But is it actually an exploit? Against the TOS?
I wouldn't want to risk getting banned.
Cryptic has a long history of letting people exploit the Foundry. My god, how long were the clickers tolerated with the daily wrapper? Like a year and a half, iirc.
That being said, I find it hard to believe that a player can spend 20 minutes shooting fish in a barrel, walk about with a TRIBBLE load of ECs, and believe that they're using the Foundry as it was intended to be used.
I'm pretty sure said player is aware that they are gaming a faulty mechanic on a mission that was intentionally designed to be drop the most amount of loot for the least amount of effort.
Just like with afk boff grinders. Want some dilithium? Go make a sandwich.
I see very few legit grinders, like accolade hunts to kill 26 mobs of Undine, back to back.
Rather, nearly all of these missions are more like putting melee enemies on the other side of a cliff and using grenades to kill them.
Actually, I've recently thought up a fairly simple solution to the problem of finding story missions among all the grinders: the authors could add tags to their descriptions. Just simple text, like so:
[Story mission] [Romulans] [Diplomacy] [Light space combat] [New Romulus]
or
#EC grinder# #Kill box# #ESD#
That way, a person could just type in "[Story mission]" to the search to filter out all the grinders.
Of course, maybe the reason I haven't seen anyone do this "simple solution" is because it's considered spam or against the rules for some other reason.
The downside, of course, is that not all missions will be tagged by their authors, but it's better than nothing.
The Foundry should remain as is, a tool used by players to create content for the players, whether they're just simple grinds or well thought-out missions. The Foundry is in need of a serious update to be more organized and feel more integrated into the main game as Neverwinter does it, but still stand out as it's own separate thing so that players have the choice of playing Foundry missions or avoiding them. It must NOT feel necessary. It must NOT feel forced. But it SHOULD have more of a presence in the game.
I am wholeheartedly against the idea of player content becoming official game content, such as additional episodes or episodes meant to replace older ones made by Cryptic. The spotlight is where endorsed user generated content MUST end. This far, no further.
There is a cap for drops, been there for a very long time so no you cannot "spend 20 minutes shooting fish in a barrel, walk about with a TRIBBLE load of ECs" since there is cap, a ACCOUNT cap on drops.
I guess it depends on our definition of TRIBBLE load. If I'm grinding for a master key or a purple doff, that loot cap max goes a long way, in terms of what I could get for shooting fish in a barrel. I would imagine that a lot of folks feel likewise, since they play those grinders everyday.
If you can think of a more efficient way to get 1/4th, 1/3rd, or maybe even half of the way to a master key in 15-20 minutes without selling something, please share. Sorry if I'm ignorant. You're right that as a Foundry author, I rarely grind.
Sure, you can do it only once a day. That doesn't invalidate the fact that you can spend 20 minutes shooting fish in a barrel and walk away with a sizable chunk of ECs. As far as I know, that is the most efficient way to get that many ECs when you are broke and need to fill your buckets and doff assignments.
Unfortunately, there really is no way to know what is really out there. Complain loudly. Personally, I would like see Cryptic do something about the exploits. It costs them money.
For example, yesterday I contemplated spending $10 to buy a cxp boost, not knowing that they're on the exchange for around 400k ECs. Then, when I found out, I needed 400k ECs. I started to use legit means of getting those ECs until I thought, "you know, let's just see what a certain 'Admiral doofus goes to war' grants. After all, it's the number 2 and number 5 top rated Foundry mission."
After 20 minutes, I had farmed enough ECs to buy $20 worth of zen store cxp boosts.
Sorry Cryptic, you just gave away something that I was willing to pay for. Sorry that I and so many players are stealing from you.
That's the reality of what is going on. The entire grind system of endgame content is exploiting the Foundry as step 1 to farming tons of ECs used to buy what the starbases, embassies, dilithium mines, and doff systems require.
Solution: Make the nebula effect map-wide. There shouldn't be a legit reason for me to shoot fish in a barrel.
Do you really want to incur the forum wrath of angry STO players like the last time you made these kinds of baseless arguments prior to and during the removal of the Daily Foundry Dilithium mission? The foundry can be used as people see fit and Cryptic has already put in proper limitations to prevent people from overly abusing it. If your anger over is over grind missions taking over the foundry mission list, then blame Cryptic for that, not grind mission authors and those who play the missions they create. Cryptic created an extremely sloppy foundry list which is very difficult to navigate through and gives no options for differentiation between the different types of missions.
