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Lets talk about Foundry and limiting submissions

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
First and foremost this is a discussion based on my and my son's observatons. It's a discussion I thought should happen; however, lets keep it civil and see if there is some kind of consensus.

Being someone who really loves the Foundry I have tried my best to reveiw missions. I figure I submit them so I should also review them. I started noticing that the list of un-reviewed mission kept getting longer and longer. Yet some of those missions were getting reviewed, some weren't. Newer ones would get reviewed while older ones went unreviewed still. People are actively advertising their missions yet they still get few if any reviews. I try my best to find ones noone else has touched and give them at least one reveiw. I am; however, just one person.

Based on all of this it seems that we will quicly get to a state where a lot of missions people may have put some very hard work into will go unplayed because of the sheer volume. i don't want this to happen to me and I don't want this to happen to anyone else. Thus I started this thread to find a solution to the problem. My initial thoughts are to limit submissions to one per week or per "?". Even at 100 people doing 1 mission per week in a year that is 5200 missions. We all know the number, if left unchecked, is going to climb a lot higher than that. Foundry is a great idea but when this goes to Holodeck and more people are creating missions the content is going to spiral out of control. I don't want anyone to put effort into a mission only to see it go unplayed simply because there is so much. I say we have to limit how often one can publish a mission. This is, however, just a starting point for discussion.
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  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Is that not what the rating system is for. Realistically all it takes is one person to recognise a quality mission and rise it above the rest. Be it 10 months old or 1 day old. I don't think you or your son should worry about it, if you put alot of work into your mission, then i'll be the player thanking you and rating accordingly.

    That's what is brilliant about the foundry. Everyone's true colours will shine. :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    HerbieZ wrote: »
    Is that not what the rating system is for. Realistically all it takes is one person to recognise a quality mission and rise it above the rest. Be it 10 months old or 1 day old. I don't think you or your son should worry about it, if you put alot of work into your mission, then i'll be the player thanking you and rating accordingly.

    That's what is brilliant about the foundry. Everyone's true colours will shine. :D


    Yes the rating system will help. However when you have a hundred or more mission that have never been played thus never rated where do you start? Now multiply that by thousands. It's that first review that is going to be the problem. With hundreds of missions being submitted and only twenty or so showing up on the list at one time (based on screen size etc) I think it wil be a problem. You could be absolutely right. I am playing the devil's advocate now so that this thread doesn't happend after foundry hits holodeck and is a flame fest. It's bettr to discuss this eary when it is more of a hypothetical then when the problem occurs.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    First and foremost this is a discussion based on my and my son's observatons. It's a discussion I thought should happen; however, lets keep it civil and see if there is some kind of consensus.

    Being someone who really loves the Foundry I have tried my best to reveiw missions. I figure I submit them so I should also review them. I started noticing that the list of un-reviewed mission kept getting longer and longer. Yet some of those missions were getting reviewed, some weren't. Newer ones would get reviewed while older ones went unreviewed still. People are actively advertising their missions yet they still get few if any reviews. I try my best to find ones noone else has touched and give them at least one reveiw. I am; however, just one person.

    Based on all of this it seems that we will quicly get to a state where a lot of missions people may have put some very hard work into will go unplayed because of the sheer volume. i don't want this to happen to me and I don't want this to happen to anyone else. Thus I started this thread to find a solution to the problem. My initial thoughts are to limit submissions to one per week or per "?". Even at 100 people doing 1 mission per week in a year that is 5200 missions. We all know the number, if left unchecked, is going to climb a lot higher than that. Foundry is a great idea but when this goes to Holodeck and more people are creating missions the content is going to spiral out of control. I don't want anyone to put effort into a mission only to see it go unplayed simply because there is so much. I say we have to limit how often one can publish a mission. This is, however, just a starting point for discussion.

    I do not see this as a problem. Some people will seek out new and unexplored space and adventure, and others will stay to the safe rrealms of the previously reviewed. Seems to me everybody gets a little of something.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    wrote:
    I do not see this as a problem. Some people will seek out new and unexplored space and adventure, and others will stay to the safe rrealms of the previously reviewed. Seems to me everybody gets a little of something.
    No game that I've ever played that has UGC content works that way. :)

    It usually works more like this: player finds crappy mission, and then player finds another crappy mission, and the player finds another crappy misison and then player posts to forum about how there's only crappy missions on the Foundry and how the rating system is useless. :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    HerbieZ wrote: »
    Is that not what the rating system is for. Realistically all it takes is one person to recognise a quality mission and rise it above the rest. Be it 10 months old or 1 day old. I don't think you or your son should worry about it, if you put alot of work into your mission, then i'll be the player thanking you and rating accordingly.

