Actually, you have no more idea than he does how many people really use the C-store out of the overall playerbase. Sure, I see plenty of the C-store ships, but I see even more regular ships.
Since I spend a great deal of time in social areas, I feel I do have adequate knowledge of people's use of CStore, based on their costume choices in addition to those CStore ships I see.
Maybe you should have read my post beyond the first sentence before commenting. Point I was making is that while they could (possibly) "reward" people for making "good" missions, they would have no incentive to do so
Sure they would.
* It gives authors incentive to make better content which subsequently gives their subscribers better content to play, makes STO look better, and makes it more marketable.
* It gives authors incentive not to cancel their subscriptions since doing so would cut off their reward income
and giving C-Points as a reward would be detrimental to their profit margins.
Most times companies do something nice for their customers it cuts into their profit margins. That 11th sub I get for free when my punchcard is finished? Yep. That's costing them. And if it's the manager taking my payment he usually throws in my drink for free. I've been a loyal customer for 7 years.
In this case the amount it affects Cryptic can be altered by Cryptic. In the math I posted in the other thread and sent dstahl, if an author earns $15 worth of C-Points, that means they've added $290 worth of play time for other players through their content, assuming the average play time of players is 62 hours a month (2 hours*31 days). That's en effective commission of about 5%. That's at least 1200 hours of time spent playing that authors' mission(s) and at least 2400 playthroughs.
Obviously Cryptic knows average play time per month better than I, so they can work the variables and change the math to their liking.
You'll have to check the other thread if you want to see the variable values I used to get the numbers above. I was actually pretty conservative in my estimates. I'm sure STO has a lot of subscribers who play far less than 2 hours a day, which would subsequently increase the value-add of the author's contribution and make the commission percent lower than stated above.
So yeah, it's possible for Cryptic to lose money. I've never stated otherwise. But it's a small percentage of what they'd be gaining and then only applies if the author would have purchased C-Points otherwise.
Bottom line is, most people will be satisfied, even happy, to get the Foundry, and the ability to make their own missions. They do not require, nor expect, any sort of "reward" except, perhaps, recognition of their achievements (which is being discussed). It therefore becomes, simply put, "bad business" to consider the idea of rewarding people with points that possess a cash-value when the vast majority will be satisfied, even thrilled to make missions, without the possibility of any such rewards.
Rewarding points that have a cash-value actually helps prevent third-party gaming of the system.
Right now there's an established exchange mechanism to get C-Points for dollars. If they were to reward achievements or some other kind of currency, third-party agencies will have a profit motive to offer their own exchange mechanism; you give them dollars, they use their "gold seller" accounts to inflate your mission popularity, rating, playthrough count, etc. And they can set their exchange rate to whatever they want--they're not competing with anyone.
With the use of C-Points as the reward, players have a means to legitimately buy the reward currency. They don't have to go to the "black market", as it were, and they'd be less inclined to do so. Third-party agencies lose much of their profit motive; now they have legal competition.
My friend, you are the exception to the rule. Just look at how many Exclesiors/Galaxy-Xs/various uniforms/costumes are used by players in the game. Most players make use of the CSTore, I am no exception.
And what I propose wouldn't prevent the purchase of C-Points.
It'd be very rare that an authors' missions are popular enough to substitute the purchase of C-Points, if they're hell-bent on having everything in the C-Store. Cryptic can tweak the variables to ensure that's the case.
And even if an author somehow makes popular enough content to buy everything... so what? The value they've added to the game would be enormous; in the realm of 20 times the monetary value of the C-Points they've been rewarded.
Since I spend a great deal of time in social areas, I feel I do have adequate knowledge of people's use of CStore, based on their costume choices in addition to those CStore ships I see.
Like Quarks, or Risa?
Those are off the beaten track. Very few non-social players have any reason to go there so what you most often see is a specific demographic--other social players. And I'd say social players--especially RPers--are more inclined to buy special costumes.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of what's available in the C-Store now came included in pre-orders, and Cryptic actually gave C-Points out to everyone once or twice after launch. I have various costumes and the TOS Connie that are now only available through the C-Store, but I've never once purchased C-Points.
Edit: Oh bugger. I see they've moved this to the UGC forum. Now it won't get as much exposure.
I think the Dev team is using UGC as a way to give players more game time with not just people playing the missions, but actually making them too. Every Trekkie has a story in their head, their idea of what Star Trek is and how it should be treated. I think the Devs should use the foundry as a way to see what us, the FANS want with STO and how we want it to feel, based on the episodes we create. The few that do become really popular should be turned into "game canon" missions and the author should get something for their hard work. The Foundry will be a good way of making Star Trek Online what WE want it to be, and a way of influencing Cryptic into making this better.
I think the Dev team is using UGC as a way to give players more game time with not just people playing the missions, but actually making them too. Every Trekkie has a story in their head, their idea of what Star Trek is and how it should be treated. I think the Devs should use the foundry as a way to see what us, the FANS want with STO and how we want it to feel, based on the episodes we create.
Agreed, and I'm sure they'll keep tabs on it for that reason.
The few that do become really popular should be turned into "game canon" missions
Maybe. It'd have to depend how well the mission fits in with the canon setting; if it's a ENT-era or TOS-era mission, I'm not sure how well that'd work.
and the author should get something for their hard work
This I agree with, but there's a long scale between the best and the worst. That's why I'm in favor of a reward system that scales with the popularity of the mission automatically. And with an automated system it's not something Cryptic has to expend resources to manage.
This I agree with, but there's a long scale between the best and the worst. That's why I'm in favor of a reward system that scales with the popularity of the mission automatically. And with an automated system it's not something Cryptic has to expend resources to manage.
And you still don't see the problem this creates? It's going to be something of a popularity contest WITHOUT rewarding people for popular missions. Doing so would only make it worse. Expect to see people saying things like "WILL PLAY UR MISSION IF U PLAY MINE" and just basically people running through each other's missions solely for the sake of bolstering each other's C-Store points. If the missions offer skill points or other rewards, giving C-Points could completely skew the balance of players into playing nothing but Foundry missions. When the Mission Architect came out in CoH it was completely exploitable, you could get to level 50 in a day, and even after they removed the exploits, it continued to be more popular than standard dev-created content because it was still faster and easier since you didn't have travel times and you could custom-tailor enemies to fit your playstyle or powersets. It was only after they took a nerf bat to the rewards that most people went back to playing ordinary dev-created missions. Adding C-Store points to the equation would only make this problem much worse, I would think.
the problem with reimbursement is how would it be distributed fairly, if it were on a per mission basis, I could release a hundred really simple missions in order to get more CP, while, if it were deturmined by committee, or through popularity, it would be subject to bias and exploitable.
