This is true, but if we all stick to a mission naming convention, then you can still find every single mission by searching "Explore Delta Volanis, Mission 34" or "Explore Delta Volanis, Mission 37."
Yeah, it's clunky, and the bad search engine puts us at a disadvantage. But, at least we can try.
But the whole point remains: Cryptic kills a major part of the game, something that was unique and deserved to be expanded and expects the community to create the content for themselves. Now randomly generated missions are replaced by x short, set missions by the community.
I personally do consider this behaviour unacceptable. And that has nothing to do with the quality of foundry missions - the whole thing is a farce and I am shocked how willingly so many people simply accept that. Again, mission quality, be it exploration missions or foundry missions, is not the issue here.
But the whole point remains: Cryptic kills a major part of the game, something that was unique and deserved to be expanded and expects the community to create the content for themselves. Now randomly generated missions are replaced by x short, set missions by the community.
I personally do consider this behaviour unacceptable. And that has nothing to do with the quality of foundry missions - the whole thing is a farce and I am shocked how willingly so many people simply accept that. Again, mission quality, be it exploration missions or foundry missions, is not the issue here.
I get that, and I'm under no delusions that Cryptic producers were actually trying to do something beyond hook up doors to support the Foundry as an alternative. If they really believe in Foundry as an alternative, then they would revamp the UI to make those missions easy to find and play.
Still, it doesn't change the fact that it is an opportunity for Star Trek fans to tell some amazing stories of Trekploration. I'm pretty convinced that a group of 10 fans, if they had enough slots, could fill up those cluster with hand-crafted missions that would be far more satisfying than anything Cryptic could deliver, even if they devoted a year to revamping the genesis junk. The quality of exploration is a factor for me.
That isn't meant as an insult to Cryptic. It's just the reality of the situation. They couldn't do it the way that we can, unless they hired those 10 Foundry authors and put them in a room for 40 hours a week. Even then, that would slow us down probably, because devs would get nervous that we're addressing politics, race, gender, and all the other things that make Trek feel Trek.
The foundry is a great tool for creating content. Unfortunately, there is one important, simple thing it can't do compared to Cryptic missions.
Diverging storylines.
I can spawn some branching dialogue or enemy mobs depending on dialogue, and add optional objectives with interaction triggers, but in the end you still can't change which story parts the player does. Basically, you build a linear set of objectives that the player follows. With good trigger work it's possible to achieve some pretty amazing things, but ultimately it's still limited to thay linear storyline.
Well, the previous exploration missions and most of the Cryptic missions are the same.
In fact, I think no mission in this game allows truely divergent storylines. Heck, even the mission where you face Obisek and decide to either work with or against him has no actual consequence in the story line - you still end up helping him the next time, and actively working together with him in the mission after that.
The only thing that the devs seem to be able to do in term of divergence have some actions being random - like in the Step Between Stars mission, where either the NPC Captain gets shot by a sniper, or you find a Voth mech. Or you go right to fight off some drones while Cooper works on the console, or you go left and make your way past a damaged solar shield.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The Foundy is NOT an "Alternative"...
It's the sorry excuse of content creation and a way to save money on actual content creators...
90% of the Foundry User Content is even WORSE than the now deleted Cluster Missions, it's inherently STATIC and NOT changing and not enough people will actually build "Exploration Missions" to begin with.
While I'm upset about losing the exploration missions, and upset about there not being any dev-created alternative on the horizon, I have to defend Cryptic on this.
The Foundry isn't just something Cryptic tossed off to avoid having to do stuff. It does serve the purpose of creating a quantity of content the devs can't do themselves, yes, but it's also a bit of a pride and joy for Cryptic too. UGC is something Cryptic have specialized in since CoH days, something no other devs do as well. The Foundry is quite amazing really, and many, many authors have done really excellent work with it. There are about half a dozen Foundry missions that are as good as any dev-created stories, and dozens and dozens of Foundry missions that are easily better than the old exploration missions.
