Thought I might find clues as to what Cryptic's goals are, keeping in mind the original post might as well have been eons ago.
I did find some interesting things Cryptic said they wanted to do...
The ability to flag missions as "favorites" so players can bookmark them for later play
Improved searching options to allow for more specific flags and filters
Setting prerequisite and follow-up missions that can be linked together into a story arc
Set the level, powers, and gear for test characters to improve testing
Improved ways for authors to collaborate on projects
And more.
There was one that was relevant to the discussion about rewards:
Give the player quest items used by the mission
If there was any feature that would be difficult to implement without opening up an exploit, that would be the one. And yet, it's on the original wish list.
I have to deduce from that Cryptic realizes that Foundry needs rewards and they need to be tied into the mission itself, not some wrapper. I'm guessing there's no chance of that happening until after Neverwinter launches and that the serious Foundry feature development is happening there.
I wish I could get a look at what they're planning to roll out in Neverwinter {sigh}.
I saw a video presentation that Cryptic gave about UCG once. I need to find that and watch it again.
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
Never post things based on a rumor. You need a legitimate comment from one of the STO team, or you have from a credible source to back up such a claim.
As far as I know, there is nothing even hinted at "restrictions" in the Foundry. Only thing that comes close is requests by the Foundry community asking for ways to curtail the current EC farming that's abusing the Foundry.
There's still a lot of jealous whining about any practical use people try to get out of the foundry. It remains to be seen if anything more comes out of it.
I personally no longer visit the Foundry after the latest "crisis". Just angries up my blood.
Maybe some day I will be able to stomach it again.
Heh, me too. I also don't PvP or STF anymore for similar reasons. If it wasn't for tweeking and learning the foundry tools for my own creations this game would quickly become too boring to continue playing.
That's just me. Leave the foundry the way it is.
Give the authors more tools to create greater stories in depth.
Establish rules for what an acceptable mission is and isn't, and then stick by them and stop changing them every patch.
I agree with most of what you're saying.
I've done some of the grinders, and to be honest I'm surprised they weren't dealt with faster. Getting 1440 Dil for clicking a single panel in ESD was clearly an exploit. Anyone who thought that such a thing was going to last was terminally naive. The easy EC missions were a bit better, but still I wasn't surprised when things were changed.
But there are grinder missions in the foundry that aren't IMO exploitative like those were, and are legitimate missions based on how the foundry should work.
Some of them are ground some are space, but in either case you have to actually do something, you can't simply idle your way though it. There's no reason why these types of missions shouldn't give a reward.
Perhaps not as much as a longer mission, but in some cases there's as much combat in one of these grinders as there is in a hour + long dialog heavy mission. Myself I don't think reading though dialog options is something that should have some sort of special reward.
The idea of returning to a daily, that's a horrible idea IMO. I like doing foundry missions, and mostly do the story based ones. But if the IOR mission is returned to a daily that means I have to back to doing fleet events to get the FM's and dil dalies to get the dil I'm now getting by doing something I enjoy a good bit more.
That said, the idea that they can come up with rules and stick with them is unrealistic. There is no way they can come up with a set of rules that covers everything and not address new ways people come up with to game the system.
I recently leveled a char from 30 to max by mostly foundry missions (missions, not grinders) and the occasional DOFF xp. Something I would never have considered under the old system. The rewards system as it is might maybe need a few minor tweaks here and there but it should not destroy the "working as intended" part (rewards for "real" foundry missions) by doing so.
I did previously also played foundry missions. But only once under a blue moon when the description really sounded interesting.
I am pleased that scaled rewards will soon be given for all Foundry missions that qualify.
I am less than pleased that they are eliminating fleet mark rewards for Foundry play altogether.
Couldn't team play in Foundry reward fleet marks, at the least?
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
No, theyrenot our friend. But you cantell who is theirfriend.
Althoughwhat I really want to say is unpublishable on this forum, sufficeto say that thisnerfs makes the game again unplayable for me. On the upside GW2 hasa bigpatch coming so i'l probably drop them some scratch for nothanding their game over to extremists.
I don't have any epic 2 hours missions, but I will be happy if folks can simply find my story missions amidst of sea of "Famrz Lootz 101."
I know I try and keep mine to the length of your average Star Trek episode (43 minutes, an hour with commercials). I don't like playing absurdly long missions, though I don't mind if they're broken into multiple parts, and I think a lot of authors also shoot for that one hour mark.