And you still don't see the problem this creates? It's going to be something of a popularity contest WITHOUT rewarding people for popular missions. Doing so would only make it worse. Expect to see people saying things like "WILL PLAY UR MISSION IF U PLAY MINE" and just basically people running through each other's missions solely for the sake of bolstering each other's C-Store points.
So?
That means people are playing the game, which is kinda the point. That's how Cryptic makes their money.
Besides.. it would take a huge coordinated effort to make any one person a notable amount of C-Points; 2400 play-throughs of unique characters (if there's a 30-minute max per-character-per-mission) just to get a single T5 ship from the C-Store. Make it per-account-per-mission and it'd be even harder to do.
If the missions offer skill points or other rewards, giving C-Points could completely skew the balance of players into playing nothing but Foundry missions. When the Mission Architect came out in CoH it was completely exploitable, you could get to level 50 in a day, and even after they removed the exploits, it continued to be more popular than standard dev-created content because it was still faster and easier since you didn't have travel times and you could custom-tailor enemies to fit your playstyle or powersets. It was only after they took a nerf bat to the rewards that most people went back to playing ordinary dev-created missions. Adding C-Store points to the equation would only make this problem much worse, I would think.
Indirectly, maybe... you're comparing rewards that players get to rewards authors get. Cryptic can nerf the rewards players get down to nothing if people are leveling too fast off UGC... that's another topic.
the problem with reimbursement is how would it be distributed fairly, if it were on a per mission basis, I could release a hundred really simple missions in order to get more CP, while, if it were deturmined by committee, or through popularity, it would be subject to bias and exploitable.
With my proposal the reimbursement is based on the amount of time playing the missions. So if missions are easy, they'd be finished quickly and wouldn't contribute much to a reward.
The remaining issue would be people idling the missions to inflate the amount of time, which is somewhat countered by having a 30-minute max per-character-per-mission. It's perhaps not the most intelligent counter... maybe the max time is the average completion time if it's lower than 30 minutes. I'm certainly open to suggestions on how to make it more exploit-proof.
And you still don't see the problem this creates? It's going to be something of a popularity contest WITHOUT rewarding people for popular missions. Doing so would only make it worse. Expect to see people saying things like "WILL PLAY UR MISSION IF U PLAY MINE" and just basically people running through each other's missions solely for the sake of bolstering each other's C-Store points. If the missions offer skill points or other rewards, giving C-Points could completely skew the balance of players into playing nothing but Foundry missions. When the Mission Architect came out in CoH it was completely exploitable, you could get to level 50 in a day, and even after they removed the exploits, it continued to be more popular than standard dev-created content because it was still faster and easier since you didn't have travel times and you could custom-tailor enemies to fit your playstyle or powersets. It was only after they took a nerf bat to the rewards that most people went back to playing ordinary dev-created missions. Adding C-Store points to the equation would only make this problem much worse, I would think.
If we're trying to determine which missions are the best...then what's wrong with a popularity contest? If the best missions get played the most often, then I say mission accomplished. Marketing will be involved--authors who promote their missions successfully will get more hits, but again, what's wrong with that?
Maybe people will start swapping playthroughs as you describe. I think that sounds boring, but if people want to spend their time that way, then congratulations--we've just added another reason for people to play Star Trek Online. People would probably be doing that even without a reward system. I don't think the fact that people are getting paid dirties the whole process, if that's what you're implying.
As for your points about people exploiting the system to level up quickly, or whatever, Cryptic says they've balanced that through play-testing. Until I see the result myself, I've got nothing to criticize. If UGC becomes more popular than stock missions, then I guess we have evidence that UGC is more fun than stock missions, don't we?
With my proposal the reimbursement is based on the amount of time playing the missions.
What about the inevitable farm missions? People love those accolades, so we know there will be dozens of missions that involve nothing more than wading through tons of enemies just to rack up kills. Those would take awhile to complete, but not really be 'good' missions.
What about the inevitable farm missions? People love those accolades, so we know there will be dozens of missions that involve nothing more than wading through tons of enemies just to rack up kills. Those would take awhile to complete, but not really be 'good' missions.
Depends how you define 'good' I guess.
For the purposes of my system the compensation is based on an author giving other players something to do, and so the reward scales with the amount of play time the mission offers. If people pay $15/month to play farming missions, so be it. Cryptic is still getting their value-add for those missions and the author still gets their "commission" for having made them.
Ultimately the system mimics capitalism. A quality product will naturally sell well, but there might be other products which aren't great but suit a specific need, so will also sell well. The effect is the same: the author has given players something to do.
Maybe that makes the proposed system less attractive... I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder.
P.S. Thanks for the good question. It's nice to have an honest discussion and people not just replying WTFNO!
For the purposes of my system the compensation is based on an author giving other players something to do, and so the reward scales with the amount of play time the mission offers. If people pay $15/month to play farming missions, so be it. Cryptic is still getting their value-add for those missions and the author still gets their "commission" for having made them.
Ultimately the system mimics capitalism. A quality product will naturally sell well, but there might be other products which aren't great but suit a specific need, so will also sell well. The effect is the same: the author has given players something to do.
Maybe that makes the proposed system less attractive... I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder.
P.S. Thanks for the good question. It's nice to have an honest discussion and people not just replying WTFNO!
But my real question comes down to quality. Why should the guy that spent 10 minutes dropping mobs at random on a map get more than the guy that spent hours writing his script, planning placement, and trying to work in effects / puzzles what have you?
There has to be some kind of check for actual quality as opposed to mindless slaughter that just happens to take longer. Otherwise it just encourages a certain type of person to crank out the schlock missions just to score some c-points.
Edit: And what about the faithful play testers? Sure they get missions to play, but they could just wait for someone else to weed out the broken / obscene missions, and even rate them so they know which ones to try. But what about the ones that actually take the time to choke through all the TRIBBLE to find the gold?
Surely they need something to encourage people to actually test these things instead of sitting back and waiting. If not, we can end up with the situation I fear: Far more missions than can be tested with the available number of people doing the testing. I'm sure there will be a lot to start with as people check things out, but that will drop over time without something to encourage them to keep at it.
But my real question comes down to quality. Why should the guy that spent 10 minutes dropping mobs at random on a map get more than the guy that spent hours writing his script, planning placement, and trying to work in effects / puzzles what have you?
There has to be some kind of check for actual quality as opposed to mindless slaughter that just happens to take longer. Otherwise it just encourages a certain type of person to crank out the schlock missions just to score some c-points.
I'd be all for accounting for quality more reliability. My system catches some of it since quality missions would likely be played more often than crappy ones but, as you point out, there are specific types that my system would reward for that aren't about quality. So yeah... I'd have to revise my description of it some.
