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My Rant About Foundry Missions
glassguitar
Member Posts: 427 Arc User
Let me start by saying I think the Foundry is the best part of STO. To be able to make missions and play missions by other players really makes up for the lack of content that would otherwise plague this game.
NOW FOR MY RANT:
TBH I have ended up dropping at least twice as many Foundry missions as I have completed,, always for the same reason, which are entirely the fault of the author of the mission. It really blows to be enjoying a mission with a really good storyline and have to drop it simply because the author made one of these simple to avoid mistakes. In the interest of actually PLAYABLE missions, I will list these flaws here so hopefully (if anyone reads this) authors will avoid making them in the future.
NUMBER ONE REASON I DROP YOUR MISSION:
Objective impossible to locate:
Many of the missions have TINY TINY TINY spots you must reach in order to activate or complete an objective. If I can't get to the objective I can't continue the mission. You CAN adjust the size of the trigger area and make it easier to get to.
NUMBER TWO REASON I DROP YOUR MISSION:
Objectives in space so far apart I spend more time flying to them than doing them:
I don't think anyone plays this game for the joy of flying in a straight line trying to get to the next enemy.
NUMBER THREE REASON I DROP YOUR MISSION:
Too much TRIBBLE to navigate:
By this I refer to SCENERY. I just dropped an otherwise awesome mission because the borg facility was filled with SO MUCH JUNK that I had to stop every ten feet and wait for my BOFFs to figure out how to get around, under, through, or past it. On top of that I could not after twenty minutes of running in circles find the way to the room where the next objective was. IT IS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY to have so much scenery. A few consoles, a device here and there is enough to make it look cool. If I have to battle just to move I will certainly not want to finish the mission.
NUMBER FOUR REASON I DROP YOUR MISSION:
BAD spawn points. I have had to drop at least five missions because upon beaming down or otherwise entering the next map, my BOFFS were spawned inside an object and could not move. This should be really easy to realize, and when it happens (especially late in a long mission) it is nothing short of maddening. Once your BOFF is stuck in a rock, wall, console, or other stupid scenery, the mission is over, especially for those of us that like to play on elite difficulty.
NUMBER FIVE REASON I DROP YOUR MISSION:
Too many NPCs to talk to. THIS MEANS YOU CAPTAIN REVO! lol It's completely a waste of time to have to talk to fifteen NPCs about the mission just to get to the next part. One, maybe two NPCs can serve the purpose.
I realize this was a rant, and so it was titled as such, but these points will make a playable mission out of your great idea instead of a big pain in the Bat'leth. Today I started and dropped four missions in a row without completing any of them, all because of things like this. Once I lose fifteen minutes trying to do something as simple as "locate the console" it really becomes pointless to play the mission.
Hopefully this is more helpful than ranting, but I have a feeling the ones who do this stuff aren;t the ones that read the forums. Q'apla!
NOW FOR MY RANT:
TBH I have ended up dropping at least twice as many Foundry missions as I have completed,, always for the same reason, which are entirely the fault of the author of the mission. It really blows to be enjoying a mission with a really good storyline and have to drop it simply because the author made one of these simple to avoid mistakes. In the interest of actually PLAYABLE missions, I will list these flaws here so hopefully (if anyone reads this) authors will avoid making them in the future.
NUMBER ONE REASON I DROP YOUR MISSION:
Objective impossible to locate:
Many of the missions have TINY TINY TINY spots you must reach in order to activate or complete an objective. If I can't get to the objective I can't continue the mission. You CAN adjust the size of the trigger area and make it easier to get to.
NUMBER TWO REASON I DROP YOUR MISSION:
Objectives in space so far apart I spend more time flying to them than doing them:
I don't think anyone plays this game for the joy of flying in a straight line trying to get to the next enemy.
NUMBER THREE REASON I DROP YOUR MISSION:
Too much TRIBBLE to navigate:
By this I refer to SCENERY. I just dropped an otherwise awesome mission because the borg facility was filled with SO MUCH JUNK that I had to stop every ten feet and wait for my BOFFs to figure out how to get around, under, through, or past it. On top of that I could not after twenty minutes of running in circles find the way to the room where the next objective was. IT IS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY to have so much scenery. A few consoles, a device here and there is enough to make it look cool. If I have to battle just to move I will certainly not want to finish the mission.
