Seriously, this needs to stop. Dev Blog 29 addresses this. They're NOT replacing it with anything. They're putting the assets into the foundry and calling it a day. The Foundry is what they say is their ORIGINAL INTENTION for exploration. So they've now hitched it to the foundry.
They're done. They just said so.
There's no new exploration revamp coming. Never was.
How anyone can continue to think that they have some super secret plan to replace and improve this after Dev Blog 29 is just insane.
It is pure speculation that the devs will never add or will add an exploration system. Where in that dev blog did the devs state that there will never be an exploration revamp? You are just inferring that since the Foundry meets the original goals of the Exploration Cluster, then there is no exploration revamp. That is not proof of anything. Exploration Clusters are an outdated concept that only gave the illusion of Exploration. We don't need Exploration Clusters, we need actual Exploration and that can only occur in unexplored space like the Delta Quadrant where there is no Alpha Quadrant presence.
Cryptic has always been cryptic about what future content they are currently working on. So it is insane for anyone to think that this dev blog is proof that STO will never have an Exploration Revamp. We might never see any type of Exploration in the game again, but it is just as likely that we will have a better Exploration system in the future.
I'm actually amazed that so many people are up in arms about them being removed. I didn't think anyone used them.
Wow, how hard is this to understand? The missions may have sucked TRIBBLE, but the core of the worry is Cryptic's openly-stated intent to "improve the average quality of the game" not by adding better content, but by stripping out the worst. What gets axed without ceremony or replacement the next time they want to "improve the average quality?"
[insert "poor quality content is still content, don't like them-don't do them, how does removing content improve the game?" response here]
I vote that the Third Borg Dynasty should return as an April Fools joke or something...
Because those missions should be (rightfully) embarrassing to a dev who cares about the presentation, look, and experience of the game. Sure, we can say that the game needs a different system, but poor content is poor content. Poor content is bad.
Read the blog really. Season 9.5 both memory alpha and exploration clusters will be removed permanent. Its not coming back.
Cryptic wants actually forcing players to create content for Cryptic because they consider it a improvement. By the way, its free labor and Cryptic is goibg make the money from it. They get the $$$ while you make content with no compensation.
If you think I'm full of bs read the blogs.
Season 10 is going be another grindfest. This time its Xindi. Check out the game leaks. Some of that content is already in patches we already downloaded.
So. Basically Season 10: Grindfest And Nerf
The new crafting system already have a built in nerf.
I wont miss exploration missions, I will miss the Cell ship and Tuffli's ability to invite friends for social doffing in exploration clusters. The lazily designed replacement (sector interact) is also taking away half of the (by design) opportunities for those assignments from my Dept. Heads. Everyone should be able to take exploration assignments from the bridge of their ship, and anyone else who happens to be aboard her. With SS9.5 this has vanished. There is no logical reason for damaging the doffing system so severely.
These problems could be worked around easily while achieving everything Cryptic wants with S9.5. I remind you of this...
I can understand the ostensible reason behind wanting to get rid of the grindy exploration clusters- in fact, way back when, it was a major complaint with the game that one would hit endgame and have nothing to do except grind away in the clusters doing dailies made by Genesis that made no sense. Fair enough.
Just removing them completely seems like a kneejerk move, considering one of their goals is to get more people playing Foundry content. Keep the clusters. Keep the way they work, but just change where the random mission hooks take you.
Instead of going to random Genesis missions (which I agree felt at best like somebody playing with one of those old assets-included RPG makers), change the hooks so that they go to featured Foundry content. If you wanted it to be more robust and feel less like an empty map, it shouldn't take more than an addition of one or two lines of code in the programming that spawns the hooks to give them real titles instead of "[Cluster Name] Anomaly."
The removal of Memory Alpha AND Clusters also affects more than just grinding. For example, there are only 13 playable "diplomacy missions." Only 7 are playable at the start of the game, and of those, 5 are placed on Memory Alpha. I'd really like to see diplomacy not disappear into another points crawl from the doff menu. One of the things that's kept me coming back to STO since open beta is the fact that, unlike other space MMOs that won't be named, the game doesn't boil down to opening up spreadsheets and clicking buttons.
Also, the removal of all these maps may have exactly the opposite effect of its intention. They're being removed because the content isn't up to par and could look like shoddy work, but just removing maps and replacing them with drop-down lists and menus looks really lazy, even when it isn't- it's not a good road to go down. This is getting into opinion more than fact here, but leave the lists and buttons for alpha testing- if the feature is worth including, it's worth taking the time to come up with a halfway decent UX that doesn't feel like playing from the pause menu.
And instead of fixing things, a door in the foundry is offered. You should know I'm not one to rage and protest every tiny change; I've supported you in forum battles in the past (the only time I can recall having expressed any disappointment or annoyance was over the "Romulan" Sand Monument with the Klingon logo in the middle and the lack of a Romulan Republic Superior Power Board when this year's Lohlunat Festival started), but this time, I have to say it: Bad form, Cryptic.
Instead of going to random Genesis missions (which I agree felt at best like somebody playing with one of those old assets-included RPG makers), change the hooks so that they go to featured Foundry content.
We've debated this stuff for a long time. The problem is pretty simple. The random foundry content would need to be vetted, because chances are that a random mission would take you to a test publish or something that starts at a place like Vulcan. Our missions often have very specific story reasons for starting where they do, and it's usually not in an unexplored entry point.
But, it's unrealistic to ask Cryptic to devote a person to trying to find what is out there and what fits for an exploration cluster. They would need to outsource that task or commission a group of hand-chosen people to make exploration cluster missions. Immediately, this suggestion brings cries of "elitism!"
A compromise would be a GM who works with Foundry authors to find missions that fit for exploration clusters. Perhaps something like that could work.
There are other issues. If I was making a mission for an exploration cluster, I wouldn't want it to last more than 15 minutes. Thus, it would not qualify for rewards. Also, I have a limited amount of foundry slots. Other authors have run out of slots. Unless we were given special accounts, I'm not sure how many of us would devote a significant number of slots to exploration-style missions. That's assuming that players would want them to be short missions.