At the end of the day, though, people will play what they find enjoyable to play, and they're paying Cryptic to do that. So that's where the value-add is from an income standpoint, so that's what my system is catching in order to give the authors their "commission", as it were.
If we can find a reliable way to programmatically detect actual quality, I'd support a system for it or would try to find a way to account for it in mine as well.
Edit: And what about the faithful play testers? Sure they get missions to play, but they could just wait for someone else to weed out the broken / obscene missions, and even rate them so they know which ones to try. But what about the ones that actually take the time to choke through all the TRIBBLE to find the gold?
Surely they need something to encourage people to actually test these things instead of sitting back and waiting. If not, we can end up with the situation I fear: Far more missions than can be tested with the available number of people doing the testing. I'm sure there will be a lot to start with as people check things out, but that will drop over time without something to encourage them to keep at it.
This presents a unique challenge.
If they're somehow rewarded for the number of missions they approve, or get their own commission based on how much the missions they approve are played, it would actually encourage them to just approve everything. This applies to any kind of reward, from achievements to C-Points.
The only way to offset that would be to actually punish them for approving missions that shouldn't be approved, and that opens up a whole can of worms in itself. The sheer possibility of punishment might dissuade people from reviewing in the first place.
I agree with what you're after.... but at the moment I'm at a loss as to how to do it.
P.S. Yeah... reviewers who abuse the system like that would lose their reviewer status, so there's some protection there... but it's reactionary and will need to be done manually by Cryptic. By the time Cryptic gets to it, damage might already be done.
At the end of the day, though, people will play what they find enjoyable to play
Will they? Or will they just sit around waiting for someone to advertise a "u play mine ill play urs" scenario, go into a single-mission campaign that's incredibly easy to beat, and then have the person whose mission they just played come do the same in their mission, in order for them both to earn C points? Some guy spends hours making a mission, and it's good and well written, but it's long and very hard. For each play through he earns a C point, but he doesn't care about them, he didn't make it in order to get rich with C-points. On the other hand, a guy makes a quick mission with bad writing or none at all that takes you through a single encounter of some bad guys and then awards him a C-point for every playthrough. On top of that, it provides good skill points for the time invested in it. And then he advertises it as such. Which mission do you think is going to get more plays? Obviously such things can be curtailed through various means, limitations and nerfs, etc. etc. But I think adding c-points is simply not worth the hassle, from that perspective. It's just one more thing that would require balancing and monitoring.
You may think this won't happen, and if there were no exp rewards in the missions I'd probably agree, but if there are rewards, and they can still play through these to level up while simultaneously accruing C Points in some kind of semi-fraudulent C-point racketeering scheme, what reason would these types of players ever have to go back to the standard content?
This would create a void in the game. People who look for teams or PVP queues (which are already suffering) will find even less people to play with than before. You might not think it causes any harm, but if the Foundry is full of farm/C-store point exchange scheme missions and authors, it will turn some people off from it. They will then go to do regular content, and may be disappointed at the lack of people out there that are available to play with.
You might think this kind of situation is far-fetched, but going back to the Mission Architect, when it first came out and you could exploit it to level up quickly and get tickets (which could be redeemed for loot), you would have been hard pressed to find a team outside of the Mission Architect. Now, even if the Foundry isn't exploitable for leveling up or getting loot, adding C-points to it seems like just more incentive for people to flock there and more or less kill off the rest of the game. You might say it doesn't matter so long as people are playing the game, but if someone gets frustrated that the only time they can find people to play with are in foundry exploit missions, they might decide to cancel their subscription.
Will they? Or will they just sit around waiting for someone to advertise a "u play mine ill play urs" scenario, go into a single-mission campaign that's incredibly easy to beat, and then have the person whose mission they just played come do the same in their mission, in order for them both to earn C points? Some guy spends hours making a mission, and it's good and well written, but it's long and very hard. For each play through he earns a C point, but he doesn't care about them, he didn't make it in order to get rich with C-points. On the other hand, a guy makes a quick mission with bad writing or none at all that takes you through a single encounter of some bad guys and then awards him a C-point for every playthrough. On top of that, it provides good skill points for the time invested in it. And then he advertises it as such. Which mission do you think is going to get more plays? Obviously such things can be curtailed through various means, limitations and nerfs, etc. etc. But I think adding c-points is simply not worth the hassle, from that perspective. It's just one more thing that would require balancing and monitoring.
The behavior you're describing is going to exist no matter what. And I can't imagine that many people even listening to channels where people are spamming advertisements. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Cryptic ends up making a policy forbidding such advertising since it's going to lead to epic spam. At the very least, expect massive numbers of ignores.
At the end of the day the system is serving its purpose exactly as it should, though. Cryptic profits on people having content to play and that's the profit that's trickling down to the content authors.
You may think this won't happen, and if there were no exp rewards in the missions I'd probably agree, but if there are rewards, and they can still play through these to level up while simultaneously accruing C Points in some kind of semi-fraudulent C-point racketeering scheme, what reason would these types of players ever have to go back to the standard content?
This would create a void in the game. People who look for teams or PVP queues (which are already suffering) will find even less people to play with than before. You might not think it causes any harm, but if the Foundry is full of farm/C-store point exchange scheme missions and authors, it will turn some people off from it. They will then go to do regular content, and may be disappointed at the lack of people out there that are available to play with.
You might think this kind of situation is far-fetched, but going back to the Mission Architect, when it first came out and you could exploit it to level up quickly and get tickets (which could be redeemed for loot), you would have been hard pressed to find a team outside of the Mission Architect. Now, even if the Foundry isn't exploitable for leveling up or getting loot, adding C-points to it seems like just more incentive for people to flock there and more or less kill off the rest of the game. You might say it doesn't matter so long as people are playing the game, but if someone gets frustrated that the only time they can find people to play with are in foundry exploit missions, they might decide to cancel their subscription.
Frankly I think your issue is really with player rewards for UGC. It's those rewards that are going to attract people to UGC for leveling; not what an author gets as a reward. Any time any new sort of content is added to the game it's going to thin out the player base and make communal content more difficult to use.
It's a pesky problem for an MMO, actually. The players demand a variety of gameplay and a lot of content, but the more variety and the more content there is, the thinner the playerbase becomes and the less fun the game becomes for many people. Based on that... one could argue that introducing UGC at all will be detrimental to the game. And they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. A lot of people are going to flock to it; both to author and to play. That'll be fewer people doing other things.
The only implication my proposed system has in any of this is through the "I'll play yours if you play mine" scenario which, yes, will exist... but it won't amount to so much activity that authors benefit that much from it. Advertisements will reach a critical mass very quickly, and per-character-per-mission restrictions will prevent repeat playing from inflating things. And if it's still that much of a problem they could always add per-account-per-author restrictions, so two authors can't mass produce new missions and inflate each others' play time.
