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Change the review system Cryptic
mattjohnsonva
Member Posts: 4,974 Arc User
I get a lot of high reviews for my three main missions, I get a lot of people asking for more missions, but when a handful of morons can give you 1 star for no good reason which relegates your 200 hour epic off the bottom of the search page never to be seen again then I feel no urge to bother writing anything else.
Here is a reply I have ready for one typical reviewer, I'm not sure whether to send it or just forget about it, probably the latter as I am sure it's what he wanted. The fact remains even if he is just a troll, he is a troll with power, the power of the 1 star review and this is wrong, very wrong and the reason I choose never to write another mission for the foundry until this is sorted out and until Cryptic actually give us the tools to do something half decent.
"I don't often write back to reviewers of my foundry missions for to do so is usually a total waste of time, however I will in this case in the hope that I can spare other people similarly poor reviews from you.
First off, you must understand that the foundry is extremely limited in terms of what we can have aliens do, look like, act etc, it is an extremely cut down and basic version of the engine Cryptic uses. If we want an alien Iconian or anything else we have to design it inside the limits of the character creator. It is irrelevant what Iconians do or do not look like, if there are no references to them in canon (which there are in fact if you do your research) then we are free to make them look like whatever we want. I tried to make them look as close to the images that are freely available online but it was almost impossible.
They have to be based on an enemy already programmed into the foundry, the one that gave the best results was the Romulan enemy and then reskinned as an Iconian, hence the Romulan weaponry.
We are working with our hands tied and our eyes blindfolded and yet after over 100 hours of sweat, confusion, frustration and more I and many others have brought you a free adventure to play. So you can imagine how it makes me and others feel when they read the throw away 1 star review that people like you choose to leave behind. If you had the ability to write a foundry mission then you would begin to understand the difficulties we face. In any case it is people that leave 1 star unfair reviews like yours that has stopped me and many others bothering to write any more foundry missions.
I hope you enjoy farming missions and those given to you by Cryptic because that's all you're likely to see in the future as genuine authors, you know the ones who care, the ones who spend long nights, the ones who research, the ones who preview their work time and time and time again and the ones who are working with substandard and bugged software just to bring people like you something new to do in the game have their ratings sabotaged by 1 star reviewers with hardly a brain cell between them.
In the end I blame Cryptic, not you, you can't help being a moron, but they are paid to make something useable and as we have seen time and time again they fail. Yes the game is playable but has more bugs than your bedsheets and in the end is just as difficult to make anything good from. Oh and don't bother to reply as I've already put you on ignore, lol at least that's one feature that Cryptic did get right!
Live long and prosper.
Matt"
Here is a reply I have ready for one typical reviewer, I'm not sure whether to send it or just forget about it, probably the latter as I am sure it's what he wanted. The fact remains even if he is just a troll, he is a troll with power, the power of the 1 star review and this is wrong, very wrong and the reason I choose never to write another mission for the foundry until this is sorted out and until Cryptic actually give us the tools to do something half decent.
"I don't often write back to reviewers of my foundry missions for to do so is usually a total waste of time, however I will in this case in the hope that I can spare other people similarly poor reviews from you.
First off, you must understand that the foundry is extremely limited in terms of what we can have aliens do, look like, act etc, it is an extremely cut down and basic version of the engine Cryptic uses. If we want an alien Iconian or anything else we have to design it inside the limits of the character creator. It is irrelevant what Iconians do or do not look like, if there are no references to them in canon (which there are in fact if you do your research) then we are free to make them look like whatever we want. I tried to make them look as close to the images that are freely available online but it was almost impossible.
They have to be based on an enemy already programmed into the foundry, the one that gave the best results was the Romulan enemy and then reskinned as an Iconian, hence the Romulan weaponry.
We are working with our hands tied and our eyes blindfolded and yet after over 100 hours of sweat, confusion, frustration and more I and many others have brought you a free adventure to play. So you can imagine how it makes me and others feel when they read the throw away 1 star review that people like you choose to leave behind. If you had the ability to write a foundry mission then you would begin to understand the difficulties we face. In any case it is people that leave 1 star unfair reviews like yours that has stopped me and many others bothering to write any more foundry missions.
I hope you enjoy farming missions and those given to you by Cryptic because that's all you're likely to see in the future as genuine authors, you know the ones who care, the ones who spend long nights, the ones who research, the ones who preview their work time and time and time again and the ones who are working with substandard and bugged software just to bring people like you something new to do in the game have their ratings sabotaged by 1 star reviewers with hardly a brain cell between them.
In the end I blame Cryptic, not you, you can't help being a moron, but they are paid to make something useable and as we have seen time and time again they fail. Yes the game is playable but has more bugs than your bedsheets and in the end is just as difficult to make anything good from. Oh and don't bother to reply as I've already put you on ignore, lol at least that's one feature that Cryptic did get right!
Live long and prosper.
Matt"
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Trolls and greifers deliberately sabotagting missions, Players ignorant of how missions are made marking authors down for things they can't control
And yes, the review system puts the power into the hands of these players unfortunatly.
I don't have a suggestion to fix it, but I have sympathy with you, and hope someday the issue can be addressed
You have my sympathy. I have gotten a few troll ratings in the past, and I know how it can push a mission into eternal obscurity.
I can only say that this image sums up my current feelings on the matter.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CFH1D2FuyU0/ULgVttW4EZI/AAAAAAAAB1k/UnADE7b_lkw/s640/396701_2566322855400_1310137791_n.jpg
Just keep foundrying.
peace
-Hippie-
I would believe you know just how much your work is adored by many, (myself included). Is
there anything us players could do to assist/help in this instance? We do'nt need to lose
a single author, regardless of reason.
As a side, I know there are many more missions than displayed in the mission selector (hence
the stated concern), is there no way to access these other foundry missions? Thanks.
I deeply appreciate all you do.
BCW.
If you mean missions which appear outside of the top 50 list, you have to use the search function in browse all or reviewer sections.
Search option... on occassions i'll type in a word "Borg, Terran" or an @handle (Kirkfat, Ashkrik) and pick a mission like that.
Very, very nice to be appreciated, and thank you for demonstrating how positively lousy the current Foundry storefront is as a user interface.
There's a search function in there. Click the "Foundry" tab, then click the tab at the right that says "Browse All". Then click the arrow above the mission list to open the search bar.
And yes, that is a stupid way to have a search bar and is 90% of the problem faced by new missions.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
If you catch me in other posts, you'll notice I often reference the "Foundry" as a place to go,
"regardless of some buggyness folks complain about that is no fault of the authorship". For
myself, I have'nt really run into to many bugs. And when I have, they seem to just increase
the challenge of completing the mission. :P
BCW.
My pleasure.
Also, regarding the "search" funtion you mention. The first time I encountered this was just
after DR launched. Tried to use it then but could get no response from the UI. Was probably
related to the Foundry shut-down, which at the time I was unaware of. I'll try it again as you
spelled out. Thanks again.
BCW.
So, let's brainstorm.
Obviously we can do segments on the podcast "What Foundry authors want players to know" and "How to look for the mission you want" and try to promote them to the general audience via the forums, twitter, reddit, etc.
One thing we could do is try to submit a guest blog for the website on these subjects.
Maybe we can get some of the big fleets involved?
What other ideas can people think of?
Uhmm...
Guest Blogs is a good place to start.
Livestreams showing the basics & or advance uses?
Ask the community what they would like to see them make a mission / series accordingly ?
Maybe get a "Foundry Community Guy" to take over the challenges and spotlights contest etc.
We could offer guest spots in missions, feature peoples toons as a sort of sponsorship in return for additional word of mouth advertising?