I actually think this will be better. There are some really good foundry missions out there. But the more people that make missions the better the overall quality will be. People will do cool stuff, newcomers will copy that cool stuff and add cool stuff of their own.
Sure, some authors make bad missions but none of them are as bad as the random TRIBBLE that passes as exploration now.
Only changes I would make would be to add a better rating system and search function and throw in the ability to gather materials. Other than that a steady improvement to the functions and features of the Foundry and all should be well.
Look people, it is not reasonable to expect a finite set of developers/writers to contribute an endless source or new missions for the community. No game ever developed has that, none that I've played. There will always be a limit because there is a limited resource creating them.
As for the dil, I get about 1K for playing a foundry mission. And if I make a good missions I get dil as tips from players. So if I play 10 missions a day, plus the once a day rewrd bonus, there is my 10k/day grind. But instead of the same TRIBBLE over and over again, I get to play 10 completely different missions each time. Will there be some eggs? Of course, but I'm sure there are some Star Trek episodes you fell asleep on or just simply passed. Personally, I can't stand any episode with Luxwana Troi...even if it is Gene's wife.
This maybe is a bit off topic, but nevertheless. I want to underline that I'm not questioning or discussing moderating, just providing my personal feedback on it.
This thread has seen multiple other threads slapped inside it in the past few days. This trend of what seems to me like trying to localize negative reactions and feedback, or trying to silence the communtiy is really starting to worry me. This is not the first time this has happened in the past few weeks - closing the legendary Galaxy thread without an explanation and for no aparent reason, mishmashing all the feedback on crafting and turning it upside-down in a single thread under 'Galactinc News', "send us your ARC feedback on mail", etc. I'm not sure if it's starting to happen on purpose or because of incompetence, but for me it's troubling.
Don't get me wrong, I understand merging threads and this has been hapening ever since I joined STO cause you'll always have the few oddballs that will start 3-4 different T5 Connie threads at about the same time (probably inspired by eachother), but lately it really seems like the company wants to hide the fact there is a lot of negative feedback on their decisions. This is just horrible PR and CR for me.
Finally I'll try to explain this in cash talk, since this is the only langualge Cryptic seems to understand lately:
I've been playing since 2011. When DStahl came back after the game went F2P I decided to be subscriber to support the game, because the team's heart seemed in the right place and I had such high hopes from DStahl's management even if I didn't see eye to eye with him on multiple ocassions.
Ever since the utter faliure that is S8 I stopped spending cash on this game and cancelled my sub. Which ironically proved like an good prediction after all the moves they've done under D'Angelo's management.
However, after this latest trend of silencing negative feedback and the communtiy in general, my willingness to spend money on STO has gone into negative and it's about -50% now. I don't trust shady moves like these and I don't like the way it's being handled. It reeks of arrogance and incompetence both. So Crpytic, I'm in a place right now where you need to do something utterly good for STO to even bring me to 0% and for me to even consider giving you any more cash. Because at this point, I'm starting to regret giving you the money I have so far, trying to support what I believed could be an awesome Star Trek MMO and what you seem to be constantly crapping on ever since LoR was released.
We've debated this stuff for a long time. The problem is pretty simple. The random foundry content would need to be vetted, because chances are that a random mission would take you to a test publish or something that starts at a place like Vulcan. Our missions often have very specific story reasons from starting where they do, and it's usually not in an unexplored entry point.
That's why I suggested to pull it from featured content, which is already a much smaller pool and could realistically be vetted. Again, it would be a win-win; from a UX perspective, we bypass one of the endless drop-downs (it's seriously a pain trying to get to featured content, as it stands), and from the dev standpoint, they get to say they put Genesis out to pasture.
But, it's unrealistic to ask Cryptic to devote a person to trying to find what is out there and what fits for an exploration cluster. They would need to outsource that task or commission a group of hand-chosen people to make exploration cluster missions. Immediately, this suggestion brings cries of "elitism!"
A compromise would be a GM who works with Foundry authors to find missions that fit for exploration clusters. Perhaps something like that could work.
That compromise is exactly what I had in mind. Even then, the standards could be quite a bit lower. There's Q, there's Section 31, which has already had one weird mission take place in a holodeck- there are a ton of deus ex machinae that could be used as a fun way to make a contact pop upon arrival in a cluster that basically says, "this content isn't canon."
There are other issues. If I was making a mission for an exploration cluster, I wouldn't want it to last more than 15 minutes. Thus, it would not qualify for rewards. Also, I have a limited amount of foundry slots. Other authors have run out of slots. Unless we were given special accounts, I'm not sure how many of us would devote a significant number of slots to exploration-style missions.
This is definitely the sticking point. Not having gotten into Foundry creation myself, I definitely appreciate the viewpoint, and I can see how Cryptic would be worried about incentivizing Foundry creators in such a way that CBS doesn't have to get involved. Do you get compensated for making a Foundry mission that ends up in the featured tab now?
On the plus side, it wouldn't actually take that much content to make this work- 9 exploration clusters popping 3 missions daily means 27 different missions cover it. Unless we've got a massive shortage of content creators, I'd be surprised if we as a playerbase couldn't generate that much content, with missions being changed out weekly.
I can understand the ostensible reason behind wanting to get rid of the grindy exploration clusters- in fact, way back when, it was a major complaint with the game that one would hit endgame and have nothing to do except grind away in the clusters doing dailies made by Genesis that made no sense. Fair enough.
Just removing them completely seems like a kneejerk move, considering one of their goals is to get more people playing Foundry content. Keep the clusters. Keep the way they work, but just change where the random mission hooks take you.
Instead of going to random Genesis missions (which I agree felt at best like somebody playing with one of those old assets-included RPG makers), change the hooks so that they go to featured Foundry content. If you wanted it to be more robust and feel less like an empty map, it shouldn't take more than an addition of one or two lines of code in the programming that spawns the hooks to give them real titles instead of "[Cluster Name] Anomaly."
The removal of Memory Alpha AND Clusters also affects more than just grinding. For example, there are only 13 playable "diplomacy missions." Only 7 are playable at the start of the game, and of those, 5 are placed on Memory Alpha. I'd really like to see diplomacy not disappear into another points crawl from the doff menu. One of the things that's kept me coming back to STO since open beta is the fact that, unlike other space MMOs that won't be named, the game doesn't boil down to opening up spreadsheets and clicking buttons.