Will they? Or will they just sit around waiting for someone to advertise a "u play mine ill play urs" scenario, go into a single-mission campaign that's incredibly easy to beat, and then have the person whose mission they just played come do the same in their mission, in order for them both to earn C points?
They're going to try to do that for skill points anyway. Cryptic says they have a solution for that--probably awarding a lower proportion of skill points than you'd get by farming dailies. Just do the same thing for C-points: make the reward rate low enough that only the certifiably insane would deliberately grind UGC missions for C-points. All you have to do is make grinding harder and less rewarding than writing good missions that everyone wants to play.
If people are determined to write terrible missions to try to get rewards from them, you're not going to be able to stop them. But if you establish a well-built ecosystem for UGC, then the overall effect will be positive.
I made this same argument for the spam-filtering system, which was initially terrible but which Cryptic eventually fixed: It's like establishing a police force for your town. You're never going to be able to stop every single crime, and that's not the objective. It's enough to establish a setting where--as a rule--people are safe. That takes a lot of work, but it can be done--and in this case, most of the work has been done already.
...A guy makes a quick mission with bad writing or none at all that takes you through a single encounter of some bad guys and then awards him a C-point for every playthrough.
Oh, you mean like the "kill 10 Klingons" missions that Cryptic has written dozens of already? I expect Cryptic will set the skill-point reward low enough that running dailies is much more efficient, and I expect a similar outcome for CP. The truly crazy people will spend weeks and weeks and weeks getting people to run their mission six hundred times so they can get another $5 costume from the C-store. That's not fraudulent, that's people expressing their God-given right to be certifiably out of their minds.
You may think this won't happen, and if there were no exp rewards in the missions I'd probably agree, but if there are rewards, and they can still play through these to level up while simultaneously accruing C Points in some kind of semi-fraudulent C-point racketeering scheme, what reason would these types of players ever have to go back to the standard content?
1.) Higher polish of standard content
2.) Higher skillpoint reward for time played in standard content
3.) Impracticality of playthrough swapping as a source of income
This would create a void in the game. People who look for teams or PVP queues (which are already suffering) will find even less people to play with than before. You might not think it causes any harm, but if the Foundry is full of farm/C-store point exchange scheme missions and authors, it will turn some people off from it. They will then go to do regular content, and may be disappointed at the lack of people out there that are available to play with.
You might think this kind of situation is far-fetched, but going back to the Mission Architect, when it first came out and you could exploit it to level up quickly and get tickets (which could be redeemed for loot), you would have been hard pressed to find a team outside of the Mission Architect. Now, even if the Foundry isn't exploitable for leveling up or getting loot, adding C-points to it seems like just more incentive for people to flock there and more or less kill off the rest of the game. You might say it doesn't matter so long as people are playing the game, but if someone gets frustrated that the only time they can find people to play with are in foundry exploit missions, they might decide to cancel their subscription.
All of the concerns you listed apply equally to any other sort of rewards, such as skill points. Cryptic is going to have to balance and watch for farming missions anyway.
Different people think different aspects of the game are fun. (This being Halloween, I'm sure the ghost of Flatfingers is around here somewhere...) Some people enjoy the story, some people are in it to create the most powerful character they can, some people are here to conquer their enemies in PvP, and so on. Ultimately, people will do whatever they enjoy, and trying to herd them into something they don't enjoy by limiting the options available to them is bad business. When the Foundry launches, I expect there will be fewer people in the PvP queues. That's tough, but you know the people who're still there are the ones who love PvP. Worthy opponents.
I expect that the tagging and rating system for UGC will be good enough that people will be able to find the kind of missions they want. That's a mission-critical feature, Cryptic Points or no. Ultimately people will gather around the things they like, which is all you can ask of any virtual world. I believe that, on the whole, UGC will be good for STO--that the lure of endless new missions will draw in new subscribers for the game, many of whom will certainly try the PvP system at some point. I'm sorry if you're worried that PvP queues will suffer in the short term, but who knows--maybe you'll find missions you like come out of the Foundry, too.
If cryptic wants to give UGC writers something, give them items they can use in writting missions.
We talked about this in the other thread. It's a reverse-handicap system, penalizing new authors by reducing their capacity to be competitive against established authors who have the full suite of options. And it may discourage people from becoming authors at all.
If you give them C-store points...SOME players will pump out a zillion tiny so-called missions to farm the points. wasting server space.
There are ways to avoid this. I believe the number of missions a single author can make will be limited already--it'd have to be to avoid the waste you describe. Then, with per-character-per-mission, per-character-per-author, and/or per-account-per-author max-time capacity limits, it becomes less and less likely that can happen, lest the entire STO playerbase is coordinated to make it happen.
If STO when F2P, then it would be worse.
If STO were F2P my motive for pushing this system would cease to exist.
By giving the writers only stuff used in writing...or titles, you eliminate the urge to 'farm it' for points.
On the contrary, if the reward is something like that then third-party agencies have a profit motive to manipulate the system, since the reward isn't something you can buy already for cheap. A black market will be created allowing players to pay to have the "gold farmers" play the missions to earn authors those rewards.
Right now you can buy a C-Point for as little as $0.0125 legitimately through Cryptic.
In order for a "gold selling" agency to compete and exist they'd have to go cheaper, which really isn't worth their time. It would take at least an hour and up to two separate STO accounts for the agency to make, at most, $0.0125. And they would have to so much cheaper that people would be willing to go to illegitimate means to do it. There ain't much profit motive there.
well on the last item, how many play the mission would not dictate rewards, you get them
for making missions..that get published (ie pass the usual bug and content check)
well on the last item, how many play the mission would not dictate rewards, you get them for making missions..that get published (ie pass the usual bug and content check)
That'd only encourage people to make tiny, pointless missions. So long as they don't violate any rules, they'd pass, and the author would earn rewards on them.
Also.. I'm pretty sure there will have to be a limit of how many missions a single person can make. That'd limit any kind of reward for number of published missions. I'm not sure that limit will be there, but I don't know why Cryptic would limit characters, ships, BOFFs, etc., as stingily as they do and not limit this.
I think its a good idea and heres why: even though we can easily sort by highest rated missions and see which missions the community thinks are good, I think it would be nice to also be able to see which missions the Devs think are good and or approximately on the same level of quality as official content.
I agree with this.
As much fun as it would be to get a kick-back, due to potential legal concerns a featured episode or Dev's fav would be a better option for Cryptic.
Seems to be some confusion here about how Player Authored MIssions end up in game.
Cryptic doesn't "select" missions to show up in game - all authored missions can show up in game if they are playtested enough times by the community.
A portion of the Terms of Use for the Foundry stipulates that the missions you are authoring in the toolset can show up in game and become the property of Cryptic and CBS. If you don't want to give up your ideas, then don't submit them.
