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Foundry Sunset
thatsgottahurt
Member Posts: 36 Arc User
I honestly cannot believe they are shutting down the Foundry.
I mean, really. I just purchased a lifetime membership, and I see them removing a huge chunk of what STO is.
I have a friend on the other side of the country who was also interested in purchasing the lifetime membership, but he wanted to wait and let me decide if I thought it was worth it before he purchased, and then he would wait for a sale.
What can I tell him now? "well dude, they are actually removing a huge chunk of content, so I don't know if you would want to spend all that money on this game". I mean, what else can I say?
I was already a little disappointed with the purchase, as it seems the rewards have not been updated in quite some time. I would have thought you would at least get 3 Tier 6 ships (one for Science, one for Engineering and one for Tactical). The 500 Zen per month is OK. The captains table is a complete non starter. There is no one there, as in it's a complete wasteland, and there is no advantage to going there.
What else do you get? Some uniforms (nothing I was interested in), a few Tier 5 ships (why would I want Tier 5 ships?). At least there were some that had Fleet variations. A few bridge officer slots, inventory slots and bank slots are perhaps the best rewards. Fireworks and a spacesuit seem to round off the list. OK, you know, I really didn't mind supporting the game, and at least there were a couple of decent ships. But now that they are removing something I enjoyed playing, and I even had a plot all worked out for my own attempt at making a foundry mission (Called it "Q The Metrons", and it would have been sweet). That friend from across the country and I were going to split the work and give it a try.
They HAVE to know that the way to get people to pay all that money for a lifetime membership is not to remove content.
However, they could make up for it. They could completely replace the ground game engine. If they do that, I will forgive them. That engine is so old looking. It's buggy, it looks 10 years old (yeah, I know), and the way the top of the character swivels and then the bottom turns is just embarrassing. How about putting some money into a different engine instead of upgrading skin textures? The space engine isn't perfect, but it's way better than the ground engine is.
I don't mean to make it look like all I do is play in the Foundry, but some of my characters have done almost every Foundry mission. When you run out of new content to play, those Foundry missions start looking pretty good.
Heck, I have 7 Max-level characters, and all of them have played all the in-game content. Each one has multiple ships, with at least one ship fully upgraded (actually, I think most of them have at least 5 Tier-6 purchased ships (Klingon, Fed and Romulan and now also each character has two Jen'Hadar ships). All purchased ships have been upgraded. They also either have or have access to all the free event Tier-6 ships from the last 6 or 7 years.
Why do I mention this? I'm not bragging, I just want to get across that, as a fairly major purchaser/player in the game, I don't like it when I see content I use disappearing, especially after having spent well over a grand (well over) to play the game over the last 8 or so years.
This is the last thing I would have expected from the devs. Removing content is bad.
Just to end this comment on a positive note, I really enjoy the changes they have made lately (well, other than the Discovery stuff, but we will have to agree to disagree on that). The DS9 changes were a long time coming, and turned out really well. The changes to the Reputation system were also very well appreciated, and the Jem'Hadar content turned out a lot better than I thought it would (in fact, I purchased the starter kit and the Jem'Hadar carrier ship). Allowing re-engineering of the game items was a godsend as well. The biggest one was the random TFO addition. At first I was a little leery of this, since I'm not a huge fan of the ground game. However, it actually turned out very well, making it so there is always a TFO available to play if you hit the old "join random" button. Another benefit is that it has forced me to play the ground game more, so I have actually gotten to know those TFOs, and on those occasions when it's obvious the others playing don't know what to do, I can help out (except for the one guy who, on the Borg TFO where at the end you have to go to the four corners of the room and upload a virus, he kept refusing to assist us in having three people to turn the forcefields off, and when we told him what to do he called us noobs (eyeroll) and told us we didn't know what we were doing...lol. Too bad the other two people left earlier, and we ended up having to abandon that TFO).
So, thank you to the Devs for adding such excellent content, but you all need a spanking for removing the Foundry.
I mean, really. I just purchased a lifetime membership, and I see them removing a huge chunk of what STO is.
I have a friend on the other side of the country who was also interested in purchasing the lifetime membership, but he wanted to wait and let me decide if I thought it was worth it before he purchased, and then he would wait for a sale.
