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Proposal for Foundry rewards
malkarris
Member Posts: 797 Arc User
I have no problem with Spotlighted missions getting rewards, and I dont think anyone does, so my proposal is that all spotlight missions keep the same rewards as they do now. Nothing there changes. This rewars players for playing missions that someone has rated as good.
Now,for all the other foundry missions, there would be no rewards other than normal loot drops. No dilithium, no marks of any sort, nothing but loot drops. In addition to this, maybe have Cryptic open up more chances for missions to get the spotlight beyond the themed ones that happen now-a-days. Maybe a popular vote every few weeks.
Anyway, what do the foundry authors think?
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies . ~BranFlakes
Now,for all the other foundry missions, there would be no rewards other than normal loot drops. No dilithium, no marks of any sort, nothing but loot drops. In addition to this, maybe have Cryptic open up more chances for missions to get the spotlight beyond the themed ones that happen now-a-days. Maybe a popular vote every few weeks.
Anyway, what do the foundry authors think?
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies . ~BranFlakes
Joined September 2011
Nouveau riche LTS member
Nouveau riche LTS member
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"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
I can barely even find a story mission that I haven't played. The lists look like this:
ldasjf
ksdfjj
kkf
Farmer's Holiday
"test" 1-30
Admiral Doofus' Circus Cruiser!!!! Rawr!
kjasdlkj
I don't really care any longer, regarding the number of plays, etc. Just turn off the rewards, please.
Nerf the Foundry.
The root of the problem of non-story missions dominating the search screen is because the search criteria aren't detailed enough. Removing rewards won't make people play a story mission instead of a grinder - folks looking for that kind of experience will play STFs or other queued PVE content instead. Nor will it make the hardcore foundry fans play less grinders - they play few if any already. What it will do is create a situation that puts pressure on mainstream, socially-engaged players -- people who are in fleets, pursuing reputation trees, etc. -- to play content other than anything on the Foundry because it isn't a good investment of their resources (read: time).
I saw this in my own fleet when they nerfed Foundry fleet marks. Our weekend fleet actions used to always involve playing two or three story-based Foundry missions. Now instead we spend time in the Nukara and Defera adventure zones. It's not because we like the Foundry less or because we don't want to play story content. It's because we have resource demands we have to meet to keep up with our Starbase and Embassy progression, and we have to invest our time in a way that benefits those goals.
TL;DR -- Nerfing is not the solution. The solution is to fix the search criteria so folks can filter returns based on the type of mission they want to play.
What you call "cutting off your nose to spite your face" I call simply having realistic expectations about what Cryptic/PWE are willing to devote significant amounts of efforts and resources to improving. Nerfing Foundry rewards may not be the best solution - far from it - but it is the quickest and easiest fix from Cryptic's perspective, and therefore, given how low the Foundry is on the STO totem pole to begin with, probably the best one we can hope for any time soon.
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
I have to agree with this statement. Particularly right now, when it's a mad dash into May and the Romulan pseudo-faction. The Romulans aren't even getting their own Foundry missions, with no ETA on when that will happen.
I predict that the Foundry is the last thing they want to worry about. The quickest fix is turning off rewards.
Without an influx of new ratings to displace the entrenched grinders, how would shutting off the rewards actually fix the rankings?
If anything, this sounds like a recipe for getting lots of the "iphgtipahgi" and "test XYZ" missions 'squatting' in the top ranks due to having a single 5-star review and no one being willing to take the time to play through them and get them out of the 5.0 slot.
Like I said though, I understand the frustration that's lead you to where you're at and I respect your right to have a different opinion. I just worry that such a heavy-handed reaction will only serve to hurt Foundry participation across all player segments - including the players who would be instrumental in supplying the influx of fresh reviews to push story missions up to the top of the chart following such a nerf.
Please don't take this as a slight against anyone who has posted here, I just don't think I have anything further to contribute.
Nouveau riche LTS member
Not sure how the foundry rep would work for rewards though.
X of player 1's aliens as b/doffs?
A crazy new weapon type?