Also, the removal of all these maps may have exactly the opposite effect of its intention. They're being removed because the content isn't up to par and could look like shoddy work, but just removing maps and replacing them with drop-down lists and menus looks really lazy, even when it isn't- it's not a good road to go down. This is getting into opinion more than fact here, but leave the lists and buttons for alpha testing- if the feature is worth including, it's worth taking the time to come up with a halfway decent UX that doesn't feel like playing from the pause menu.
according to the forum 1 post. have you been through every bit of information on the issue in question or you posting your remark you may have no intention of coming back to reply or check on. anyway the simple fact of the matter is, exploration dailies are already gone, the decision was made months ago by the devs, if it was d'angelo or stahl who got the ball rolling on that one by the turn of this year, i do not know, whatever the case as expected from the dev blogs its more along the lines of what i wrote down a few times, that the exploration content like crafting will be bottle necked into a specific purpose rather then free choice on the issue, by that i mean there is no obligation to carry it out for any other purpose them spending free time just exploring without any hook or whatnot stating you need to explore for this or that.
so by reading the information there the exploration sectors are gone but there will likely be a marker to park besides for your doffs and such to work from. i dont know what will happen to mem alpha beyond the removal of the ground map. can not save of the system from sector space will disappear either, but that would be more absurd then useful if it were to be completely removed.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
As for the dil, I get about 1K for playing a foundry mission. And if I make a good missions I get dil as tips from players. So if I play 10 missions a day, plus the once a day rewrd bonus, there is my 10k/day grind. But instead of the same TRIBBLE over and over again, I get to play 10 completely different missions each time. Will there be some eggs? Of course, but I'm sure there are some Star Trek episodes you fell asleep on or just simply passed. Personally, I can't stand any episode with Luxwana Troi...even if it is Gene's wife.
Don't forget to pick up the repeatable "Officer Reports" mission. I can max out my 8k playing 3 or 4 Foundry missions, with a pitstop at SFA lore. You should be earning around 2000-2500 dilithium for most non-spotlights and nearly 4000 for a spotlight.
Thanks for the other kind comments about our missions.
I actually think this will be better. There are some really good foundry missions out there. But the more people that make missions the better the overall quality will be. People will do cool stuff, newcomers will copy that cool stuff and add cool stuff of their own.
Sure, some authors make bad missions but none of them are as bad as the random TRIBBLE that passes as exploration now.
Only changes I would make would be to add a better rating system and search function and throw in the ability to gather materials. Other than that a steady improvement to the functions and features of the Foundry and all should be well.
Look people, it is not reasonable to expect a finite set of developers/writers to contribute an endless source or new missions for the community. No game ever developed has that, none that I've played. There will always be a limit because there is a limited resource creating them.
As for the dil, I get about 1K for playing a foundry mission. And if I make a good missions I get dil as tips from players. So if I play 10 missions a day, plus the once a day rewrd bonus, there is my 10k/day grind. But instead of the same TRIBBLE over and over again, I get to play 10 completely different missions each time. Will there be some eggs? Of course, but I'm sure there are some Star Trek episodes you fell asleep on or just simply passed. Personally, I can't stand any episode with Luxwana Troi...even if it is Gene's wife.
When Cryptic start paying me, I will start doing work for them.
This. The removal of the genesis system is the worst decision they made up to date.
And it's not about removing bugged missions - whoever doesn't get the impact this decision has (let alone in a Star Trek game) won't understand that, but there was a time before "MOAR DPS!" when we could level our diplomacy accolades doing exploration and diplomacy missions, for example.
It is true that the exploration system was outdated - but I ask you whose bloody fault is this? The system could have simply been reworked, added new tilesets, variables, missions, rewards and features. Even sell it via an Exploration Expansion. But letting a system rot (which many players still enjoy because that's what pulled them into the game) and then claiming "it's broken TRIBBLE, we remove it to improve our game" is hypocrite. Pushing lame excuses like "players get lost in exploration missions" or "the game is too big, new players are scared and confused" is another poor move we better don't talk about...
I remember when I started playing this game.
No fleet and alone, I just pointed my ship to something interesting and just EXPLORED what the game had to offer BEFORE I started with the mission progression.
Visiting this star system, a nebula here, ect. ect.
It actually felt like, (for a few blissful months), that I was actually exploring the galaxy. AND, I was still able to make some progress by gaining XP along the way. Later - I could take a break from the mission progression, and just EXPLORE at will.
It hasn't been since my characters all hit VA and I got on the hamster wheel otherwise known as the rep system, that I stopped visiting the exploration missions. I'm too busy grinding reps and fleet holdings out now.
But to be honest, some of the most fun I had in this game was simply messing around with friends in one of the exploration missions, on the elite setting, just for the nuts of it.
No worries about blown optionals, testin out crazy new builds or gear. With-out the pressure of throwing someone else's game, like STF's have.
Some may say, that I wasn't "playing right", but still it was at MY pace, as I slowly learned by myself about the very basics of the game. Later, I joined a fleet after talking with a few random players and I learned much, much more.
Not everyone wants to immediately jump into the fray, particularly when they just start, they may be new to mmos, like I was. They need to acclimate. I always thought the explore missions helped with that.
Teamed missions are serious business. Do something wrong there and you're a noob and the subject of the latest worst STF experience post.
As repetitive and as exploration missions are, on the elite setting, they were a very forgiving test bed in contrast to STFs, (even on normal). So it boggles me when it's said that they are not new player friendly.
It was also damned fun, beaming down with YOUR bridge officers on an away mission. It didn't get any more Star Trek than that, aside from SOME foundry missions, they are a lot more Star Trek, then those STFs are IMO.
I have to say though his idea is really good idea. Making exploration cluster lead into top rated foundry missions would be an awesome idea, but i see problem like putting you into a part 2 of a several part series without doing the 1st one.
If they made it where they only put in the 1st part and let you choose to do the next by searching then it would be great. I like this idea a lot for the reason it gets people into the froundry, provides great spot light for the authors, gives us all easy access to content.
