Thats exactly what I was getting at, are you telling me that for those weeks, that was the only quality missions on the foundry... there was nothing else that could possibly come close? I simply do not believe that...
Perhaps during those weeks, those other quality missions weren't brought to Branflakes' attention. It sounds to me like you are expecting Branflakes to play through every possible Foundry mission over a week period to determine that absolute best mission. If a great quality mission isn't suggested to Branflakes or isn't getting any promotion / PR; then I doubt it will be even looked at.
Authors have to remember that they NEED to promote their missions, they NEED to get information about their missions into the public eye. Just as a movie needs to have teasers, trailers, posters, commercials, and all other kinds of marketing ploys; so do Foundry authors for their missions. Maybe not trailers (though they do help), but certainly creating a post in the Missions Database on these forums and possibly even a post on StarbaseUGC.
Considering one of the biggest sources of his 'pool' to pull from have been players that have played some of these missions, that bias is going to show a little because if one player has a good mission, its a inclination to play more of them. With that said, when I got my spotlight and brandon asked me for a klink suggestion, I went hunting, and thats how I discovered Dead Men Tell No Tales...and it was amazing. I had not played anything by that author before and I thought it deserved to get recognition, apparently I was not the only one and I hope that others enjoyed it as much as I did.
So really what should be asked is "how can we help Brandon find more of those 'OMG you have to play this' missions", and not have to make him hunt through page after page of suggestions.
The ones submitted to Cryptic do not breach EULA. The rest of for the benefit of other people who enjoy seeing Star Trek characters or a different timeline other then the one that Cryptic presents as fact.
Besides I'm not making profit from it or submitting them to review by Cryptic so why the hell should I care. CBS can go to..., Star Trek belonged to the fans long before it was on a piece of paper. I come from Second Life Star Trek roleplay, same principles.
As long as you don't make profit from it, its not in violation. There are so many fan organisations and sites out there that its impossible for CBS to try and shut down them all. You cannot own an ideal.
The ones submitted to Cryptic do not breach EULA. The rest of for the benefit of other people who enjoy seeing Star Trek characters or a different timeline other then the one that Cryptic presents as fact.
EULA applies to all missions, not just ones submitted for spotlight.
The ones submitted to Cryptic do not breach EULA. The rest of for the benefit of other people who enjoy seeing Star Trek characters or a different timeline other then the one that Cryptic presents as fact.
So you admit that the rest do.
As long as you don't make profit from it, its not in violation.
That is an incorrect statement.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
EULA applies to all missions, not just ones submitted for spotlight.
If CBS are really that petty about it, its a bit of a sad state of affairs. Besides, they can just easily be changed to non-direct parodies, so what does it matter? You must forgive me, for coming from a different medium where creativity is not impaired in that fashion.
Actually that might not be the way it works for STO, but that is how it works for every other Star Trek community.
Besides, they've been up there for quite some time and I was going to take a couple down to make some more anyway...
Cryptic, BTW, has been sued for something similar in the past, so they're especially vigilant in this regard.
Well that's Cryptic's problem, I'm not seeking profit so ultimately its Cryptic that are misbehaving for not being as "vigilant" as they should be. Because the players are incapable of making profit in this fashion. I fail to see why Foundry missions need to be regulated in this manner because they are "Non-Profit" user generated content?
If CBS are really that petty about it, its a bit of a sad state of affairs.
CBS might not be, the original actors however might, and Cryptic don't want to take the chance that CBS or the actors might start legal action against them.
Marvel attempted legal action against Cryptic in 2005 because the costume creator in CoX could create reasonable clones of their characters, this isn't an isolated case and the fact is that if Patrick Stewart decided that a Picard clone made in the Foundry badly represented him then he wouldn't bring his case against the author of said mission, but against Cryptic for allowing the clone in the first place.
Also Copyright and Trademark is all inclusive, it's just that most trademark/copyright owners don't bother chasing up non-profit uses of their trademarks/copyrights.
Well that's Cryptic's problem, I'm not seeking profit so ultimately its Cryptic that are misbehaving for not being as "vigilant" as they should be. Because the players are incapable of making profit in this fashion. I fail to see why Foundry missions need to be regulated in this manner because they are "Non-Profit" user generated content?