This is very similar to how an employee agreement works in game design. If several Cryptic employees get together at work and come up with a new game idea - it becomes the properly of Cryptic due to our employee agreement.
Not trying to point out the obvious(and the point of this post by my interpretation) but Cryptic employees who are subject to their employment agreement actually earn an income from Cryptic... where as the community does not - they pay a subscription fee.
I think some form of reimbursement would be great. To make a point, look at what Valve has done with player made content in Team Fortress 2... people are receiving huge paychecks. A lot of the people in this post have said they would be happy with in game reimbursement as opposed to monetary.
Considering these tools are clearly designed to add content and take load of the dev team isn't this only fair?
How about for the player of the ugc mission some unique accolade and for the ugc creator some sort of in game reward like a critter or a medal or something like that?
How about for the player of the ugc mission some unique accolade and for the ugc creator some sort of in game reward like a critter or a medal or something like that?
While this would be something neat in itself, it's not at all the intention of this thread. Accolades and the like are always one-time things. That would just encourage someone to make one mission and they'd be less likely to ever make another since they have obtained the accolade.
Not trying to point out the obvious(and the point of this post by my interpretation) but Cryptic employees who are subject to their employment agreement actually earn an income from Cryptic... where as the community does not - they pay a subscription fee.
I think some form of reimbursement would be great. To make a point, look at what Valve has done with player made content in Team Fortress 2... people are receiving huge paychecks. A lot of the people in this post have said they would be happy with in game reimbursement as opposed to monetary.
Considering these tools are clearly designed to add content and take load of the dev team isn't this only fair?
I completely agree with this. I don't think people are being unreasonable here or asking for much. My thought (along with a few others I've seen as I read over the thread) was that you could earn 1 CP per unique playthrough. That could be unique character, unique account, or hell it could even have an accout-wide timer applied to it so that people wouldn't switch characters and just repeat the mission all over again. And for what? 1 CP. 1 CP at a time, in no way would I ever call that abusable or farmable. You'd need 120 unique playthroughs by other people to get enough for the cheapest C-Store item. A Tribble/Targ.
I've said it before but this encourages quality missions. Obviously people are going to make missions regardless but if they could earn a handful of CP from doing so, they'd definitely be more inclined. Unless you're in a fleet, and absolutely everyone is an active player, and the fleet is full, you're not likely to even get to 120 CP any time soon. I don't know about your fleets, but I don't see everyone just saying 'ok I'll take the time to play your mission so you can get 1 CP' a hundred times over. People don't really want to waste their time if the mission is terrible, people will however want to play a mission that is entertaining. One could make an only averagely popular mission and earn about 500 CP off of that one mission over the span of half a year. So, if the mission is decently made enough, it will gain an amount of popularity and reward CP to the author accordingly.
The only potential for exploitation that I see is farm missions; which have absolutely nothing to do with CP at all. Farm missions where you just spawn two hundred Gorn or Breen so that people can get their accolades. They wouldn't even have to complete said missions, in fact I'm pretty sure that most people wouldn't; what I see is people nearly completing it, then dropping it, taking it again, and repeating to fulfill said accolades. That is the only kind of exploit I can imagine here.
This I agree with, but there's a long scale between the best and the worst. That's why I'm in favor of a reward system that scales with the popularity of the mission automatically. And with an automated system it's not something Cryptic has to expend resources to manage.
Any 'automated' system of this type can be abused, plain and simple; and again you're totally ignoring the fact that any reimbursement of this type, especially with C-Points that have a monetary value associated with them could cause legal trouble for Cryptic, in that an arguement could be made that simnce Crypyic 'pays' for Foundry created missions, it sets up a 'paid contractor' type situation.
^^^^^
For this reason alone, it's enough to end the 'compensation' debate. As others (and I before have said); the Foundry is an optional feature that you're free to make use of, or not. It doesn't detract of hinder you from using any other part of the game. If you don't want to use it because you feel Cryptic would somehow be unfairly profiting from your work; that's a perfectl valid opinion; and you are free NOT to use the tool.
If you do decide to use it; the 'reward' you get is seeing others play and occassionally comment on your work. If that's not enough incentive, again, don't use the tool. I DO think people in the long run will be dissapointed as once the Foundry is open, unless you have a lot of friends or Fleetmates in game, most will be surprised how little they 'ultimate/excellent' mission actually gets played by others, and further, how rare it'll be that someone comments signifigantly on the mission (be it positive, or negative feedback); and I'm sure we'll see the - "I spent 2 weeks making this thing and only 6 people have played it - WTF! The Foundry blows..." thread.
And FYI - many folks (myself included) still don't see ANYTHING positive that CoX's Mission Architect system did for that game; and in most circles; many still it's overall effect as mostly negative BECAUSE many authors couldn't handle criticism; or were upset the they didn't have 200 plays and tons of 'Awsome' feedback in the firsyt 24 hours it was published. So, while I do think DStahl an dcrew have seen what the MA did to CoX, and are seeing if they can do a better implementation of UGC that minimizes the negative aspects; I think whether, in the end, the Foundry itself becomes a positive of negative influence on the state of STO in general remains to be seen. If could end up costing more ubs than it brings in if implememntation follows a similar pattern to what happened with CoX; and actual compenstation won't help matters as a lot of authors will not believe their additions are unpopular because they are badly designed/written (usually no one sets out to make something 'bad'. The perception (good or bad)occurs as the 'masses' get a hold of it and form their own opinions. Now, depending on the maturity and life experience of the author; they might be able to take and process criticism; or they might not. Those that can't will for a negative view of the Foundry, the STO community, and the game itself; and leave - so again, the thing to keep in mind is that the Foundry WILL cost subs. The question is: Will it bring in more STO subs than it looses in the long run?
Comments
Since I spend a great deal of time in social areas, I feel I do have adequate knowledge of people's use of CStore, based on their costume choices in addition to those CStore ships I see.
Sure they would.
* It gives authors incentive to make better content which subsequently gives their subscribers better content to play, makes STO look better, and makes it more marketable.
* It gives authors incentive not to cancel their subscriptions since doing so would cut off their reward income
Most times companies do something nice for their customers it cuts into their profit margins. That 11th sub I get for free when my punchcard is finished? Yep. That's costing them. And if it's the manager taking my payment he usually throws in my drink for free. I've been a loyal customer for 7 years.
In this case the amount it affects Cryptic can be altered by Cryptic. In the math I posted in the other thread and sent dstahl, if an author earns $15 worth of C-Points, that means they've added $290 worth of play time for other players through their content, assuming the average play time of players is 62 hours a month (2 hours*31 days). That's en effective commission of about 5%. That's at least 1200 hours of time spent playing that authors' mission(s) and at least 2400 playthroughs.