In fact, Dan Stahl should be doubly blamed for the mess that the foundry is in. How many times did Dan tell us that the foundry was essentially going to be the biggest source of new content? How many times did he pretty much say go play foundry missions if you're bored? With all respect, Dan, the way the foundry missions are currently organized is a complete disaster, and it needs a major revamp. Missions should have different classifications based on type that should ultimately serve as the new categories under which foundry missions are placed; for example, grind, length of mission, episode series, etc. It would be nice if you could include us in on this revamp, as well.
But going back to my original point kirksplat, you need to set aside whatever feelings you harbor against the creators of these missions and get real, especially when you do the grind missions yourself and enjoy the EC you earn from it.
Cryptic created an extremely sloppy foundry list which is very difficult to navigate through and gives no options for differentiation between the different types of missions.
It's one of the main reasons why I don't use the foundry for story missions. How the heck am I supposed to find anything other than by word of mouth? Maybe if I'm lucky, a foundry spotlight will recommend a good mission but that doesn't mean that every mission worth playing will get spotlighted. TBH, I don't have the time to go around and hunt for which ones are the best missions. I'm busy enough Risa grinding my Klingon rommie's rear end off just to get enough marks on my alts. Yeah, I know. I don't have to grind if I don't want to, but I have no choice given my time constraints.
There is no reason to overcomplicate the solution for this, implement tags. Then authors can tag their missions
Action
Adventure
Comedy
Crime
Horror
Mystery
Political
Dungeon
Grind
Tresure
What have you. Imagination is the limit.
Then permit tag searches from a proper foundry GUI.
It's almost as if such a thing was dictated by, GASP, COMMON SENSE!??!?!? Cue spooky Alfred Hitchcockish suspenseful music and zoom into the list of tags above. MY GOD!!
We're asking for programmer time and UI improvements for a tool that is barely maintained in a working condition. It's been broken for two months. Nearly every game update breaks it further. The foundry is far less functional than it was prior to season 4.
That's the state its in right now. It'll probably be in a worse state a year from now. Yeah, the tags are a good idea, a new search system is a good idea, and a new rating system is a good idea.
It took over a year to get a UI change to Foundry spotlights after Dstahl started talking about it.
The foundry is the lowest of lowest priorities for our EP. IMO, the best I can expect is a small change to an FX prop that eliminates a way to exploit the foundry.
As soon as the foundry is functional again, those programmers are going elsewhere, I would reckon.
If you can think of a more efficient way to get 1/4th, 1/3rd, or maybe even half of the way to a master key in 15-20 minutes without selling something, please share. Sorry if I'm ignorant. You're right that as a Foundry author, I rarely grind.
Sure, you can do it only once a day. That doesn't invalidate the fact that you can spend 20 minutes shooting fish in a barrel and walk away with a sizable chunk of ECs. As far as I know, that is the most efficient way to get that many ECs when you are broke and need to fill your buckets and doff assignments.
Tour the Universe. 100K EC in less than four minutes. In fact, the main limiting factor (other than the fact that it's only an hour) is the loading time at Sol System and ESD.
Rumour has it that the neverwinter foundry is going to get tags
If that happens, I would hope that our fellow STO foundry authors would get uber mad. How is the neverwinter franchise worth more than the star-trek franchise? Get your priorities straight Perfect World.
And slipstream ends when crossing sectors now, before we could walk with a million EC or more if we had a Vesta.
And with no particular justification for it either, especially when you consider that Cryptic has been saying it was going to merge all of the sector block maps into one big one for how many seasons now and that the slipstream would never run out on one big map before the timer expires.
We're asking for programmer time and UI improvements for a tool that is barely maintained in a working condition. It's been broken for two months. Nearly every game update breaks it further. The foundry is far less functional than it was prior to season 4.
There's no reason authors can't put text tags in themselves, though. The foundry search also searches mission descriptions, so this should work unless there are rules prohibiting it. We just need to come up with a semi-standardized list.
There's no reason authors can't put text tags in themselves, though. The foundry search also searches mission descriptions, so this should work unless there are rules prohibiting it. We just need to come up with a semi-standardized list.
Google mail has had tags and labels since as far back as I can remember-2007, 2008. Why is it that top notch developers can't write a simple program for including tags for foundry authors and that lets players easily search them out in the foundry mission list? I guess we're asking for too much.
There's no reason authors can't put text tags in themselves, though. The foundry search also searches mission descriptions, so this should work unless there are rules prohibiting it. We just need to come up with a semi-standardized list.