I know I try and keep mine to the length of your average Star Trek episode (43 minutes, an hour with commercials). I don't like playing absurdly long missions, though I don't mind if they're broken into multiple parts, and I think a lot of authors also shoot for that one hour mark.
Play time is the reason I split B'Vat's legacy into 2 parts. too bad I never finished part 2...
Treasure Hunt.... yeah.... not fast, even for ME and I've memorized the map so thoroughly I can run it in about half the time of most...
I like the OP's idea. Keep the fleet marks in IOR but make it a daily so you can only do it once a day.
Then have a separate reward that includes a level-appropriate item box for doing a spotlight mission.
I think this would make almost everyone happy. You won't be able to grind IOR anymore but you could get an easy 50 fleet marks and nice item by doing a couple foundry missions each day. I would be happy with that.
Remember this day. Remember all your wailing and gnashing of teeth when nobody plays your "epic" 2-hour missions or anything else.
What will you do then? Scream for a way to force people to play your missions?
Foundry Authors never moaned about the FM reward in the Foundry Daily, apart from to moan that it attracted more exploiters back before it was adjusted for Season 7 when clickie missions were rampant..
The group that moaned against the Foundry having an FM reward was the people who farmed Fleet Actions saying that they rarely popped as it was, and that if the Foundry got a better reward then they'd never pop at all.
If you're going to throw stones, at least throw them in the right direction
Foundry Authors never moaned about the FM reward in the Foundry Daily, apart from to moan that it attracted more exploiters back before it was adjusted for Season 7 when clickie missions were rampant..
Oh please. Thereare podcasts, forumposts you can read and see who are the people callingfornerfs were. Theywere and stillare veryvocal about it (andmany should have been warned/banned,yetcuriously not). Unless themods erase alltheir posts, there is a public record.
Oh please. Thereare podcasts, forumposts you can read and see who are the people callingfornerfs were. Theywere and stillare veryvocal about it (andmany should have been warned/banned,yetcuriously not). Unless themods erase alltheir posts, there is a public record.
At one point, I wanted a complete nerf of the foundry, because it had gotten so bad. Every other author told me I was crazy and that the solution was a timer based rewards system, combined with better UI. Barely anyone shared my views, except for a general consensus that something needed to be done. Lots of different ideas were thrown out there.
You can blame me if you want to blame somebody. Or, you can blame the folks that turned the foundry into festering swamp of crappy grind missions, forcing Cryptic to re-evaluate what it was doing with Foundry rewards. I'm not talking about the authors who made the missions.
For me, when I see the list of top-rated missions as almost entirely dominated by "Farm LOLZ!" and AFK grinders, and then I see Cryptic change something, I don't blame a small % of authors for complaining. I blame a larger amount of players for abusing the Foundry in a way that it was not intended to be abused.
For me, when I see the list of top-rated missions as almost entirely dominated by "Farm LOLZ!" and AFK grinders, and then I see Cryptic change something, I don't blame a small % of authors for complaining. I blame a larger amount of players for abusing the Foundry in a way that it was not intended to be abused.
I'm one of the foundry authors that finds myself at odds with Kirkfat's views on a lot of things, mainly because our passions for it run at different levels and intensities.
However, I do share this view with him. With the exception of one word, authors. We are all the same ugly players. Authors, Grinders, PvPers. There were only a small amount of players complaining for either side. But it was the shear amount of feet driving this issue and a look at the top rated missions and the plays for those missions proves that.
Every change to the foundry rewards has always instigated a backlash and the sudden posting of thousands who've decided to make their one forum post in this subsection. It's nothing new. People choosing to insult "authors" and blame them for this change aren't going to get much of a response. After all this time that section of players has grown some pretty thick skin.
No, theyrenot our friend. But you cantell who is theirfriend.
Althoughwhat I really want to say is unpublishable on this forum, sufficeto say that thisnerfs makes the game again unplayable for me. On the upside GW2 hasa bigpatch coming so i'l probably drop them some scratch for nothanding their game over to extremists.
Too bad, I'd gotten back into playing sto recently, but this nerf ...again... just makes the whole thing unenjoyable. Being forced into elite stfs just to contribute to fleet projects (in even a small way) is not cool. (and no I never did any of these clicky missions... didnt even know of their existence til after they got nerfed.) Oh well, i'll check back in a few months...
I don't have any epic 2 hours missions, but I will be happy if folks can simply find my story missions amidst of sea of "Famrz Lootz 101."
