You may now flame me for making the following statement: Hey fellow Foundry authors, what can we do to make exploration feel like exploration?
Let's brainstorm. Let's do something big.
*anticipates comments from critics that include the following terms: fanboi, elitism, cliche, self-promotion, foundry KABAL!
Hmm the way your supporting this and then slagging of the people who are against the change makes me think you may be part of Cryptic is some way. Otherwise you would be as ticked off as most of the community is. Instead of spamming your foundry missions which like the other post will never play your mission just for the spamming you are doing for them. If I want to play the Foundry I would play it. There is a specific thread to plug your foundry missions and this thread is not it.
NO TO ARC
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I find it curious why some people defend PWE and Cryptic to the death with the idea that the game should center around foundry missions. After all, who owns the game? CBS, Perfect World Entertainment, Cryptic, sooo who is earning all the big bucks from the game? the players? umm nope, we're the ones spending the money, soo must be them. The point is, why should it be left up to the players to develop the game then pay someone else for the privilege? I say they are getting our cash so let them come up with a suitable replacement for star clusters. Why should the players have to do it?
I wish there was some kind of forum veteran award for the first time that we're accused of being an undercover PWE operative.
I think I'm past a dozen by now. there was one guy who acted like he thought he was going to get something for "outing" me as a plant. Hmm... now I'm thinking of Phylosians... hehe.
Geko confirmed that the closest thing to long-term goals surrounding exploration is (an idea of) expanding how Foundry works in those zones.
Sorry folks, you are stuck with us. So, the question is, what can we do about it? It will be fun.
There are no long-term goals at the moment. Hopefully the disappointment and discussion in this thread and going forward will change that at some point, or at least influence the Foundry development in a more...responsible...direction than others might prefer.
They need to reconsider and come up with a plan or I will cancel my subscription. I played two of the "Foundry Missions" and though the concept wasn't bad it really poorly executed. And quite frankly it needs a whole heck of changes to be worthwhile such as and not limited to; company will need to hire a quality control expert, the green map marks detract for it the story and emersion, crafting resources in it turn it into a grind and it detracts from scanning, the actual map the planet and moons are on is way to small, the Foundry will need a whole bunch of models to make the stories viable and interesting, worthwhile awards need to be create that fit the story and issued but they should be controlled by the authors. The most viable plan I have seen has been proposed by inkrunner in the form thread called “Replacing Star Clusters”.
The foundry should serve as a supplement to existing content, not a substitute.
^^ THIS!!
It's sad to see to what this community has been degraded over time.
Like I said before, it's hilarious in a certain sad way to see how low certain foundry authors have fallen, that they're basically over the moon in this thread for getting.....well, pretty much nothing from Cryptic. They may feel they're getting some exclusivity, but the sad matter of the truth is that Cryptic is doing nothing more than covering their own corporate posteriors and laziness with the Foundry. And that's about it.
Don't get me wrong, I bare no ill will towards the Foundry and the authors. I like the fact of having a Foundry, as I said before in the thread - it has helped me get through dire content droughts on the KDF side.
But the Foundry should always be a supplement to the game's content, like you said, and not the tagged as the primary content generator for an entire aspect of the game, which coincidentally happens to be the pillar on which the Star Trek franchise has been built. Especially in it's current state.
That people really can't see the entire big picture behind this, because it feels they're getting their short term wishes granted for the moment, speaks volumes about the current state of the STO community. Which as I said before, it's kinda' hilarious in a sad way.
The foundry should serve as a supplement to existing content, not a substitute.
I totally agree. The problem is, cryptic will never put efforts and money in creating exploration missions (that is something that will help the future of the game, and since cryptic is trying to destroy the game, that is something that will never happen), so the only solution we have is to carry that work to the foundry and the players emselves. We are not asking for incredible foundry missions, just missions with some "exploration" in em.
The problem is, my idea was that cryptic should just replace the classic dumb exploration missions for foundry ones, not just remove the entire exploration system. Letting the actual star clusters there, but instead of getting a stupid mission when you investigate an anomaly or watever in the star cluster, you get a improve foundry exploration mission.