There's no problem with Cryptic saying Foundry missions should be part of the exploration system - they could have done that by doing something like I said, and having it be a sub-section of Foundry mission creation, with tighter parameters, so a Foundry mission with exploration parameters plus some random stuff authors could add, could automatically be one of the ones that randomly comes up in clusters. That would have been ok, awesome in fact.
The problem is Cryptic gutting exploration entirely, and looking like they have no plans to improve it or replace it with something else. The more I think about it, the more this annoys me as someone who's been here from the start of the game.
It annoys me because up till now I've tolerated and understood the p2win aspects of the game as part of the f2p idea, with the hopes that the devs would at least keep doing something to keep the game have some Star Trek essence to it, for those who want that. But now, with the recent Geko interview, it's looking more and more like this is "generic PWE firesale f2p MMO no. 23478395", and any effort to keep the game Trek has gone out the window.
I'm upset about losing the exploration missions, and upset about there not being any dev-created alternative on the horizon. But if people continue to support Cryptic's way of doing business in regards to removing content then, the company will continue to do so. What is required is a massive campaign to change this practice. The foundry is a poor replacement for "exploration" and his its own problems. If a large majority complain then there must be something wrong. If it was a stop gap measure I would support it, but it is not. This is poor planning and a poor business practice.
I'm upset about losing the exploration missions, and upset about there not being any dev-created alternative on the horizon. But if people continue to support Cryptic's way of doing business in regards to removing content then, the company will continue to do so. What is required is a massive campaign to change this practice. The foundry is a poor replacement for "exploration" and his its own problems. If a large majority complain then there must be something wrong. If it was a stop gap measure I would support it, but it is not. This is poor planning and a poor business practice.
Not a campaign. What needs to happen if you want this to change and Cryptic's priorities to change, you need to show them that it hurts their bottom line. They are making the changes to the game they do because they think it will attract players and make them spend money on the game.
If players don't like STO without exploration content and stop playing the game, and stop spending money on the game, Cryptic will need to change its strategy.
But if that doesn't happen, they are on the right track. You may have been lost as a customer, but apparently you were replaced by someone else, or even more than one.
As for me - I would like STO to have a decent exploration system. Be it with specialized Foundry missions, or be it via a mission generator, or because Cryptic hired 5,000 authors to create a universe to explore.
But I practically stopped playing exploration missions probably around F2P. For a long time, it was replaced with PVP,. Now I am "grinding" reps on various characters, and I enjoy it. For me, the game didn't have an exploration system anymore, so I can live without it. I am not one of the guys they may have lost over this.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I'm not surprised in the least bit that they are throwing away exploration, and I'll tell you why.
Have you ever seen the movie Wayne's World? In the movie, Wayne Campbell hosts a show from his basement. The essence of the show had its own point to it, which is what drew people to watch it (ie. it didn't take itself so seriously). Later in the movie, Wayne and his friend and co-host Garth meet a guy who works for a large-profit company called Noah's Arcade, who chose Wayne's World to exploit. Why? Because Wayne's World was popular and had a fan base, and therefore, an already generated source of income. He convinces Wayne to sell the show to him, and suddenly, they have changed all kinds of things in the show's format, which ultimately changes (for the worse) the essence of the show for which made it special in the first place.
This is what I feel STO did with Star Trek. When this game was made, there obviously was no intention of making it into an "exploration" game because the engine and format it uses is made for combat and economy more than anything. So why did they choose to turn Star Trek (a socially "anti-war" franchise) into a war game? Because that would be the most direct way of financially exploiting it. War means economy. In-game economy means translation into real world value from its users, and therefore, money in the developer's pockets. This game was directed to neglect exploration from the beginning because exploration does not generate into economy in game or out. To cut their efforts of maintaining the game and therefore, cutting money to spend on maintaining it, doing away with exploration is only the most logical (and most likely, the original) choice to them. Don't like it? Well, if you've already invested money into the game, it's only on your conscious to be strong-armed into continuing to play it anyway.
The only reason why this game has the Star Trek label on it is because Star Trek has a fan base to exploit, and exploit you it did. I don't see them having any intention of bringing exploration back around. It just doesn't generate enough fund incentive and it's counter to their franchise exploit.
