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Intention of limited project numbers
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I was making a new project just to how a friend what the system was capable of yesterday and got the message that I could not create any new projects because I had reached the limit, or something along those lines. It was no big deal, as I already has some "test" projects which I simply deleted and made a new one. However, this did get me thinking about the intention of the limited project numbers. That is to say, do the Devs intend for you to only keep your missions up for X amount of time, and then delete them and create new ones, or simply stop making them once you have reached your limit? I would hate to see some of the really great missions that have been simply be gone because the authors have reached their limits and need more space. Or does a mission remain playable even after you delete the project?
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I believe the intent is to get people focused on publishing and also to spare the server load of those special authors who would create 200 missions and just flood the release channels. (what if someone published 200 at once? would they dominate both the new and hot lists for weeks?)
i have a klingon story arc planned, starting with my current mission ive already made that will last 5 or 6 eps and will probably take up the bulk of my slots. i certainly dont want to have to delete them as the first has already gone down well with those who have played it and i hope to make the rest as fun and as interesting.
the fact they are in an arc means deleting one destroys the entire story so quite simply i have to have the ability to get more slots in some way.
I didn't think that there'd be a limit on the number of episodes in total you could have out on release. If it's 200, then that could be OK because it's quite a high number, although who knows - in a few years some people might make that many and need more... I hope they just drop that or raise it to a higher number. I hope they don't make it a C-store purchaseable e.g. Buy more mission project space!
But about the other thing - I DID hear that there is a limit to the number of unfinished projects you can have at the same time. That I'm OK with. It encourages you to finish what you've got that isn't finished. E.g. they only let you have a certain number of unpublished missions at a time or something. Once you get those published, you can make more.
It does not require you to delete your published projects. You just can't have more than a bunch "in development" at the same time.
During Closed beta it was 5 then upped to 8, I believe. No idea what the current threshold is.
Ehh, I was under the impression that Cryptic created the tool so we could add to the universe. I don't believe in placing a cap on published missions. It would be akin to having a featured series for a month or so and then removing it so no one could ever play it again.
Even if we had to pay to increase the said cap is on the intolerable side of things for me. Frankly, that'll just be the point I fold and quit.
Remember - EVERYTHING takes up storage space somewhere; and when you get into the number of users were talking about; NOT setting a cap on either work in progress, or published misions per player wuld be insane.
By setting some limit, you're at least forced to make sure (if you're into creating a lot for the Foundry), that you don't commit something to the server until it's 'worth it'. leave it open ended and the hard drives will just fill up with garbage that no one really cares about; but has to be backed up/preserved, becauuse there's no way to tell what's what.
The entire problem of a limited number of missions had been brought up before if you really wanted to search for it. And the storage argument had been tossed around there a lot. But the going trend is putting new things and services on the C-store. Odds are if a cap is enforced, it's going to be pretty low only to increase C-store sales, which I find fairly distasteful. I find it akin to asking the player base to pay to create content that will cover content gaps left by the game developers.
The problems with having a paid system doesn't end there. For starters, I think it would cause a wave of user-generated missions that take an hour or so to complete (I'll probably stop playing all UGC if it ever comes to that) as people try to squeeze their entire story arc into a single mission. Furthermore, it will hurt UGC author's ability to tell their stories. You look at it from the point of view that a single author will generate lots of bad missions. Yeah, it's possible. I'm not going to lie. But if an author wants their mission to go out to the holodeck server they need to be improve their mission or prepare to have their mission wiped by the developers/moderators of the system from time to time.
Moving on, I'm looking at the problem from the other point of view, is it possible that a UGC author can produce lots of great missions? Do we really want to stifle that kind of talent? Let's put the cap at 3 published/unpublished missions. In three weeks, I create and publish 3 missions that become wildly popular. Now, if I wanted to continue the story I created in the first 3 missions, should I delete the mission from the first week to make room? Or the second week's? Or how about the third? It's not fair to the game populace to start deleting missions like that. It's the same reasoning that in-game we keep the featured series missions long after they've been featured. With a cap and no interest in paying for increase, it seems that my career as a UGC author has come to an early end.