Then i dont think the foundry will be ever be a solution. Because it will be just like playing foundry missions no related to the exploration theme at all, and eventually they will be just foundry missions.
I really hope they fire the ****** that thought this was a good idea. Did you think removing potential harvesting grounds for the Crafters was smart? Short answer is NO. Now instead we get to fumble around with the same old TRIBBLE that people are getting board of. And what about the accolades that were associated with these Exploration Clusters? There are still some players that are trying to finish there accolade sets. Perhaps the devs should look at all the potential consequences of there decisions BEFORE they make radical changes.
And what about the accolades that were associated with these Exploration Clusters? There are still some players that are trying to finish there accolade sets. Perhaps the devs should look at all the potential consequences of there decisions BEFORE they make radical changes.
Exploration Cluster accolades is still there and easier to get. Just do any mission with the Cluster name and it will reward.
Also, Federation now can get KDF exploration cluster accolades, and KDF the Federation Cluster Accolades. The only one NOT working is the Chart B'Tran / Azlesa.
I really hope they fire the ****** that thought this was a good idea. Did you think removing potential harvesting grounds for the Crafters was smart? Short answer is NO. Now instead we get to fumble around with the same old TRIBBLE that people are getting board of. And what about the accolades that were associated with these Exploration Clusters? There are still some players that are trying to finish there accolade sets. Perhaps the devs should look at all the potential consequences of there decisions BEFORE they make radical changes.
It was smart for their bank balance. Nothing more!
If they can trick a few hundred dumb players into buying Zen to get the crafting packs, their goal is complete..
I agree that the exploration cluster missions were not very good, but I think the resources should have been better spent on rewriting the exploration system instead of e.g. the crafting revamp. It would have been a much better match to the Star Trek setting generally. I don't remember seeing the crafting of custom items having any sort of emphasis in the Star Trek series...
Also, albeit I played only a few foundry missions, I wasn't happy with their quality neither. Add to that that there is no 'exploration' or surprises in the foundry mission selection at all; so I don't understand how would the foundry replace any sort of exploration experience.
I agree that the exploration cluster missions were not very good, but I think the resources should have been better spent on rewriting the exploration system instead of e.g. the crafting revamp. It would have been a much better match to the Star Trek setting generally. I don't remember seeing the crafting of custom items having any sort of emphasis in the Star Trek series...
Also, albeit I played only a few foundry missions, I wasn't happy with their quality neither. Add to that that there is no 'exploration' or surprises in the foundry mission selection at all; so I don't understand how would the foundry replace any sort of exploration experience.
The best thing we can all do is stop calling sto anything to do with star trek because apart from ships ,t has nothing to do with star trek since they removed the only exploration they had.
NO TO ARC
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I really hope they fire the ****** that thought this was a good idea. Did you think removing potential harvesting grounds for the Crafters was smart? Short answer is NO. Now instead we get to fumble around with the same old TRIBBLE that people are getting board of. And what about the accolades that were associated with these Exploration Clusters? There are still some players that are trying to finish there accolade sets. Perhaps the devs should look at all the potential consequences of there decisions BEFORE they make radical changes.
I hope they promote him to tick you off since you like getting mad a silly things. There is no shortage of souces for crafting material. If you cannot figure that out and have to buy lol crafting packs you are either lazy or not too bright.
Geko confirmed that the closest thing to long-term goals surrounding exploration is (an idea of) expanding how Foundry works in those zones.
Sorry folks, you are stuck with us. So, the question is, what can we do about it? It will be fun.
Hey I just played your first Delta Volanis mission. Really great. Felt pretty red faced at the end
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Hey I just played your first Delta Volanis mission. Really great. Felt pretty red faced at the end
Thank you for playing it. I really do think there is potential for genuine and satisfying exploration missions. I'm not the best author, so I'm hoping to see other authors make a Mission 3, 4, etc. With enough of these types of missions, players could spend weeks or months simply exploring.
You know, for all the fuss, it is nice to be able to travel around the ESD area without bumping into that damned Delta Volanis pop up.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
After seeing the update live, I'm annoyed. Even though I didn't do exploration missions a lot, we've lost roughly half the doff missions in Cardassian space. That's half the NADRCs, and 1/2 of the rare commodity missions only found there.
