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What keeps Foundry Authors authoring?
admiralmurphy1
Member Posts: 4 Arc User
So with all of the bugs in the Foundry and no word on anything for STO's Foundry in some time other then a few vague comments here and there, I'm curious as to how other authors feel right now about making missions. Are you still making mission? If so, or if not so, why? What's keeping you interested in Foundry Authoring at this time?
For me I would love to be working on new missions, but since Legacy of Romulus I've been kicked from the Foundry most times by an error message, and when actually in the tool map previews never load, or take minutes to load. On top of that not hearing anything about Foundry development for STO has me pushing off authoring a mission.
For me I would love to be working on new missions, but since Legacy of Romulus I've been kicked from the Foundry most times by an error message, and when actually in the tool map previews never load, or take minutes to load. On top of that not hearing anything about Foundry development for STO has me pushing off authoring a mission.
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But generally my reason for doing anything in games still stands: because I enjoy it.
While the bugs have stopped me from doing as much as i like ( i'm Crashing to desktop now so can't do anything ) i haven't lost enthusiasm to author , i love playing STORY content, and i like the idea that perhaps someone else will enjoy mine
Heck, I've gotten that multiple times just trying to get into the game. (Last week. Haven't really played since then)
I feel the result of this is predominately the introduction of Spotlight Missions and getting even greater rewards for them. That means it's our fault just as much as Cryptic, because we argued that such things were important -- but what I don't think we realized was exactly how much players play the Foundry for dilithium.
The spotlight missions guarantee working stories that are excellent that give double rewards. Why would you ever want to try any other avenue? The problem with being spotlighted, is that spotlights are actually too good.
I sometimes wonder if we shouldn't nerf those rewards and buff them for non-spotlighted missions. But exactly how remains to be seen. Perhaps rewarding players for playing a spotlighted mission with double rewards for only the FIRST time they play it, and then it gives normal rewards for all the other times? But I feel like there still needs to be an incentive for normal missions.
The biggest problem with spotlights is that the authors don't like it all around -- it removes editing capabilities of the missions, and removes interest away from non-spotlighted missions. It needs fixing.
Outside of that, yes, the bugs are terrible, and no, I'm starting to think there isn't a dedicated Foundry team anymore.
Check out my Foundry missions
Fed: "To Helna and Back", "Rema Donna", "Animations with Helna", "Mudd's Weapons", "Waiting for Wednesday", "Monolith"
KDF: "Time the Enemy", "Time the Ally", "Time the Traitor"
(1) To get the error #s when it crashes, to send to Frost.
and
(2) because i am a storyteller, and honestly the most fun I have in the game is when editing. For now at least, I can put up with the nonsense we have to put up with currently.
and
(3) The current SBUGC Contest. Story Focused, accepting the broken tool, so no focus on building maps(preview time problem), Fed Only (since KDF foundary is broken for so many), basically a contest that takes the current state of things into mind.
It gives me something to do, since I can't really work on my KDF missions.
Eventually the problems will have become more than I can handle, and I will just quit authoring until the thing is fixed (if it ever is).
I am maintaining my ever positive outlook for now, but it's faltering.
also one of my mission broke because of a map got half destroyed and having my work damaged always sticks in my craw.
I was working on mission 20 but the long load times combined with everything above meant that I had no interest to chug through the problems and delays and my interest totally died.
Chances are I would have taken a break anyway after number 20 anyway, but they certainly have not helped, and I have no interest to go back until they are at least fixed.
It helps that I went and released a mission that proved fairly popular but ended in a cliffhanger and now almost every review I get and conversation I have about the Foundry includes the question, "When is part 2 coming out?" Needless to say, I'll be burned in effigy if I don't finish it. :eek:
Beyond that it comes from a desire to tell a story and be clever doing it. There are just some ideas that eat you up inside if you don't express them.