That's a nice story but Star Trek is not Wayne's World basement IP, and STO isnt the giant production company sucking up the assets for milking.
STO is successful for two reasons only: STAR and TREK. Without that it would be just like the dozen other roadkill F2P space shooters.
I doubt it would be succesful without Star Trek, but it has actual gameplay that very few - if any - F2P games (Sci-Fi) or otherwise offer. The Space Combat engine is very different from most space combat games. It's "tall ship combat" - even if it is also with a lot of space magic.
Which is why I look with great interested at the upcoming title "Dreadnought".
I'm not surprised in the least bit that they are throwing away exploration, and I'll tell you why.
Have you ever seen the movie Wayne's World? In the movie, Wayne Campbell hosts a show from his basement. The essence of the show had its own point to it, which is what drew people to watch it (ie. it didn't take itself so seriously). Later in the movie, Wayne and his friend and co-host Garth meet a guy who works for a large-profit company called Noah's Arcade, who chose Wayne's World to exploit. Why? Because Wayne's World was popular and had a fan base, and therefore, an already generated source of income. He convinces Wayne to sell the show to him, and suddenly, they have changed all kinds of things in the show's format, which ultimately changes (for the worse) the essence of the show for which made it special in the first place.
This is what I feel STO did with Star Trek. When this game was made, there obviously was no intention of making it into an "exploration" game because the engine and format it uses is made for combat and economy more than anything. So why did they choose to turn Star Trek (a socially "anti-war" franchise) into a war game? Because that would be the most direct way of financially exploiting it. War means economy. In-game economy means translation into real world value from its users, and therefore, money in the developer's pockets. This game was directed to neglect exploration from the beginning because exploration does not generate into economy in game or out. To cut their efforts of maintaining the game and therefore, cutting money to spend on maintaining it, doing away with exploration is only the most logical (and most likely, the original) choice to them. Don't like it? Well, if you've already invested money into the game, it's only on your conscious to be strong-armed into continuing to play it anyway.
The only reason why this game has the Star Trek label on it is because Star Trek has a fan base to exploit, and exploit you it did. I don't see them having any intention of bringing exploration back around. It just doesn't generate enough fund incentive and it's counter to their franchise exploit.
OF course this game exists because Star Trek fans are willing to spend money on Star Trek.
The game has combat because that's what most computer games are about. The ones that aren't are usually puzzle and adventure games that you don't really need to play in a team or need other players around.
There is also a whole Star Trek TV show that was not primarily about exploration in "let'S go out and see what's on that planet". The major arc of DS9 was in fact about a devastating war.
And a lot of the other Trek TV episodes aren't all that much about exploration - they are about conflicts, some violent, some not, and many even happen on Federation planets or with species the Federation already had encountered.
And pretty much never has any episode of Star Trek been only about the crew running around and scanning various things.
Many of the STO episodes focus on war, but they also can contain exploration. The most clear-cut example may be when we activate the New Republic Gateway and explore what is behind.
Also, I think you can very much create exploration content and monetize it. Imagine having to "grind" exploration missions to get better scanning gear so that exploration missions go faster or you find more research points, crafting mats or whatever.
Farville is heavily monetized and there is no combat in it (AFAIK).
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
As long as we have to pick and choose the Foundry mission, then it is not exploration. If Cryptic wants to make Foundry as a huge part of exploration, then there should be a bunch of exploration missions and a random one is picked. So if I go to Delta Voltanis Exploration Cluster and click on the Explore Delta Voltanis Exploration Cluster button, then it should randomly send me to one of the hundred or so exploration clusters that are specifically set for Delta Voltanis. Preferably these Foundry Exploration missions are only selected if they meet a certain quality. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece, but it should be more than just fight a bunch of aliens for no reason or is just excruciatingly awful. A possibility would be the ability to set tags like combat-oriented, exploration-oriented, science-oriented, non-combat, etc.