Grrr.
Maybe they should rename STO to Starfleet Battles or Starfleet Command. Like the old PC game.
That would be an insult to those games. They had meaningful, thought out combat systems that didn't rely on console spamming or P2W BS. Oh and that would require Cryptic at least pretend to give a **** about the KDF :mad:
You know, for all the fuss, it is nice to be able to travel around the ESD area without bumping into that damned Delta Volanis pop up.
"Helm, set course for Eta Eridani sector block, best speed."
"Aye, captain."
[30 seconds later...]
"Captain, we are cleared to warp to Delta Volanis."
"We are? Who requested this, exactly? And who told you to bring us to a stop here? Does 'Delta Volanis' in fact sound anything like 'Eta Eridani', which is the course I ordered you to set?"
It gets aggravating, and is, I believe, a major contributor to folks relying entirely on transwarp rather than flying through sector space. I like to admire the ship I built - but I don't like having to argue with the helm officer every time we leave ESD under warp drive.
Ooh no, not the evil Delta Volanis pop-up!! :eek: The horror. THE HORROR!!! :rolleyes:
Totally worth ripping a major and unique part of the game without any form of substitute.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
With the release of Season 9.5 (AKA how far can we push this before it breaks), the Star Trek Online team is continuing with our commitment to improve the overall quality of the player base for all shareholders, this time by focusing on Exploration content. When this was created, we envisioned role players, Star Trek fans and exploration-minded players to enjoy and make use of the explore strange new worlds part of the Star Trek mantra. Exploration missions used automated tools to facilitate creating large quantities of widely varied free-to-play content. But then because of the grinding, income and server bandwidth use minimisation needs of our game, the exploration-minded players had to be discouraged from playing within the non income-generating elements of game content (the dozen or so Exploration Clusters seen across the galaxy map) which featured a limited suite of opportunities within which to introduce pay-to-win initiatives (each Exploration Cluster features only free content). The end results were thousands of simple players that all played in their own way without buying up any Zen from our online store nothing close to what we now desire.
With the steadily improving quality of purchasable content available throughout the Zen store as well as our recent efforts to explore even more avenues of profiteering, Exploration Clusters have become something were reluctant to steer new players towards because they do not involve micro-transactions or milking player wallets for all theyre worth. One of the main reasons theyve stayed in the game as long as they have is that we didnt want to drive away all the role players and crafters without a micro-transaction framework established to replace the free content. As has been mentioned in other developer blogs, Season 9.5 marks a launching of our pay-to-win Research and Development system. This also comes with an update to how crafting materials are earned (most notably by adding them to the Zen store). As a result, weve been able to re-examine the inclusion of Exploration Clusters in STO and found them not to be part of the pay-to-win experience we want our shareholders to enjoy the benefit of.
Removing Exploration Clusters means that players will no longer be able to enjoy a diverse part of the game that doesnt involve paying us money. Players that logged out in these maps will be redirected to the appropriate area of the Zen store immediately.
Duty officer assignments that previous took place inside the Exploration Cluster sector maps can no longer be accessed, and the equivalent benefits those areas once offered are effectively transferred to payment-based elements of the game. For example, colonization rewards previously utilised by the old free crafting system are now readily available in packs from the Zen store.
The transwarp powers available on the Tuffli Freighter and Suliban Cell Ship, that took players to these locations, will now be useless, and those players who enjoyed a play style that involved spending countless hours not engaging in micro-transactions will now either be forced to leave the game or engage with the PvE queues, Fleet content, new paid crafting system or (ultimately, as the only way to jump the queue in terms of performance within any of the aforementioned in-game systems) the Zen store.
Accolades that previously tracked completing missions inside each Exploration Cluster will now track completion of duty officer assignments unique to those Exploration Clusters, because theres nothing more annoying to hardworking free-content players than devaluing their efforts by making older content and rewards much easier to earn.
The daily missions to explore these Exploration Clusters have been removed, including the Explore Strange New Worlds and We Need Breathing Room daily missions. In order to replace these sources of Dilithium, players will need to buy Zen from the Zen store, then convert that Zen into Refined Dilithium via the in-game Exchange tool.