Does seem that we need something between Spotlight and normal. The number of spotlights is very very small compared to the number of good missions. Rather than a single spotlight, might be best to have area-specific recognition (story, technical ability, combat, ground, space...) that would cover a much larger number of missions. Kind of like 'awards' or 'decorations' or something. I've given up using the in-game search to discover missions though, it's hopeless.
Given that Cryptic is unlikely to do much, it would be good to establish something like a cross between UGC's listings and the sto wiki listings. If you think like a review magazine where you can put mission info up and it can record average ratings based on categories and also have an "editor's pick" style review. An easier way to look through missions like that would be great.
I've never heard of you :O
There are stories to be told.
For the people who are still aliiiiiive.
A. The foundry is in such an unusable state.
B. People can't find my missions due to a really awful search listings.
C. The lists are cluttered up with exploits, and Cryptic doesn't seem to care that "Admiral Bobo" represents their top 50 (and only 50) mission listings.
D. The game has become an endgame grindfest that teaches players not to care about story, even Cryptic's own stories once a player hits 50 on the second war front. If they don't care that nobody is playing their own Cardassian front, why would they care if nobody is playing our stories?
E. From my perspective as an author, our "Foundry Producer" has no resources or authority to actually be a "Foundry Producer" other than add in some props and costumes on her downtime. That's not "production" in my vocabulary.
F. Our other STO Foundry-related devs consist of BranFlakes, who isn't a dev, and QA's Frost, who can only point out how broken things are to some mysterious group of people who mess around with this thing without communicating with us.
G. Our "foundry team" works on a different game, as far as I know.
From my point of view, there is one person clearly in charge of the STO Foundry and the state that it's in: Dan Stahl. He decides the direction of a new season. By extension, he decides whether or not to devote any resources or people to making this thing functional and out of the beta. I'm not talking about features here.
We have been asking for STO stuff for STO's foundry. We need the art team to make stuff. We need the audio guys to add stuff. We need integration with endgame, etc. etc. None of that is the realm of a "core" team.
If Dan thinks that it's not his department, while that "core" department neglects his game's Foundry, then nobody is in charge of STO's Foundry. A good manager cares and acts if the ketchup packets that go with his burgers are foul.
The Foundry is part of Star Trek Online. If those at the top say, "I'm not in charge of anything to do with that.." That is the source of the problem.
Honestly, this is put up or shut up time for Dan Stahl as our EP. We tolerated and even understood why the Foundry took a neglected back seat during the transition to F2P and the long and delayed release of NW. He told us "the same thing for a year": That they're waiting on NW, that they're hoping to stop neglecting the Foundry once NW launches, and that THIS would be the time that all of us have been waiting for.
The Foundry is a neglected mess. I am drawing the line at January of 2014. If he is still saying the same thing about waiting for the core team, waiting for some kind of tech, waiting for this or that, while not assigning any time to the schedule for his teams to add their STO stuff into the STO Foundry, then that is that.
My desire to contribute content to this game will likely be gone.
This game relied on us for an entire year, while they transitioned to F2P. We were even told by Dan once or twice that we are the reason that STO is still here.
I've come to turn in my chips now. It's time to pay up. What do I get for saving your game?
What keeps me going at this point? I am still trying to work on something secret because I have friends working on it. Otherwise, I'm taking six months off and then deciding whether it's worth it to keep going in 2014, given the track record of 2012-2013.
I plan to go on a hiatus of my own (at least as far as writing new missions is concerned) once my Romulan trilogy is complete, which will probably be the tail end of 2013 or early '14. In the meantime, I still have a story to finish tying into my Fed six-parter.
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
Well, for me...it's the voices.
The ones in my head...
what? you don't have voices in your head?
You think you're better than me because you don't hear voices?
yeah...that's what I thought...keep walkin' pal.
It's not that, it's just the first rule of having voices in your head is, don't talk about the voices in your head. They get jealous knowing they're not the only voices. :P
How does that work? What do you use your own missions for?