What can I tell him now? "well dude, they are actually removing a huge chunk of content, so I don't know if you would want to spend all that money on this game". I mean, what else can I say?
I was already a little disappointed with the purchase, as it seems the rewards have not been updated in quite some time. I would have thought you would at least get 3 Tier 6 ships (one for Science, one for Engineering and one for Tactical). The 500 Zen per month is OK. The captains table is a complete non starter. There is no one there, as in it's a complete wasteland, and there is no advantage to going there.
What else do you get? Some uniforms (nothing I was interested in), a few Tier 5 ships (why would I want Tier 5 ships?). At least there were some that had Fleet variations. A few bridge officer slots, inventory slots and bank slots are perhaps the best rewards. Fireworks and a spacesuit seem to round off the list. OK, you know, I really didn't mind supporting the game, and at least there were a couple of decent ships. But now that they are removing something I enjoyed playing, and I even had a plot all worked out for my own attempt at making a foundry mission (Called it "Q The Metrons", and it would have been sweet). That friend from across the country and I were going to split the work and give it a try.
They HAVE to know that the way to get people to pay all that money for a lifetime membership is not to remove content.
However, they could make up for it. They could completely replace the ground game engine. If they do that, I will forgive them. That engine is so old looking. It's buggy, it looks 10 years old (yeah, I know), and the way the top of the character swivels and then the bottom turns is just embarrassing. How about putting some money into a different engine instead of upgrading skin textures? The space engine isn't perfect, but it's way better than the ground engine is.
I don't mean to make it look like all I do is play in the Foundry, but some of my characters have done almost every Foundry mission. When you run out of new content to play, those Foundry missions start looking pretty good.
Heck, I have 7 Max-level characters, and all of them have played all the in-game content. Each one has multiple ships, with at least one ship fully upgraded (actually, I think most of them have at least 5 Tier-6 purchased ships (Klingon, Fed and Romulan and now also each character has two Jen'Hadar ships). All purchased ships have been upgraded. They also either have or have access to all the free event Tier-6 ships from the last 6 or 7 years.
Why do I mention this? I'm not bragging, I just want to get across that, as a fairly major purchaser/player in the game, I don't like it when I see content I use disappearing, especially after having spent well over a grand (well over) to play the game over the last 8 or so years.
This is the last thing I would have expected from the devs. Removing content is bad.
Just to end this comment on a positive note, I really enjoy the changes they have made lately (well, other than the Discovery stuff, but we will have to agree to disagree on that). The DS9 changes were a long time coming, and turned out really well. The changes to the Reputation system were also very well appreciated, and the Jem'Hadar content turned out a lot better than I thought it would (in fact, I purchased the starter kit and the Jem'Hadar carrier ship). Allowing re-engineering of the game items was a godsend as well. The biggest one was the random TFO addition. At first I was a little leery of this, since I'm not a huge fan of the ground game. However, it actually turned out very well, making it so there is always a TFO available to play if you hit the old "join random" button. Another benefit is that it has forced me to play the ground game more, so I have actually gotten to know those TFOs, and on those occasions when it's obvious the others playing don't know what to do, I can help out (except for the one guy who, on the Borg TFO where at the end you have to go to the four corners of the room and upload a virus, he kept refusing to assist us in having three people to turn the forcefields off, and when we told him what to do he called us noobs (eyeroll) and told us we didn't know what we were doing...lol. Too bad the other two people left earlier, and we ended up having to abandon that TFO).
So, thank you to the Devs for adding such excellent content, but you all need a spanking for removing the Foundry.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11102923
I agree that removing the Foundry is a really stupid idea. Foundry mission authors spent thousands (maybe more) of hours and resources to create content, characters, and stories. Foundry mission players like me spent more hours playing content and exploring places that the official missions may not have covered in depth.
And when I read the announcement, all I see is "oh sorry for shutting down the place and erasing all of your intellectual property, but here is a consolation prize of a few titles and ground items" which is insulting and demeaning! Seriously PWE?? Is that all you have? Who runs your company now, CBS??