    That's what is brilliant about the foundry. Everyone's true colours will shine. :D

    I disagree. I put QUITE a lot of work and lost QUITE a lot of sleep over my mission, advertised it on 3 different threads, and almost two weeks later? Nothing, not a single play or review.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    The number of 5 star missions will go up, as well, even if they don't deserve it. I think alot of reviewers are lazy and if the mission works, many people will just give it a 5 star and say "great mission."

    I think people need to be more critical of missions...if there are any grammar mistakes, mispellings, things of that nature it doesn't deserve 5 stars. 4, perhaps if everything is good.

    But there has to be a way to weed out the bad ones, and not just promote the good ones.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I understand your angst OP, but look at it this way, there will be a flood of content initially. Alot of TRIBBLE content, that will get overrated reviews, through friends, fleets etc.

    But then those people that are making the TRIBBLE content will

    a) get bored with the foundry

    b) get better at making content, or;

    c) the real rating of the mission will come to light overtime as the overall playerbase rates the mission.

    Word of mouth and favourite authors will be key in this system. The rating system is just a starting point for when foundry kicks off.

    Trust me, keep doing what you are doing as far as giving those unrated missions a go, build a feel for an author overtime.

    And ask yourself are they getting better, or are they just being dweebs cluttering the system. Then from there follow your favourite authors, recommend to your friends and fleetmates. missions you have tried and felt were very good. (I know I would listen to one friends review over other unknown players' testimonials)

    The foundry will have some growing pains when it goes live, My only concern is, if Cryptic starts flushing the system and unpublishes content because its taking up room. We might end up losing gems of missions simply because people havent got around to them.

    But, think of it like a TV show, make good content, advertise and develop a fanbase, or face cancellation.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I would think that this will self correct over time. If people keep publishing missions that don't get reviewed, they'll probably stop publishing for a while and maybe even go review some themselves.

    Also, I don't think Tribble is a good thing to judge review volume on. Since they won't carry to Holodeck it is really pointless to review missions for any reason other than to see if the review mechanism works. I know I reviewed a couple to see if it worked, but didn't see any point in reviewing more on Tribble. What is needed on Tribble is testing the tools, and those mostly relate to creating and publishing missions.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Cosmic_One wrote: »
    No game that I've ever played that has UGC content works that way. :)

    It usually works more like this: player finds crappy mission, and then player finds another crappy mission, and the player finds another crappy misison and then player posts to forum about how there's only crappy missions on the Foundry and how the rating system is useless. :)

    Finding crappy mission after crappy mission is part of the adbventure in unexplored space.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Spartan844 lends support to my point. Everything said so far has some basis in fact. What remains missed is the fact that to develop a rating someone needs to rate it. I just checked on Tribble and there are well over a hundred missions on the review tab of which 80% plus have never been reviewed. Foundry will become a popularity contest. Even if you are a good writer/developer if you lack the popular name or Fleet connections you will suffer. That is just wrong. The rating system works only if content is presented in a limited fashion to give everyone a fair shake.

    The other solutiion is that oldest/least reviewed missions are presented first in thel list. Why? Because humans are lazy and scrolling down is hard work. Those at the top get played first and most. Remember I am talking about the review mission tab which is those missions not having reached the 5 star (meaning 5 reviews) to go "live". The is probably the only other vialbe alternative.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    WarpVis wrote: »
    Finding crappy mission after crappy mission is part of the adbventure in unexplored space.
    I guess that should be the advertising slogan for all space-based MMOs from this point on then. That'll make players come flocking in. :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    1234567890
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I agree with what Revlot said, a very powerful mission filter is what is needed.

    If we want to play missions and kill dancing Borg, so be it.

    If we want to hang out and be Captain Kirk's pool boy, so be it.

    If we want to play space based missions, or ground base, let us choose.

    With a powerful mission filter comes a defence against inept story writers, and a good counter against a flood of TRIBBLE overrated missions.