Obviously Cryptic knows average play time per month better than I, so they can work the variables and change the math to their liking.
You'll have to check the other thread if you want to see the variable values I used to get the numbers above. I was actually pretty conservative in my estimates. I'm sure STO has a lot of subscribers who play far less than 2 hours a day, which would subsequently increase the value-add of the author's contribution and make the commission percent lower than stated above.
So yeah, it's possible for Cryptic to lose money. I've never stated otherwise. But it's a small percentage of what they'd be gaining and then only applies if the author would have purchased C-Points otherwise.
Rewarding points that have a cash-value actually helps prevent third-party gaming of the system.
Right now there's an established exchange mechanism to get C-Points for dollars. If they were to reward achievements or some other kind of currency, third-party agencies will have a profit motive to offer their own exchange mechanism; you give them dollars, they use their "gold seller" accounts to inflate your mission popularity, rating, playthrough count, etc. And they can set their exchange rate to whatever they want--they're not competing with anyone.
With the use of C-Points as the reward, players have a means to legitimately buy the reward currency. They don't have to go to the "black market", as it were, and they'd be less inclined to do so. Third-party agencies lose much of their profit motive; now they have legal competition.
And what I propose wouldn't prevent the purchase of C-Points.
It'd be very rare that an authors' missions are popular enough to substitute the purchase of C-Points, if they're hell-bent on having everything in the C-Store. Cryptic can tweak the variables to ensure that's the case.
And even if an author somehow makes popular enough content to buy everything... so what? The value they've added to the game would be enormous; in the realm of 20 times the monetary value of the C-Points they've been rewarded.
Like Quarks, or Risa?
Those are off the beaten track. Very few non-social players have any reason to go there so what you most often see is a specific demographic--other social players. And I'd say social players--especially RPers--are more inclined to buy special costumes.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of what's available in the C-Store now came included in pre-orders, and Cryptic actually gave C-Points out to everyone once or twice after launch. I have various costumes and the TOS Connie that are now only available through the C-Store, but I've never once purchased C-Points.
Edit: Oh bugger. I see they've moved this to the UGC forum. Now it won't get as much exposure.
Good. Considering the thread has to do with the Foundry, the correct forum for it is the Foundry forum.
Yeah.. problem is it's way down the list and I don't think that many know it's here yet.
One even got hired onto the dev team he was so good at it.
I imagine the Foundry will follow very closely to this model for obvious reasons.
Agreed, and I'm sure they'll keep tabs on it for that reason.
Maybe. It'd have to depend how well the mission fits in with the canon setting; if it's a ENT-era or TOS-era mission, I'm not sure how well that'd work.
This I agree with, but there's a long scale between the best and the worst. That's why I'm in favor of a reward system that scales with the popularity of the mission automatically. And with an automated system it's not something Cryptic has to expend resources to manage.
And you still don't see the problem this creates? It's going to be something of a popularity contest WITHOUT rewarding people for popular missions. Doing so would only make it worse. Expect to see people saying things like "WILL PLAY UR MISSION IF U PLAY MINE" and just basically people running through each other's missions solely for the sake of bolstering each other's C-Store points. If the missions offer skill points or other rewards, giving C-Points could completely skew the balance of players into playing nothing but Foundry missions. When the Mission Architect came out in CoH it was completely exploitable, you could get to level 50 in a day, and even after they removed the exploits, it continued to be more popular than standard dev-created content because it was still faster and easier since you didn't have travel times and you could custom-tailor enemies to fit your playstyle or powersets. It was only after they took a nerf bat to the rewards that most people went back to playing ordinary dev-created missions. Adding C-Store points to the equation would only make this problem much worse, I would think.
So?
That means people are playing the game, which is kinda the point. That's how Cryptic makes their money.
Besides.. it would take a huge coordinated effort to make any one person a notable amount of C-Points; 2400 play-throughs of unique characters (if there's a 30-minute max per-character-per-mission) just to get a single T5 ship from the C-Store. Make it per-account-per-mission and it'd be even harder to do.
Indirectly, maybe... you're comparing rewards that players get to rewards authors get. Cryptic can nerf the rewards players get down to nothing if people are leveling too fast off UGC... that's another topic.
With my proposal the reimbursement is based on the amount of time playing the missions. So if missions are easy, they'd be finished quickly and wouldn't contribute much to a reward.
The remaining issue would be people idling the missions to inflate the amount of time, which is somewhat countered by having a 30-minute max per-character-per-mission. It's perhaps not the most intelligent counter... maybe the max time is the average completion time if it's lower than 30 minutes. I'm certainly open to suggestions on how to make it more exploit-proof.
If we're trying to determine which missions are the best...then what's wrong with a popularity contest? If the best missions get played the most often, then I say mission accomplished. Marketing will be involved--authors who promote their missions successfully will get more hits, but again, what's wrong with that?
Maybe people will start swapping playthroughs as you describe. I think that sounds boring, but if people want to spend their time that way, then congratulations--we've just added another reason for people to play Star Trek Online. People would probably be doing that even without a reward system. I don't think the fact that people are getting paid dirties the whole process, if that's what you're implying.
As for your points about people exploiting the system to level up quickly, or whatever, Cryptic says they've balanced that through play-testing. Until I see the result myself, I've got nothing to criticize. If UGC becomes more popular than stock missions, then I guess we have evidence that UGC is more fun than stock missions, don't we?
What about the inevitable farm missions? People love those accolades, so we know there will be dozens of missions that involve nothing more than wading through tons of enemies just to rack up kills. Those would take awhile to complete, but not really be 'good' missions.
Depends how you define 'good' I guess.
For the purposes of my system the compensation is based on an author giving other players something to do, and so the reward scales with the amount of play time the mission offers. If people pay $15/month to play farming missions, so be it. Cryptic is still getting their value-add for those missions and the author still gets their "commission" for having made them.
Ultimately the system mimics capitalism. A quality product will naturally sell well, but there might be other products which aren't great but suit a specific need, so will also sell well. The effect is the same: the author has given players something to do.
Maybe that makes the proposed system less attractive... I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder.
P.S. Thanks for the good question. It's nice to have an honest discussion and people not just replying WTFNO!
But my real question comes down to quality. Why should the guy that spent 10 minutes dropping mobs at random on a map get more than the guy that spent hours writing his script, planning placement, and trying to work in effects / puzzles what have you?
There has to be some kind of check for actual quality as opposed to mindless slaughter that just happens to take longer. Otherwise it just encourages a certain type of person to crank out the schlock missions just to score some c-points.
Edit: And what about the faithful play testers? Sure they get missions to play, but they could just wait for someone else to weed out the broken / obscene missions, and even rate them so they know which ones to try. But what about the ones that actually take the time to choke through all the TRIBBLE to find the gold?