OK, we'll try it. I'll start simple and see how many authors will add [story] someplace in their mission description.
And with no particular justification for it either, especially when you consider that Cryptic has been saying it was going to merge all of the sector block maps into one big one for how many seasons now and that the slipstream would never run out on one big map before the timer expires.
So ignoring all the rest of the conversation, i do want to ask where you have heard this? and if you can cite sources or provide quotes ?
the only reason I ask is because the only thing I have ever heard regarding the "1 sector to rule then all' idea was from Gecko when he said quite plainly that it would be a nightmare to try and implement, and that it was very likely not going to happen any time soon, which would seem in direct opposition to a claim that they have been talking about doing it for seasons.
I would think it was , and is still considered a "wouldn't that be neat and great" idea , but I am pretty sure this is no where near the "to do list" and never has been.
So ignoring all the rest of the conversation, i do want to ask where you have heard this? and if you can cite sources or provide quotes ?
the only reason I ask is because the only thing I have ever heard regarding the "1 sector to rule then all' idea was from Gecko when he said quite plainly that it would be a nightmare to try and implement, and that it was very likely not going to happen any time soon, which would seem in direct opposition to a claim that they have been talking about doing it for seasons.
I would think it was , and is still considered a "wouldn't that be neat and great" idea , but I am pretty sure this is no where near the "to do list" and never has been.
Right here in Ask Cryptic September 2011 and directly from Dan:
Q: Kilawpilath: How will free to play affect removing the space boarders in Sector Space?
A: We wanted to be able to remove all of the sector space zoning prior to F2P launch, but due to schedule conflicts it will be after F2P launch before we can move to a one sector galaxy map. It is still something we want to do and will most likely be included in a future Season.
Q: Kilawpilath: How will free to play affect removing the space boarders in Sector Space?
A: We wanted to be able to remove all of the sector space zoning prior to F2P launch, but due to schedule conflicts it will be after F2P launch before we can move to a one sector galaxy map. It is still something we want to do and will most likely be included in a future Season.
Edit to Add : thanks for finding the quote.
He talked about how cool it would be in an ask cryptic 22 months ago, and this equals "talking about doing it for seasons now".
He stated "It is still something we want to do and will most likely be included in a future Season."
I joined the game soon after the ask cryptic you quoted. Aside from players talking about it, and how they want it, and hearing Gecko talk about how tough it would be, I had never seen a Dev say they are actively working on this. (i.e. Spending seasons talking about doing it, as you implied)
I'm not disagreeing that it would be cool, but I think to hold the Devs to a thing (not even a promise) said 2 years ago about a feature that would be cool is just silly.
That's my opinion.
trust me , I agree that there are things to complain about, but non-promises that weren't kept from 2 years ago and worrying about those .... just not on my agenda.
Edit to add : It is quite true that Tour the Galaxy can be quite rewarding EC wise.
So far as the search thing.
I have long held that it is the best solution.
And we dont need dozens of tags.
we need 2.
(1) combat
and
(2) story
An author can only choose one of the lists for his mission to appear in.
grinders and farmers would obviously fall under combat.
After every play, players are asked to click a button of what of the 2 tags they thought it was. After 10 or 25 or 50 or 100 votes the system can weigh the votes and see if the mission need be moved.
Things like comedy, action, exploration, etc .... just another layer of confusing for an automated system. If your mission is a comedy, clearly state that in the mission description.
I tagged one of my missions with [STORY] and [STRY]. It was not among the results that showed mostly grinders that say something like "this mission has no story." I'll try hashtags.
This is the biggest issue with using tags. Most players don't check the foundry, how are they going to know what tags to look for?
Most won't really, but they might notice that missions they enjoyed used those tags. It can't hurt us to use search terms, right? The question is, will it help?
Cryptic themselves primarily design 'grind' encounter content with minimal story that you don't even have to pay attention to for endgame. Why would the UGC be any different eh?
Now had they gone ahead and put battleship royal into the 'spotlight' category it would have become the default number one grinder mission and no one would bother with all the others so they would never had clogged up the basic searches but when I suggested that all I received were flames. Oh well.
Comments
Cryptic has a long history of letting people exploit the Foundry. My god, how long were the clickers tolerated with the daily wrapper? Like a year and a half, iirc.
That being said, I find it hard to believe that a player can spend 20 minutes shooting fish in a barrel, walk about with a TRIBBLE load of ECs, and believe that they're using the Foundry as it was intended to be used.