    But I will say it again, word of mouth is going to be the best tool for finding well written and implemented missions. Unfortunately, that's going to require some players to muddle around in the cesspool of TRIBBLE missions to find those Gems and bring them to the light of day.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    i think its too early to comment. it will need some time to settle down.

    personally i dont think there should be any kind of limit to how often you can post mission. the foundry and a massive number of missions might help to create the feel that a real universe should presents us. endless stories and missions. i want to discover hidden gems along the way, and play missions that no one else has seen.

    now whilst thats good for me its not great for the author of that mission and of course there is always the problem that some missions will fall into the cracks and get missed. only time will tell if that a few dozen or a few thousand. if its the later then we can try and think of ways to improve it.
    it will somewhat be up to the author to try his or her best to promote their work but lets see what happens before we decide to start radical changes.

    UGC is not a perfect system, its not a fair system. you will have to take the rough with the smooth on this one.

    i do fully support a more powerful search feature.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I agree with what Revlot said, a very powerful mission filter is what is needed.

    If we want to play missions and kill dancing Borg, so be it.

    If we want to hang out and be Captain Kirk's pool boy, so be it.

    If we want to play space based missions, or ground base, let us choose.

    With a powerful mission filter comes a defence against inept story writers, and a good counter against a flood of TRIBBLE overrated missions.

    But I will say it again, word of mouth is going to be the best tool for finding well written and implemented missions. Unfortunately, that's going to require some players to muddle around in the cesspool of TRIBBLE missions to find those Gems and bring them to the light of day.

    Captain Kirk's pool boy...Now there's an idea...

    To the Foundry!!!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    what this man speaks is the truth, people will create anything and put it on the Foundry, ratings won't help if there are thousands of missions.

    And some dufus' will rate a mission high because it was TRIBBLE just to get others to experience their pain. This man speaks sense, I think that missions should be limited to a certain number per week, that way people put out only their best stuff, because if they put out TRIBBLE and get rated badly on their first set of missions then people are less likely to try their missions, so it'll inspire people if they are serious about creating missions to make quality ones.

    Then the great mission makers will become known and they can have higher limits.

    But its giong to be thousands of missions and good missions will get overlooked, I plan to create a blog or a website or something to advertise, publish news about my missions, teasers, ads, hype etc etc, and get a community around it.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Being someone who really loves the Foundry I have tried my best to reveiw missions. I figure I submit them so I should also review them. I started noticing that the list of un-reviewed mission kept getting longer and longer.

    I bet you dollars to doughnuts that won't always be the case. There are a LOT of UGCers who've come into the Foundry with a backlog of ideas, naturally they will be visited by lady Writer's Block soon and have to start reviewing.
    :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    No offense, but anyone that really thinks "everything will work itself out" and that every mission will wind up getting reviewed eventually has absolutely no idea what their talking about. The truth is there is going to be a huge amount of unreviewed content that never sees the light of day. The question is, how serious a "problem" is that? Well, it certainly isnt "game breaking". It may be discouraging to the mission authors whose missions fall between the cracks, but whether the Devs will ever actually do anything about it is doubtful.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I'm not sure who you are talking to Nagus, but instantaneously having (an estimatable) 10 - 20% more content available is hardly a lamentable situation. On these forums people used to say "more space" "more ground" "more Klingon this or that," now?

    *crickets*

    :mad:
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    First and foremost this is a discussion based on my and my son's observatons. It's a discussion I thought should happen; however, lets keep it civil and see if there is some kind of consensus.

    Being someone who really loves the Foundry I have tried my best to reveiw missions. I figure I submit them so I should also review them. I started noticing that the list of un-reviewed mission kept getting longer and longer. Yet some of those missions were getting reviewed, some weren't. Newer ones would get reviewed while older ones went unreviewed still. People are actively advertising their missions yet they still get few if any reviews. I try my best to find ones noone else has touched and give them at least one reveiw. I am; however, just one person.

    Based on all of this it seems that we will quicly get to a state where a lot of missions people may have put some very hard work into will go unplayed because of the sheer volume. i don't want this to happen to me and I don't want this to happen to anyone else. Thus I started this thread to find a solution to the problem. My initial thoughts are to limit submissions to one per week or per "?". Even at 100 people doing 1 mission per week in a year that is 5200 missions. We all know the number, if left unchecked, is going to climb a lot higher than that. Foundry is a great idea but when this goes to Holodeck and more people are creating missions the content is going to spiral out of control. I don't want anyone to put effort into a mission only to see it go unplayed simply because there is so much. I say we have to limit how often one can publish a mission. This is, however, just a starting point for discussion.