A generic escort, cruiser or science upon hitting tier 5 ? :O
My character Tsin'xing
Why? Because what you or I may think of as a cool way to get rewards may not be the next guy's cup of tea, and vice versa. If someone gets into doing grinders, great, more power to you. If you want to do a story-based episode that takes so long you can't fit it into the Officer Reports hour, have at it. I'm inclined to agree with the idea that what the Foundry needs is better organization. Let the author classify their work as Grinder, Story, mixed, whatever...and let the search functionality be upgraded. As a brand new author to the Foundry, I'm trying to figure out how all of the creative bits work. Does that mean that if I want to share my episode with the people in my fleet that I shouldn't be able to, because it's not your idea of what should be on the Foundry? Who gets to decide that?
If rewards are curtailed, I think the Foundry will die a slow and painful death from two fronts. For one thing, if I can't get acceptable rewards (read: dilithium -- I really don't need the drops) for going out and trying someone's episode, then there's not much incentive for me to do so. Why would I try an author I don't know, if my efforts aren't going to be rewarded? And as a new author if what I create can't get rewarded, then there's less reason for me to spend my precious leisure time creating new content. The Foundry then becomes less and less relevant as new potential authors are turned away.
While there are always problems in the opening up a small group to a larger audience, there are benefits to be gained as well. You're always going to get tradeoffs no matter what you choose to do.
Respectfully,
Morgan@starboysfo
Fleet Admiral of LGBT of Starfleet 9th Order.
We authors are also players. We like dilithium as much as the next player. Many if not all of us are in fleets and we want to help those fleets progress. You'll see many threads here and in the bug forum from authors protesting the recent change where we can't get rewards from our own missions.
The problem is exploits. An exploit is different from a grinder. Most of us story authors have made our peace with grinders. It may not be what we like, but we really don't have any right to say they shouldn't be here. Yes, Cryptic has made statements to the effect that story missions are the intended use, but most grinders do not violate the EULA and are thus acceptable. We'd love some better ways to narrow the search so that everyone can find what they want to play more easily. I don't know of anyone who wouldn't want that.
Exploits are another story, that's getting something for nothing. The community has shown it has a voracious appetite for exploiting the Foundry, going back to the beginning. I'm afraid I can't think of any reward scheme that can't be exploited. If you can think of one, please put it forward, cause I got nuthin'.
Is removing all rewards the answer? I don't know. I don't think the Foundry would die if it did. We got plenty of plays before there were rewards. Sure there would be fewer players, but not none. I personally wish the Foundry didn't have to be beholden to new game systems like dilithium and fleets that came later. But that's not up to me.
But exploits are a problem, a serious enough one that Cryptic is banning people for them. So, I'm open to new ideas. What ya got?
Definitely a valid question.
I think the answer is in metrics. One thing this recent PodcastUGC session brought to light is that the devs gather and utilize very extensive metrics on Foundry use, and indeed they've used that to crack down on the "big exploit" we've see floating about recently.
A series of exception reports could identify most of the exploits and flag them for customer service review and intervention:
This is just off the top of my head, but there are a lot of angles the administrative staff can use to identify questionable cases and scrutinize them. From there, they need to examine the cases for actual terms of use violations - critically this needs to be done by a human being, not an algorithm. Cases of confirmed exploitation should be addressed with the same vigor we've seen applied to people playing the exploits:
1) Remove mission
2) 1st offense - Delete some or all of the author's numericals
3) 2nd offense - Permanent account ban
In conjunction with this, the devs need to very clearly define where they draw the line between grinder-style combat missions and true exploits and they need to stick to that definition. As you noted, there are high-quality grinders out there and there is a large base of players to whom those missions appeal.
That's the first thing that comes to my mind. I'm sure there are more refined approaches possible, but like you said - providing rewards for any content (not just the Foundry, either) creates a motivation in some players to find and exploit weaknesses in the system. You can remove the motivation by removing the rewards, but that has a lot of collateral damage that I touched on in my previous post. The alternative that I prefer is to mitigate and manage the impact of exploiters by using monitoring & controlling tools - tools we know the devs already have access to - to ease the time burden on the staff enough to allow them to enforce the terms of use.