For those who will miss the opportunity to explore the Exploration Clusters, we will be adding doors to the Foundry so that player-created missions can make use of these settings. The limitless nature of the inexplicable penchant of some players to perform our content-creation function for us for free, allows us to exploit that goodwill and use the Foundry tool as a paltry excuse for a replacement of the former robust Exploration Cluster content, whilst focusing paid resources on content that will entail micro-transactions and maximisation of value for money and profit.
While we are removing part of the player base, we hope that the result is a greater proportion of paying players within STO. In the end, we aim to make Star Trek Online something our shareholders are excited to be investing in every week.
Dr. Evil Von Moneystein
Zen Store Grand Nagus
$$$tar Trek Online
(It was a mistake to participate with the previous thread as I did, it didn't feel right and therefore I removed it.)
Yes, I too, appreciate that Cryptic pulled content that (almost) everyone agrees was sub par content, especially as far as STO has evolved. The Exploration Cluster content was a randomly generated set of maps that got Cryptic past a time that they could not generate content fast enough when there was no end-game content.
At the same time, having "exploration" removed still hurts because it was the only form of "exploring the unknown" that we have had and the fear is that since it's removed, there is no reason to fix it.
My feeling is that STO has everything that other MMOs already has, just the skins on the models are different. Having a way to explore the unknown would make it more unique and closer to being in Star Trek.
The best thing we can do is be creative, constructive and fair in our responses.
So, how can lots of unique, quality content be generated for players to regularly consume?
It would be almost impossible to hand-create exploration content at a rate and quality that players could be continually be playing new content.
An automated mission generator system, I believe it was called Genesis that was used for the Exploration Cluster content, was not very good - I wish I knew more about how it worked... but how can a computer program be so creative as to give truly creative content with a decent quality? The only possible way, that I can see, is to create templates (of maps, texture maps, dialog, races, etc.) that are randomly put together - sounds more like what Genesis was.
Besides the mechanics, it would need to be profitable for Cryptic/PWE or have no-cost in generating it. The Foundry, for what it is, it's the only solution that Cryptic see as the only stop gap they have for the time being. The is some great content in the Foundry but most of it I would not consider exploration though; I expect Cryptic to be the ones to create the content for their game. Even if you tie a Reputation to Exploration, you will still need regular (even non-story arc) content to be generated, besides what they come out with for each season.
How can we get Exploration into Star Trek Online?
Star Trek Battles Channel - Play Star Trek like they did in the series!Avatar: pinterest-com/pin/14003448816884219Are you sure it isn't time for a "colorful metaphor"? --Spock in 'The Voyage Home' SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
Comments
Hmm the way your supporting this and then slagging of the people who are against the change makes me think you may be part of Cryptic is some way. Otherwise you would be as ticked off as most of the community is. Instead of spamming your foundry missions which like the other post will never play your mission just for the spamming you are doing for them. If I want to play the Foundry I would play it. There is a specific thread to plug your foundry missions and this thread is not it.
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I wish there was some kind of forum veteran award for the first time that we're accused of being an undercover PWE operative.
My character Tsin'xing
Sorry folks, you are stuck with us. So, the question is, what can we do about it? It will be fun.
We are stuck with a cesspool of bad content... great.
Some people love old exploration missions because they were simple without stupid/boring storyline or forced personality on our captains/boffs.
There are no long-term goals at the moment. Hopefully the disappointment and discussion in this thread and going forward will change that at some point, or at least influence the Foundry development in a more...responsible...direction than others might prefer.
^^ THIS!!
It's sad to see to what this community has been degraded over time.
Like I said before, it's hilarious in a certain sad way to see how low certain foundry authors have fallen, that they're basically over the moon in this thread for getting.....well, pretty much nothing from Cryptic. They may feel they're getting some exclusivity, but the sad matter of the truth is that Cryptic is doing nothing more than covering their own corporate posteriors and laziness with the Foundry. And that's about it.