But although the anxiousness and fallout are not Cryptic problem, the broken Foundry is.
Cryptic. Fix the damned foundry already.
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
However, the very poor way the Foundry has been treated has made me reconsider whether it's worth the effort. It takes me forever to make my missions, and I could easily devote that time to other creative pursuits that have the potential to be more worthwhile. So, I am currently seriously questioning whether it is worth the time investment.
My major issue is that it seems to me that Cryptic does not value the Foundry at all, or PWE doesn't, but either way it's the same thing. NW Foundry gets worked on, STO Foundry gets absolutely nothing. We don't even get bugs fixed.
In fact, rather than being improved, the Foundry is in a worse state now than it was half a year ago. The inability to separate out grind and story missions, means that a lot of our stories just get buried. Also, older missions are at a ratings disadvantage due to the period of time when ratings defaulted to 3 stars, which means my missions have a lower rating than they otherwise would have, which compounds the problem of being buried by the grinders. And this is compounded, once again, by the fact that only the top 50 missions even show up in the default listing.
In addition to that, It's not clear to me whether the current player base of STO values story based missions. I know there are still people playing who do, but the whole game has been geared towards grind now, and that is reflected in the player base. This wouldn't be a big problem if there were a way to sort the type of missions, but there isn't.
I'm not at the point where I am willing to walk away from the Foundry yet. I do intend to come back and finish up the missions I have in the works, including my remastered version of Perilous Prize, but I am doubtful as to whether I'm going to stick with the Foundry going forward from there. I love making missions in the Foundry and have more stories I'd like to tell, but if things don't improve then I just can't justify devoting that time to the Foundry, as opposed to other projects.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
"Time the Enemy". Try it. Honestly, who cares about whether the KDF has as much content as the Federation, when you can just go to the Foundry tab and help yourself to this stuff? Three cheers for all the Foundry authors and especially ones who can write like this.
Yeah, as much as spotlights are useful for Dilithium ( i get at least 3000 per character every day From the mine and spotlight ) i would be happy to give up the bonus rewards if it meant better promotion of new stories
Perhaps all stories should qualify for a 'Narrative' bonus reward
(Also i played monolith the other day - FANTASTIC mission, very well written with a great plot )
yeah that was a pretty cool mission.
"The time has come to see the world as it is." - Captain James T. Kirk
Twitter - @SDVargo
A greeting.
https://www.youtube.com/user/NenfisGirfud
Ask such missions was a mistake, as are the stars, as are the new score, like so many other things that you have asked and now they have gone wrong.
Freedom for all, we all want to do the mission with the same rewards, but a good search is what you need to ask.
That everyone can choose what they want to play.
But hey, that's what people asked and now we have the results ...
https://www.youtube.com/user/NenfisGirfud
Similar situation here, workign strong on my first one ( been a long time in the making) and then its like the rug was swept out from underneith and now i have to do other stuff
Luckily I am a pretty good artist, so there an alternat outlet for creativity, but its frustration to be so close to making my mission and then be halted so suddenly
The spotlight is a reward by itself, it mean the mission is good, not bugged and work perfectly (for the player, not the author). It should reward the same amount than any other mission. It's the author that should be rewarded for it, not the player.
Oh, and BTW, on NWO, they just had an add on for the foundry. Just saying.
Anyway, according to Cryptic in a recent interview (massively), they make content for fleet (including BIS item) or add on/season just because it is the best thing to earn money. Fleet player pay. New player from LoR pay. New ships, new Doff... sells. Not because people want it, or it would be cool, but because it makes money for their overlords.
Foundry ? No money at all. More or less the contrary, considering the Dil earned can be changed for zen.
NWO is still new, they can earn money by using the Foundry tool for marketing to new people. Once the novelty is gone, they will probably let the Foundry as it is and forget it.
Don't expect anything from Cryptic, except a kind dev adding a few costumes during his/her spare time.