    I honestly don't think there is a issue and I will tell you why, where is the foundry currently ?

    Tribble

    That said we are talking about Tribble, do you honestly think every player that currently plays the game really goes and plays on Tribble ? And that everyone of those that does goes on there to play a UGC mission ? I would say a very small number of people go on there unless there is a test weekend and most are there only for the reward plain and simple. Lets not kid ourselves....

    Before I would start worrying about missions getting missions over - shadowed by newer content I would wait till its in use on Holodeck and fully implimented.

    I myself probabally won't be playing any of them until its been on Holodeck for at least a month or more.

    Why ?

    I would be very shy of wasting my time playing a mission that was lets say created in a couple of days, honestly how good could the content be, I mean if you are that good maybe you are in the wrong job ;)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Klingorion wrote: »
    I'm not sure who you are talking to Nagus, but instantaneously having (an estimatable) 10 - 20% more content available is hardly a lamentable situation. On these forums people used to say "more space" "more ground" "more Klingon this or that," now?

    *crickets*

    :mad:

    I'm not referring to the additional content itself, but specifically to the subject of much of it not ever getting past the review phase. Or was that not already abundantly clear from the subject of the thread and the context of my post?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Revlot,
    I like the idea of a completion rate stat.

    The.Grand.Nagus,
    The fact that many will not be rated or even played is not a problem, therefore it will work itself out, because the result does not matter.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    WarpVis wrote: »
    Revlot,
    I like the idea of a completion rate stat.

    The.Grand.Nagus,
    The fact that many will not be rated or even played is not a problem, therefore it will work itself out, because the result does not matter.

    I put the word "problem" in quotation because one person's problem is another person's "doesnt matter".
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Well, the big concern is the playerbase getting turned off using player created content.

    If the Foundry consistently lists TRIBBLE missions first(missions purposefully overrated), people will get sick and tired of foundry as a source of content. The playerbase will just stop using it causing the good authors to give up making stories.

    I think limiting submissions is a last resort though, powerful filter tools to hammer out the clown authors is the best bet. Let them flood the server with their TRIBBLE content, let them overrate it, but in the long run let us as players block them from our lists.

    Ratings can be manipulated, player's filtering whose content they want to play, and types of missions cant.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Dakma wrote: »
    I honestly don't think there is a issue and I will tell you why, where is the foundry currently ?

    Tribble

    That said we are talking about Tribble, do you honestly think every player that currently plays the game really goes and plays on Tribble ? And that everyone of those that does goes on there to play a UGC mission ? I would say a very small number of people go on there unless there is a test weekend and most are there only for the reward plain and simple. Lets not kid ourselves....

    Before I would start worrying about missions getting missions over - shadowed by newer content I would wait till its in use on Holodeck and fully implimented.

    I myself probabally won't be playing any of them until its been on Holodeck for at least a month or more.

    Why ?

    I would be very shy of wasting my time playing a mission that was lets say created in a couple of days, honestly how good could the content be, I mean if you are that good maybe you are in the wrong job ;)

    The problem is if its already a problem on Tribble (and I assure it is) the problem will get worse on Holodeck not better. Trust me. Filters aren't going to help. How do you find a good mission if no one has played it because there are hundreds of unplayed missions. Filters will only help once you have established good authors. However, good authors may get overelooked because of sheer volume. I'l bet a years salary that withing a year of Foundry hitting Holodeck you will find more thant one person who quits putting out Foundry missions because they never really got played. Yet when you look at their missions they will be excellant. Why didn't they get played? Peoples say cracks they fall through I will say they will be huges crevices.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    No offense, but anyone that really thinks "everything will work itself out" and that every mission will wind up getting reviewed eventually has absolutely no idea what their talking about. The truth is there is going to be a huge amount of unreviewed content that never sees the light of day. The question is, how serious a "problem" is that? Well, it certainly isnt "game breaking". It may be discouraging to the mission authors whose missions fall between the cracks, but whether the Devs will ever actually do anything about it is doubtful.

    Indeed. The problem really is that even with the review system there can be a case where 10 missions submitted each day for example, and that leads to 70 missions in a week. So even if the good ones get reviews a lot of those missions could be great missions but don't get a review or enough reviews to get many players doing them.