I'm pretty sure said player is aware that they are gaming a faulty mechanic on a mission that was intentionally designed to be drop the most amount of loot for the least amount of effort.
Just like with afk boff grinders. Want some dilithium? Go make a sandwich.
I see very few legit grinders, like accolade hunts to kill 26 mobs of Undine, back to back.
Rather, nearly all of these missions are more like putting melee enemies on the other side of a cliff and using grenades to kill them.
[Story mission] [Romulans] [Diplomacy] [Light space combat] [New Romulus]
or
#EC grinder# #Kill box# #ESD#
That way, a person could just type in "[Story mission]" to the search to filter out all the grinders.
Of course, maybe the reason I haven't seen anyone do this "simple solution" is because it's considered spam or against the rules for some other reason.
The downside, of course, is that not all missions will be tagged by their authors, but it's better than nothing.
I am wholeheartedly against the idea of player content becoming official game content, such as additional episodes or episodes meant to replace older ones made by Cryptic. The spotlight is where endorsed user generated content MUST end. This far, no further.
I guess it depends on our definition of TRIBBLE load. If I'm grinding for a master key or a purple doff, that loot cap max goes a long way, in terms of what I could get for shooting fish in a barrel. I would imagine that a lot of folks feel likewise, since they play those grinders everyday.
If you can think of a more efficient way to get 1/4th, 1/3rd, or maybe even half of the way to a master key in 15-20 minutes without selling something, please share. Sorry if I'm ignorant. You're right that as a Foundry author, I rarely grind.
Sure, you can do it only once a day. That doesn't invalidate the fact that you can spend 20 minutes shooting fish in a barrel and walk away with a sizable chunk of ECs. As far as I know, that is the most efficient way to get that many ECs when you are broke and need to fill your buckets and doff assignments.
Do you really want to incur the forum wrath of angry STO players like the last time you made these kinds of baseless arguments prior to and during the removal of the Daily Foundry Dilithium mission? The foundry can be used as people see fit and Cryptic has already put in proper limitations to prevent people from overly abusing it. If your anger over is over grind missions taking over the foundry mission list, then blame Cryptic for that, not grind mission authors and those who play the missions they create. Cryptic created an extremely sloppy foundry list which is very difficult to navigate through and gives no options for differentiation between the different types of missions.
In fact, Dan Stahl should be doubly blamed for the mess that the foundry is in. How many times did Dan tell us that the foundry was essentially going to be the biggest source of new content? How many times did he pretty much say go play foundry missions if you're bored? With all respect, Dan, the way the foundry missions are currently organized is a complete disaster, and it needs a major revamp. Missions should have different classifications based on type that should ultimately serve as the new categories under which foundry missions are placed; for example, grind, length of mission, episode series, etc. It would be nice if you could include us in on this revamp, as well.
But going back to my original point kirksplat, you need to set aside whatever feelings you harbor against the creators of these missions and get real, especially when you do the grind missions yourself and enjoy the EC you earn from it.
Agreed.
/10chars
It's one of the main reasons why I don't use the foundry for story missions. How the heck am I supposed to find anything other than by word of mouth? Maybe if I'm lucky, a foundry spotlight will recommend a good mission but that doesn't mean that every mission worth playing will get spotlighted. TBH, I don't have the time to go around and hunt for which ones are the best missions. I'm busy enough Risa grinding my Klingon rommie's rear end off just to get enough marks on my alts. Yeah, I know. I don't have to grind if I don't want to, but I have no choice given my time constraints.
Action
Adventure
Comedy
Crime
Horror
Mystery
Political
Dungeon
Grind
Tresure
What have you. Imagination is the limit.
Then permit tag searches from a proper foundry GUI.
It's almost as if such a thing was dictated by, GASP, COMMON SENSE!??!?!? Cue spooky Alfred Hitchcockish suspenseful music and zoom into the list of tags above. MY GOD!!
We're asking for programmer time and UI improvements for a tool that is barely maintained in a working condition. It's been broken for two months. Nearly every game update breaks it further. The foundry is far less functional than it was prior to season 4.
That's the state its in right now. It'll probably be in a worse state a year from now. Yeah, the tags are a good idea, a new search system is a good idea, and a new rating system is a good idea.
It took over a year to get a UI change to Foundry spotlights after Dstahl started talking about it.
The foundry is the lowest of lowest priorities for our EP. IMO, the best I can expect is a small change to an FX prop that eliminates a way to exploit the foundry.