I get dilithium tips from my Foundry missions. I can then take that dilithium to the exchange for Zen. While I can't exchange my Zen for real currency, that Zen does act as a form of "real currency" in terms of purchasing items in-game. So when they added dilithium tips to Foundry missions, they inheritantly made them for-profit.
Well that's Cryptic's problem, I'm not seeking profit so ultimately its Cryptic that are misbehaving for not being as "vigilant" as they should be. Because the players are incapable of making profit in this fashion. I fail to see why Foundry missions need to be regulated in this manner because they are "Non-Profit" user generated content?
No, actually, it's your problem, which Cryptic will likely shortly be solving for you.
If you beat them to it, you might retain your Foundry access afterwards.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
CBS might not be, the original actors however might, and Cryptic don't want to take the chance that CBS or the actors might start legal action against them.
Marvel attempted legal action against Cryptic in 2005 because the costume creator in CoX could create reasonable clones of their characters, this isn't an isolated case and the fact is that if Patrick Stewart decided that a Picard clone made in the Foundry badly represented him then he wouldn't bring his case against the author of said mission, but against Cryptic for allowing the clone in the first place.
Also Copyright and Trademark is all inclusive, it's just that most trademark/copyright owners don't bother chasing up non-profit uses of their trademarks/copyrights.
I see you point, but again, that's still rather petty... what a sad world we live in eh. Besides, I was unaware about the Foundry's stipulations regarding its EULA so I have since taken down one of the missions that violates this and deleted it.
I needed the space to make more anyway :P I'll be more careful in future.
Besides Cryptic are rather lazy anyway with their regulation of Foundry missions. Why can they not apply the same language filter that they apply in the actual game to prevent copyrighted names from being used. Surely that's not hard to do? After all, you cannot call your ship the U.S.S. Enterprise in game.
I think most of the Cryptic made "episodes" could probably go on that to begin with... :P Even before we get to the Foundry, just because I've seen better writing in Star Trek Unofficial Fan Fictions. Even Star Trek: Destiny is better written then some of the missions in this game *chuckles* and that's saying something.
I did have to laugh when I realized that Cryptic's entire story was a re-hash of Season 4-5 of Deep Space Nine with the Undine (Species 8472 is their actual name) replacing the role of the Founders. It probably would have been a better design choice for the game to have two "coalition" of races. Give much more choice to players and would allow for multiple ships for different races.
Some of the STO canon episodes are actually quite good, but hater's are gonna hate. Though I thought it'd be obvious, Species 8472 is a Borg designation, not a name
Sorry, I have to disagree in that given the sheer amount of Foundry missions out there - to have 3 authors spotlighted twice in 34 missions spoytlighted to date (IE approximately 10%) shows that Brandon isn't going to far a field to find his 'spotlights'. I don't believe there's a conspiracy per se; but mayhaps Brandon goes to the same authors missions a LOT.
Let's think of this mathematically. Say you have 90 good authors who did 100 missions total and you randomly picked 34 to spotlight, what are the the odds of you getting more than 31 distinct authors from that sample?
I see you point, but again, that's still rather petty... what a sad world we live in eh. Besides, I was unaware about the Foundry's stipulations regarding its EULA so I have since taken down one of the missions that violates this and deleted it.
I needed the space to make more anyway :P I'll be more careful in future.
Besides Cryptic are rather lazy anyway with their regulation of Foundry missions. Why can they not apply the same language filter that they apply in the actual game to prevent copyrighted names from being used. Surely that's not hard to do? After all, you cannot call your ship the U.S.S. Enterprise in game.
Because we could legitimately use the Enterprise F in the Foundry as that's a Cryptic designed asset.
Because other ships in the Star Trek franchise have been named after other famous ships/characters (see SS Robert Fox from Star Trek Generations)
Because there are legitimate reasons to mention ships and characters from the show.
Because given how you had to rename your Picard character the character name filter obviously is working.
Because we could legitimately use the Enterprise F in the Foundry as that's a Cryptic designed asset.
Because other ships in the Star Trek franchise have been named after other famous ships/characters (see SS Robert Fox from Star Trek Generations)
Because there are legitimate reasons to mention ships and characters from the show.