The solution does seem to be some sort of Foundry-lite (a sub-section of the Foundry) with fairly tightly-controlled parameters based on the old exploration missions and maps set up by the devs that players can tweak (e.g. 3-6 scans instead of always 5, one large team of Nausicans around one mineral treasure, instead of a few scattered around with each one, etc., etc.), with the option of having a few random elements of their own choosing (talky bits, etc.).
Something the average player can dip their toes into the Foundry with for fun, without having the daunting prospect of starting a mission from scratch; so they can shove a few of their explorations into the pool for other players to draw from.
Then have the old exploration sector space and have these Foundry-lite exploration missions as what you randomly get.
This would kill two birds with one stone: solve the exploration problem, and ease players into trying out the Foundry.
The solution does seem to be some sort of Foundry-lite (a sub-section of the Foundry) with fairly tightly-controlled parameters based on the old exploration missions and maps set up by the devs that players can tweak (e.g. 3-6 scans instead of always 5, one large team of Nausicans around one mineral treasure, instead of a few scattered around with each one, etc., etc.), with the option of having a few random elements of their own choosing (talky bits, etc.).
Something the average player can dip their toes into the Foundry with for fun, without having the daunting prospect of starting a mission from scratch; so they can shove a few of their explorations into the pool for other players to draw from.
Then have the old exploration sector space and have these Foundry-lite exploration missions as what you randomly get.
This would kill two birds with one stone: solve the exploration problem, and ease players into trying out the Foundry.
I like it, but we can't expect much oversight on what does and does not get included. Geko suggests a display of the top 5-10 rated missions that start at the doors within the clusters. I am skeptical of it, because the foundry does something similar now, and we can't find what is really out there. Plus, lots of loot grinders in the top rated.
so the "90%" is a number you pulled out of your behind, and they are "worse" because you say so, which is your opinion, not much else.
Yeah... the hundreds of "Beam down, Kill, Beam up" (not even walking) Missions with even worse text than the "Borg 3rd Dynasty" are totally fine for some people...
obviously the foundry is not an alternative for you, but i guess you can't deny that it may be an alternative for others.
Many people willingly read tabloids... that doesn't make them a suitable replacement or alternative for actual journalism....
Being negative about something getting changed or removed is one thing, but automaticaly assuming the replacement is ****ty because you think so is plain ignorant.
How many spotlight foundry missions have you played? Have you ever created a foundry mission yourself?
As there are not that many, I have played almost all...
And yes, there is currently one active Mission by me in the Foundry.
But due to the absolutely bugged and horrible UI you will probably never find it.
Even if 90% were worse than a repetitive and predictable mission, it would still leave you with well over 500 missions that have better quality. If you grinded through those, i'd predict that another 500 have been made in the meantime.
I won't because not all of them are properly listed and therefore not accessable unless I spend 30 Minutes searching AND filtering through all the Bull****...
Give it some time. The editor is borked right now, unless we choose to not use a single custom costume. 1 Foundry author can make one of these exploration missions in 24-48 hours. Compare that potential to the Cryptic team. It may take some time, but we can fill the clusters up much faster than the devs could, unless they put in more blender-made content.
Heck, give it a go yourself. With a week of learning, you could make your own mission.
The effing Editor is always "borked"... there was not a single time when everything worked as intended...
For that matter... those are NOT exploration missions... as they are always static, always the same, never changing, pre-made, pre-done Missions usually with a Full Description which is at least needed to somewhat filter out the mass of complete Bull**** that is there...
And then there are the tons of Bugs that always plague the Foundry and its Missions and the fact that after every "update" we are always without it for at least 2 Weeks...
As said above, I already tried out the Foundry in its varying states of disarray and disfunctionality and there is currently a single active mission by me, so I know it is ****.
Yeah... the hundreds of "Beam down, Kill, Beam up" (not even walking) Missions with even worse text than the "Borg 3rd Dynasty" are totally fine for some people...
As there are not that many, I have played almost all...
And yes, there is currently one active Mission by me in the Foundry.
But due to the absolutely bugged and horrible UI you will probably never find it.