This is actually a pretty brilliant solution to the 'Exploration' aspect of the game. Would make this game feel sooooooooooo much more trek.
You sir get a cookie for suggesting this, well done.
I wont miss exploration missions, I will miss the Cell ship and Tuffli's ability to invite friends for social doffing in exploration clusters. The lazily designed replacement (sector interact) is also taking away half of the (by design) opportunities for those assignments from my Dept. Heads. Everyone should be able to take exploration assignments from the bridge of their ship, and anyone else who happens to be aboard her. With SS9.5 this has vanished. There is no logical reason for damaging the doffing system so severely.
These problems could be worked around easily while achieving everything Cryptic wants with S9.5. I remind you of this...
I say PWE and Cryptic should come up with a replacement for star clusters themselves, not rely on foundry missions to replace it. that's just pathetic and lazy, after all, when were the players hired as employees of PWE or Cryptic? When did it become the player's job to take over the development of the game? If anything, they should merge all the sectors, add more star systems, particularly planets that are the home worlds of the different species of the game like Betazed, Ferenginar, Rigel V, Benzar, stuff like that. Besides being new social zones they could also have missions to do, not to mention being new settings for more foundry missions. That should be an acceptable replacement
1- the poster asked for an episode. I provided one. One that specifically states the enterprise is on a diplomatic mission. Took me 30 seconds for it to pop in my head. The requirements asked for were met. You are trying to change the question.
Did the episode involve diplomacy in some way? Yes. Was it the focus of the episode? NOPE. That was my point. the actual focus of the episode was Picard's misadventures in the holodeck.
2- what do you even mean by the ferengi comment? The episode is all about exploration. It hinges on a first contact scenario and interacting with the long dead Tkon empire. I wonder if you'll be as snark when season 11 introduces the new Tkon story arc with voice work from armin shimmerman and Johnathan frakes.
In case you forgot... the T'Kon ep was centered around the crew of the Ent-D fighting a bunch of Ferengi who wanted to take the planet for themselves. The diplomacy part came after the Portal awakened and was largely an accident.
Whether a mission is non-combat is the crux of the matter. When did the TV show ever do a BORING(non-combat) diplomatic mission? Pretty much never. They always tossed in something to make it interesting. Which in STO translates to some sort of combat.
I was talking to a friend of mine who is heavily into Second Life*, last night, and she mentioned something which I thought interesting... Second Life used to have official volunteer mentors who would show new uses the ropes of the game, but the owners had to drop this idea. The reasoning went, apparently, that under the labour laws where SL's owners are incorporated, those volunteers would be classifiable as employees and eligible for certain benefits and compensations from that.
Now that set me thinking, rather a lot, about the potential legal implications of this imbroglio.
Despite all the argument, most of us seem to agree that exploration is an important component of a Star Trek game. Given that Cryptic have been providing "exploration" missions (however poor in execution), and given that they are implicitly asking for Foundry content to replace it**... what is their legal position with regard to Foundry authors, now?
(I won't ask about their ethical position, because when a profit-making corporation to ask its customers to do part of its job for it, for nothing, the ethical position is pretty darn clear - it stinks.)
But, seriously, what is the legal position? If you write a Foundry mission, and you want to re-use text or character designs or some other element somewhere else - who owns the rights to it? If somebody writes a Foundry mission which is horrifically unacceptable under US law - or some other jurisdiction's law - who's liable as a result? Have any of the relevant end-user agreements been tested in court? Someone needs to be thinking about these questions. (I don't know the answers. I don't offhand know where Cryptic is incorporated, and anyway I am not a lawyer. But someone who is a lawyer had better have answers ready.)
Oh, and one parting question: if some complex legal entanglement were to arise out of the use of Foundry missions to replace game content... how long do you think it would be before Cryptic shut the Foundry down as a result? Measured to the nearest nanosecond?
*I thought Second Life rather refuted @kirksplat's contention, earlier, that all MMO's are about shooting and grinding... but apparently I'm wrong, Second Life might look like an MMO to ignorant people like me, but it is actually a combination of an artistic medium, a technological innovation, and a social event. Or so I have been told. At some length.
**Sticking a Foundry door on something is, I think, implicitly asking for someone to create Foundry content at that point. (Of course I may be wrong, see previous comment about not being a lawyer.)
Based on all the forum posts cryptic should see we want to keep the clusters ...but i think they dont care at all...if i was a subscriber i would just stop subscribing since the product i was paying for has changed into a direction i dont like.
I was talking to a friend of mine who is heavily into Second Life*, last night, and she mentioned something which I thought interesting... Second Life used to have official volunteer mentors who would show new uses the ropes of the game, but the owners had to drop this idea. The reasoning went, apparently, that under the labour laws where SL's owners are incorporated, those volunteers would be classifiable as employees and eligible for certain benefits and compensations from that.
Now that set me thinking, rather a lot, about the potential legal implications of this imbroglio.
Despite all the argument, most of us seem to agree that exploration is an important component of a Star Trek game. Given that Cryptic have been providing "exploration" missions (however poor in execution), and given that they are implicitly asking for Foundry content to replace it**... what is their legal position with regard to Foundry authors, now?
(I won't ask about their ethical position, because when a profit-making corporation to ask its customers to do part of its job for it, for nothing, the ethical position is pretty darn clear - it stinks.)
But, seriously, what is the legal position? If you write a Foundry mission, and you want to re-use text or character designs or some other element somewhere else - who owns the rights to it? If somebody writes a Foundry mission which is horrifically unacceptable under US law - or some other jurisdiction's law - who's liable as a result? Have any of the relevant end-user agreements been tested in court? Someone needs to be thinking about these questions. (I don't know the answers. I don't offhand know where Cryptic is incorporated, and anyway I am not a lawyer. But someone who is a lawyer had better have answers ready.)
Oh, and one parting question: if some complex legal entanglement were to arise out of the use of Foundry missions to replace game content... how long do you think it would be before Cryptic shut the Foundry down as a result? Measured to the nearest nanosecond?