There's a lot of hyperbole being thrown around, but, just to set the record straight, the number of people who make two hour missions is pretty small. There's me, and like a handful of other people.
We're by far a very tiny minority, and also I don't think it's exactly like we set out with the belief that 2 hour missions were the way to go, it just sort of ended up happening due to each of our creative styles.
I'm not even sure it's a good thing, but it is what it is.
Honestly the removal of fm from the foundry doesn't bother me one bit. That's not why I enjoy(ed) the foundry. However, instead of removing it, why the heck couldn't they put it on the same timer as the dil refining and foundry drops? Have the IOR reset at 4pm pacific just like the refining. Seems to be an infinitely more intelligent approach.
Or, you can blame the folks that turned the foundry into festering swamp of crappy grind missions, forcing Cryptic to re-evaluate what it was doing with Foundry rewards.
How are those crappy grind missions any different from anything in the current PvE queue?
No honestly, tell me how. Or the breen dailies, rommie dailies, etc.
There are some people who want fast grind mission, and don't really care about the foundry by itself. And there is others who want to play foundry mission, but still be rewarded enough so it's not a penalty doing those missions.
In both case it's not a good idea to tell those people what to do, and how they should have fun.
I think there should be some daily mission like BRR or clickies, from cryptic, for those who want to grind. And then, reward the foundry mission accordingly to the time spent, IE you spend 2h doing a mission, you have a lot more than if you spent 15m. Basically, you earn the same amount of reward from either content, for the same amount of time spent. Add a daily lock, so you can either choose to do foundry content or grind missions, or a bit of everything, but never everything the same day.
Comments
(Capital idea, to whomever thought of it.)
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=192185
Thought I might find clues as to what Cryptic's goals are, keeping in mind the original post might as well have been eons ago.
I did find some interesting things Cryptic said they wanted to do...
And more.
There was one that was relevant to the discussion about rewards:
If there was any feature that would be difficult to implement without opening up an exploit, that would be the one. And yet, it's on the original wish list.
I have to deduce from that Cryptic realizes that Foundry needs rewards and they need to be tied into the mission itself, not some wrapper. I'm guessing there's no chance of that happening until after Neverwinter launches and that the serious Foundry feature development is happening there.
I wish I could get a look at what they're planning to roll out in Neverwinter {sigh}.
I saw a video presentation that Cryptic gave about UCG once. I need to find that and watch it again.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
As far as I know, there is nothing even hinted at "restrictions" in the Foundry. Only thing that comes close is requests by the Foundry community asking for ways to curtail the current EC farming that's abusing the Foundry.
Maybe some day I will be able to stomach it again.
Heh, me too. I also don't PvP or STF anymore for similar reasons. If it wasn't for tweeking and learning the foundry tools for my own creations this game would quickly become too boring to continue playing.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
I agree with most of what you're saying.
I've done some of the grinders, and to be honest I'm surprised they weren't dealt with faster. Getting 1440 Dil for clicking a single panel in ESD was clearly an exploit. Anyone who thought that such a thing was going to last was terminally naive. The easy EC missions were a bit better, but still I wasn't surprised when things were changed.
But there are grinder missions in the foundry that aren't IMO exploitative like those were, and are legitimate missions based on how the foundry should work.
Some of them are ground some are space, but in either case you have to actually do something, you can't simply idle your way though it. There's no reason why these types of missions shouldn't give a reward.
Perhaps not as much as a longer mission, but in some cases there's as much combat in one of these grinders as there is in a hour + long dialog heavy mission. Myself I don't think reading though dialog options is something that should have some sort of special reward.
The idea of returning to a daily, that's a horrible idea IMO. I like doing foundry missions, and mostly do the story based ones. But if the IOR mission is returned to a daily that means I have to back to doing fleet events to get the FM's and dil dalies to get the dil I'm now getting by doing something I enjoy a good bit more.
That said, the idea that they can come up with rules and stick with them is unrealistic. There is no way they can come up with a set of rules that covers everything and not address new ways people come up with to game the system.
My character Tsin'xing
I did previously also played foundry missions. But only once under a blue moon when the description really sounded interesting.
I am less than pleased that they are eliminating fleet mark rewards for Foundry play altogether.
Couldn't team play in Foundry reward fleet marks, at the least?
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
What will you do then? Scream for a way to force people to play your missions?
I thought Cryptic was our friend.
No, theyrenot our friend. But you cantell who is theirfriend.