Surely they need something to encourage people to actually test these things instead of sitting back and waiting. If not, we can end up with the situation I fear: Far more missions than can be tested with the available number of people doing the testing. I'm sure there will be a lot to start with as people check things out, but that will drop over time without something to encourage them to keep at it.
I'd be all for accounting for quality more reliability. My system catches some of it since quality missions would likely be played more often than crappy ones but, as you point out, there are specific types that my system would reward for that aren't about quality. So yeah... I'd have to revise my description of it some.
At the end of the day, though, people will play what they find enjoyable to play, and they're paying Cryptic to do that. So that's where the value-add is from an income standpoint, so that's what my system is catching in order to give the authors their "commission", as it were.
If we can find a reliable way to programmatically detect actual quality, I'd support a system for it or would try to find a way to account for it in mine as well.
This presents a unique challenge.
If they're somehow rewarded for the number of missions they approve, or get their own commission based on how much the missions they approve are played, it would actually encourage them to just approve everything. This applies to any kind of reward, from achievements to C-Points.
The only way to offset that would be to actually punish them for approving missions that shouldn't be approved, and that opens up a whole can of worms in itself. The sheer possibility of punishment might dissuade people from reviewing in the first place.
I agree with what you're after.... but at the moment I'm at a loss as to how to do it.
P.S. Yeah... reviewers who abuse the system like that would lose their reviewer status, so there's some protection there... but it's reactionary and will need to be done manually by Cryptic. By the time Cryptic gets to it, damage might already be done.
Will they? Or will they just sit around waiting for someone to advertise a "u play mine ill play urs" scenario, go into a single-mission campaign that's incredibly easy to beat, and then have the person whose mission they just played come do the same in their mission, in order for them both to earn C points? Some guy spends hours making a mission, and it's good and well written, but it's long and very hard. For each play through he earns a C point, but he doesn't care about them, he didn't make it in order to get rich with C-points. On the other hand, a guy makes a quick mission with bad writing or none at all that takes you through a single encounter of some bad guys and then awards him a C-point for every playthrough. On top of that, it provides good skill points for the time invested in it. And then he advertises it as such. Which mission do you think is going to get more plays? Obviously such things can be curtailed through various means, limitations and nerfs, etc. etc. But I think adding c-points is simply not worth the hassle, from that perspective. It's just one more thing that would require balancing and monitoring.
You may think this won't happen, and if there were no exp rewards in the missions I'd probably agree, but if there are rewards, and they can still play through these to level up while simultaneously accruing C Points in some kind of semi-fraudulent C-point racketeering scheme, what reason would these types of players ever have to go back to the standard content?
This would create a void in the game. People who look for teams or PVP queues (which are already suffering) will find even less people to play with than before. You might not think it causes any harm, but if the Foundry is full of farm/C-store point exchange scheme missions and authors, it will turn some people off from it. They will then go to do regular content, and may be disappointed at the lack of people out there that are available to play with.
You might think this kind of situation is far-fetched, but going back to the Mission Architect, when it first came out and you could exploit it to level up quickly and get tickets (which could be redeemed for loot), you would have been hard pressed to find a team outside of the Mission Architect. Now, even if the Foundry isn't exploitable for leveling up or getting loot, adding C-points to it seems like just more incentive for people to flock there and more or less kill off the rest of the game. You might say it doesn't matter so long as people are playing the game, but if someone gets frustrated that the only time they can find people to play with are in foundry exploit missions, they might decide to cancel their subscription.
The behavior you're describing is going to exist no matter what. And I can't imagine that many people even listening to channels where people are spamming advertisements. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Cryptic ends up making a policy forbidding such advertising since it's going to lead to epic spam. At the very least, expect massive numbers of ignores.
At the end of the day the system is serving its purpose exactly as it should, though. Cryptic profits on people having content to play and that's the profit that's trickling down to the content authors.
Frankly I think your issue is really with player rewards for UGC. It's those rewards that are going to attract people to UGC for leveling; not what an author gets as a reward. Any time any new sort of content is added to the game it's going to thin out the player base and make communal content more difficult to use.
It's a pesky problem for an MMO, actually. The players demand a variety of gameplay and a lot of content, but the more variety and the more content there is, the thinner the playerbase becomes and the less fun the game becomes for many people. Based on that... one could argue that introducing UGC at all will be detrimental to the game. And they wouldn't necessarily be wrong. A lot of people are going to flock to it; both to author and to play. That'll be fewer people doing other things.
The only implication my proposed system has in any of this is through the "I'll play yours if you play mine" scenario which, yes, will exist... but it won't amount to so much activity that authors benefit that much from it. Advertisements will reach a critical mass very quickly, and per-character-per-mission restrictions will prevent repeat playing from inflating things. And if it's still that much of a problem they could always add per-account-per-author restrictions, so two authors can't mass produce new missions and inflate each others' play time.
They're going to try to do that for skill points anyway. Cryptic says they have a solution for that--probably awarding a lower proportion of skill points than you'd get by farming dailies. Just do the same thing for C-points: make the reward rate low enough that only the certifiably insane would deliberately grind UGC missions for C-points. All you have to do is make grinding harder and less rewarding than writing good missions that everyone wants to play.
If people are determined to write terrible missions to try to get rewards from them, you're not going to be able to stop them. But if you establish a well-built ecosystem for UGC, then the overall effect will be positive.
I made this same argument for the spam-filtering system, which was initially terrible but which Cryptic eventually fixed: It's like establishing a police force for your town. You're never going to be able to stop every single crime, and that's not the objective. It's enough to establish a setting where--as a rule--people are safe. That takes a lot of work, but it can be done--and in this case, most of the work has been done already.
Oh, you mean like the "kill 10 Klingons" missions that Cryptic has written dozens of already?
1.) Higher polish of standard content
2.) Higher skillpoint reward for time played in standard content
3.) Impracticality of playthrough swapping as a source of income
All of the concerns you listed apply equally to any other sort of rewards, such as skill points. Cryptic is going to have to balance and watch for farming missions anyway.
Different people think different aspects of the game are fun. (This being Halloween, I'm sure the ghost of Flatfingers is around here somewhere...) Some people enjoy the story, some people are in it to create the most powerful character they can, some people are here to conquer their enemies in PvP, and so on. Ultimately, people will do whatever they enjoy, and trying to herd them into something they don't enjoy by limiting the options available to them is bad business. When the Foundry launches, I expect there will be fewer people in the PvP queues. That's tough, but you know the people who're still there are the ones who love PvP. Worthy opponents.
