No Foundry for STO Console Version

drogyn1701

Earlier today it was announced that Star Trek Online is coming to Xbox One and Playstation 4 later this year. Naturally there are a lot of questions being asked, among them being "Will it have the Foundry?"

The answer, which doesn't surprise me, is no. Zero responded via twitter:

Given that we don't support that for NW XBOne, nope.

https://twitter.com/mariarosseau/status/730810572028051457

duncanidaho11

There's a small consolation though, engine improvements specifically targeting lighting are coming with the console version's release. This probably won't add any functionality to the foundry but it'll still be a +1 to the overall quality of the game and what we can make of it.

thay8472

Can they still play missions?

As for PC ...

duncanidaho11

Nope, no missions either.

markhawkman

Hmm... I was wondering how that would work... not what I was hoping to hear.

castsbugc

the 'problem' with that is that it doesn't expose the masses who exist in the console sphere to the foundry, with is a tragedy. Of course the question becomes how many STO potential players exist in a console only realm? I just have a fear that the already almost non existent development of features for the Foundry will go to nil because they are stretched too thin supporting 3 platforms.

paxfederatica

castsbugc wrote: »

I just have a fear that the already almost non existent development of features for the Foundry will go to nil because they are stretched too thin supporting 3 platforms.

I highly doubt that. Each platform requires its own set of knowledge and experience from its devs, so they couldn't just reshuffle people from the PC dev team over to the Xbox One and/or PS4 teams - they'd have to hire new devs for those. Indeed, since the rollout of these new versions of STO is just a few months away and they've already started posting teaser images from them, that suggests they've already had their new Xbox One and PS4 dev teams in place for quite some time, and meanwhile the PC devs recently managed to give us a bunch of new Foundry NPC costumes, the New Khitomer ground map, the blank ground map, etc.

thegreendragoon1

So simply put, putting the Foundry on consoles isn't practical.

The consoles will be on different servers than PC. Even more than that, if they use Neverwinter as the model, PC and Consoles won't even have the same release schedule. This means that at any given time, The PC and console versions won't be on the same code branch. That means that even if they could port over a Foundry mission from PC, there's a strong possibility it would break.

If in some hypothetical future they can get PC and consoles on the same server, consoles may gain access to Foundry missions, but this won't happen Soon™.

xenocloud666

this is all very saddening the console version is not even really going to be the same game without the foundry

lostshaide

Personally I prob won't play it. I don't play NW on XBONE, because there's no foundry(I don't even play Champions on the PC because of the lack of foundry...once I played through it, no point in continuing).....So, I don't see me playing on STO console either for the same reason. To be honest, Foundry is the main draw for me on both games. There's not a lot of content, and the games can be played through rather quickly....and they don't add muchofficial content....So, the only thing keeping me coming back is foundry missions.

I also buy zen frequently for those games, and have considered buying a STO lifetime sub, especially while it's on sale....but let's be clear...I do ALL of that, for the user created content(Yea, PWI/Cryptic only makes money from me, because of it's users creations)

gawainviii

I can see and understand not putting foundry editor on console, with engine, programming, UI interface limitations and everything else... Hell, just putting in a UI keyboard in a console interface would be time restrictive, if nothing else... But why wouldn't console players be able to access foundry-made missions to play? Without knowing the nuts and bolts, it doesn't seem to me that there would need to be anything to do other than put a foundry tab on the console's mission option wheel.

Of course, that's just little ol' me spouting gibberish about something I know nothing about.

drogyn1701

I'm guessing that's because the difference in versions between PC and console would mean that any mission ported over would have to be done manually by the devs. They're a small team and it's probably too much of an ask to take time to do that. Maybe in time they could get a couple ported over, but then the question is: whose mission gets the honor?

rogue6800

drogyn1701 wrote: »

Maybe in time they could get a couple ported over, but then the question is: whose mission gets the honor?

I believe the purity series should be first in the hypothetical queue...

dragonsbrethren

Priority One talked to Captain Geko about the console ports at STLV, you can listen to it here, it's quite interesting:

http://priorityonepodcast.com/po282/

Of particular note, at 21:47, for the first time I've heard, he says moving Foundry missions over to the console, with the example of spotlights, is totally doable. It won't be in at launch, but it'll probably happen. He says it'll be great to flesh out some of the planets that don't do anything.