Ultimately, "good" and "bad" in a creative context are a matter of opinion.
Equality is an illusion. It'll never happen because players are free to choose not to play a mission. It doesn't really matter why they don't.
I agree with Bluedarky. Spotlights are about recognizing things that are better than average. trying to force equality into consideration is futile. The point of Spotlights is that it's inherently inequal.
Then its not really worth doing anything on the Foundry, not to compete with Cryptic's rat race for popularity. I mean, it defeats the whole point of the Foundry... but what am I? Just a small player in the 2 Million or so players (probably not that but 2 million Captains, dunno about accounts) who think that equality is part of the ideals of the Federation and something to aspire to. I do not really expect a game made purely for profit to live up to my expectations.
I just wanted to see more variety in the missions featured, not the same authors... that is all. Some more controversial choices would be good and not just missions that overly indulge Cryptic's poorly written fan-fiction which is the story of this game.
Rat race? If your goal as a Foundry author is to get featured.... you're setting the bar too high for yourself.
And Define "more variety" as-is only a few authors have been featured more than once.
Well no, because the missions already featured were not much different then run-of-the-mill Cryptic variations. Well I do not see why authors have to be mentioned more then once anyway, its not exactly fair to somebody else who might be their first time getting mentioned.
Mission-quality aside, I just do not think its fair for one person's opinion, regardless of who it is to affect the popularity of a mission. I know there were quite a few people saying that "Battleship Royal Rumble" should have received spotlight with over 2000 reviews which is more then the current featured spotlight mission had.
However because Bran thought that he knew what was best for the community, he decided to ignore calls to feature this mission. This is exactly what I am talking about, if it does not fit in with the overblown Cryptic canon then they just simply ignore it.
While people with distinctively average missions (not to name names) get featured more then once. So what is the criteria and why is it so subjective to Bran's opinion being the only one that matters? Is he the authority on Star Trek or am I missing something here?
I am holding that up as more "controversial" titles... there are others that do effectively provide alternate explanations of STO's universe other then Cryptic's and these are fundamentally ignored.
(*Disclaimer: I have not played "Battleship Royal Rumble" so I am unable to comment on the quality of the mission or provide an opinion on it.)
Well no, because the missions already featured were not much different then run-of-the-mill Cryptic variations. Well I do not see why authors have to be mentioned more then once anyway, its not exactly fair to somebody else who might be their first time getting mentioned.
Mission-quality aside, I just do not think its fair for one person's opinion, regardless of who it is to affect the popularity of a mission. I know there were quite a few people saying that "Battleship Royal Rumble" should have received spotlight with over 2000 reviews which is more then the current featured spotlight mission had.
However because Bran thought that he knew what was best for the community, he decided to ignore calls to feature this mission. This is exactly what I am talking about, if it does not fit in with the overblown Cryptic canon then they just simply ignore it.
While people with distinctively average missions (not to name names) get featured more then once. So what is the criteria and why is it so subjective to Bran's opinion being the only one that matters? Is he the authority on Star Trek or am I missing something here?
I am holding that up as more "controversial" titles... there are others that do effectively provide alternate explanations of STO's universe other then Cryptic's and these are fundamentally ignored.
(*Disclaimer: I have not played "Battleship Royal Rumble" so I am unable to comment on the quality of the mission or provide an opinion on it.)
Brandon's stated in other threads that whilst it is a well crafted mission it doesn't qualify for the Spotlight as the Spotlight is for story missions. He'd already checked it before and tbh if people can get Brandon to cave to pier pressure in concern to the Spotlight, that'll be the end of me doing any new Spotlights.
The reason for this is simple, it starts with him caving to one mission, then another, soon the story missions have dropped off due to people demanding more and more grinders like BRR to be spotlighted.
It ends with him caving to pier pressure to ban certain people from the forums, I've been in forums where it's happened, it's not pretty and I'm glad that Brandon seems to be above that.
Brandon's stated in other threads that whilst it is a well crafted mission it doesn't qualify for the Spotlight as the Spotlight is for story missions. He'd already checked it before and tbh if people can get Brandon to cave to pier pressure in concern to the Spotlight, that'll be the end of me doing any new Spotlights.