Some high-profile, vigorous enforcement (obviously, with due attention paid to protecting privacy: no public naming and shaming) on the player and the author end would go a long way to reduce the motivation of "borderline" exploiters to go over to the proverbial dark side.
People always return to their favorite grinders. They'll return to them over and over. Since the most popular missions are always grinders, this characteristic describes most grinders, whether those grinders are exploitative or not.
"RPscenes" contain abnormally high play times as people TRIBBLE in them for hours at a time.
You're expecting a computer to be able to comprehend text, which may or may not be in English.
There's an interesting thing...the foundry TOU does not actually include any rules about the creation of "exploitative" content at all. If you actually read the section regarding the actual prohibited uses, the creation of content designed purely to be mined for rewards is not, in fact, one of the prohibited uses at all. This particular "exploit" as of late has a rather interesting history, too, especially seeing as the developers themselves are known to have used it, and, indeed, may have the been the ones to originate or at least popularize it.
Ultimately, though, the only solution that makes any sense in the long-run is the removal of the special rewards. The Foundry, by its very nature, exists purely to be exploited: You're allowing users to essentially define the actions they have to take to receive a reward. This is basically a system that is meant to be gamed.
No reward is no-play.. simple.
Then its time they delte the whole foundry.
My character Tsin'xing
What are those events?
Nothing wrong with any of that. In fact I wish the Foundry had more tools to help fleets do things together. I emphasize "do things" cause if you've tried to make something where your fleet gets huge amounts of resources for zero effort, then you have an issue.
one of our Officers sets up a trivia based relay race where he is hiding on a specific planet or in a sector. The goal is to figure out the riddles and move to the the next sector and solve the next clue until you find him. By using the foundry as a tool we can setup many stages of the race and without requiring another member to act as a check point, allowing more of our members to actually take part as a contestant in the race.
Theres my two cents. :S ((Also wrote in response to the first post))
To tell the truth, I doubt it is a case that they are mad you are not playing their missions, but upset that the hours they spend in foundry crafting something is outplaced by missions that are basically carbon copies of the last grinder mission where the author doesn't know how press the shift key to make a capitalization or a where a single punctuation mark is. It's almost less that someone plays it that someone even sees it.
Returning to the topic at hand, I don't think the rewards change is the issue anymore. I think it is simply down to how missions are viewed and searched. Spotlight has been great, but new authors don't necessarily end up with a spotlight to get their name out there. Neither do some authors who make constant epics like Deriliction Duty which don't qualify for the spotlights.
We're still dealing with growing pains of changes to the system. Changing things further rashly will not solve the problem, I fear.
I'd really like to see a UI change so we can have different categories of missions, like storyline, combat, etc. I won't blather on about it, because it's all been mentioned before.
I think the reality is that 75%, maybe more, of the player base doesn't care about stories, but it's nice to have our niche where we can tell stories and have them played by those who enjoy them. Those people obviously do exist, since the storyline missions do get plays.
I don't think we need to take the rewards out. The only reason that's suggested is that is what allowed us to have our niche before. We can still have it if we have the ability to tag missions, or have them auto assigned to categories, or whatever.
The ability to follow specific authors is also sorely needed. In addition it would be nice if authors could link to other authors/missions that they enjoy, and if players could have missions suggested to them based on their ratings (similar to how Netflix makes suggestions based on your ratings).
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Quoted for truth.
Sure, there's still going to be exploit maps, but it'll be a lot harder to pull off.
This is probably the only solution to the problem with all the THOUSANDS of exploit missions out there, and even that has quite a few gaps.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
1) People are exploiting it to get not just a bit but maxing out on certain hard to come by economies, best thing to do atm would be to turn off rewards till may. Though the people that figured this out have most likely made millions and used it to obtain most, if not all rare items in the game and have most likely horded them too.
2) I don't play the foundry unless there's a reward. I loved the foundry when it gave fleet marks, really helped, after that kinda meh unless it's spotlight or a friends.