Per the announcement: "Our team at Cryptic strives to create excellent content and maintain a high standard of quality for our games. However, the legacy knowledge required to maintain the Foundry at our quality standards is no longer available. Our goal is to continue creating top-notch content for our current and upcoming games - and the development time and resources required to maintain the Foundry would impede on these new features and systems." I read that as, we neglected the Foundry on purpose and made zero updates or patches for six months and now we just gave up.... we did it because we can.
There is a sliver of hope though, I played games like Duke Nukem 3D and Doom before. They allowed player maps to be loaded separately into the game, you just had to download them from Fileplanet or over BitTorrent and put them in the same directory as the game. If STO allowed player missions to be loaded that way, instead of being submitted into the Foundry and be vetted, then all the missions would not be lost forever.
But as I said, the chances of that happening are smaller than a coward's chance in Grethor. The dev team does not have the "development time and resources" for Foundry upkeep so why would they go the extra mile to redo the launcher to allow player missions?
That's my rant. I'd like to hear what Foundry authors think about this appalling move. This is a huge step backward, Star Trek Online!
"Our team at Cryptic strives to create excellent content and maintain a high standard of quality for our games. However, the legacy knowledge required to maintain the Foundry at our quality standards is no longer available. Our goal is to continue creating top-notch content for our current and upcoming games - and the development time and resources required to maintain the Foundry would impede on these new features and systems."
I agree it is a really bad move. I made a length reply but the stupid forum hiccupped on me and lost it! I want to know what Foundry mission authors and other mission players (like me) have to say.
It sounds like since I left the game back in 2013 or so things have just slowly gotten worse with the Foundry. I mean, the finally announced they were closing it, but it sounds like it was down for a significant part of last year. The writing has kind of been on the wall.
I'm sure anyone who's created something in the Foundry would have wished that things could have turned out better, but there's simply nothing we could have done about it. It was out of our hands.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Really? I have created seven characters, and I have never had an issue with the UI.
Now we know why the foundry is being shut down. They are hiring people and letting them work on things that just don't matter, while abandoning content many people liked.
Top this off with the fact this game won't even work in VR-3D. Many games that don't support VR (too many to mention) work fine in 3D using VR goggles. I purchased an Oculus Rift, and when I try to play STO, I was disappointed to find that it would not work in 3D (not VR, just 3D). I used to play the game in 3D on my Samsung 120Hz monitor, so what's up with this? The Rift community says it used to work fine, but one day there was an update to STO and that broke the 3D. The developers of the software used for this, (vorpX) say they have tried to contact the devs for STO to correct the problem, but no one here will ever get back to them.
WTF? They want to spend time and money to make the character creation UI pretty, but they won't fix the problems they cause for people who have put a lot of investment into, not just this game, but computer equipment to improve the experience. And, they don't need a major fix, just remove whatever they did to break it in the first place.
I am personally starting to have a little buyers remorse about purchasing the lifetime membership. They are actually spending time and money on things that don't need to be changed, and things that desperately need fixing are left, and content we really enjoy is being abandoned because no one there wants to work on it.
If they had of done this before Christmas, I could have saved myself a few hundred bucks.
I can't believe that I wasted so much time not only trying to learn how to use this program, but putting so much effort into my first mission and the current one I was hoping to publish this year. Are you really telling me that the dozens upon dozens of weeks coming up with a story draft, tweaking dialogue, etc. was for nothing? That the dozens of hours play testing, tweaking and republishing my mission was for nothing? That I created all of these characters and this story so it could all vanish without a trace?
Are you telling me that all of these other missions that people spent months crafting, publishing and tweaking was for nothing, too? Missions, I might add, in which they built entire sets and environments from scratch like you would a Hollywood set?
If you are, then you've just lost me as a player. I can understand stopping the creation of Foundry missions, but eliminating all the content everyone put so much effort to is unconscionable. It shows how little TPTB cared about its creators and all the work they put into their missions.
BTW, some of the dire warnings that other commenters have made on this forum and in other places are right--the Foundry missions gave players plenty to do in between new releases. Expect player retention to drop.
Seriously!?