The reason for this is simple, it starts with him caving to one mission, then another, soon the story missions have dropped off due to people demanding more and more grinders like BRR to be spotlighted.
It ends with him caving to pier pressure to ban certain people from the forums, I've been in forums where it's happened, it's not pretty and I'm glad that Brandon seems to be above that.
Well then it would be better to just drop the spotlight all together and eliminate the problem.
Well then it would be better to just drop the spotlight all together and eliminate the problem.
I've thought long and hard about how to respond to this, I almost didn't but I finally decided what to say and how.
I disagree.
The spotlight does have rules that aren't to everyone's taste, it does have us beholden to one master in Branflakes. But it's something more than just a token award for making what Brandon views as a good mission, it's a start to seeing more player - Cryptic/PWE relationships ingame.
If they decide the spotlight is a failure and pull it then that might be it, it could signal the end to dev ran events ingame altogether, no more PvP events, no more random PvE events, just increasing the silence between the Company and the Players.
But if it keeps on going, if it proves to be popular then it could increase the player - company interaction. Which would only enrich the game and attract more players to all aspects of it.
The Foundry Spotlight is currently one of the only regular dev run events in the game, removing it could only hurt the game, keeping it could make it so much greater.
Well then it would be better to just drop the spotlight all together and eliminate the problem.
The Foundry was designed for players to tell stories. Spotlight selection is based on story, whether it contains a lot of combat or not.
There is no problem to be solved in this regard. If you don't like the spotlight missions, don't play them. There is no reason to drop them for everybody else.
If you want one of your missions spotlighted, write story missions (which can be filled with as much combat as you want). But it will be the quality of the story that carries weight in the choice, not just how much loot one can achieve.
If you manage to tie the two together in a substantive way, great.
I do think Cryptic would serve the Foundry community better by adding a Tabs that allow the author to chose which Tab he'd like a piece of content to appear in, and there shpould be a tab that contains and sorts through just such 'reward focused' and another that just sorts through 'story focused' -- and let the potential player of the Foundry decide what he wants to play in his STO session.
This has been my thought since the "exploits" came out. I could give a Epohhs behind if they exist or not, regardless if I like them or not, but seperate them from the story content. Combat/Grind missions in one tab, Story based content on another. Too many story missions are getting buried far underneath the ocean of grinders.
So what is the point of the rest of us making missions? Because at the moment, I am not sure if the Foundry is nothing more then a promotion tool for future Cryptic mission developers? How can such a hopelessly biased system work?
As one being honored to be chosen as having a spotlight mission, I can assure you I will never be, nor have any desire to be a "future Cryptic mission developer" as you have asserted in your comments. I build my maps and write my stories for my enjoyment and the hope that it gives enjoyment to others. I would continue to do this even if my mission was never selected for a spotlight. It was an honor that Branflakes found my story and my use of the toolset worthy. So if you see the spotlight as a way to promote future Cryptic employees, you can exclude me from that list. I am perfectly happy in my chosen career.
Also, if the numbers I see are correct at 34 spotlighted missions, at 1 mission per week, less the weeks here and there where they did not run it, that would make roughly 50 spotlights within a years time. If only 3 authors were chosen twice, and with the KDF Foundry missions (of which there are far fewer) being in the mix, I don't see any brand of favoritism being involved. Heck, I only know five or six of the other spotlight authors personally through the game and from SBUGC aside from a forum post here and there. I would hardly call that a "clique" out of the number of spotlights. Some folks enjoy my style of mission, some do not, but I will continue regardless of the results as it is what I enjoy.
Best Regards,
DoR
ABI-Artificial Borg Intelligence by Duke-of-Rock Available on Holodeck
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Also play Spawn of Medusa - The 5 Part series
by Duke-of-Rock Available on Holodeck
I just wanted to chime in regarding the Foundry.
I'm a new author. I have one mission published. I've only spent a few weeks on it, and it shows. I was thinking about really putting time into it and making it spotlight worthy, but after reading that I can't edit anymore, I'm not sure I want to. Don't get me wrong, I still want to spend time on it and improve it, I'm just not sure I want to spotlight it.