*I thought Second Life rather refuted @kirksplat's contention, earlier, that all MMO's are about shooting and grinding... but apparently I'm wrong, Second Life might look like an MMO to ignorant people like me, but it is actually a combination of an artistic medium, a technological innovation, and a social event. Or so I have been told. At some length.
**Sticking a Foundry door on something is, I think, implicitly asking for someone to create Foundry content at that point. (Of course I may be wrong, see previous comment about not being a lawyer.)
There is a eula that authors have to agree to be bound by, and players have to agree to a eula of their own when accepting a foundry mission for the first time. As for the other stuff, I'm sure all of this was run through Cryptic's legal a long time before they even decided to build the tools. They are in California which has pretty strict laws about volunteer workers.
Technically, I think maybe foundry authors are classified as players who "play" the foundry part of the game, lol. It would be neat if we had some of the Second Life functionality of actually earning $$$ making content for the game. I've never played Second Life, but I hear that some people even make a living through their stores or what not.
I can understand the ostensible reason behind wanting to get rid of the grindy exploration clusters- in fact, way back when, it was a major complaint with the game that one would hit endgame and have nothing to do except grind away in the clusters doing dailies made by Genesis that made no sense. Fair enough.
Just removing them completely seems like a kneejerk move, considering one of their goals is to get more people playing Foundry content. Keep the clusters. Keep the way they work, but just change where the random mission hooks take you.
Instead of going to random Genesis missions (which I agree felt at best like somebody playing with one of those old assets-included RPG makers), change the hooks so that they go to featured Foundry content. If you wanted it to be more robust and feel less like an empty map, it shouldn't take more than an addition of one or two lines of code in the programming that spawns the hooks to give them real titles instead of "[Cluster Name] Anomaly."
The removal of Memory Alpha AND Clusters also affects more than just grinding. For example, there are only 13 playable "diplomacy missions." Only 7 are playable at the start of the game, and of those, 5 are placed on Memory Alpha. I'd really like to see diplomacy not disappear into another points crawl from the doff menu. One of the things that's kept me coming back to STO since open beta is the fact that, unlike other space MMOs that won't be named, the game doesn't boil down to opening up spreadsheets and clicking buttons.
Also, the removal of all these maps may have exactly the opposite effect of its intention. They're being removed because the content isn't up to par and could look like shoddy work, but just removing maps and replacing them with drop-down lists and menus looks really lazy, even when it isn't- it's not a good road to go down. This is getting into opinion more than fact here, but leave the lists and buttons for alpha testing- if the feature is worth including, it's worth taking the time to come up with a halfway decent UX that doesn't feel like playing from the pause menu.
Great idea... I (and a few others) have said as much on here.
To solve the hooking problem that some have mentioned, so you aren't pulled to Vulcan while in Regulus block... add tags to Foundry missions. Authors can tag locations into their stories, and the cluster hooks can pull appropriate stories from these tags.
I mean, there are specific Doff missions tied to specific sectors. Why not Foundry as well?
I was talking to a friend of mine who is heavily into Second Life*, last night, and she mentioned something which I thought interesting... Second Life used to have official volunteer mentors who would show new uses the ropes of the game, but the owners had to drop this idea. The reasoning went, apparently, that under the labour laws where SL's owners are incorporated, those volunteers would be classifiable as employees and eligible for certain benefits and compensations from that.
Now that set me thinking, rather a lot, about the potential legal implications of this imbroglio.
Despite all the argument, most of us seem to agree that exploration is an important component of a Star Trek game. Given that Cryptic have been providing "exploration" missions (however poor in execution), and given that they are implicitly asking for Foundry content to replace it**... what is their legal position with regard to Foundry authors, now?
(I won't ask about their ethical position, because when a profit-making corporation to ask its customers to do part of its job for it, for nothing, the ethical position is pretty darn clear - it stinks.)
But, seriously, what is the legal position? If you write a Foundry mission, and you want to re-use text or character designs or some other element somewhere else - who owns the rights to it? If somebody writes a Foundry mission which is horrifically unacceptable under US law - or some other jurisdiction's law - who's liable as a result? Have any of the relevant end-user agreements been tested in court? Someone needs to be thinking about these questions. (I don't know the answers. I don't offhand know where Cryptic is incorporated, and anyway I am not a lawyer. But someone who is a lawyer had better have answers ready.)
Oh, and one parting question: if some complex legal entanglement were to arise out of the use of Foundry missions to replace game content... how long do you think it would be before Cryptic shut the Foundry down as a result? Measured to the nearest nanosecond?
*I thought Second Life rather refuted @kirksplat's contention, earlier, that all MMO's are about shooting and grinding... but apparently I'm wrong, Second Life might look like an MMO to ignorant people like me, but it is actually a combination of an artistic medium, a technological innovation, and a social event. Or so I have been told. At some length.
**Sticking a Foundry door on something is, I think, implicitly asking for someone to create Foundry content at that point. (Of course I may be wrong, see previous comment about not being a lawyer.)
Oh i guarentee you that PWE's lawyers will come up with some BS cop out loophole in which modifies their EULA to excuse them from any legal, moral, and financial responsibilities given their due negligence and gross misconduct in order to get out of any shape or form of financial responsibility and liability towards foundry authors... Meaning PWE/Cryptics legal and moral stance is "You do our jobs while we profit off your work and monitize the new crafting system more effectively".
Now for you people that think that this is a good move i got news for you, this is just the START of the crafting system monitization efforts and i can guarentee you that cryptic/PWE will after this divert it's attention to nerfing the everloving hell out of DoFF crafting rewards next to make that a pointless grindfest waste of time so as to force people to pay for materials off the C-Store. And it would not surprise me one tiny bit either if they wind up throtteling the hell out of foundry crafting material rewards either. The devs have said it themselves that crafting materials are way to easy to get which translates to "We will make no money off the C-Store material packs so we're forcing you to pay for them now".
I honestly thought i saw the standard of dev lazieness before, but this is a new damn low in MMO history. Only other time i have ever seen stuff like this being pulled is with the developers of fallen earth which suffice to say that game in one update went from F2P to forced severely throttled P2P and went from actually having a community to having nothing more then a dried up barren wasteland for a community, and it would not surprise me if enough people leave this game after 9.5 that CBS ends up pulling the star trek license.