I won't because not all of them are properly listed and therefore not accessable unless I spend 30 Minutes searching AND filtering through all the Bull****...
The effing Editor is always "borked"... there was not a single time when everything worked as intended...
For that matter... those are NOT exploration missions... as they are always static, always the same, never changing, pre-made, pre-done Missions usually with a Full Description which is at least needed to somewhat filter out the mass of complete Bull**** that is there...
And then there are the tons of Bugs that always plague the Foundry and its Missions and the fact that after every "update" we are always without it for at least 2 Weeks...
As said above, I already tried out the Foundry in its varying states of disarray and disfunctionality and there is currently a single active mission by me, so I know it is ****.
i give you that, the search function needs improvements, but that doesn't mean that missions in general are horrible. If you look for grind missions, you obviously find grind missions...if you look for story missions, you will obviously find story missions. And i wouldn't suggest searching within the foundry UI, but outside: forum, official website. There are always some foundry missions highlighted by the community.
quality of the searchfunction doesn't represent the quality of the missions. The quality missions are always highlighted somewhere, stating they can't be found is simply a lie.
youndry is not for you, that is your opinion, and to a certain extend respectable...unless you start to generalize that it is TRIBBLE for everybody else too. At that point you take the lazy road and condemn everything about the foundry, which is unfounded and untrue.
IThere is also a whole Star Trek TV show that was not primarily about exploration in "let'S go out and see what's on that planet". The major arc of DS9 was in fact about a devastating war.
And a lot of the other Trek TV episodes aren't all that much about exploration - they are about conflicts, some violent, some not, and many even happen on Federation planets or with species the Federation already had encountered.
And pretty much never has any episode of Star Trek been only about the crew running around and scanning various things.
Many of the STO episodes focus on war, but they also can contain exploration. The most clear-cut example may be when we activate the New Republic Gateway and explore what is behind.
We all know this, the episodes were all about the story and adventure. But the thing is, as players we need to experience that unknown. That's what Star Trek is all about. Because they are exploring a new area of space no Federation ship has gone before and we (as players) don't know what's ahead, and it's that unknown that leads to the adventure.
Like how we experience a new mission or story for the first time, and we want more! That's what exploration is really about.
The effing Editor is always "borked"... there was not a single time when everything worked as intended...
And then there are the tons of Bugs that always plague the Foundry and its Missions and the fact that after every "update" we are always without it for at least 2 Weeks...
Sad, but very true. The Foundry is always experiencing problems. And it's due to neglect. But if by some miracle that Geko isn't BSing us on focusing on the Foundry, and Cryptic actually fixes it, perhaps that will change.
But I'm not really holding my breath on it. Cryptic is like a kid who plays with new toys and gets bored of it fast. And when we ask them to play with it, they make a fuss and go "I promise" and then tosses it aside.
i give you that, the search function needs improvements, but that doesn't mean that missions in general are horrible. If you look for grind missions, you obviously find grind missions...if you look for story missions, you will obviously find story missions. And i wouldn't suggest searching within the foundry UI, but outside: forum, official website. There are always some foundry missions highlighted by the community.
quality of the searchfunction doesn't represent the quality of the missions. The quality missions are always highlighted somewhere, stating they can't be found is simply a lie.
youndry is not for you, that is your opinion, and to a certain extend respectable...unless you start to generalize that it is TRIBBLE for everybody else too. At that point you take the lazy road and condemn everything about the foundry, which is unfounded and untrue.
The Search Engine is just the most recent example of what I had to struggle with...
And here's the thing... I shouldn't have to ****ing spend hours OUTSIDE of the game to find at most half a dozen playable missions and I certainly don't have the time to "just play a few Missions" and note down the playable ones which I don't want to do, because I actually don't want to replay the same dozen 1-2 Hour missions Missions that never change and don't even offer Team play...
I'm glad to see that this is a live issue for people.
Let's keep the conversation going so Cryptic are aware that there's a contingent of players who feel strongly that "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go" is the Star Trek banner, is what got people excited about Star Trek in the first place, so long ago; and there surely has to be some sort of representation of that in a Star Trek game.