Either way, what I wanted to say is that even without promotion, missions can get exposure.
I believe I only told two people I know irl about it (of whom I'm not even sure have played it yet). I didn't post here or at StarbaseUGC. Yet I have received over 200 reviews in the few months it's been out. Most of which has been positive. I'm actually surprised I got that many. I made no promotions about it at all (mostly because it's my first and I'm 'shy', as one person mentioned). I would mention the name now, but I'm having issues with patrol pathing in the S7 update, so I don't want anyone playing it with that bug in it (unfortunately that particular issue doesn't appear when editing, only after publishing).
EDIT: FYI Cryptic, I'd like to see contact NPC's with pathing (at least when not used in the current objective)!
So people do look, and find them.
Little off-topic: no offense to Kirkfat, but I can't stand StarbaseUGC. I haven't used it for looking for missions, but I tried to use it to learn the foundry. I didn't even know until today that there are a few written tutorials for the foundry (I prefer those to videos). Plus finding help is difficult. I ended up going to Google and Youtube to find what I wanted. Plus the site is really busy--too much stuff showing on a page (banners and side-bars). It's kind of an eyesore. The STOWiki on the other hand is great. IMO, I'd like to see a wiki-style set up for the tutorials. There seems to be a lot of useful information on there, it just needs to be organized better.
This is just my opinion, supplying feedback as a newbie foundry author.
EDIT: I just saw that I have 1 post. Well, that's not right.
Comments
Then its not really worth doing anything on the Foundry, not to compete with Cryptic's rat race for popularity. I mean, it defeats the whole point of the Foundry... but what am I? Just a small player in the 2 Million or so players (probably not that but 2 million Captains, dunno about accounts) who think that equality is part of the ideals of the Federation and something to aspire to. I do not really expect a game made purely for profit to live up to my expectations.
I just wanted to see more variety in the missions featured, not the same authors... that is all. Some more controversial choices would be good and not just missions that overly indulge Cryptic's poorly written fan-fiction which is the story of this game.
And Define "more variety" as-is only a few authors have been featured more than once.
My character Tsin'xing
Well no, because the missions already featured were not much different then run-of-the-mill Cryptic variations. Well I do not see why authors have to be mentioned more then once anyway, its not exactly fair to somebody else who might be their first time getting mentioned.
Mission-quality aside, I just do not think its fair for one person's opinion, regardless of who it is to affect the popularity of a mission. I know there were quite a few people saying that "Battleship Royal Rumble" should have received spotlight with over 2000 reviews which is more then the current featured spotlight mission had.
However because Bran thought that he knew what was best for the community, he decided to ignore calls to feature this mission. This is exactly what I am talking about, if it does not fit in with the overblown Cryptic canon then they just simply ignore it.
While people with distinctively average missions (not to name names) get featured more then once. So what is the criteria and why is it so subjective to Bran's opinion being the only one that matters? Is he the authority on Star Trek or am I missing something here?
I am holding that up as more "controversial" titles... there are others that do effectively provide alternate explanations of STO's universe other then Cryptic's and these are fundamentally ignored.
(*Disclaimer: I have not played "Battleship Royal Rumble" so I am unable to comment on the quality of the mission or provide an opinion on it.)
Brandon's stated in other threads that whilst it is a well crafted mission it doesn't qualify for the Spotlight as the Spotlight is for story missions. He'd already checked it before and tbh if people can get Brandon to cave to pier pressure in concern to the Spotlight, that'll be the end of me doing any new Spotlights.
The reason for this is simple, it starts with him caving to one mission, then another, soon the story missions have dropped off due to people demanding more and more grinders like BRR to be spotlighted.
It ends with him caving to pier pressure to ban certain people from the forums, I've been in forums where it's happened, it's not pretty and I'm glad that Brandon seems to be above that.
Well then it would be better to just drop the spotlight all together and eliminate the problem.
I've thought long and hard about how to respond to this, I almost didn't but I finally decided what to say and how.
I disagree.
The spotlight does have rules that aren't to everyone's taste, it does have us beholden to one master in Branflakes. But it's something more than just a token award for making what Brandon views as a good mission, it's a start to seeing more player - Cryptic/PWE relationships ingame.