NUMBER FOUR REASON I DROP YOUR MISSION:
BAD spawn points. I have had to drop at least five missions because upon beaming down or otherwise entering the next map, my BOFFS were spawned inside an object and could not move. This should be really easy to realize, and when it happens (especially late in a long mission) it is nothing short of maddening. Once your BOFF is stuck in a rock, wall, console, or other stupid scenery, the mission is over, especially for those of us that like to play on elite difficulty.
NUMBER FIVE REASON I DROP YOUR MISSION:
Too many NPCs to talk to. THIS MEANS YOU CAPTAIN REVO! lol It's completely a waste of time to have to talk to fifteen NPCs about the mission just to get to the next part. One, maybe two NPCs can serve the purpose.
I realize this was a rant, and so it was titled as such, but these points will make a playable mission out of your great idea instead of a big pain in the Bat'leth. Today I started and dropped four missions in a row without completing any of them, all because of things like this. Once I lose fifteen minutes trying to do something as simple as "locate the console" it really becomes pointless to play the mission.
Hopefully this is more helpful than ranting, but I have a feeling the ones who do this stuff aren;t the ones that read the forums. Q'apla!
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
2)Please list your own missions showing your workarounds of your above listed grievances.
Nope, wrong request. You don't need to be a cook to say you liked the plat du jour.
Agreed with some of the grievances. Not with all of them. You can use V to find props to scan or locations to reach, you know? :rolleyes:
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
So, that's sort of in our control somewhat, but what drives me crazy is how inconsistent things are in foundry missions. If it's an object, the scanner takes you there. If it's a reach marker, you have to hit M.
Otherwise, we can't really do much about the BOs spawning in floors and objects. That is a cryptic bug. If we need to build up in the air, it's simply unavoidable, as is how badly the boffs are scripted to path, or whether or not they start shooting through walls.
And there are also some stuff to remember with interiors. A lot of those maps are filled with objects not by us, but by the dev that made the map. Crates everywhere! Despite the fact that we could add crates if we want them. We can't take many of those details out of the maps. They are baked in, especially with interiors.
Many of those details are baked into that Borg map, so an author has to either a. use the one with nothing and start from scratch or b. use the one that is cluttered with stuff.
It's also bad when the cryptic cave maps are inherently frustrating to navigate, even without a single added thing.
Reach marker in space is a really bad idea. It's not recommanded not to use them, you should simply not use them at all, ust because any good map isn't... flat. a good author will always use the Y levels to simulate something more interesting. It's also buggy, since it won't complete the objective if you're already deep inside the marked zone. It can create a lot of frustration if you're a player and not aware of this.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
That said, there are some things, such as BOFFs spawning in objects, that can in some cases be fixed and in some cases cannot because of how wonky the engine is. Just take a look at Kirksplat's bug thread about BOFF spawns. I've seen other cases where a mission can completely bug out, but be fine the next time its played. Sometimes I've even seen where beaming back to your ship and continuing where you left off will fix a spawn problem.
I would ask, and maybe you are already doing this, that if you have a technical issue with a mission, that you e-mail the author's @handle and let them know. It could be as simple as making a minor tweak to a spawn point, or it may not be fixable at all. If they don't know, they can't find out.
We're like any game developers. We can test and test and test, but we're not going to catch everything.
I agree. I tend to only use them with planets for beam downs. For some reason, if they are really big, they seem reliable, which makes me wonder if their y bulk (for lack of a better term) increases with the size of a radius.
My character Tsin'xing
The radius is 3 dimensional
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
I appreciate that my missions can not please everybody and I'm sorry that the way I choose to make my missions is not to your personal taste to the point where you feel the need to personally call me out over it, but I have absolutely no intention of compromising my stories because one person does not like the amount of talking and dialogue in the mission. I'm not a professional writer or anything, I'm just some random guy making missions for fun, so I wont get it perfect every time but those NPC's are there for a reason.
At the end of the day I am telling a story and these characters are not there to just get you to the next part as fast as possible. They are part of the interactive experience of the mission. I want them there.
I'm sure I could condense the talking down to a fraction of what I use but I don't want to. That damages the story that I am trying to tell. I certainly don't want people to get bored or turned off by needless talking that waffles on but if I feel the missions requires it then I will add them.
If this is not to your taste then that's fine, as I said I don't expect it to appeal to everybody but in future I would advise just skipping my missions because this is not something I plan on changing.
1) Make them large enough to encompass the etirire area of a space map where you wangt to place one or more.
2) Make sure you do not have a spawn point already inside of one - as it will never trigger in that case.