Wow, i mean, if that's really the kind of employee the company is currently hiring, no wonder they're clueless about coding XD Next time perhaps they should instead search in retirement houses, or nurseries... Who knows, they might yet find someone more competent there.
It will all be lost, like tears in rain.
"The way to get people to pay all that money for a lifetime membership is not to remove content." W-W-Well said, my frend. Well said. I-In fact, I couldn't agree m-more on this point right here.
"However, they could make up for it. They could completely replace the ground game engine. If they do that, I will forgive them." <---- This alone will NOT be enough to make me forgive them...Sorry, but if they want forgiveness, they'll have to put back ALL of the missions they took away from us before...Especially ones like: The Tribble with Klingons. Gosh, I-I just loved it!! Oh, and they'll also have to ring in another Temporal Agent Recruitment event. Come on, guys! You did it once with Delta Recruitment. Surely the same can be done again...R-Right?
"I don't mean to make it look like all I do is play in the Foundry, but some of my characters have done almost every Foundry mission. When you run out of new content to play, those Foundry missions start looking pretty good." Yesh indeed! Especially when they make Personal/Universal Endeavor-grinding much more be-bearable. I know players will probably chastise me for using The Foundry like this, bu-but I don't care, alright? It's my account, after all. And like you, I myself was trying to create my very own Foundry Mission. And it was going to be a proper one to!
"As a fairly major purchaser/player in the game, I don't like it when I see content I use disappearing, especially after having spent well over a grand (well over) to play the game over the last 8 or so years." - I-I honestly couldn't agree more. And wh-while I probably haven't sunk as much money into this game as other players have, I've given way more than my fair share of 'bread'. And probably way more than I should have. And what do the devs roll out next after what I con-consider a highly-successful DS9 'season'? Discovery content? Y-Yuck! No thanks!!
This is the last thing I would have expected from the devs. Removing content is bad.
"Just to end this comment on a positive note, I really enjoy the changes they have made lately (well, other than the Discovery stuff, but we will have to agree to disagree on this." Again, I could honestly n-not agree with you more on this last part...Ugh, Discovery!? Really now? It's a new TV show and it hasn't even been on for more than two seasons! Why create content about it? Also, having Tilly and others on her 'team' using swear words does not make this game 'cooler'. (-_-)
"However, they could make up for it. They could completely replace the ground game engine. If they do that, I will forgive them." <---- This alone will NOT be enough to make me forgive them...Sorry, but if they want forgiveness, then they're at least going to have to bring back ALL of the missions they took away to start with. E-Especially The Tribble with Klingons...G-Gosh, I just loved it so much! And it won't kill them to bring back the Temporal Agent Recruitment either. I-I mean, come on, devs/guys! You did it once before with Delta Recruitment. Surely it can be done again...R-Right?
"I don't mean to make it look like all I do is play in the Foundry, but some of my characters have done almost every Foundry mission. When you run out of new content to play, those Foundry missions start looking pretty good." Yesh indeed it does! In fact, I've been often using The Foundry to help many of my Personal/Universal Endeavors m-much more bearable. And while I'm sure other players will chastise me for saying this, b-but it's my account! I can do what I want with it if it's 'legal'.
"As a fairly major purchaser/player in the game, I don't like it when I see content I use disappearing, especially after having spent well over a grand (well over) to play the game over the last 8 or so years.
This is the last thing I would have expected from the devs. Removing content is bad." - Yesh indeed...Removing content is VERY bad! And wh-while I haven't been playing the game over the last 8 or so years, n-nor have I spent as much money on it as you and other players might have, I spent more than enough 'bread' on it, and probably a lot more than I should have.
"Just to end this comment on a positive note, I really enjoy the changes they have made lately (well, other than the Discovery stuff, but we will have to agree to disagree on this." - Aah, well I-I actually DO agree with you on this last part. After all, th-the show 'Discovery' probably hasn't even been on the air for more than two seasons! And yet already, they're making in-game content out of it!? Yuck! No thanks!! Having a girl, naming her 'Tilly' of all things and having her and her 'crew' using swear words DOES NOT make this game any 'cooler'. The DS9 content (New and old) was a welcome addition...End of story! (-_-)
You get 4 ships from going lifetime per character. A T5-U veteran ship, a T6 Veteran ship, a T5-U ship that normally costs 2k zen from reaching level 50, and the veteran shuttle. And if you're doing admiralty, all of those ships are useful. Even the T5-U veteran ship.