Althoughwhat I really want to say is unpublishable on this forum, sufficeto say that thisnerfs makes the game again unplayable for me. On the upside GW2 hasa bigpatch coming so i'l probably drop them some scratch for nothanding their game over to extremists.
I don't have any epic 2 hours missions, but I will be happy if folks can simply find my story missions amidst of sea of "Famrz Lootz 101."
I know I try and keep mine to the length of your average Star Trek episode (43 minutes, an hour with commercials). I don't like playing absurdly long missions, though I don't mind if they're broken into multiple parts, and I think a lot of authors also shoot for that one hour mark.
Treasure Hunt.... yeah.... not fast, even for ME and I've memorized the map so thoroughly I can run it in about half the time of most...
Most of my missions aren't that long though.
My character Tsin'xing
Then have a separate reward that includes a level-appropriate item box for doing a spotlight mission.
I think this would make almost everyone happy. You won't be able to grind IOR anymore but you could get an easy 50 fleet marks and nice item by doing a couple foundry missions each day. I would be happy with that.
Foundry Authors never moaned about the FM reward in the Foundry Daily, apart from to moan that it attracted more exploiters back before it was adjusted for Season 7 when clickie missions were rampant..
The group that moaned against the Foundry having an FM reward was the people who farmed Fleet Actions saying that they rarely popped as it was, and that if the Foundry got a better reward then they'd never pop at all.
If you're going to throw stones, at least throw them in the right direction
Oh please. Thereare podcasts, forumposts you can read and see who are the people callingfornerfs were. Theywere and stillare veryvocal about it (andmany should have been warned/banned,yetcuriously not). Unless themods erase alltheir posts, there is a public record.
At one point, I wanted a complete nerf of the foundry, because it had gotten so bad. Every other author told me I was crazy and that the solution was a timer based rewards system, combined with better UI. Barely anyone shared my views, except for a general consensus that something needed to be done. Lots of different ideas were thrown out there.
You can blame me if you want to blame somebody. Or, you can blame the folks that turned the foundry into festering swamp of crappy grind missions, forcing Cryptic to re-evaluate what it was doing with Foundry rewards. I'm not talking about the authors who made the missions.
For me, when I see the list of top-rated missions as almost entirely dominated by "Farm LOLZ!" and AFK grinders, and then I see Cryptic change something, I don't blame a small % of authors for complaining. I blame a larger amount of players for abusing the Foundry in a way that it was not intended to be abused.
I'm one of the foundry authors that finds myself at odds with Kirkfat's views on a lot of things, mainly because our passions for it run at different levels and intensities.
However, I do share this view with him. With the exception of one word, authors. We are all the same ugly players. Authors, Grinders, PvPers. There were only a small amount of players complaining for either side. But it was the shear amount of feet driving this issue and a look at the top rated missions and the plays for those missions proves that.
Every change to the foundry rewards has always instigated a backlash and the sudden posting of thousands who've decided to make their one forum post in this subsection. It's nothing new. People choosing to insult "authors" and blame them for this change aren't going to get much of a response. After all this time that section of players has grown some pretty thick skin.
Too bad, I'd gotten back into playing sto recently, but this nerf ...again... just makes the whole thing unenjoyable. Being forced into elite stfs just to contribute to fleet projects (in even a small way) is not cool. (and no I never did any of these clicky missions... didnt even know of their existence til after they got nerfed.) Oh well, i'll check back in a few months...
The doors, Mister Scott!
There's a lot of hyperbole being thrown around, but, just to set the record straight, the number of people who make two hour missions is pretty small. There's me, and like a handful of other people.
We're by far a very tiny minority, and also I don't think it's exactly like we set out with the belief that 2 hour missions were the way to go, it just sort of ended up happening due to each of our creative styles.
I'm not even sure it's a good thing, but it is what it is.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
How are those crappy grind missions any different from anything in the current PvE queue?
No honestly, tell me how. Or the breen dailies, rommie dailies, etc.
They're not. They're just like the crappy Cryptic S6 stuff.
That's why some of us are upset.
In both case it's not a good idea to tell those people what to do, and how they should have fun.
I think there should be some daily mission like BRR or clickies, from cryptic, for those who want to grind. And then, reward the foundry mission accordingly to the time spent, IE you spend 2h doing a mission, you have a lot more than if you spent 15m. Basically, you earn the same amount of reward from either content, for the same amount of time spent. Add a daily lock, so you can either choose to do foundry content or grind missions, or a bit of everything, but never everything the same day.