Don't get me wrong, I bare no ill will towards the Foundry and the authors. I like the fact of having a Foundry, as I said before in the thread - it has helped me get through dire content droughts on the KDF side.
But the Foundry should always be a supplement to the game's content, like you said, and not the tagged as the primary content generator for an entire aspect of the game, which coincidentally happens to be the pillar on which the Star Trek franchise has been built. Especially in it's current state.
That people really can't see the entire big picture behind this, because it feels they're getting their short term wishes granted for the moment, speaks volumes about the current state of the STO community. Which as I said before, it's kinda' hilarious in a sad way.
I totally agree. The problem is, cryptic will never put efforts and money in creating exploration missions (that is something that will help the future of the game, and since cryptic is trying to destroy the game, that is something that will never happen), so the only solution we have is to carry that work to the foundry and the players emselves. We are not asking for incredible foundry missions, just missions with some "exploration" in em.
The problem is, my idea was that cryptic should just replace the classic dumb exploration missions for foundry ones, not just remove the entire exploration system. Letting the actual star clusters there, but instead of getting a stupid mission when you investigate an anomaly or watever in the star cluster, you get a improve foundry exploration mission.
Then i dont think the foundry will be ever be a solution. Because it will be just like playing foundry missions no related to the exploration theme at all, and eventually they will be just foundry missions.
Exploration Cluster accolades is still there and easier to get. Just do any mission with the Cluster name and it will reward.
Also, Federation now can get KDF exploration cluster accolades, and KDF the Federation Cluster Accolades. The only one NOT working is the Chart B'Tran / Azlesa.
It was smart for their bank balance. Nothing more!
If they can trick a few hundred dumb players into buying Zen to get the crafting packs, their goal is complete..
I agree that the exploration cluster missions were not very good, but I think the resources should have been better spent on rewriting the exploration system instead of e.g. the crafting revamp. It would have been a much better match to the Star Trek setting generally. I don't remember seeing the crafting of custom items having any sort of emphasis in the Star Trek series...
Also, albeit I played only a few foundry missions, I wasn't happy with their quality neither. Add to that that there is no 'exploration' or surprises in the foundry mission selection at all; so I don't understand how would the foundry replace any sort of exploration experience.
The best thing we can all do is stop calling sto anything to do with star trek because apart from ships ,t has nothing to do with star trek since they removed the only exploration they had.
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Or maybe just star grind online as that is all this game is now or Starville as the new crafting game is just a form of that game
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I hope they promote him to tick you off since you like getting mad a silly things. There is no shortage of souces for crafting material. If you cannot figure that out and have to buy lol crafting packs you are either lazy or not too bright.
Hey I just played your first Delta Volanis mission. Really great. Felt pretty red faced at the end
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Thank you for playing it. I really do think there is potential for genuine and satisfying exploration missions. I'm not the best author, so I'm hoping to see other authors make a Mission 3, 4, etc. With enough of these types of missions, players could spend weeks or months simply exploring.
Thanks again for the play.
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Grrr.
That would be an insult to those games. They had meaningful, thought out combat systems that didn't rely on console spamming or P2W BS. Oh and that would require Cryptic at least pretend to give a **** about the KDF :mad:
Ooh no, not the evil Delta Volanis pop-up!! :eek: The horror. THE HORROR!!! :rolleyes:
"Aye, captain."
[30 seconds later...]
"Captain, we are cleared to warp to Delta Volanis."
"We are? Who requested this, exactly? And who told you to bring us to a stop here? Does 'Delta Volanis' in fact sound anything like 'Eta Eridani', which is the course I ordered you to set?"
It gets aggravating, and is, I believe, a major contributor to folks relying entirely on transwarp rather than flying through sector space. I like to admire the ship I built - but I don't like having to argue with the helm officer every time we leave ESD under warp drive.