As soon as the foundry is functional again, those programmers are going elsewhere, I would reckon.
Well.. the pvp is at least equal..
Lets face it, the only priority of the dev team is to make money and they make money with new ships and the "omgnewship!!11one!!" guys.
Division Hispana
www.divisionhispana.com
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
Tour the Universe. 100K EC in less than four minutes. In fact, the main limiting factor (other than the fact that it's only an hour) is the loading time at Sol System and ESD.
If that happens, I would hope that our fellow STO foundry authors would get uber mad. How is the neverwinter franchise worth more than the star-trek franchise? Get your priorities straight Perfect World.
And with no particular justification for it either, especially when you consider that Cryptic has been saying it was going to merge all of the sector block maps into one big one for how many seasons now and that the slipstream would never run out on one big map before the timer expires.
There's no reason authors can't put text tags in themselves, though. The foundry search also searches mission descriptions, so this should work unless there are rules prohibiting it. We just need to come up with a semi-standardized list.
Google mail has had tags and labels since as far back as I can remember-2007, 2008. Why is it that top notch developers can't write a simple program for including tags for foundry authors and that lets players easily search them out in the foundry mission list? I guess we're asking for too much.
OK, we'll try it. I'll start simple and see how many authors will add [story] someplace in their mission description.
So ignoring all the rest of the conversation, i do want to ask where you have heard this? and if you can cite sources or provide quotes ?
the only reason I ask is because the only thing I have ever heard regarding the "1 sector to rule then all' idea was from Gecko when he said quite plainly that it would be a nightmare to try and implement, and that it was very likely not going to happen any time soon, which would seem in direct opposition to a claim that they have been talking about doing it for seasons.
I would think it was , and is still considered a "wouldn't that be neat and great" idea , but I am pretty sure this is no where near the "to do list" and never has been.
http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=556561
Right here in Ask Cryptic September 2011 and directly from Dan:
Q: Kilawpilath: How will free to play affect removing the space boarders in Sector Space?
A: We wanted to be able to remove all of the sector space zoning prior to F2P launch, but due to schedule conflicts it will be after F2P launch before we can move to a one sector galaxy map. It is still something we want to do and will most likely be included in a future Season.
Let me first try it by tagging a mission or two and see what shows when searching for the tag. If it works, we'll try to spread the word.
The biggest downside is I wouldn't put it past a decision maker to then think, "They don't need proper tags, since they do it themselves."
Edit to Add : thanks for finding the quote.
He talked about how cool it would be in an ask cryptic 22 months ago, and this equals "talking about doing it for seasons now".
He stated "It is still something we want to do and will most likely be included in a future Season."
I joined the game soon after the ask cryptic you quoted. Aside from players talking about it, and how they want it, and hearing Gecko talk about how tough it would be, I had never seen a Dev say they are actively working on this. (i.e. Spending seasons talking about doing it, as you implied)
I'm not disagreeing that it would be cool, but I think to hold the Devs to a thing (not even a promise) said 2 years ago about a feature that would be cool is just silly.
That's my opinion.
trust me , I agree that there are things to complain about, but non-promises that weren't kept from 2 years ago and worrying about those .... just not on my agenda.
Edit to add : It is quite true that Tour the Galaxy can be quite rewarding EC wise.
So far as the search thing.
I have long held that it is the best solution.
And we dont need dozens of tags.
we need 2.
(1) combat
and
(2) story
An author can only choose one of the lists for his mission to appear in.
grinders and farmers would obviously fall under combat.
After every play, players are asked to click a button of what of the 2 tags they thought it was. After 10 or 25 or 50 or 100 votes the system can weigh the votes and see if the mission need be moved.
Things like comedy, action, exploration, etc .... just another layer of confusing for an automated system. If your mission is a comedy, clearly state that in the mission description.
just my two latinum slips worth
This is the biggest issue with using tags. Most players don't check the foundry, how are they going to know what tags to look for?
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
Most won't really, but they might notice that missions they enjoyed used those tags. It can't hurt us to use search terms, right? The question is, will it help?
1. tagging #story or [STORY] doesn't work. However, tagging #stry does, however,
2. Only 50ish missions show by searching a tag
So, even if we all tagged our missions as #stry, only 50ish results would show.
Now had they gone ahead and put battleship royal into the 'spotlight' category it would have become the default number one grinder mission and no one would bother with all the others so they would never had clogged up the basic searches but when I suggested that all I received were flames. Oh well.