I felt that feeling very strongly when I first played the game as a newbie. Exploration didn't "confuse" me at all, it felt like this was what I wanted most out of a Star Trek game. Flying new spaceships is cool and all, competing to outdo each other is cool, MMO progression is cool. But exploration ought, in my view, to be the USP of a Star Trek MMO, and it's a major feature of most MMOs.
And I managed to have that feeling for quite a while when the game was new, using exploration as a change of pace between storylines and team-based content. It's just that the bugginess and the sameyness wore thin after a while.
But surely it's not an unsolveable problem? I mean, I understand it's difficult (exploration content is easily exhausted by players), but there's the challenge. Obviously the core of the answer has to be some mix of procedural content and UGC in some sense.
Come on Cryptic, put your thinking caps on! And make it a priority for some future update or half-update!
Comments
True enough.
Agreed on all accounts.
I get that, and I'm under no delusions that Cryptic producers were actually trying to do something beyond hook up doors to support the Foundry as an alternative. If they really believe in Foundry as an alternative, then they would revamp the UI to make those missions easy to find and play.
Still, it doesn't change the fact that it is an opportunity for Star Trek fans to tell some amazing stories of Trekploration. I'm pretty convinced that a group of 10 fans, if they had enough slots, could fill up those cluster with hand-crafted missions that would be far more satisfying than anything Cryptic could deliver, even if they devoted a year to revamping the genesis junk. The quality of exploration is a factor for me.
That isn't meant as an insult to Cryptic. It's just the reality of the situation. They couldn't do it the way that we can, unless they hired those 10 Foundry authors and put them in a room for 40 hours a week. Even then, that would slow us down probably, because devs would get nervous that we're addressing politics, race, gender, and all the other things that make Trek feel Trek.
Anything more complex would be far, far slower.
In fact, I think no mission in this game allows truely divergent storylines. Heck, even the mission where you face Obisek and decide to either work with or against him has no actual consequence in the story line - you still end up helping him the next time, and actively working together with him in the mission after that.
The only thing that the devs seem to be able to do in term of divergence have some actions being random - like in the Step Between Stars mission, where either the NPC Captain gets shot by a sniper, or you find a Voth mech. Or you go right to fight off some drones while Cooper works on the console, or you go left and make your way past a damaged solar shield.
While I'm upset about losing the exploration missions, and upset about there not being any dev-created alternative on the horizon, I have to defend Cryptic on this.
The Foundry isn't just something Cryptic tossed off to avoid having to do stuff. It does serve the purpose of creating a quantity of content the devs can't do themselves, yes, but it's also a bit of a pride and joy for Cryptic too. UGC is something Cryptic have specialized in since CoH days, something no other devs do as well. The Foundry is quite amazing really, and many, many authors have done really excellent work with it. There are about half a dozen Foundry missions that are as good as any dev-created stories, and dozens and dozens of Foundry missions that are easily better than the old exploration missions.
There's no problem with Cryptic saying Foundry missions should be part of the exploration system - they could have done that by doing something like I said, and having it be a sub-section of Foundry mission creation, with tighter parameters, so a Foundry mission with exploration parameters plus some random stuff authors could add, could automatically be one of the ones that randomly comes up in clusters. That would have been ok, awesome in fact.
The problem is Cryptic gutting exploration entirely, and looking like they have no plans to improve it or replace it with something else. The more I think about it, the more this annoys me as someone who's been here from the start of the game.
It annoys me because up till now I've tolerated and understood the p2win aspects of the game as part of the f2p idea, with the hopes that the devs would at least keep doing something to keep the game have some Star Trek essence to it, for those who want that. But now, with the recent Geko interview, it's looking more and more like this is "generic PWE firesale f2p MMO no. 23478395", and any effort to keep the game Trek has gone out the window.
Not a campaign. What needs to happen if you want this to change and Cryptic's priorities to change, you need to show them that it hurts their bottom line. They are making the changes to the game they do because they think it will attract players and make them spend money on the game.
If players don't like STO without exploration content and stop playing the game, and stop spending money on the game, Cryptic will need to change its strategy.