Because given how you had to rename your Picard character the character name filter obviously is working.
I did that myself last night, it was kinda of loose parody. :P There is no name filter preventing this on the foundry which I find a little strange if Cryptic want to avoid incidents like this from happening?
Why can they not apply the same language filter that they apply in the actual game to prevent copyrighted names from being used. Surely that's not hard to do? After all, you cannot call your ship the U.S.S. Enterprise in game.
Because you CAN have a USS Enterprise in the Foundry. You can even have it communicate with the player as a message from Captain Kirk or Uhura or whomever. You just can't show the actor's likeness; an audio-only or text-only communication would be perfectly allowable. You should read the EULA before you proceed any further, it may save you a lot of wasted work.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Because you CAN have a USS Enterprise in the Foundry. You can even have it communicate with the player as a message from Captain Kirk or Uhura or whomever. You just can't show the actor's likeness; an audio-only or text-only communication would be perfectly allowable. You should read the EULA before you proceed any further, it may save you a lot of wasted work.
Its no skin off my back, those missions were old and taking up space. I finished some of them almost a year ago so I'm not actually that bothered. Only having 8 slots is a bit of a pain because sometimes you max that out without even realizing it.
Have you played the rest of their missions? they're decidedly not bad....
If this was directed at me -- my point is NOT that the missions selected are not worthy of being spotlghted, they probably are (but no I haven't played them so I can't give my opinion on that aspect one way or the other fairly.)
My point is that - if we have 3 authors who have had more then 1 of their missions spolighted by Brandon/Cryptic out of a total of 34 missions -- again, that's a HIGH percentage of repeat authors for such a small sample -- regardless of whether the missions are good enough to deserve being spotlighted.
If a trend like that were to continue; I'd say Cryptic should just start spotlighting the good authors themselves, and stop trying to spotlight individual missions if they can't find a system that helps them determine good/deserving of spotlight Foundry content from the wider Foundry Authorbase that exists.
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..."
Even though I've been spotlighted before, I did hit the submit button on one of my missions. BranFlakes had sent out a tweet reminding folks to send him suggestions, and I feel like its a very good mission (my favorite of my own, in fact), and it isn't one I intend to do any more work on. I did send him a tweet though saying something like "Here's one of mine that's good, put it in if you want to but definitely look at other authors who haven't been spotlighted before."
I think one thing I'd say here is remember that one mission getting spotlighted isn't a slight on all other missions. I think we're turning a positive thing into a negative one here.
If this was directed at me -- my point is NOT that the missions selected are not worthy of being spotlghted, they probably are (but no I haven't played them so I can't give my opinion on that aspect one way or the other fairly.)
My point is that - if we have 3 authors who have had more then 1 of their missions spolighted by Brandon/Cryptic out of a total of 34 missions -- again, that's a HIGH percentage of repeat authors for such a small sample -- regardless of whether the missions are good enough to deserve being spotlighted.
If a trend like that were to continue; I'd say Cryptic should just start spotlighting the good authors themselves, and stop trying to spotlight individual missions if they can't find a system that helps them determine good/deserving of spotlight Foundry content from the wider Foundry Authorbase that exists.
We're not a very large community of dedicated Foundry authors, if you exclude the makers of grinders and lootz. Take a look at the big list and you'll see many of the same names get repeated. The spotlights are meant to reflect the best of the best, which are some of the folks who spent months and months crafting missions. It is bound to happen that names get repeated, especially on the KDF side.
When the top rated listing actually showed the top-rated for story, it was dominated by different missions of a small group of really good authors.
There are lots and lots of gems left to be discovered and existing missions that really deserve the spotlight. But it can't be helped when every single mission of certain authors like Alimac, etc. are the best of the best.
Star Trek belonged to the fans long before it was on a piece of paper.
A lot of fans hold this sense of entitlement towards their favorite properties. It's as deluded as claiming the Easter Bunny lives in your spare room. But it's there none the less.
As long as you don't make profit from it, its not in violation.
That's not true either.
There are so many fan organisations and sites out there that its impossible for CBS to try and shut down them all. You cannot own an ideal.
The entire point of copyright laws is that you can own an idea.