However seeing as how CBS has that TRIBBLE up JJ at the helm and how badly he's butchering it i guess it was just a matter of time before Star Trek ended up in the same overkilled joke catagory along with Star Wars.
In closing, PWE is gutting the core of what star trek is and means for nothing more then cheap short term financial gain and an effort to monitize the hell out of a flawed revamped crafting system, and just doing nothing more then just using a bandaid fix in an attempt to cauterize the wound from gutting out the essential core fundamentals of what star trek is and means in an extremely lazy attempt to appease the masses while they profit off of others hard work. I give this game another year or 2 at the most before it's completely dead due to gross negligence and gross misconduct of PWE/Cryptic.
They said they will create Foundry hooks so that missions can start at exploration clusters. Unfortunately, nothing else has been said - what we'd need is a Foundry search mode in where we can look by mission start area. If we had that, it would be easier to find exploration-minded mission easier, and it could also allow later to create a Foundry Interface specifically for exploration clusters.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Comments
R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
Maybe someday we'll feel nostalgic about the Borg 3rd Dynasty or boffs falling through the terrain, or Planet Bloom.
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Nah
I vote that the Third Borg Dynasty should return as an April Fools joke or something...
It is pure speculation that the devs will never add or will add an exploration system. Where in that dev blog did the devs state that there will never be an exploration revamp? You are just inferring that since the Foundry meets the original goals of the Exploration Cluster, then there is no exploration revamp. That is not proof of anything. Exploration Clusters are an outdated concept that only gave the illusion of Exploration. We don't need Exploration Clusters, we need actual Exploration and that can only occur in unexplored space like the Delta Quadrant where there is no Alpha Quadrant presence.
Cryptic has always been cryptic about what future content they are currently working on. So it is insane for anyone to think that this dev blog is proof that STO will never have an Exploration Revamp. We might never see any type of Exploration in the game again, but it is just as likely that we will have a better Exploration system in the future.
Wow, how hard is this to understand? The missions may have sucked TRIBBLE, but the core of the worry is Cryptic's openly-stated intent to "improve the average quality of the game" not by adding better content, but by stripping out the worst. What gets axed without ceremony or replacement the next time they want to "improve the average quality?"
It's not rocket science, people.
Because those missions should be (rightfully) embarrassing to a dev who cares about the presentation, look, and experience of the game. Sure, we can say that the game needs a different system, but poor content is poor content. Poor content is bad.
Read the blog really. Season 9.5 both memory alpha and exploration clusters will be removed permanent. Its not coming back.
Cryptic wants actually forcing players to create content for Cryptic because they consider it a improvement. By the way, its free labor and Cryptic is goibg make the money from it. They get the $$$ while you make content with no compensation.
If you think I'm full of bs read the blogs.
Season 10 is going be another grindfest. This time its Xindi. Check out the game leaks. Some of that content is already in patches we already downloaded.
So. Basically Season 10: Grindfest And Nerf
The new crafting system already have a built in nerf.
Have a lovely day.
These problems could be worked around easily while achieving everything Cryptic wants with S9.5. I remind you of this...
LOR Romulan Survivor Duty Officer Pack
"The grand prize in the Romulan Survivor Duty Officer Pack is the Suliban Cell Ship."
I would also like to point out WHY I acquired a Cell ship.
"Both you and your allies that you invite aboard can access the Duty Officer assignments."
So Cryptic please consider fixing these oversights before launch, thank you.
Just removing them completely seems like a kneejerk move, considering one of their goals is to get more people playing Foundry content. Keep the clusters. Keep the way they work, but just change where the random mission hooks take you.
Instead of going to random Genesis missions (which I agree felt at best like somebody playing with one of those old assets-included RPG makers), change the hooks so that they go to featured Foundry content. If you wanted it to be more robust and feel less like an empty map, it shouldn't take more than an addition of one or two lines of code in the programming that spawns the hooks to give them real titles instead of "[Cluster Name] Anomaly."
The removal of Memory Alpha AND Clusters also affects more than just grinding. For example, there are only 13 playable "diplomacy missions." Only 7 are playable at the start of the game, and of those, 5 are placed on Memory Alpha. I'd really like to see diplomacy not disappear into another points crawl from the doff menu. One of the things that's kept me coming back to STO since open beta is the fact that, unlike other space MMOs that won't be named, the game doesn't boil down to opening up spreadsheets and clicking buttons.
Also, the removal of all these maps may have exactly the opposite effect of its intention. They're being removed because the content isn't up to par and could look like shoddy work, but just removing maps and replacing them with drop-down lists and menus looks really lazy, even when it isn't- it's not a good road to go down. This is getting into opinion more than fact here, but leave the lists and buttons for alpha testing- if the feature is worth including, it's worth taking the time to come up with a halfway decent UX that doesn't feel like playing from the pause menu.
And instead of fixing things, a door in the foundry is offered. You should know I'm not one to rage and protest every tiny change; I've supported you in forum battles in the past (the only time I can recall having expressed any disappointment or annoyance was over the "Romulan" Sand Monument with the Klingon logo in the middle and the lack of a Romulan Republic Superior Power Board when this year's Lohlunat Festival started), but this time, I have to say it: Bad form, Cryptic.
We've debated this stuff for a long time. The problem is pretty simple. The random foundry content would need to be vetted, because chances are that a random mission would take you to a test publish or something that starts at a place like Vulcan. Our missions often have very specific story reasons for starting where they do, and it's usually not in an unexplored entry point.
But, it's unrealistic to ask Cryptic to devote a person to trying to find what is out there and what fits for an exploration cluster. They would need to outsource that task or commission a group of hand-chosen people to make exploration cluster missions. Immediately, this suggestion brings cries of "elitism!"
A compromise would be a GM who works with Foundry authors to find missions that fit for exploration clusters. Perhaps something like that could work.
There are other issues. If I was making a mission for an exploration cluster, I wouldn't want it to last more than 15 minutes. Thus, it would not qualify for rewards. Also, I have a limited amount of foundry slots. Other authors have run out of slots. Unless we were given special accounts, I'm not sure how many of us would devote a significant number of slots to exploration-style missions. That's assuming that players would want them to be short missions.