If they decide the spotlight is a failure and pull it then that might be it, it could signal the end to dev ran events ingame altogether, no more PvP events, no more random PvE events, just increasing the silence between the Company and the Players.
But if it keeps on going, if it proves to be popular then it could increase the player - company interaction. Which would only enrich the game and attract more players to all aspects of it.
The Foundry Spotlight is currently one of the only regular dev run events in the game, removing it could only hurt the game, keeping it could make it so much greater.
My character Tsin'xing
The Foundry was designed for players to tell stories. Spotlight selection is based on story, whether it contains a lot of combat or not.
There is no problem to be solved in this regard. If you don't like the spotlight missions, don't play them. There is no reason to drop them for everybody else.
If you want one of your missions spotlighted, write story missions (which can be filled with as much combat as you want). But it will be the quality of the story that carries weight in the choice, not just how much loot one can achieve.
If you manage to tie the two together in a substantive way, great.
This has been my thought since the "exploits" came out. I could give a Epohhs behind if they exist or not, regardless if I like them or not, but seperate them from the story content. Combat/Grind missions in one tab, Story based content on another. Too many story missions are getting buried far underneath the ocean of grinders.
As one being honored to be chosen as having a spotlight mission, I can assure you I will never be, nor have any desire to be a "future Cryptic mission developer" as you have asserted in your comments. I build my maps and write my stories for my enjoyment and the hope that it gives enjoyment to others. I would continue to do this even if my mission was never selected for a spotlight. It was an honor that Branflakes found my story and my use of the toolset worthy. So if you see the spotlight as a way to promote future Cryptic employees, you can exclude me from that list. I am perfectly happy in my chosen career.
Also, if the numbers I see are correct at 34 spotlighted missions, at 1 mission per week, less the weeks here and there where they did not run it, that would make roughly 50 spotlights within a years time. If only 3 authors were chosen twice, and with the KDF Foundry missions (of which there are far fewer) being in the mix, I don't see any brand of favoritism being involved. Heck, I only know five or six of the other spotlight authors personally through the game and from SBUGC aside from a forum post here and there. I would hardly call that a "clique" out of the number of spotlights. Some folks enjoy my style of mission, some do not, but I will continue regardless of the results as it is what I enjoy.
Best Regards,
DoR
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
by Duke-of-Rock Available on Holodeck
I'm a new author. I have one mission published. I've only spent a few weeks on it, and it shows. I was thinking about really putting time into it and making it spotlight worthy, but after reading that I can't edit anymore, I'm not sure I want to. Don't get me wrong, I still want to spend time on it and improve it, I'm just not sure I want to spotlight it.
Either way, what I wanted to say is that even without promotion, missions can get exposure.
I believe I only told two people I know irl about it (of whom I'm not even sure have played it yet). I didn't post here or at StarbaseUGC. Yet I have received over 200 reviews in the few months it's been out. Most of which has been positive. I'm actually surprised I got that many. I made no promotions about it at all (mostly because it's my first and I'm 'shy', as one person mentioned). I would mention the name now, but I'm having issues with patrol pathing in the S7 update, so I don't want anyone playing it with that bug in it (unfortunately that particular issue doesn't appear when editing, only after publishing).
EDIT: FYI Cryptic, I'd like to see contact NPC's with pathing (at least when not used in the current objective)!
So people do look, and find them.
Little off-topic: no offense to Kirkfat, but I can't stand StarbaseUGC. I haven't used it for looking for missions, but I tried to use it to learn the foundry. I didn't even know until today that there are a few written tutorials for the foundry (I prefer those to videos). Plus finding help is difficult. I ended up going to Google and Youtube to find what I wanted. Plus the site is really busy--too much stuff showing on a page (banners and side-bars). It's kind of an eyesore. The STOWiki on the other hand is great. IMO, I'd like to see a wiki-style set up for the tutorials. There seems to be a lot of useful information on there, it just needs to be organized better.
This is just my opinion, supplying feedback as a newbie foundry author.
EDIT: I just saw that I have 1 post. Well, that's not right.