They don't shut fans down for a number of reasons: It alienates the people dumb enough to keep buying your product even when it's bad. Lawyers are incredibly expensive. Fan fic and fan culture are a source of free advertising.
And the Foundry is For Profit. It's just not for your profit.
If this was directed at me -- my point is NOT that the missions selected are not worthy of being spotlghted, they probably are (but no I haven't played them so I can't give my opinion on that aspect one way or the other fairly.)
My point is that - if we have 3 authors who have had more then 1 of their missions spolighted by Brandon/Cryptic out of a total of 34 missions -- again, that's a HIGH percentage of repeat authors for such a small sample -- regardless of whether the missions are good enough to deserve being spotlighted.
If a trend like that were to continue; I'd say Cryptic should just start spotlighting the good authors themselves, and stop trying to spotlight individual missions if they can't find a system that helps them determine good/deserving of spotlight Foundry content from the wider Foundry Authorbase that exists.
Just out of your rough estimate, how many spotlight-worthy episodes are currently in the Foundry and how many authors made them? If the 3 authors who have been double-featured did 5 of 6 KDF episodes between them, that's simply *not* higher than expected. As BranFlakes himself said, he actually is *less* likely to pick someone he's already picked.
Picking a large sample of quality missions from the UGC spotlight thread, there are currently 161 missions: 33 KDF missions and 128 Fed missions. Since Brandon picks an equal number of KDF missions as Fed, if you have a top quality KDF one you're far more likely to get yours chosen for the spotlight.
Of the 161 missions, there are 95 distinct authors -- a great author is likely to have done multiple episodes. Not everything they do is necessarily gold.
When I did that, I got a single selection from 16 authors. Double selections from 6 authors, and triple selections from two authors. 24 authors from 34 randomly picked missions. 24/34 (71%) is a higher unique rate than 95/161 (59%) due to the sample size (the fewer you pick, the less chance of a duplicate author), but is not shocking.
That the Foundry spotlight currently has 31 unique authors for 34 missions shows that Brandon is being very fair to try out a range of different authors and that *every* case of a duplicated spotlight author is because they wrote quality KDF missions.
We're not a very large community of dedicated Foundry authors, if you exclude the makers of grinders and lootz. Take a look at the big list and you'll see many of the same names get repeated.
Then perhaps it has been stagnant for far too long, and an influx of new people and new ideas will only improve player experience, and PWE's bottom line.
How MMO companies reach for the stars: "And as far as Season 7 being "grindy" - welcome to the MMORPG genre."
We're not a very large community of dedicated Foundry authors, if you exclude the makers of grinders and lootz. Take a look at the big list and you'll see many of the same names get repeated. The spotlights are meant to reflect the best of the best, which are some of the folks who spent months and months crafting missions. It is bound to happen that names get repeated, especially on the KDF side.
When the top rated listing actually showed the top-rated for story, it was dominated by different missions of a small group of really good authors.
There are lots and lots of gems left to be discovered and existing missions that really deserve the spotlight. But it can't be helped when every single mission of certain authors like Alimac, etc. are the best of the best.
To your point, that's honestly not something we 'know' for certain. What we do know is there is a group of prolific and well received (because there work IS good) authors who aren't shy or afraid of promoting their works. That doesn't mean there aren't other authors who may just author for themselves or friends; or are shy about promoting what they've done in the Foundry. Starbase UGC is a great resource for authors and a great tool to help authors with the resolve and desire to promote their missions (I've used it both as a resource and a tool to promote the missions I've done to date as well.) That said, I don't think we should fall into the trap of believing that the majority of good, dedicated Foundry authors makes use of it, knows about it; or is comfortable going to a non-cryptic site to promote their works.
(And I honestly mean no disparagement to the spotlighted authors or the authors who make great use of Starbase UGC and other sites to promote their work - which again, I've done myself -- and think Kirkfat has done a MAJOR service in starting, providing and maintaining the site; BUT, if it is only 100 or so Foundry authors out of the entire STO Foundry authorbase who make UGC content worthy of being spotlight -- then honestly, I'd consider the Foundry a major failure.)