3) For every good mission there are 10-20 bad/boring missions. I think missions should be available for 2-4 weeks once published, after that if they don't get played they're removed for 4 weeks or more. I know this won't be popular to hear but there's a lot of very boring missions out there that might give a little chuckle the first time but otherwise is nothing remarkable. This just clogs up searching for and playing the gems.
4) A bloomin time limit on them, I don't want to play a mission to find 2 hours later I'm still playing it and wading through someones amature novel. Release missions in chapters no longer than 30-60 mins and label as such.
Yeah that's just my opinion on some things recently and some of my experiences. There's been some gems but there's just too rubbish floating around.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
1. Already solved.
2. You probably know already that you're not the kind of person we're making the missions for, then. :P
3. And how do you know -why- the mission isn't being played? I've got 3 missions that don't even qualify for rewards yet because too few people have played through them.
One of them has had 2 plays and has a solid 4 stars, another had 4-5 and is just under 3 stars. (My fault entirely, tried to toy with mechanics that simply DO NOT work in the Foundry, and didn't pull it down immediately upon finding out. The fact that I didn't proofread the dialogue after fixing the stuff didn't help at all.
4. And how do you propose we make those chapters if we've got a limit on project slots? I don't have that kind of problem (yet), but I'm pretty certain Nagorak would run out of project slots (AFTER buying as many slots as possible) if he tried to do what you suggested.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
My character Tsin'xing
I just wanted to say that it's not as easy as you think. If you happen to make long missions, it seems like you could just cut them up, but it's not really practical. I've obviously devoted considerable thought to this in the past.
First of all, you don't really know how long each player will devote to a single map. Sometimes you can have a map where if you talk to everyone it takes an hour, and if you do nothing but follow the main objectives it takes 10 minutes. So, if you split the mission after that point, for some people it will just seem ridiculous.
Then there's the annoyance of having to accept and queue up 3-4 missions just to finish the one full mission. If we had some sort of campaign system this might be more practical, but as it currently stands it's a definite hindrance.
And what about people rating each part separately? It's like reading a book and reading the first chapter and rating it, then the second and so on. While ideally you'd have the strongest chapter first, to pull people in, sometimes the initial build up is a very incomplete experience. With Dereliction Duty, for example, it would pretty much mean that the first mission segment would end right after you received your briefing, which seems ridiculous to me. In general, I think it's better if the whole mission is rated as a full experience.
I accept the argument that 2 hour missions may not fit with what the game has become, but I have little interest in making 30 minute missions. Long missions are just what my creative process ends up producing. I guess I'm just too long winded for some. :cool:
My suggestion is if a mission says it takes 2 hours, just don't play it if you want one that takes 30 minutes. Almost everyone who makes long missions (the handful of us) clearly labels the length, knowing full well that not everyone wants to play such long missions. And also if it says 2 hours, consider that could mean it could take anywhere from 1 hour to 4 hours depending on your play speed and how long you spend checking everything out.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Perhaps the inclusion of a compulsory average time for completion might be helpful. It's not ferpect but it is certainly one of the reasons a lot (well in my experience I could be wrong) of people ignore the foundry. They don't know what they're picking up from a mission, I might want a 30 minute mission to pass the time while on cooldown if labelled as approx 30mins it would help everyone. If labeled as 4 hours I won't pick it up then give a 1 star review after quiting stating "I'm a magpie it is too lon...OOOooo SHINEY!!"
You may say that I'm not the type of person you make missions for which might be true in some ways but the current direction of the game does not make people want to play the foundry. The rewards have been fairly poor and the game is certainly leaning in a grindy direction and if less people are playing the foundry, the more likely it is to lose support.
Oh btw what was done about the foundry and that exploit? All I heard was that customer services were removing dilithium from people that used it and then banning them if they continued.
It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.
Has damage got out of control?
This is the last thing I will post.
Did you know that you can custom search for missions that fall into a category of 20-30 mins, 30-60 mins, and 60+?
Use the custom search and it won't be such a guessing game. Just fyi.