As for recommending the lifetime subscription option to your friend? Well, that's your choice. Only you can make that choice. But you also get additional races that you cannot get otherwise(Talaxian and Liberated Borg). Just be honest to your friend when you do talk to him.
I enjoy flying the Duvqu' ship and the Romulan T6 Veteran ship myself. I don't like the T6 Fed version. I do like the Captain's Table zone, and some of the outfit options.
It's true that the rewards have not been updated in a very long time. And players still don't have access to the forum title that was supposed to come with the package either.
If a friend asked me if it's worth it to pick up a lifetime subscription nowadays, I would most likely say no. As there's no guarantee that the game will last long enough for that $200-$300 investment to start paying itself off for the player. It's a large expense to eat all at once.
After I wrote several stories here, I went to alpha test Neverwinter back in 2013. When I reported bugs about the Foundry on there, I was told not to report Foundry bugs, "We are not testing the Foundry we are alpha testing Ebon Downs, please report bugs about the area we are currently testing.". After beta the Foundry on Neverwinter was so buggy it wasn't funny. All the Foundry Authors worked with broken tools on both STO and NW for over 5 years. Over on Neverwinter, we lost our AD rewards and Foundry hour, as Cryptic claimed it was due to botting. A good friend of mine and Foundry Author, went through and reported all those quests that exploited. No exploits were removed. Bots ran rampant in the dungeons and nothing was done to prevent it, why punish the authors? Cryptic tossed the NW Foundry in the corner like a dirty rag and left it sit.
Now they claim it is going to make the games better without it. Give me a break. The players on Champions best beware, they will be coming for you next. There are plans for a new Magic the Gathering MMO by Cryptic. The Foundry was a gimmick used by this company to lure people who desire to spin a good tale. Now that it is gone, I expect I will play less often. Many of the authors who are my friends, spend money on the game, some of you call them whales, I can tell you they professionals with large incomes. People like comic book artists, 3D model designers, postal workers, politicians, doctors, lawyers, database engineers, and a least one author of fantasy books. There will be a hole here in April, a void, I am not predicting it will upset the game at all, but it will never be filled.
As a Foundry Author, I have to face the fact, I know at this point they will not recreate a new Foundry editor, which is exactly what is needed. They didn't say, Hey players, we are going to shut the Foundry down for repairs. They cannot support the Foundry because they don't know how to monetize it. I would not mind them repairing it or monetizing it. It didn't work that way, so they decided to scrap it.
I imagine PC is only alive to "play test" the content for the consoles, that is where they get the bulk of their money. My nephew has PS4 and XB1, he spends money on them like water, but he plays war games like Call of Duty. Call of Duty uses match making where the PvP game is hosted by a player and you join from a list of micro-servers within a given ping rate. I can only assume this is their intended direction in the future as this places less of the load on their servers and reduce spending.
Sorry, I got so curious about this because I love to do ground, any type of them, I usually run Elites but I love to do Borg when they happen.
Regarding the TFO, you are speaking about Infected ground (Manus). Where did you start with the consoles? Because if you went LEFT in respect to the entrance in the room, that would be a mistake.
The best way to activate the consoles it's to start from the console on the right side of the entrance (the one that it's at the left side of Rebecca Simmons/Manus of Borg). This allows the entire team to run through the consoles in a clockwise sense ONLY ONCE, decreasing the chance to fall in the plasma. If you start from left instead, you will have to pass twice from one or more console and you increase the chance to fall in the plasma. Take in mind also that there is a time limit with the activation of the consoles, so you have to be fast too, therefore starting from the left of Rebecca it's the best way.