Honestly, I think something the Foundry is still missing is an easy way for them to promote their mission in the game itself -- (look at the way the Cryptic mission interface easily promotes STO events, etc.) -- and that's something that perhaps Cryptic could think about adding to th mission interface -- a way that also promotes rank and file missions, that easy for authors to make use of and is shown as an option to authors in the Foundry tool.
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..."
First, spotlight foundry mission is about a promoting a mission, not an author. If some authors are simply more awesome than others, and have many awesome mission, I found normal to have several of their missions promoted. As said before, if we compare to great author, like Shakespear or Asimov, several of their works got prizes, and less known authors may have complained that awards were always for the same people.
As another example, much bigger than foundry mission, Marie Curie received 2 nobel prizes for her work. The highest award a scientist can dream of. She was the first (and only ?). During a time and a place were women couldn't vote. Simply mean her work was exceptional, probably because she was an incredible woman, ahead of her time. Doesn't mean it's a conspiracy, even if I'm sure a lot of people saw it that way.
Would it be better to ignore a mission to promote a less interesting one because the author already got promoted once ?
(And I honestly mean no disparagement to the spotlighted authors or the authors who make great use of Starbase UGC and other sites to promote their work - which again, I've done myself -- and think Kirkfat has done a MAJOR service in starting, providing and maintaining the site; BUT, if it is only 100 or so Foundry authors out of the entire STO Foundry authorbase who make UGC content worthy of being spotlight -- then honestly, I'd consider the Foundry a major failure.)
There is not a lot of player on STO. Only 1 server for the entire world. On those people, how many of them are creative enough to use the foundry ? 1-10% ? How many of them have the time and will to make missions ? Then again, on those few peoples, how many of them make good missions, worth to be spotlight ? I'd say 100 awesome authors is not a failure.
Honestly, I think something the Foundry is still missing is an easy way for them to promote their mission in the game itself -- (look at the way the Cryptic mission interface easily promotes STO events, etc.) -- and that's something that perhaps Cryptic could think about adding to th mission interface -- a way that also promotes rank and file missions, that easy for authors to make use of and is shown as an option to authors in the Foundry tool.
Last time I checked, there is a "submit for spotlight" button in the mission editor. Dunno if it was removed recently, but I can't think of a better way to ask for spotlight.
Also, you can promote it with the forum, and Bran seems to check often. Especially if your mission is good and a lot of people comment the thread.
If you are shy or afraid, you don't want to be spotlight anyway.
There is not a lot of player on STO. Only 1 server for the entire world.
Not to disagree with your main points, which are completely valid, but I see statements like the above a lot and want to make sure people aren't operating under invalid assumptions.
There is one "logical" server. It consists, however, of hundreds of computers, in a giant and expandable cluster. There are 2 million people with accounts in this game, and tens of thousands can be active at any time. Steam, for instance, shows that just people playing concurrently who obtained the game from Steam, and just for today, has exceeded 2,600. Most people don't play it via Steam, and it's early in the day.
This is a very large MMO population.
I'm not aware of any recent MMORPG where one "server" equals one computer. Even WoW, with an architecture that uses many servers, has each server on in excess of 20 computer blades. (it was 20 during Wrath of the Lich King; I assume it's more now, although it's possible it's less with their new hardware.)
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
I'd have to see the full list of spotlights, but I think that less than half of the authors who get spotlighted are actively promoting their missions at Starbase UGC. Some of us have actively promoted their missions for them, when we discover something unexpected from someone we've never heard of before.
The equation of sbugc with spotlights is not justified by looking at the lists of who gets spotlighted.
Having one server is not indicative of having a small game population. Its always had one server regardless of how many people are playing. Same with Champions Online and the same with a few other games as well (Guild Wars 1 for example). And actually I think having one server is one of STO's strengths. Everyone is together. Make a STO friend in real life or in another game and you are guaranteed to be able to play with them without any messy server transfers. Look at all the problems other games have had with multiple servers. STO doesn't have to mess with that.
BUT, if it is only 100 or so Foundry authors out of the entire STO Foundry authorbase who make UGC content worthy of being spotlight -- then honestly, I'd consider the Foundry a major failure.)
That seems a rather odd way to look at it, and not at all keeping with how most artistic things work.
