Foundry offline?

trappa83 · July 2012

Hi all,

is the Foundry currently offline?

I just wanted to start a new project in the Foundry, but I can't click on the Foundry button, because it is greyed out.

ryan218 · July 2012

Same here. It's rather frustrating.

designationxr377 · July 2012

It's offline for a short period of time as they republish all old missions and check for errors. Check the patch notes for when it is opened up again.

They are doing this to avoid previous backlashes and troubles at other large content updates.

mikewendell · July 2012

Discussion here:

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=307171

zechov · July 2012

I am also quite frustrated as I am an avid Foundry user. I do look forward to what they're adding to make it better, it's just that it's been like 3 days already. I will continue to look in the patch notes, but really, will the Foundry EVER return at this point? :mad:

azurianstar · July 2012

mikewendell wrote: »

Discussion here:

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=307171

Yeah, republishing all those missions will take a long, long time. Be nice if we got somekind of ETA.

Makes me wonder, with the number of Foundry missions increasing daily, if they couldn't implement somekind of triage system that prioritizes certain Foundry missions to speed up the recovery time. Like Popular missions getting auto republished, while those who are with inactive accounts, their foundry missions need to be manually republished after the Foundry is back online. (Those who are inactive, but popular will get grandfathered in).

husker75 · July 2012

I know some people are frustrated, but at least Cryptic learned from their mistakes. I think it's smart that they are checking the Foundry an making sure it's ok. No one wants a repeat of season 4.

I just hope it's back up soon.

castsbugc · July 2012

azurianstar wrote: »

Yeah, republishing all those missions will take a long, long time. Be nice if we got somekind of ETA.

Makes me wonder, with the number of Foundry missions increasing daily, if they couldn't implement somekind of triage system that prioritizes certain Foundry missions to speed up the recovery time. Like Popular missions getting auto republished, while those who are with inactive accounts, their foundry missions need to be manually republished after the Foundry is back online. (Those who are inactive, but popular will get grandfathered in).

I absolutely do NOT support the idea of giving preferential treatment to 'popular' missions. Sorry, but there are far too many missions already that get ignored or relegated to the bowels of the lists to have that sort of precident set into place, I say all(or most all) or none.

That said, yes it would be really nice to get an ETA, or at the very least, turn the editor and the save system on so we can at least get about the business of working while we wait for the real show to get back on the road.

mikewendell · July 2012

castsbugc wrote: »

I absolutely do NOT support the idea of giving preferential treatment to 'popular' missions. Sorry, but there are far too many missions already that get ignored or relegated to the bowels of the lists to have that sort of precident set into place, I say all(or most all) or none.

Another reason is because some authors have complained about getting downvoted out of spite.

What may be popular per a rating count may not be correct.

markhawkman · July 2012

Yeah, if I'm playing Foundry misisons I typically avoid missions that have more than 100 review just because of that.

sameriker · July 2012

Hmm... k here is a question, why didn't they open the Foundry editor, so people could start making new sht over the weekend? Then they could say, "Hey folks we are taking off to enjoy the weekend with pizza and beer. We got the machines hard at work fixing those published missions. Cya on Monday!"

Instead they say.

The Foundry is like down and we are hard at work getting it back up and running ASAP. ETA will be whenever.

Which most people know, it won't get fixed until maybe sometime next week, unless by some divine act of Gene Roddenberry.

At least with approach A it would be closer to the truth, and people planning new missions would not be coming in here to complain. They would have the Foundry to work with, the only people BAM would be those with missions done or half done.

Personally I think they need better PR and this would not be as big of an issue. Well I am going back to playing on my 360 now.

designationxr377 · July 2012

Of all the things I want to say right now to this thread, I will just say this:

If the forums hadn't lost their identity, I would be able to search and post multiple examples from threads at the last two season launches that would explain why this has been the best response to player feedback to date. I am elated. They listened and they are acting.

I can understand wanting to play again, but, it's been the length of one extended weekend. 4 days. That's it. Deep breaths and try playing around with your fleetmates, if you don't have a fleet, join the StarbaseUGC one.

azurianstar · July 2012

castsbugc wrote: »

I absolutely do NOT support the idea of giving preferential treatment to 'popular' missions. Sorry, but there are far too many missions already that get ignored or relegated to the bowels of the lists to have that sort of precident set into place, I say all(or most all) or none.

That said, yes it would be really nice to get an ETA, or at the very least, turn the editor and the save system on so we can at least get about the business of working while we wait for the real show to get back on the road.

The way you say that, makes me sound like a monster.

