Foundry Overhaul and Updates?

powerman913

Currently I'm working on a mission in the foundry and many of things that I "need" are completely missing. Most of these assets are ship related, recently many of the new T6 ships haven't been added to the costume options, lack all of the parts for the costume, or are named incorrectly. For example the Federation carrier isn't named like the other Federation ships, and the Yamato class only has the third nacelle available in the costume selector.

Another major issue with ship assets are the ground scale ships, we have a decent amount of Federation ships, some Romulan ships, and only ONE KDF ship. We need more options, mainly in the KDF area, we don't even have the most basic of Klingon ships the BOP.

I feel frustrated with the foundry currently, it seems that it has been left behind. Considering that the foundry allows players to tell their own stories through a game that they enjoy; it should be a bigger priority. A rework to the foundry to give us more creator tools would be nice, allowing "choices" to be done easier (I know this would be a more difficult thing), or a very basic dialogue tag like the ones for "name" and "rank" that would restrict an option based on profession would be very helpful.

I'm not posting this to be rude, I understand that some things aren't as been of a deal for PWE/Cryptic to allocate dev time to. However I think some of these things and other updates would boast the quality of foundry missions and make them much more enjoyable for players and authors.

castsbugc

The eternal problem will be, how does it benefit them and their bottom line. Trust me, I'm right there with you, I have been, for years. And point of fact, in the last year, year and a half (it might actually be longer now, time slips in your dotage) we have gotten more assets added thanks to the tireless and not on the clock work of devs. As sad as it is for me to say, I am unsure if there is a priority because of the way the foundry is perceived. I fear that a group of players view it solely as an in game economic resource(let me farm eq and sell it or dilithium from the spotlights) and not as a way to explore stories. Still others consider it fanciful fan fiction where they get to interpose their character with star trek people and tell their horrible fan fiction. If someone could come up with a way to market the foundry, to turn it from a pool of farming and elevate the storytelling (this is me looking for the return of the spotlights and or the return of the challenges) and shine a light on the ability of the foundry to pick up 'the slack' on production of stories in the game (and also have good stories), then, maybe then we can get some time put into it. That said, there is supposed to be something on the books coming up, but we aren't totally sure when it will be, with 11.5 or even as far into the future as 12. I can say however, that we aren't the only ones 'suffering.' If you go look at the neverwinter forums, they are even more 'sticken,' which is sad, because in many ways they got the better end of things with their version of the foundry.

johnnysnowball

Not forgetting that the Foundry doesn't generate revenue for the game and therefore spending time and resources on it would not be profitable or help in the continued financial success of STO.
Without financial success, there is no STO.
I can understand this, even as a Foundry addict.

duncanidaho11

johnnysnowball wrote: »

Not forgetting that the Foundry doesn't generate revenue for the game and therefore spending time and resources on it would not be profitable or help in the continued financial success of STO.
Without financial success, there is no STO.
I can understand this, even as a Foundry addict.

Well there are other things that get developed which don't directly generate revenue either (ex. mission revamps, featured episodes, QoL features, events). But those deal with parts of the game which are much more central to it (ex. Cryptic's main game activities). The Foundry is a very nice feature (personally, it's the biggest reason why I'm still playing STO) but at present it's an accessory (and what it can do is sufficient to its task.) It's on the side, doing interesting things regardless, but dedicating time to improving it would, presumably in most cases, take time away from other things which would have more of a direct impact on improving STO's general appeal (hypothetical example: other system revamps).

So the Foundry has to worry about the cost-benefit analyses from the developers as well as the accountants POV. I'm sure there's a lot the devs would collectively like to fix, improve, and work on but deciding just what from that pile gets worked on will (almost invariably) leave something like this out.

ussjohnbrown

I disagree, whole there are many quality foundry missions its often very difficult to find them... The poor user interface, both on the creator and player side reduces it for most people to a fringe novelty. With a better send friendlier interface and more options, average mission quality would go up and its reputation would then increase among players.

I think if this was coupled with not top 3 but endorsed campaigns from reliable authors, cryptic could spend more time bettering game mechanics and other things players complain about and might even start to appeal to general mmo-ers and not just star trek fans who put up with all the bugs and limitations.

Id go gold if the foundry was better and they stopped adding point and click garbage like admiralty and doff assignments and spent time making features that were fun.