Depending on the size of the foundry author group, it's only logical that only a given % of them would produce really good stuff. This is no different then any thing else in life. Some people are good at it, some aren't. Just because someone isn't good at it doesn't mean they can't still take part.
If there's 1,000 people who really do much with the foundry, and 100 of them are worthy of the spotlight, that's 10% and seems to be about right to me. I mean you don't see every novel written in a given sub-genera being on a top 10 list. Why should the foundry be any different? It's fairly unreasonable to expect every mission made to be worthy of the spotlight.
Comments
Perhaps during those weeks, those other quality missions weren't brought to Branflakes' attention. It sounds to me like you are expecting Branflakes to play through every possible Foundry mission over a week period to determine that absolute best mission. If a great quality mission isn't suggested to Branflakes or isn't getting any promotion / PR; then I doubt it will be even looked at.
Authors have to remember that they NEED to promote their missions, they NEED to get information about their missions into the public eye. Just as a movie needs to have teasers, trailers, posters, commercials, and all other kinds of marketing ploys; so do Foundry authors for their missions. Maybe not trailers (though they do help), but certainly creating a post in the Missions Database on these forums and possibly even a post on StarbaseUGC.
So really what should be asked is "how can we help Brandon find more of those 'OMG you have to play this' missions", and not have to make him hunt through page after page of suggestions.
The ones submitted to Cryptic do not breach EULA. The rest of for the benefit of other people who enjoy seeing Star Trek characters or a different timeline other then the one that Cryptic presents as fact.
Besides I'm not making profit from it or submitting them to review by Cryptic so why the hell should I care.
As long as you don't make profit from it, its not in violation. There are so many fan organisations and sites out there that its impossible for CBS to try and shut down them all. You cannot own an ideal.
EULA applies to all missions, not just ones submitted for spotlight.
So you admit that the rest do.
That is an incorrect statement.
If CBS are really that petty about it, its a bit of a sad state of affairs. Besides, they can just easily be changed to non-direct parodies, so what does it matter? You must forgive me, for coming from a different medium where creativity is not impaired in that fashion.
Actually that might not be the way it works for STO, but that is how it works for every other Star Trek community.
Besides, they've been up there for quite some time and I was going to take a couple down to make some more anyway...
STO is a for-profit venture.
Cryptic, BTW, has been sued for something similar in the past, so they're especially vigilant in this regard.
Well that's Cryptic's problem, I'm not seeking profit so ultimately its Cryptic that are misbehaving for not being as "vigilant" as they should be. Because the players are incapable of making profit in this fashion. I fail to see why Foundry missions need to be regulated in this manner because they are "Non-Profit" user generated content?
CBS might not be, the original actors however might, and Cryptic don't want to take the chance that CBS or the actors might start legal action against them.
Marvel attempted legal action against Cryptic in 2005 because the costume creator in CoX could create reasonable clones of their characters, this isn't an isolated case and the fact is that if Patrick Stewart decided that a Picard clone made in the Foundry badly represented him then he wouldn't bring his case against the author of said mission, but against Cryptic for allowing the clone in the first place.
Also Copyright and Trademark is all inclusive, it's just that most trademark/copyright owners don't bother chasing up non-profit uses of their trademarks/copyrights.
I get dilithium tips from my Foundry missions. I can then take that dilithium to the exchange for Zen. While I can't exchange my Zen for real currency, that Zen does act as a form of "real currency" in terms of purchasing items in-game. So when they added dilithium tips to Foundry missions, they inheritantly made them for-profit.
No, actually, it's your problem, which Cryptic will likely shortly be solving for you.
If you beat them to it, you might retain your Foundry access afterwards.
I see you point, but again, that's still rather petty... what a sad world we live in eh. Besides, I was unaware about the Foundry's stipulations regarding its EULA so I have since taken down one of the missions that violates this and deleted it.
I needed the space to make more anyway :P I'll be more careful in future.
Besides Cryptic are rather lazy anyway with their regulation of Foundry missions. Why can they not apply the same language filter that they apply in the actual game to prevent copyrighted names from being used. Surely that's not hard to do? After all, you cannot call your ship the U.S.S. Enterprise in game.