The idea was to speed up recovery and get the Foundry back up online sooner by having less missions to recover back to the database. That way the Foundry authors and the Foundry players, don't have to wait days or weeks for it to be restored.

And the idea for the triage prioritizing the popular missions is that those missions would very likely be the first ones people will play (outside of those exploit foundry missions). At the same time, they wouldn't have to republish those missions, which would cause stress on the servers.

As for those being ignored, wouldn't a reset benefit them by getting a second chance with a fresh start? I too would like them to get their fair share. Of course that alone should be a thread in brainstorming ideas that revises the system. Like categorizing stories into various Trek genres.

nitrous82 · July 2012

Same with all the other problems that arose when Season 6 Launched, They don't care, they will just wait til thurs patch day, won't actually try and fix it ASAP.

malek3 · July 2012

Prior to the launch of Season 6 I did get hooked on playing the community authored missions and am in awe of the talented, creative people that populate this STO universe! Thanks to all of you that contribute your time and energies to these stories!

mightydan1 · November 2012

It went up for a short while right before S7, then they took it down again! I have been attempting to create a mission since the S6 downtime, and just missed the short time it was up. It's been a while since the S7 update, and the foundry's still down. If I'm lucky, it'll be up some time in late December... Maybe.

hippiejon · November 2012

They have been totally up front about WHY the Foundry has been taken down.
IF you had bothered to read.
Twice now, season launches have completely borked the Foundry.

Do people forget Season 4 ? Season 6 ?

I for one am happy that they responded to previous issues by bringing it down.

AND

1 week after Season 7 launched, they brought back the ability to play missions.
Next week they are saying the editor will be back up.

That's some REALLY good turn around for them.

So , in short, GO READ the forums !
FIND THE INFO that was already provided.

drogyn1701 · November 2012

mightydan1 wrote: »

It went up for a short while right before S7, then they took it down again! I have been attempting to create a mission since the S6 downtime, and just missed the short time it was up. It's been a while since the S7 update, and the foundry's still down. If I'm lucky, it'll be up some time in late December... Maybe.

Your perception of time is somewhat slanted.

Season six went live in June, Foundry was back up sometime in July and was up for at least 4 months before Season 7 went live last week, at which time they took it down, with plenty of advance notice. Ability to play missions is up after one week. THIS IS RECORD TIME. Ability to edit will likely go up next week. However, some of us are discovering issues, such as disappearing NPCs. After the holiday, they may have to take it down to correct these issues or it may delay them turning back on editing.

I don't understand what everyone's objection is to the process:

1. Disable editing and playing while new season goes live.
2. Autorepublish so everyone's missions get put back up with whatever new code the Foundry got. Keep editing and playing offline while the devs monitor the process to see if anything got borked.
3. Turn on playing so that AUTHORS can playtest their missions to see if anything got borked. Devs don't have time to play through every mission to see if there's a problem. I for one am happy to help. Reviewing is turned off so that we don't get downrated for mission broken by the patch.
4. Turn editing on.

So, what about this is objectionable? Yeah it takes time, but trust me, this is the way to avoid what happened in season 4 when the foundry was down for nearly two months.

Turnaround time this season looks to be 1.5 to 2 weeks. Remember that Foundry stuff can be turned off and on independent of patch days. If there's a problem at any stage it will take extra time. During Season 6 the process above took three weeks. However, a problem was found, they had to disable it again to fix it, then it was brought up again. The same could happen this time.

We have had plenty of warning from the devs in this very forum.

Now, I admit I got a little annoyed at the lengthy downtime last season after they had taken it down again to fix that problem (i made a sig to count the days it had been off). But honestly that was more due to the fact that the devs were silent on where we were in the process. This time BranFlakes has kept us up to speed. So c'mon guys, 2 weeks ain't nothing to cry about.

nagorak · November 2012

I think my major problem is that the update seems to have broken missions again due to the disappearing NPC bug. That probably affects a large number of missions. So, I think it may not have been wise to push the Season patch right before a long weekend. It doesn't help the popularity of the Foundry in general when people play missions and find them broken.

I also hope that ratings really are disabled currently.

zorbane · November 2012

nagorak wrote: »

I think my major problem is that the update seems to have broken missions again due to the disappearing NPC bug. That probably affects a large number of missions. So, I think it may not have been wise to push the Season patch right before a long weekend. It doesn't help the popularity of the Foundry in general when people play missions and find them broken.

I also hope that ratings really are disabled currently.

Ratings are disabled.

Foundry offline?

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