Totally worth ripping a major and unique part of the game without any form of substitute.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
With the steadily improving quality of purchasable content available throughout the Zen store as well as our recent efforts to explore even more avenues of profiteering, Exploration Clusters have become something were reluctant to steer new players towards because they do not involve micro-transactions or milking player wallets for all theyre worth. One of the main reasons theyve stayed in the game as long as they have is that we didnt want to drive away all the role players and crafters without a micro-transaction framework established to replace the free content. As has been mentioned in other developer blogs, Season 9.5 marks a launching of our pay-to-win Research and Development system. This also comes with an update to how crafting materials are earned (most notably by adding them to the Zen store). As a result, weve been able to re-examine the inclusion of Exploration Clusters in STO and found them not to be part of the pay-to-win experience we want our shareholders to enjoy the benefit of.
Removing Exploration Clusters means that players will no longer be able to enjoy a diverse part of the game that doesnt involve paying us money. Players that logged out in these maps will be redirected to the appropriate area of the Zen store immediately.
Duty officer assignments that previous took place inside the Exploration Cluster sector maps can no longer be accessed, and the equivalent benefits those areas once offered are effectively transferred to payment-based elements of the game. For example, colonization rewards previously utilised by the old free crafting system are now readily available in packs from the Zen store.
The transwarp powers available on the Tuffli Freighter and Suliban Cell Ship, that took players to these locations, will now be useless, and those players who enjoyed a play style that involved spending countless hours not engaging in micro-transactions will now either be forced to leave the game or engage with the PvE queues, Fleet content, new paid crafting system or (ultimately, as the only way to jump the queue in terms of performance within any of the aforementioned in-game systems) the Zen store.
Accolades that previously tracked completing missions inside each Exploration Cluster will now track completion of duty officer assignments unique to those Exploration Clusters, because theres nothing more annoying to hardworking free-content players than devaluing their efforts by making older content and rewards much easier to earn.
The daily missions to explore these Exploration Clusters have been removed, including the Explore Strange New Worlds and We Need Breathing Room daily missions. In order to replace these sources of Dilithium, players will need to buy Zen from the Zen store, then convert that Zen into Refined Dilithium via the in-game Exchange tool.
For those who will miss the opportunity to explore the Exploration Clusters, we will be adding doors to the Foundry so that player-created missions can make use of these settings. The limitless nature of the inexplicable penchant of some players to perform our content-creation function for us for free, allows us to exploit that goodwill and use the Foundry tool as a paltry excuse for a replacement of the former robust Exploration Cluster content, whilst focusing paid resources on content that will entail micro-transactions and maximisation of value for money and profit.
While we are removing part of the player base, we hope that the result is a greater proportion of paying players within STO. In the end, we aim to make Star Trek Online something our shareholders are excited to be investing in every week.
Dr. Evil Von Moneystein
Zen Store Grand Nagus
$$$tar Trek Online
Yes, I too, appreciate that Cryptic pulled content that (almost) everyone agrees was sub par content, especially as far as STO has evolved. The Exploration Cluster content was a randomly generated set of maps that got Cryptic past a time that they could not generate content fast enough when there was no end-game content.
At the same time, having "exploration" removed still hurts because it was the only form of "exploring the unknown" that we have had and the fear is that since it's removed, there is no reason to fix it.
My feeling is that STO has everything that other MMOs already has, just the skins on the models are different. Having a way to explore the unknown would make it more unique and closer to being in Star Trek.
The best thing we can do is be creative, constructive and fair in our responses.
So, how can lots of unique, quality content be generated for players to regularly consume?
It would be almost impossible to hand-create exploration content at a rate and quality that players could be continually be playing new content.
An automated mission generator system, I believe it was called Genesis that was used for the Exploration Cluster content, was not very good - I wish I knew more about how it worked... but how can a computer program be so creative as to give truly creative content with a decent quality? The only possible way, that I can see, is to create templates (of maps, texture maps, dialog, races, etc.) that are randomly put together - sounds more like what Genesis was.
Besides the mechanics, it would need to be profitable for Cryptic/PWE or have no-cost in generating it. The Foundry, for what it is, it's the only solution that Cryptic see as the only stop gap they have for the time being. The is some great content in the Foundry but most of it I would not consider exploration though; I expect Cryptic to be the ones to create the content for their game. Even if you tie a Reputation to Exploration, you will still need regular (even non-story arc) content to be generated, besides what they come out with for each season.
How can we get Exploration into Star Trek Online?
SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.