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Foundry Frustration
vulcanmonk
Member Posts: 146 Arc User
I am not an author, but I am an active player, and I want to start off by saying that I believe, or I want to believe that the concept of the Foundry can be a revolutionary part of this game giving it an ongoing creative flow of material.
With that said, my own experience is that the game mechanics are so poor that two of the seven Foundry missions I recently attempted to play I could not complete. BOFFS getting stuck in walls, beam in points un-findable, basic game-play functions not working...I don't see how this is sustainable, and I don't see how the Foundry becomes the content answer Cryptic is looking for. Take for example the mission "Checks and Balances." This is really a well conceived story, well written, at least the part I was able to get through, but after about an hour of trying I gave up...couldn't find the beam in point. I regulary play Elite STF, and have comnpleted all the episodes, so I know how the game works. There are about 3,000 reviews of this mission...most really good, but about 10% of people gave it 1 or 2 stars why? Mostly game mechanics issues. So it seems to me there needs to be some improvements in the tools authors are given to work with so they can bring working content to the players. For now I'll go back to repeating episode missions...or move on to another game.
Anybody else frustrated?
With that said, my own experience is that the game mechanics are so poor that two of the seven Foundry missions I recently attempted to play I could not complete. BOFFS getting stuck in walls, beam in points un-findable, basic game-play functions not working...I don't see how this is sustainable, and I don't see how the Foundry becomes the content answer Cryptic is looking for. Take for example the mission "Checks and Balances." This is really a well conceived story, well written, at least the part I was able to get through, but after about an hour of trying I gave up...couldn't find the beam in point. I regulary play Elite STF, and have comnpleted all the episodes, so I know how the game works. There are about 3,000 reviews of this mission...most really good, but about 10% of people gave it 1 or 2 stars why? Mostly game mechanics issues. So it seems to me there needs to be some improvements in the tools authors are given to work with so they can bring working content to the players. For now I'll go back to repeating episode missions...or move on to another game.
Anybody else frustrated?
Sacca Gavesaka, Fleet Admiral, Commanding
BSG-Benne Gesserit Consortium
BSG-Benne Gesserit Consortium
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Additionally the foundry has always been rife with bugs. I have noticed that playing through one time is fine, than playing it another I get stuck at some point.
I urge you to give us the benefit of the doubt, and play more missions. There are some awesome ones out there and more in development.
yeah........it's actually the moon you have to go too not the planet, no idea why the author said planet but there you go.
I've been trying to e-mail everyone who leaves a review that mentions the problem with the planet individually, but that can get time consuming and I sometimes get a little behind.
The problem is that there's an "interact with planet" task that used to work but, after a recent patch, no longer works.
Unfortunately, since it's a spotlight mission, I no longer have the capacity to edit it. I've filed a bug report and contact PWE customer service, but all I've gotten is that they're aware of the bug and will fix it someday.
In the meantime, yYou can continue to play through the broken part by skipping the planet altogether and heading toward the small moon on the right as you enter the map. This will trigger a map change. The only problem is that you lose some vital information by doing this.
If you want to play through (and the rest of the mission apparently works fine), here?s the information you?ll be missing. I?ll put it in black text to avoid any spoilers for anyone else:
1) The Deferi ships were all attacked by a ship using phasers and quantum torpedoes.
2) That ship was the Eldridge, which is missing.
3) The archive on Lae'nas was attacked and is in ruins. All the Deferi there are dead. The Preservers are gone.
4) Prof. Olpar reveals that there is actually a second archive on the smaller moon. This was were the bulk of the Preservers were in stasis because it was more geologically stable than the planet.
5) You decide to check out the second archive.
Very, in fact I spent a lot of time working on a Foundry mission (a follow-up to the Undine arc 'Assimilated' mission) and ultimately gave up in frustration with the toolset.
Things that made the mission I wanted to build unfeasible:
Invisible walls are hopelessly broken and allow players to aggro opponents they shouldn't be able to (this is exploited in ground STFs too).
Inability to assign enemies as 'friendlies' (you can drop in friendly Feds/KDF or neutral creatures but they'll fight with factional weapons - I wanted 'friendly' Undine but this simply isn't possibly since the only way you can get them is to disguise animals as Undine and they die in seconds making the exercise pointless).
Zero control over how your mission scales for groups - I wanted tougher encounters against a handful of powerful opponents for group play - instead STO simply spawns more enemies.
The system as it stands can be used to create simple, story-driven content (and even allows for some interesting 'hacks') but complex game-play is impossible with all the bugs in the Foundry.
Contact Brandon directly and let him know this has happened to your mission. Basically , stay in contact with the guy who is responsible for the Spotlights. If anyone can help you, it will be him.
All this have simple and well-known workarounds. Your invisible walls will work fine if you choose the tall version and set them at Y = -20.
You can costume neutral targs or even friendly NPCs. The neutral ones won't fight no matter what, the friendly ones will help you.
It does spawn dreadnoughts at some point (4 players for a battleship group). The game is quite good at handling difficulty.
Complexity comes with the tricks you learn.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Nope - plasma grenades and similar AoE effects can still aggro stuff behind these walls (it's a game-wide bug, not restricted solely to the Foundry).
Done that - a Targ won't live very long against a Borg drone though - I wanted to put together a mission where you fight alongside some Undine to free members of their crew that have been taken for assimilation. Making them Feds/KDF means they run around firing Disruptors or Phasers.
Say you want a Borg Cube and several Spheres in specific places though - you can set that up for single player, but when someone joins you (and this is designed to be a group mission) they spawn all over the place. Basically, you have no control over how the Foundry handles team missions.
What I wanted was a tougher Cube/Spheres - what I got were multiples that broke the setup for the mission.
I applaud the ingenuity of some of the Foundry authors out there, but all the hacks and tricks in the world don't compensate for the fact that the toolset is broken.
So true man... so true.
Oh wait, guess not, that would be sensible after all..
***Disenchanted***
Real Join Date: Monday, 17 May 2010
Nothing derivative about that title *whistles*
It can help to set the y value of npcs above that of the floor. they will drop to the floor anyways. You could ask the player to exile their Boffs at the start of the mission. My mission has a chase sequence and a stealth level with sections where boffs cannot follow you.
Parallels: my second mission for Fed aligned Romulans.