    However the devs can do something about it if they implement a system like the OP says where you are limited to 1 submission per week. They can add similar small changes or rules that can make it so that the good missions are submitted and reviewed more than the ''warp in. mission over. warp out'' missions. They could make it a requirement for all missions to have at least 10 mission dialogs for example, or 10 objectives, etc, so that people who really wanna submit something have to spend time and make it work (which would hopefully help diminish the spam of meh missions and lead to better, or more thought out ones). Finding ways to help prevent the spam of blank and empty missions, and thus focus players and reviewers on the better made (or at least with more stuff to do) missions.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    Filters will work if implemented properly

    I want to play a ground mission

    - ground mission,check

    I want a combat mission

    -combat, check

    I want to fight klingons

    - Klingons,check

    I dont want to play any missions made by player x who insists on populating their entire map with Slave Girls or player y with dancing borg drones. (Personal preference if you like these things)

    - Block player x, Block Player y, check and check (or have ignore feature)

    I guarantee your list will go from 5 million or whatever entries down to a manageable list. From there you note favourite authors, do all the quests that fall into that category and voila. now you have a list of missions you can recommend to your friends and fleetmates

    And this is what players would do if they could filter out what they do and don't want to play.

    Will you still get TRIBBLE missions? Yes, but at least you will be delving into missions with content you want to experience.

    Will player's missions still get overlooked, Yes, but if you are adding content to missions that players just don't want to play, I'm sorry.

    I dont want to see submissions be limited because as the Good Authors get better, what would take them 3-5 days to put together will only take them a couples of days.

    So we have to wait for Good Content? While we muck around with TRIBBLE content, because the good authors can only publish once a week? That's like forcing me to watch TRIBBLE television because there is nothing else to watch.

    Not to mention when they finish adding the tools so that Authors can work together on projects I guarantee that the Good Authors are going to start working together on larger projects. Wait till the system is on Holodeck before panicking, wait till the initial dust settles.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I can Sympathize with most of the opinions here... As a Mission creator I'm working hard on my skills and learning the tools and tricks as best I can... I've been trying to explore various parts of the process such as structure, Layout, dialogue & interaction. I'm going on 30 hours straight of creating today with 3 more missions under my belt and another one halfway done...

    The problem of people just doing a test mission to learn the tools and skills is that there will be a lot of them. The test server helps mitigate this problem by getting the learning part over with before it is ready for prime time.

    It is the "Johnny-come-Lately's that wait till Foundry is Live on the Holodeck to Start Learning that will clog up the system with junk missions.

    I've been trying to do more and more complex things in my missions to both learn how and to discover problems to be fixed and issues to be resolved. This does not rely on getting missions reviewed.

    I've reviewed about 20 UGC Missions so far and have given out mostly three Stars for a functional mission... I have been trying to give the authors helpful insight into what works well and what doesn't.

    Are there grammar and punctuation Errors? Couldn't figure out where to go or what to do? How were the maps used? Creatively or cookie-cutter? Any effects or creative item placement or thinking out of the box..

    Most functional missions without obvious errors I give 3 stars only...

    It is the Exceptional missions that I reserve 4 or 5 stars for. But that is just me... some kid might like garbage missions and get his friends to amp up his ratings... the important thing is to READ the Reviews and see what some other people said about it. If no-one ever plays your mission there are no reviews to read..

    Hopefully all the interested authors will have their skills sharpened for when it finally goes live on Holo-Deck.... because the word is that all the test missions will get scrapped anyway and we all get to "Start Over" on a New Shiny Clean Slate... and the people who only wanted to "try it out" will already have done so on the test server and Holo-Deck will be cleaner...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    I am afraid this is just a part of how user submitted content works. And how the world works. Artists struggle, musicians send demo CDs, actresses work as waitresses and hope to be discovered., writers send drafts and pray to get published.

    This is just a smaller scale version of the eternal struggle of artistic creation. How do we get our work seen by others and appreciated?

    It will take luck, divine intervention, or some good friends to bring your mission to the top, rather than being one of thousands not played.

    The community will do its part to get good missions out there. Hopefully a lot of podcasts and blogs and the UCG resource sites will take submissions and publish a weekly list of good missions.

    Maybe someone needs to create a Lost Missions Society and devote some time to go through and play untested missions, oldest first.


    In the end, if you can't get it noticed with the proper advertisement or by friends.... better luck next time?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited December 2010
    1234567890
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