In theory, one can also start from the console at the right of Rebecca but it's very far.
so, captain let her have that uniform. he has long hair and bound as pony tail with funky sideburns, which federation begin to allow longer hair regulation.
after series of close calls with hostile aliens and while every crew members start acting lively and singing, some began to blame her for pheromones and she claim she didnt and captain discovered it was cause by prankster Q by having all crew to act merry mood except captain wasnt effected,
so, he call on Q to put end of silly action, (which i plan to release for april fool day but got busy to put off), still not finished,
planned next and final saga, when they get surround by elite orion fleet leading by a queen which was happen to be a princess's mother, wanting her back home after she was 'kidnapped' by cultists,
instead, captain invited queen for a dinner, she tested him and found him a worthy for princess, decided to allow Chelshea to stay with captain, making sure she is protected.
in the end, captain went to hologram deck, dress in 1930 noir gumshoe setting, created by captain picard, sat and relaxed with his feet on desk, tipped his hat over his eye, suddenly a lady in red came thru a door, it was Chelshea, he whisper his thought, "Dame in trouble?"
Ricky's Agents of Foundry - https://www.facebook.com/groups/431046150596106/
Foundry Authors - https://www.facebook.com/groups/CrypticFoundry/
I wouldn't say i'm devastated, but the Foundry being removed certainly caused me to lose the most part of my interest in STO, which is a shame after 6 years of playing. Honestly, it feels like the game is taking the same direction as Champions Online, and I have zero interest in re-enacting the same official content again and again. In fact, I don't think i've been logging on at all since the sunset was announced.
Grind is a constant. Still, there are other and better MMOs out there.
WRT Champions Online, there's nothing to come after as:
- No version of the Foundry was ever implemented for CO (Despite thunderous CO player request).
- CO has been in MMO maintenance mode since about 2013 on. (They average about 1 new mission for the game per year; although they skipped last year.) They get minor bug fixes an the occassional new costume piece and that's what passes for "New Content" in CO.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
I've been trying to be optimistic about holding on but with the 2nd roadmap I'm asking myself again "what's left?" To be blunt with Cryptic, there's nothing listed between now and July on the software and systems side (for context: this is pre-livestream) that I wouldn't axe completely for the dev time to fix the Foundry because the trade-off here appears to be a deep structural mechanism for supporting player engagement and positive community interactions (still to be capitalized on) v. temporary events. I don't see how it can work, long term. There's greater onus on cryptic to maintain engagement through frequent direct action, the product (per events) doesn't interact as it accumulates over time (even new episodes are telling divergent modular stories through a standardized format), the requirements escalate per acclimatization, the pressures on player psychology are directed towards burnout (with few structural buffers or outlets against that), and if development effort needs to pull back in line with further structural shifts at Cryptic the negative impact is more keenly felt after entering into this mode (and with the alternative gone by this critical transition point.)
I want to understand but that needs foundation and I don't know what that is at this point. I thought the roadmap might have something but it wasn't there (pre-livestream). Maybe on a longer timescale something big is coming (gradually or in a big update) but per older discussion on Ten Forward (downplaying major feature additions in the context of admiralty and doffing) that also don't seem likely. My logical approximation is that the game is adrift and studio's willing to see STO settle into a long twilight with the Foundry simply amputated and the maximum loss taken (no adjustment, just business is business because that's what's most expedient per inertia.) This is an incredible amount of whiplash coming from 2018 (one of STO's best years on the books, a great culmination), the incorporation of new Star Trek, and not knowing that Cryptic had any definite thoughts about cutting the Foundry up until the Sunset blog.
Thing have become so bleak so fast and the company doesn't seem interested. STO is what it is now and it'll probably continue for quite some time. That's enough. But STO could do so much more to reach out, connect with, and hook players organically and even with a smaller team there are approaches (that we know very well) to make that content under the most difficult situations. Just look at Greendragoon's effort to finish Midas Part 3 with the editor as is or Admiral Aarons to finish Resistence. That's a microcosm for how much your game and format can mean to players and how (in a rough sense) to achieve that connection without drastic investments. Even in sunset the Foundry can still be of use to Cryptic in providing working permutations of concepts, styles, mechanics, and approaches they could employ themselves to improve their missions and make them more accessible across the range of their player base.
Maybe they're listening here, maybe they're not, either way I'm just so tired of the worry, hurt, struggle for hope, and sense of futility that this is it for the STO I thought I knew.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!