mission/story scenarios I can imagine where we need NPCs that can be destroyed using player weapons that don't fight back. Should killing those pacifist NPCs drop loot? No, but the option needs to be there.
To be honest we need a range of behaviours that cover aggressive, neutral and pacifist that can be applied to NPC contacts and groups.
We also, desperately need destructible objects! In space and on ground, with a range of healths, or an author definable one.
Lastly, invisible targetable objects wouldn't go amiss. One scenario where these would come in handy is for firing warning shots, or shot where the player is meant to miss.
I want to be a foundry user, both as a player and author. I have so many ideas for missions I want to make, but when I go into the editor, 99% of the time I leave frustrated, because the assets/resources/tools I need to bring my missions to life are not there.
The few missions I was making progress on all involved the timid creature behaviour in some way, and now I'm back at square one :mad:
Commander, Starfleet Corps of Engineers • 7th Fleet
Commanding Officer, U.S.S. HEART OF OAK • NX-1759-B • Odyssey class Star Cruiser ( Lexington Tactical Configuration))
(Steam - feel free to follow/friend me : )
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=535051
960 Dilithium
60 Fleet Marks (includes Fleet Mark Bonus Pool)
3600 Expertise
350,000 EC worth of dropped loot.
So... why all the complaining? Even sorting the loot out before selling it I still had 10 minutes to burn before the cooldown was done. So I should be easily able to run three toons through this an hour for
2880dil / 180 FM / 10800 EXP / 1,050,000 EC
Is this not enough?
How much is enough to stop this incessant whining?
At this rate there is going to be a severe cheese shortage.
lol.... Space pinata's I like it. Should make that a mission, except when you destroy the pinata it spawns dozens of fighters....turns out that was a well decorated bee hive.
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
You've argued that, but it has not been established. The argument that "the system allows for this behavior so therefore it must be all right" is a non-argument.
Players find ways to exploit loopholes all the time; devs have to play catch-up to close said loopholes. Using a flaw in the system to gain rewards 'way above and beyond normal gameplay is called an exploit by just about every MMO developer out there. That's not spin, it's a fact.
What Cryptic did with the timid ships is fix a bug, nothing more.
They don't like the prey fighting back to get that easy money.
...by the way, can I appropriate those last two lines for my sig?
So, a fleet had a discussion and clearly, we are all boycotting the Foundry from now on. About a hundred less players will be playing Foundry missions.
Appereantly, we are forced into PvP farming. Boring, but at least much faster then 2 hour missions for us that actually have to take care of our families and can't play more then an hour, or two on a lucky day. Still works, just the foundry suffers. I'm sorry but no time for everything.
For example, I've found that 'timid creature' starships don't move unless you get extremely close to them. I'm using this to make some targetable space station hardpoints in an upcoming mission. While them shooting back isn't that hard to fit into the mission, I'd be extremely disappointed if they lost their default 'immobile'-ness.
So, while we very much need an 'immobile' NPC group behavior in case the timid behavior ever changes to let ships move more, we could also use a 'destructable object' in the Foundry. If this object could be skinned as a ship, it could fill in the 'non-combat target' fine, but wouldn't provide loot. We have single-unit 'groups' on the ground (neutral targ), so why not invent a group in space that doesn't shoot back but doesn't give loot?
So Cryptic, please make sure you don't throw any babies out with the bathwater, and make sure there are behaviors for all of these foundry uses
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
LOL. Sure, help yourself too them with my blessing....
The foundry isn't worthless now, it wasn't created to be farmed. It was created to tell stories.
You're boycotting the foundry because they made the enemies shoot back? You can still farm it for EC, this change hasn't even affected the ability to farm marks/dilithium. Nothing has changed to how the foundry is supposed to be used. So keep telling us how you like the story missions but you're boycotting it over a minor inconvenience in using it against how it was intended. Take your hundred players, we don't want players who would boycott it over an exploit.
"Incessant" and "whining" is misspelled in his post, you should correct that before appropriating it...but you didn't.