Me either, I stopped doing them long ago, don't care for them, now if we could also get rid of Bajor then it would make me even happier.
Sure, some authors make bad missions but none of them are as bad as the random TRIBBLE that passes as exploration now.
Only changes I would make would be to add a better rating system and search function and throw in the ability to gather materials. Other than that a steady improvement to the functions and features of the Foundry and all should be well.
Look people, it is not reasonable to expect a finite set of developers/writers to contribute an endless source or new missions for the community. No game ever developed has that, none that I've played. There will always be a limit because there is a limited resource creating them.
As for the dil, I get about 1K for playing a foundry mission. And if I make a good missions I get dil as tips from players. So if I play 10 missions a day, plus the once a day rewrd bonus, there is my 10k/day grind. But instead of the same TRIBBLE over and over again, I get to play 10 completely different missions each time. Will there be some eggs? Of course, but I'm sure there are some Star Trek episodes you fell asleep on or just simply passed. Personally, I can't stand any episode with Luxwana Troi...even if it is Gene's wife.
This thread has seen multiple other threads slapped inside it in the past few days. This trend of what seems to me like trying to localize negative reactions and feedback, or trying to silence the communtiy is really starting to worry me. This is not the first time this has happened in the past few weeks - closing the legendary Galaxy thread without an explanation and for no aparent reason, mishmashing all the feedback on crafting and turning it upside-down in a single thread under 'Galactinc News', "send us your ARC feedback on mail", etc. I'm not sure if it's starting to happen on purpose or because of incompetence, but for me it's troubling.
Don't get me wrong, I understand merging threads and this has been hapening ever since I joined STO cause you'll always have the few oddballs that will start 3-4 different T5 Connie threads at about the same time (probably inspired by eachother), but lately it really seems like the company wants to hide the fact there is a lot of negative feedback on their decisions. This is just horrible PR and CR for me.
Finally I'll try to explain this in cash talk, since this is the only langualge Cryptic seems to understand lately:
I've been playing since 2011. When DStahl came back after the game went F2P I decided to be subscriber to support the game, because the team's heart seemed in the right place and I had such high hopes from DStahl's management even if I didn't see eye to eye with him on multiple ocassions.
Ever since the utter faliure that is S8 I stopped spending cash on this game and cancelled my sub. Which ironically proved like an good prediction after all the moves they've done under D'Angelo's management.
However, after this latest trend of silencing negative feedback and the communtiy in general, my willingness to spend money on STO has gone into negative and it's about -50% now. I don't trust shady moves like these and I don't like the way it's being handled. It reeks of arrogance and incompetence both. So Crpytic, I'm in a place right now where you need to do something utterly good for STO to even bring me to 0% and for me to even consider giving you any more cash. Because at this point, I'm starting to regret giving you the money I have so far, trying to support what I believed could be an awesome Star Trek MMO and what you seem to be constantly crapping on ever since LoR was released.
That's why I suggested to pull it from featured content, which is already a much smaller pool and could realistically be vetted. Again, it would be a win-win; from a UX perspective, we bypass one of the endless drop-downs (it's seriously a pain trying to get to featured content, as it stands), and from the dev standpoint, they get to say they put Genesis out to pasture.
That compromise is exactly what I had in mind. Even then, the standards could be quite a bit lower. There's Q, there's Section 31, which has already had one weird mission take place in a holodeck- there are a ton of deus ex machinae that could be used as a fun way to make a contact pop upon arrival in a cluster that basically says, "this content isn't canon."
This is definitely the sticking point. Not having gotten into Foundry creation myself, I definitely appreciate the viewpoint, and I can see how Cryptic would be worried about incentivizing Foundry creators in such a way that CBS doesn't have to get involved. Do you get compensated for making a Foundry mission that ends up in the featured tab now?
On the plus side, it wouldn't actually take that much content to make this work- 9 exploration clusters popping 3 missions daily means 27 different missions cover it. Unless we've got a massive shortage of content creators, I'd be surprised if we as a playerbase couldn't generate that much content, with missions being changed out weekly.
according to the forum 1 post. have you been through every bit of information on the issue in question or you posting your remark you may have no intention of coming back to reply or check on. anyway the simple fact of the matter is, exploration dailies are already gone, the decision was made months ago by the devs, if it was d'angelo or stahl who got the ball rolling on that one by the turn of this year, i do not know, whatever the case as expected from the dev blogs its more along the lines of what i wrote down a few times, that the exploration content like crafting will be bottle necked into a specific purpose rather then free choice on the issue, by that i mean there is no obligation to carry it out for any other purpose them spending free time just exploring without any hook or whatnot stating you need to explore for this or that.
so by reading the information there the exploration sectors are gone but there will likely be a marker to park besides for your doffs and such to work from. i dont know what will happen to mem alpha beyond the removal of the ground map. can not save of the system from sector space will disappear either, but that would be more absurd then useful if it were to be completely removed.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Don't forget to pick up the repeatable "Officer Reports" mission. I can max out my 8k playing 3 or 4 Foundry missions, with a pitstop at SFA lore. You should be earning around 2000-2500 dilithium for most non-spotlights and nearly 4000 for a spotlight.
Thanks for the other kind comments about our missions.
Nope, you're waaaaaaay too late. The time for "can we try this first" came and went before the Devs even let us in on their now-set-in-stone plans.
I remember when I started playing this game.
No fleet and alone, I just pointed my ship to something interesting and just EXPLORED what the game had to offer BEFORE I started with the mission progression.
Visiting this star system, a nebula here, ect. ect.
It actually felt like, (for a few blissful months), that I was actually exploring the galaxy. AND, I was still able to make some progress by gaining XP along the way. Later - I could take a break from the mission progression, and just EXPLORE at will.
It hasn't been since my characters all hit VA and I got on the hamster wheel otherwise known as the rep system, that I stopped visiting the exploration missions. I'm too busy grinding reps and fleet holdings out now.
But to be honest, some of the most fun I had in this game was simply messing around with friends in one of the exploration missions, on the elite setting, just for the nuts of it.