Which doesn't mean I don't think a cap is useful, it just needs to be based on something other than money. Merits would be acceptable already (they are earned for every single mission, and most have an ample supply of them), but even better would be a reward for good missions. For every mission you put out that gets a 4-star rating or higher from at least 75% of the reviewers, you get an additional mission slot, essentially making that mission free. It has two results: 1) it encourages players to make good content, allowing them to continue making such content and rewarding them for good content; and 2) it ensures that those who create bad quality content will, at some point, no longer be able to add content when they reach the max.
If there was no limitations to the missions that each account could hold, we would run into a problem where the servers would get full, and there would also be a greater need for maintenance.
Believe it or not- this costs money for cryptic. If not in the value of taking staff away from their regular jobs- which means that it takes more time for cryptic to put out updates and content. that willl end up costing them money. Servers are also limited. I have no idea on the exact amount, but hosting the game, storing the majority of its contents inside the cryptic server, and then holding data such as maps and missions. There is only ever a finite amount of hard drive storage, and every mission started, in progress, and even published takes up a certain amount of that limited space. To buy more space would cost cryptic even more money naturally. There is 2 ways to help keep this under control: 1- make missions created be stored on the clients hard drive, and set a hard limit with the option to "buy more server storage."
the drawback with the first option is that this would open up the game to be exploited much easier than if cryptic didn't allow the clients to hold the missions on their hard drive until publish. This is generally a bad idea for security- both to prevent game exploitation, and the possible security in the account and billing end.
the second option just makes more sense- both from a security and a business point of view
- Merit-based: if you have a mission with X many reviews and an average at or over 4 stars, you get a slot per qualifying mission.
- Time-based: the longer you've been a subscriber, the more mission slots you get.
- Endgame-based: reviewing missions at endgame means unlocking more slots.
- Accolade-based: trade accolade points for more slots! (i.e. allocate 1200/1620 points toward mission slots)
- As a last resort, for people that reach the new caps created by the above in-game methods, add a C-store alternative (but only available if you hit your cap).
I take it you've never worked in IT and you've met very few fan-fiction writing Trekkers.The cap will increase but removing limits means people can flood or game the review system via spam. This is in addition to the resources it takes for all these missions on the server side.
For example, what if I publish 200 missions in quick succession? Wouldn't that mean that two of the filtering systems would be cluttered with my name and my name alone? What about the review process for these missions? Would anyone honestly check all of these to ensure they meet ToS standards? What if 150 were violating the ToS but the devs had to go through each to verify which did?
There's a headache and the cap is so low right now because they want to ensure the base system works before moving onto something larger.Believe it or now, there are mission objective limits and NPC limits on maps. They exist but they're high enough that you won't notice generally.
Oh trust me- I have noticed for my mission, but thats because I use both enemy and allied NPC groups in my mission, and they share the same cap.
Consider yourself not a "general" player.
i already do, but thanks for the confirmation
For the people that come late and miss the old episodes that authors were forced to delete, I can say nothing but "Sorry you missed TRIBBLE, but the same author just published YYY."
Client-side code storage is a bit tricky. You can inject some code and cause unwanted things to happen on Cryptic's end when you want to publish.
I know because people like Pendra and I have modded STO to add new things (which is a good type of reconfiguring stuff) whereas this would open the door for more malicious code injection.
Definitely use encrypted files if anything were to go client-side and, by encrypted, I mean better than storage they use on the .hoggs and the header info they put in the .wtex
I keep thinking my 6 episode Story Arc might get 8 missions total if that is going to be our limit, but Time will tell I suppose...
Hehe, I stopped at one for that.
It let me test what I wanted to test, try what I wanted to try, and provide feedback and bug reports based on that. I don't see a point to making more until the next serious upgrade of the Foundry comes out, mainly because some of the limitations really limit the avenues I want to explore.
I do hope that on live we get more than 6 missions though. Based on some feedback on my one little mission, I've decided I want to make my mission into a 5 mission arc, each one that happens to include within it the events of one act of Romeo and Juliet, plus other things. The goal being to give it a bit more traditional mission feel, but still advance the story. If that takes up 5/6ths of my slots, that doesn't leave me much room for anything else. Especially since I've got another two mission ideas already.
I would hope that if Cryptic has a mission of the week type deal, that being chosen for that comes with a reward for the author of an additional slot. That would be one way to help insure the authors of the best stories get additional slots.