But if that doesn't happen, they are on the right track. You may have been lost as a customer, but apparently you were replaced by someone else, or even more than one.
As for me - I would like STO to have a decent exploration system. Be it with specialized Foundry missions, or be it via a mission generator, or because Cryptic hired 5,000 authors to create a universe to explore.
But I practically stopped playing exploration missions probably around F2P. For a long time, it was replaced with PVP,. Now I am "grinding" reps on various characters, and I enjoy it. For me, the game didn't have an exploration system anymore, so I can live without it. I am not one of the guys they may have lost over this.
Have you ever seen the movie Wayne's World? In the movie, Wayne Campbell hosts a show from his basement. The essence of the show had its own point to it, which is what drew people to watch it (ie. it didn't take itself so seriously). Later in the movie, Wayne and his friend and co-host Garth meet a guy who works for a large-profit company called Noah's Arcade, who chose Wayne's World to exploit. Why? Because Wayne's World was popular and had a fan base, and therefore, an already generated source of income. He convinces Wayne to sell the show to him, and suddenly, they have changed all kinds of things in the show's format, which ultimately changes (for the worse) the essence of the show for which made it special in the first place.
This is what I feel STO did with Star Trek. When this game was made, there obviously was no intention of making it into an "exploration" game because the engine and format it uses is made for combat and economy more than anything. So why did they choose to turn Star Trek (a socially "anti-war" franchise) into a war game? Because that would be the most direct way of financially exploiting it. War means economy. In-game economy means translation into real world value from its users, and therefore, money in the developer's pockets. This game was directed to neglect exploration from the beginning because exploration does not generate into economy in game or out. To cut their efforts of maintaining the game and therefore, cutting money to spend on maintaining it, doing away with exploration is only the most logical (and most likely, the original) choice to them. Don't like it? Well, if you've already invested money into the game, it's only on your conscious to be strong-armed into continuing to play it anyway.
The only reason why this game has the Star Trek label on it is because Star Trek has a fan base to exploit, and exploit you it did. I don't see them having any intention of bringing exploration back around. It just doesn't generate enough fund incentive and it's counter to their franchise exploit.
STO is successful for two reasons only: STAR and TREK. Without that it would be just like the dozen other roadkill F2P space shooters.
Having made the necessary correction, I dont disagree with your final assessment. It will have to come from somewhere else.
Which is why I look with great interested at the upcoming title "Dreadnought".
OF course this game exists because Star Trek fans are willing to spend money on Star Trek.
The game has combat because that's what most computer games are about. The ones that aren't are usually puzzle and adventure games that you don't really need to play in a team or need other players around.
There is also a whole Star Trek TV show that was not primarily about exploration in "let'S go out and see what's on that planet". The major arc of DS9 was in fact about a devastating war.
And a lot of the other Trek TV episodes aren't all that much about exploration - they are about conflicts, some violent, some not, and many even happen on Federation planets or with species the Federation already had encountered.
And pretty much never has any episode of Star Trek been only about the crew running around and scanning various things.
Many of the STO episodes focus on war, but they also can contain exploration. The most clear-cut example may be when we activate the New Republic Gateway and explore what is behind.
Also, I think you can very much create exploration content and monetize it. Imagine having to "grind" exploration missions to get better scanning gear so that exploration missions go faster or you find more research points, crafting mats or whatever.
Farville is heavily monetized and there is no combat in it (AFAIK).
Something the average player can dip their toes into the Foundry with for fun, without having the daunting prospect of starting a mission from scratch; so they can shove a few of their explorations into the pool for other players to draw from.
Then have the old exploration sector space and have these Foundry-lite exploration missions as what you randomly get.
This would kill two birds with one stone: solve the exploration problem, and ease players into trying out the Foundry.
I like it, but we can't expect much oversight on what does and does not get included. Geko suggests a display of the top 5-10 rated missions that start at the doors within the clusters. I am skeptical of it, because the foundry does something similar now, and we can't find what is really out there. Plus, lots of loot grinders in the top rated.