Some of the STO canon episodes are actually quite good, but hater's are gonna hate. Though I thought it'd be obvious, Species 8472 is a Borg designation, not a name
Let's think of this mathematically. Say you have 90 good authors who did 100 missions total and you randomly picked 34 to spotlight, what are the the odds of you getting more than 31 distinct authors from that sample?
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
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Because we could legitimately use the Enterprise F in the Foundry as that's a Cryptic designed asset.
Because other ships in the Star Trek franchise have been named after other famous ships/characters (see SS Robert Fox from Star Trek Generations)
Because there are legitimate reasons to mention ships and characters from the show.
Because given how you had to rename your Picard character the character name filter obviously is working.
I did that myself last night, it was kinda of loose parody. :P There is no name filter preventing this on the foundry which I find a little strange if Cryptic want to avoid incidents like this from happening?
Because you CAN have a USS Enterprise in the Foundry. You can even have it communicate with the player as a message from Captain Kirk or Uhura or whomever. You just can't show the actor's likeness; an audio-only or text-only communication would be perfectly allowable. You should read the EULA before you proceed any further, it may save you a lot of wasted work.
Its no skin off my back, those missions were old and taking up space. I finished some of them almost a year ago so I'm not actually that bothered. Only having 8 slots is a bit of a pain because sometimes you max that out without even realizing it.
If this was directed at me -- my point is NOT that the missions selected are not worthy of being spotlghted, they probably are (but no I haven't played them so I can't give my opinion on that aspect one way or the other fairly.)
My point is that - if we have 3 authors who have had more then 1 of their missions spolighted by Brandon/Cryptic out of a total of 34 missions -- again, that's a HIGH percentage of repeat authors for such a small sample -- regardless of whether the missions are good enough to deserve being spotlighted.
If a trend like that were to continue; I'd say Cryptic should just start spotlighting the good authors themselves, and stop trying to spotlight individual missions if they can't find a system that helps them determine good/deserving of spotlight Foundry content from the wider Foundry Authorbase that exists.
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 think one thing I'd say here is remember that one mission getting spotlighted isn't a slight on all other missions. I think we're turning a positive thing into a negative one here.
We're not a very large community of dedicated Foundry authors, if you exclude the makers of grinders and lootz. Take a look at the big list and you'll see many of the same names get repeated. The spotlights are meant to reflect the best of the best, which are some of the folks who spent months and months crafting missions. It is bound to happen that names get repeated, especially on the KDF side.
When the top rated listing actually showed the top-rated for story, it was dominated by different missions of a small group of really good authors.
There are lots and lots of gems left to be discovered and existing missions that really deserve the spotlight. But it can't be helped when every single mission of certain authors like Alimac, etc. are the best of the best.
A lot of fans hold this sense of entitlement towards their favorite properties. It's as deluded as claiming the Easter Bunny lives in your spare room. But it's there none the less.
That's not true either.
The entire point of copyright laws is that you can own an idea.
They don't shut fans down for a number of reasons: It alienates the people dumb enough to keep buying your product even when it's bad. Lawyers are incredibly expensive. Fan fic and fan culture are a source of free advertising.
And the Foundry is For Profit. It's just not for your profit.
Just out of your rough estimate, how many spotlight-worthy episodes are currently in the Foundry and how many authors made them? If the 3 authors who have been double-featured did 5 of 6 KDF episodes between them, that's simply *not* higher than expected. As BranFlakes himself said, he actually is *less* likely to pick someone he's already picked.
Picking a large sample of quality missions from the UGC spotlight thread, there are currently 161 missions: 33 KDF missions and 128 Fed missions. Since Brandon picks an equal number of KDF missions as Fed, if you have a top quality KDF one you're far more likely to get yours chosen for the spotlight.
Of the 161 missions, there are 95 distinct authors -- a great author is likely to have done multiple episodes. Not everything they do is necessarily gold.
I decided to run a simple test by randomly assigning those 161 missions a number and then choosing 34 missions: 17 Fed and 17 KDF.
When I did that, I got a single selection from 16 authors. Double selections from 6 authors, and triple selections from two authors. 24 authors from 34 randomly picked missions. 24/34 (71%) is a higher unique rate than 95/161 (59%) due to the sample size (the fewer you pick, the less chance of a duplicate author), but is not shocking.