No worries about blown optionals, testin out crazy new builds or gear. With-out the pressure of throwing someone else's game, like STF's have.
Some may say, that I wasn't "playing right", but still it was at MY pace, as I slowly learned by myself about the very basics of the game. Later, I joined a fleet after talking with a few random players and I learned much, much more.
Not everyone wants to immediately jump into the fray, particularly when they just start, they may be new to mmos, like I was. They need to acclimate. I always thought the explore missions helped with that.
Teamed missions are serious business. Do something wrong there and you're a noob and the subject of the latest worst STF experience post.
As repetitive and as exploration missions are, on the elite setting, they were a very forgiving test bed in contrast to STFs, (even on normal). So it boggles me when it's said that they are not new player friendly.
It was also damned fun, beaming down with YOUR bridge officers on an away mission. It didn't get any more Star Trek than that, aside from SOME foundry missions, they are a lot more Star Trek, then those STFs are IMO.
If they made it where they only put in the 1st part and let you choose to do the next by searching then it would be great. I like this idea a lot for the reason it gets people into the froundry, provides great spot light for the authors, gives us all easy access to content.
This is actually a pretty brilliant solution to the 'Exploration' aspect of the game. Would make this game feel sooooooooooo much more trek.
You sir get a cookie for suggesting this, well done.
This. The Cell ship has been well nerfed. Something should be done. Discounts on crafting, reinstate doffing bridge invites . . . Something.
Whether a mission is non-combat is the crux of the matter. When did the TV show ever do a BORING(non-combat) diplomatic mission? Pretty much never. They always tossed in something to make it interesting. Which in STO translates to some sort of combat.
My character Tsin'xing
Now that set me thinking, rather a lot, about the potential legal implications of this imbroglio.
Despite all the argument, most of us seem to agree that exploration is an important component of a Star Trek game. Given that Cryptic have been providing "exploration" missions (however poor in execution), and given that they are implicitly asking for Foundry content to replace it**... what is their legal position with regard to Foundry authors, now?
(I won't ask about their ethical position, because when a profit-making corporation to ask its customers to do part of its job for it, for nothing, the ethical position is pretty darn clear - it stinks.)
But, seriously, what is the legal position? If you write a Foundry mission, and you want to re-use text or character designs or some other element somewhere else - who owns the rights to it? If somebody writes a Foundry mission which is horrifically unacceptable under US law - or some other jurisdiction's law - who's liable as a result? Have any of the relevant end-user agreements been tested in court? Someone needs to be thinking about these questions. (I don't know the answers. I don't offhand know where Cryptic is incorporated, and anyway I am not a lawyer. But someone who is a lawyer had better have answers ready.)
Oh, and one parting question: if some complex legal entanglement were to arise out of the use of Foundry missions to replace game content... how long do you think it would be before Cryptic shut the Foundry down as a result? Measured to the nearest nanosecond?
*I thought Second Life rather refuted @kirksplat's contention, earlier, that all MMO's are about shooting and grinding... but apparently I'm wrong, Second Life might look like an MMO to ignorant people like me, but it is actually a combination of an artistic medium, a technological innovation, and a social event. Or so I have been told. At some length.
**Sticking a Foundry door on something is, I think, implicitly asking for someone to create Foundry content at that point. (Of course I may be wrong, see previous comment about not being a lawyer.)
but thats just me.
There is a eula that authors have to agree to be bound by, and players have to agree to a eula of their own when accepting a foundry mission for the first time. As for the other stuff, I'm sure all of this was run through Cryptic's legal a long time before they even decided to build the tools. They are in California which has pretty strict laws about volunteer workers.
Technically, I think maybe foundry authors are classified as players who "play" the foundry part of the game, lol. It would be neat if we had some of the Second Life functionality of actually earning $$$ making content for the game. I've never played Second Life, but I hear that some people even make a living through their stores or what not.
Great idea... I (and a few others) have said as much on here.
To solve the hooking problem that some have mentioned, so you aren't pulled to Vulcan while in Regulus block... add tags to Foundry missions. Authors can tag locations into their stories, and the cluster hooks can pull appropriate stories from these tags.
I mean, there are specific Doff missions tied to specific sectors. Why not Foundry as well?
Oh i guarentee you that PWE's lawyers will come up with some BS cop out loophole in which modifies their EULA to excuse them from any legal, moral, and financial responsibilities given their due negligence and gross misconduct in order to get out of any shape or form of financial responsibility and liability towards foundry authors... Meaning PWE/Cryptics legal and moral stance is "You do our jobs while we profit off your work and monitize the new crafting system more effectively".
Now for you people that think that this is a good move i got news for you, this is just the START of the crafting system monitization efforts and i can guarentee you that cryptic/PWE will after this divert it's attention to nerfing the everloving hell out of DoFF crafting rewards next to make that a pointless grindfest waste of time so as to force people to pay for materials off the C-Store. And it would not surprise me one tiny bit either if they wind up throtteling the hell out of foundry crafting material rewards either. The devs have said it themselves that crafting materials are way to easy to get which translates to "We will make no money off the C-Store material packs so we're forcing you to pay for them now".
I honestly thought i saw the standard of dev lazieness before, but this is a new damn low in MMO history. Only other time i have ever seen stuff like this being pulled is with the developers of fallen earth which suffice to say that game in one update went from F2P to forced severely throttled P2P and went from actually having a community to having nothing more then a dried up barren wasteland for a community, and it would not surprise me if enough people leave this game after 9.5 that CBS ends up pulling the star trek license.
However seeing as how CBS has that TRIBBLE up JJ at the helm and how badly he's butchering it i guess it was just a matter of time before Star Trek ended up in the same overkilled joke catagory along with Star Wars.
In closing, PWE is gutting the core of what star trek is and means for nothing more then cheap short term financial gain and an effort to monitize the hell out of a flawed revamped crafting system, and just doing nothing more then just using a bandaid fix in an attempt to cauterize the wound from gutting out the essential core fundamentals of what star trek is and means in an extremely lazy attempt to appease the masses while they profit off of others hard work. I give this game another year or 2 at the most before it's completely dead due to gross negligence and gross misconduct of PWE/Cryptic.