Also, players need a way to find more, not less.
Yeah... the hundreds of "Beam down, Kill, Beam up" (not even walking) Missions with even worse text than the "Borg 3rd Dynasty" are totally fine for some people...
Many people willingly read tabloids... that doesn't make them a suitable replacement or alternative for actual journalism....
As there are not that many, I have played almost all...
And yes, there is currently one active Mission by me in the Foundry.
But due to the absolutely bugged and horrible UI you will probably never find it.
I won't because not all of them are properly listed and therefore not accessable unless I spend 30 Minutes searching AND filtering through all the Bull****...
The effing Editor is always "borked"... there was not a single time when everything worked as intended...
For that matter... those are NOT exploration missions... as they are always static, always the same, never changing, pre-made, pre-done Missions usually with a Full Description which is at least needed to somewhat filter out the mass of complete Bull**** that is there...
And then there are the tons of Bugs that always plague the Foundry and its Missions and the fact that after every "update" we are always without it for at least 2 Weeks...
As said above, I already tried out the Foundry in its varying states of disarray and disfunctionality and there is currently a single active mission by me, so I know it is ****.
i give you that, the search function needs improvements, but that doesn't mean that missions in general are horrible. If you look for grind missions, you obviously find grind missions...if you look for story missions, you will obviously find story missions. And i wouldn't suggest searching within the foundry UI, but outside: forum, official website. There are always some foundry missions highlighted by the community.
quality of the searchfunction doesn't represent the quality of the missions. The quality missions are always highlighted somewhere, stating they can't be found is simply a lie.
youndry is not for you, that is your opinion, and to a certain extend respectable...unless you start to generalize that it is TRIBBLE for everybody else too. At that point you take the lazy road and condemn everything about the foundry, which is unfounded and untrue.
We all know this, the episodes were all about the story and adventure. But the thing is, as players we need to experience that unknown. That's what Star Trek is all about. Because they are exploring a new area of space no Federation ship has gone before and we (as players) don't know what's ahead, and it's that unknown that leads to the adventure.
Like how we experience a new mission or story for the first time, and we want more! That's what exploration is really about.
Sad, but very true. The Foundry is always experiencing problems. And it's due to neglect. But if by some miracle that Geko isn't BSing us on focusing on the Foundry, and Cryptic actually fixes it, perhaps that will change.
But I'm not really holding my breath on it. Cryptic is like a kid who plays with new toys and gets bored of it fast. And when we ask them to play with it, they make a fuss and go "I promise" and then tosses it aside.
The Search Engine is just the most recent example of what I had to struggle with...
And here's the thing... I shouldn't have to ****ing spend hours OUTSIDE of the game to find at most half a dozen playable missions and I certainly don't have the time to "just play a few Missions" and note down the playable ones which I don't want to do, because I actually don't want to replay the same dozen 1-2 Hour missions Missions that never change and don't even offer Team play...
It has to be a miracle indeed... a miracle of a magnitude that would not only rival but surpass the second coming of Christ.
Let's keep the conversation going so Cryptic are aware that there's a contingent of players who feel strongly that "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go" is the Star Trek banner, is what got people excited about Star Trek in the first place, so long ago; and there surely has to be some sort of representation of that in a Star Trek game.
I felt that feeling very strongly when I first played the game as a newbie. Exploration didn't "confuse" me at all, it felt like this was what I wanted most out of a Star Trek game. Flying new spaceships is cool and all, competing to outdo each other is cool, MMO progression is cool. But exploration ought, in my view, to be the USP of a Star Trek MMO, and it's a major feature of most MMOs.
And I managed to have that feeling for quite a while when the game was new, using exploration as a change of pace between storylines and team-based content. It's just that the bugginess and the sameyness wore thin after a while.
But surely it's not an unsolveable problem? I mean, I understand it's difficult (exploration content is easily exhausted by players), but there's the challenge. Obviously the core of the answer has to be some mix of procedural content and UGC in some sense.
Come on Cryptic, put your thinking caps on! And make it a priority for some future update or half-update!