That the Foundry spotlight currently has 31 unique authors for 34 missions shows that Brandon is being very fair to try out a range of different authors and that *every* case of a duplicated spotlight author is because they wrote quality KDF missions.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Mmmmmmmm...... I approve of this delicious math.
Then perhaps it has been stagnant for far too long, and an influx of new people and new ideas will only improve player experience, and PWE's bottom line.
To your point, that's honestly not something we 'know' for certain. What we do know is there is a group of prolific and well received (because there work IS good) authors who aren't shy or afraid of promoting their works. That doesn't mean there aren't other authors who may just author for themselves or friends; or are shy about promoting what they've done in the Foundry. Starbase UGC is a great resource for authors and a great tool to help authors with the resolve and desire to promote their missions (I've used it both as a resource and a tool to promote the missions I've done to date as well.) That said, I don't think we should fall into the trap of believing that the majority of good, dedicated Foundry authors makes use of it, knows about it; or is comfortable going to a non-cryptic site to promote their works.
(And I honestly mean no disparagement to the spotlighted authors or the authors who make great use of Starbase UGC and other sites to promote their work - which again, I've done myself -- and think Kirkfat has done a MAJOR service in starting, providing and maintaining the site; BUT, if it is only 100 or so Foundry authors out of the entire STO Foundry authorbase who make UGC content worthy of being spotlight -- then honestly, I'd consider the Foundry a major failure.)
Honestly, I think something the Foundry is still missing is an easy way for them to promote their mission in the game itself -- (look at the way the Cryptic mission interface easily promotes STO events, etc.) -- and that's something that perhaps Cryptic could think about adding to th mission interface -- a way that also promotes rank and file missions, that easy for authors to make use of and is shown as an option to authors in the Foundry tool.
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..."
As another example, much bigger than foundry mission, Marie Curie received 2 nobel prizes for her work. The highest award a scientist can dream of. She was the first (and only ?). During a time and a place were women couldn't vote. Simply mean her work was exceptional, probably because she was an incredible woman, ahead of her time. Doesn't mean it's a conspiracy, even if I'm sure a lot of people saw it that way.
Would it be better to ignore a mission to promote a less interesting one because the author already got promoted once ?
There is not a lot of player on STO. Only 1 server for the entire world. On those people, how many of them are creative enough to use the foundry ? 1-10% ? How many of them have the time and will to make missions ? Then again, on those few peoples, how many of them make good missions, worth to be spotlight ? I'd say 100 awesome authors is not a failure.
Last time I checked, there is a "submit for spotlight" button in the mission editor. Dunno if it was removed recently, but I can't think of a better way to ask for spotlight.
Also, you can promote it with the forum, and Bran seems to check often. Especially if your mission is good and a lot of people comment the thread.
If you are shy or afraid, you don't want to be spotlight anyway.
Not to disagree with your main points, which are completely valid, but I see statements like the above a lot and want to make sure people aren't operating under invalid assumptions.
There is one "logical" server. It consists, however, of hundreds of computers, in a giant and expandable cluster. There are 2 million people with accounts in this game, and tens of thousands can be active at any time. Steam, for instance, shows that just people playing concurrently who obtained the game from Steam, and just for today, has exceeded 2,600. Most people don't play it via Steam, and it's early in the day.
This is a very large MMO population.
I'm not aware of any recent MMORPG where one "server" equals one computer. Even WoW, with an architecture that uses many servers, has each server on in excess of 20 computer blades. (it was 20 during Wrath of the Lich King; I assume it's more now, although it's possible it's less with their new hardware.)
The equation of sbugc with spotlights is not justified by looking at the lists of who gets spotlighted.
That seems a rather odd way to look at it, and not at all keeping with how most artistic things work.
Depending on the size of the foundry author group, it's only logical that only a given % of them would produce really good stuff. This is no different then any thing else in life. Some people are good at it, some aren't. Just because someone isn't good at it doesn't mean they can't still take part.
If there's 1,000 people who really do much with the foundry, and 100 of them are worthy of the spotlight, that's 10% and seems to be about right to me. I mean you don't see every novel written in a given sub-genera being on a top 10 list. Why should the foundry be any different? It's fairly unreasonable to expect every mission made to be worthy of the spotlight.