Timeframe for Foundry Challenges

drogyn1701

Hey everyone, the Foundry Roundtable is interested in getting some community feedback on Foundry challenges, and the first thing we'd like to know is: "How much time should be given for mission creation?"

Bonus question: how much time should be given for playing and voting?

thay8472

Eight Weeks (Two Months)

All depends on how much "free time" you can put into it. I think the time Branflakes' gave us was adequate. (8 weeks building, 2 voting.)

markhawkman

Four Weeks (One Month)

um, yeah, more is good I guess though.

elijahthomassto

Six Weeks

I think four weeks leaves very little room for error and I think it'd see too many people having to pull out due to being a slower builder or real life complications. Six weeks will delivers better missions, in my view, and more of them while still putting a certain amount of pressure with a deadline.

thegreendragoon1

markhawkman wrote: »

um, yeah, more is good I guess though.

I would say the big risk with a longer time frame is that you risk having a Foundry downtime interrupt the contest. Cryptic typically looks to have some kind of update every 3 to 4 months. Factoring in inevitable downtime periods of 2 to 4 weeks, it's not a ton of wiggle room.

duncanidaho11

Four Weeks (One Month)

Four to build, so long as it's not a complicated challenge (involves timetravel to a period without built-in assets: 6). Two weeks for voting on all submissions would probably work but depending on how many are entered 1-3 is the range to shoot for.

drogyn1701

Six Weeks

I've been looking back at the past challenges. We got four per year under Branflakes, so essentially they were done quarterly. I think if you were to start a new challenge right after the Foundry comes back from a Season or Half-Season related downtime (assuming no bad bugs), that'd give you plenty of time for anywhere from four to eight weeks.

johnnysnowball

Four Weeks (One Month)

I saw Arnie the other day. He was in drag but i asked him what he thought anyway.
He said: two weeks! Two weeeks! Two weeeeeks!

captainhunter1

Eight Weeks (Two Months)

From my perspective:

1 month isn't long enough to come up with a quality story, build it, and de-bug it properly. (not given having a life outside STO )

1.5 months is an odd time schedule. Let's say Cryptic implemented it as a standard - - "wait, was the deadline the middle of this month or the beginning of the next?" Besides, it's still a little tight time-wise just as above (for me personally anyway).

2 months seems just about right. Plenty of time to brainstorm and massage a project into a professional state.

3 months (quarterly) was just too long. As we saw from previous Branflake challenges, this amount of time can leave the door open to all sorts of issues (care to revisit Season 4 again? Not me! )

Sure missions can be built quicker than this (I can throw together an old 'scan three things, kill three mobs' standard mission in a week (more like days)), but aren't Spotlights supposed to be something special and carry some weight? I don't think they should be rushed.

lorne12

Six Weeks

Six Weeks is enough time to build an entire spotlight I think.

drogyn1701

Six Weeks

The point of "building a spotlight" is an interesting one. On one hand, if you enter a challenge, your goal is obviously to make something "good enough" to win in a truncated timeframe, but on the other, it would become a spotlight, and six months down the line, the player won't know or care that it was a challenge mission, they'll just see it as a spotlight like any other.

captainhunter1

Eight Weeks (Two Months)

drogyn1701 wrote: »

<snip> ...and six months down the line, the player won't know or care that it was a challenge mission, they'll just see it as a spotlight like any other.

Exactly.

Shouldn't they get enough time to really polish well? (I hate to say it, but the quality of the Purity series definitely suffers from this - some missions feel like there was little to no 'QA' done on them after building - so many rough spots that needed another week or two of fine tuning/bug fixing/spell checking )

drogyn1701

Six Weeks

There was extensive playtesting and "QA"

Did you report any of what you saw?

captainhunter1

Eight Weeks (Two Months)

I do in every mission I play through for the first time. I've even sent some authors lengthy, multi-part in-game mails about what I've encountered

It has been some time since my first play-through of the Purity series (the mindscape mission is the one I remember having the most issues, primarily because of the mechanics involved). I know they have gotten a new polishing pass(es) since they were first released, but the initial reaction when they first came out was as above on a couple of them (they didn't feel like they had been playtested - or playtested enough from someone other than the author ) And of course they were released right onto the Spotlight list, so they couldn't be fixed easily once the playerbase started in on them and gave feedback.

It's one of the reasons why I like to have more time developing a mission, it gives a chance for more feedback from many different sets of eyes (I know for a fact, I am blind when it comes to mistakes in my own missions )

thay8472

Eight Weeks (Two Months)

So what's the story Mr. Drogyn? Are you the new "Foundry Challenge" guy?

drogyn1701

Six Weeks

Just gathering some data. At the very least, the Roundtable will be hosting a non-official challenge.

The next thread will be about topics. I might just post it today in fact.

thay8472

Eight Weeks (Two Months)

drogyn1701 wrote: »

Just gathering some data. At the very least, the Roundtable will be hosting a non-official challenge.

The next thread will be about topics. I might just post it today in fact.

A community challenge you say? Hmm.. I like the way you think my good sir.

Let me know if you do this and I may donate "epicz" to your cause.
I may also have someone else who will donate "epicz" to your cause.

drogyn1701

Six Weeks

I spoke to Branflakes on twitter today. For what it's worth, he said that his challenges started off at four weeks and the feedback he got afterward was that it needed to be a bit longer.