I expect that the tagging and rating system for UGC will be good enough that people will be able to find the kind of missions they want. That's a mission-critical feature, Cryptic Points or no. Ultimately people will gather around the things they like, which is all you can ask of any virtual world. I believe that, on the whole, UGC will be good for STO--that the lure of endless new missions will draw in new subscribers for the game, many of whom will certainly try the PvP system at some point. I'm sorry if you're worried that PvP queues will suffer in the short term, but who knows--maybe you'll find missions you like come out of the Foundry, too.
missions.
If you give them C-store points...SOME players will pump out a zillion tiny so-called missions to farm the
points. wasting server space.
If STO when F2P, then it would be worse.
By giving the writers only stuff used in writing...or titles, you eliminate the urge to 'farm it' for points.
We talked about this in the other thread. It's a reverse-handicap system, penalizing new authors by reducing their capacity to be competitive against established authors who have the full suite of options. And it may discourage people from becoming authors at all.
There are ways to avoid this. I believe the number of missions a single author can make will be limited already--it'd have to be to avoid the waste you describe. Then, with per-character-per-mission, per-character-per-author, and/or per-account-per-author max-time capacity limits, it becomes less and less likely that can happen, lest the entire STO playerbase is coordinated to make it happen.
If STO were F2P my motive for pushing this system would cease to exist.
On the contrary, if the reward is something like that then third-party agencies have a profit motive to manipulate the system, since the reward isn't something you can buy already for cheap. A black market will be created allowing players to pay to have the "gold farmers" play the missions to earn authors those rewards.
Right now you can buy a C-Point for as little as $0.0125 legitimately through Cryptic.
In order for a "gold selling" agency to compete and exist they'd have to go cheaper, which really isn't worth their time. It would take at least an hour and up to two separate STO accounts for the agency to make, at most, $0.0125. And they would have to so much cheaper that people would be willing to go to illegitimate means to do it. There ain't much profit motive there.
for making missions..that get published (ie pass the usual bug and content check)
That'd only encourage people to make tiny, pointless missions. So long as they don't violate any rules, they'd pass, and the author would earn rewards on them.
Also.. I'm pretty sure there will have to be a limit of how many missions a single person can make. That'd limit any kind of reward for number of published missions. I'm not sure that limit will be there, but I don't know why Cryptic would limit characters, ships, BOFFs, etc., as stingily as they do and not limit this.
I agree with this.
As much fun as it would be to get a kick-back, due to potential legal concerns a featured episode or Dev's fav would be a better option for Cryptic.
Not trying to point out the obvious(and the point of this post by my interpretation) but Cryptic employees who are subject to their employment agreement actually earn an income from Cryptic... where as the community does not - they pay a subscription fee.
I think some form of reimbursement would be great. To make a point, look at what Valve has done with player made content in Team Fortress 2... people are receiving huge paychecks. A lot of the people in this post have said they would be happy with in game reimbursement as opposed to monetary.
Considering these tools are clearly designed to add content and take load of the dev team isn't this only fair?
I completely agree with this. I don't think people are being unreasonable here or asking for much. My thought (along with a few others I've seen as I read over the thread) was that you could earn 1 CP per unique playthrough. That could be unique character, unique account, or hell it could even have an accout-wide timer applied to it so that people wouldn't switch characters and just repeat the mission all over again. And for what? 1 CP. 1 CP at a time, in no way would I ever call that abusable or farmable. You'd need 120 unique playthroughs by other people to get enough for the cheapest C-Store item. A Tribble/Targ.
I've said it before but this encourages quality missions. Obviously people are going to make missions regardless but if they could earn a handful of CP from doing so, they'd definitely be more inclined. Unless you're in a fleet, and absolutely everyone is an active player, and the fleet is full, you're not likely to even get to 120 CP any time soon. I don't know about your fleets, but I don't see everyone just saying 'ok I'll take the time to play your mission so you can get 1 CP' a hundred times over. People don't really want to waste their time if the mission is terrible, people will however want to play a mission that is entertaining. One could make an only averagely popular mission and earn about 500 CP off of that one mission over the span of half a year. So, if the mission is decently made enough, it will gain an amount of popularity and reward CP to the author accordingly.
The only potential for exploitation that I see is farm missions; which have absolutely nothing to do with CP at all. Farm missions where you just spawn two hundred Gorn or Breen so that people can get their accolades. They wouldn't even have to complete said missions, in fact I'm pretty sure that most people wouldn't; what I see is people nearly completing it, then dropping it, taking it again, and repeating to fulfill said accolades. That is the only kind of exploit I can imagine here.
Any 'automated' system of this type can be abused, plain and simple; and again you're totally ignoring the fact that any reimbursement of this type, especially with C-Points that have a monetary value associated with them could cause legal trouble for Cryptic, in that an arguement could be made that simnce Crypyic 'pays' for Foundry created missions, it sets up a 'paid contractor' type situation.
^^^^^
For this reason alone, it's enough to end the 'compensation' debate. As others (and I before have said); the Foundry is an optional feature that you're free to make use of, or not. It doesn't detract of hinder you from using any other part of the game. If you don't want to use it because you feel Cryptic would somehow be unfairly profiting from your work; that's a perfectl valid opinion; and you are free NOT to use the tool.
If you do decide to use it; the 'reward' you get is seeing others play and occassionally comment on your work. If that's not enough incentive, again, don't use the tool. I DO think people in the long run will be dissapointed as once the Foundry is open, unless you have a lot of friends or Fleetmates in game, most will be surprised how little they 'ultimate/excellent' mission actually gets played by others, and further, how rare it'll be that someone comments signifigantly on the mission (be it positive, or negative feedback); and I'm sure we'll see the - "I spent 2 weeks making this thing and only 6 people have played it - WTF! The Foundry blows..." thread.
And FYI - many folks (myself included) still don't see ANYTHING positive that CoX's Mission Architect system did for that game; and in most circles; many still it's overall effect as mostly negative BECAUSE many authors couldn't handle criticism; or were upset the they didn't have 200 plays and tons of 'Awsome' feedback in the firsyt 24 hours it was published. So, while I do think DStahl an dcrew have seen what the MA did to CoX, and are seeing if they can do a better implementation of UGC that minimizes the negative aspects; I think whether, in the end, the Foundry itself becomes a positive of negative influence on the state of STO in general remains to be seen. If could end up costing more ubs than it brings in if implememntation follows a similar pattern to what happened with CoX; and actual compenstation won't help matters as a lot of authors will not believe their additions are unpopular because they are badly designed/written (usually no one sets out to make something 'bad'. The perception (good or bad)occurs as the 'masses' get a hold of it and form their own opinions. Now, depending on the maturity and life experience of the author; they might be able to take and process criticism; or they might not. Those that can't will for a negative view of the Foundry, the STO community, and the game itself; and leave - so again, the thing to keep in mind is that the Foundry WILL cost subs. The question is: Will it bring in more STO subs than it looses in the long run?