IMO reachmarkers are useful in space if you want to give players a choice of either fighting or avoiding enemy ships (had no complauints on that part on my mission that does this; and a few complinments). they are also good if you want to have a 'surprise' encounter or objective you don't want to player to see when they first enter a space map.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
You do know that an invisible object can offer the same opportunities but is safer to use? :rolleyes:
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Indeed. Especially if you choose the largest Inv object asset. For space, I would recommend the size of the Inv obj be scaled by how far away the previous objective was on the map.
If the objective is very far away, choosing a larger obj makes the trigger for the next objective that much more certain to pop up despite random variations the player ships may deviate from on elevation.
I agree, plus it just seems more player-friendly to me that pressing V shows them where to go, rather than making the player stop and press M and then try to figure out "ok, there I am, and there is the circle, which way am I pointing ship v. camera and which direction turns my ship... errrr"
Yes, I use Invisible object all the time as well, but I find the term 'safer' misleading as, as ;long as you use reach markers corretly and test whgat you do, there's zero issues. Also with an object, they need to go to a spefic area, and interact to trigger what the object is tied to. With a reach marker, they can be anywjhere in the map, and the dialogue, or whatever else will just trigger.
Given all the other crazy tigger mechanics many have come up with (which in my experience have often failed or caused a break in whatever immersion the author is attempting), I'm surprised to see so much aversion to a tool, which when set up and tested properly, can work well.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
/10chars
In the end, I make my episodes for me, and I do not care what people think of them. Don't get me wrong, I am glad that people enjoy them, but they are based 100% on my personal vision of Startrek. They aren't McTrek Missions, and so they won't appeal to everybody. Thank you for your opinion, but rather than tell us why you will drop a mission, why not create some of your own? In your own style?
I will play them.
Join Date: Sep 2008
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: CHANGE THE FORUMS BACK !!!
Reach markers are perfectly viable in space as a sudden trigger for a dialog or mission objective (no need to interact with anything) so long as you give them a focus target. May it be a planet, a friendly/enemy ship or contact, overly large asteroid; something that gives the player a visual clue to the high, as well as the X and Y. Nav beacon points help, but aren't foolproof either.
As someone mentioned; the only real thing to keep in mind is that if the reach marker spawns with the player inside it already, it will not trigger until they leave the area then return to it. If you keep that in mind, it can be just as useful as anything else in our kits.
While true you may just want a reach marker for an open location of space, unless you force the players into the right direction, it's dangerous to rely on. It's also a handy trick to place an intractable object inside (tied to some simple text or unneeded prop vis toggle, so long as the radius of the reach marker is greater that 7km they'll never reach it anyways) that appears when the objective does, but disappears when it is reached. This gives player a target if they scan the area to try to find out what to do and where to go.
Moral of the story, you can still use reach icons if you give the player an obvious visual target and don't spawn it over-top of them as an advancing objective.
CaptainRevo I do really appreciatte the time you take to make really good missions, and I actually like the dialogues, I am simply suggesting reducing the number of actual NPCs that are needed to talk to. I like the dialogue itself it's having to talk to a dozen different NPCs that bugs. That said though, I did not mean to call you out in a negative way, more just to poke a little because you do make good missions.
I do make foundry missions, but I make a point of playing them over and ever looking for these little bugs and hopefully eliminating them all.
What I am referring to is cases where it's clear that the author didn't play test the mission, because you can't get to an objective no matter what you do, or the spawn point is in a terrible spot that should have been clear with a simple play test.
In no way would I want to downplay the hard work and effort that goes into a foundry mission.
FYI, I wrote this rant after my third straight hour of trying to play foundry missions and having to drop then when they reached a point of unplayability due to these errors, most of which seem to be the result of over adding features and decoration that get in the way of the function of the game.
Actually most of CaptainRevos missions are completely free of bugs like bad spawn points and such. There seem to be a lot more federation (of course) missions that are bug free, I assume because people have been working on federation missions longer.
The main workarounds are exactly what I said in the OP. Use less scenery that isn;t native to the map. Almost every problem I have had in a foundry mission was due to author added scenery that didn't serve a distinct purpose but impeded movement.
By impeding movement, I am not referring to a simple obstacle in line of fire and such that makes a fight interesting. I am referring to decorative items that are at odd locations and just lock up BOFFs or even the player themselves. The workaround is: If a decorative item is not needed for the mission objective, playtest it before publishing by running around near it and seeing if you get stuck. The mission I am designing currently I have been working forever on a building you have to walk up to, trying to find a map and combination of sturctures that won't do this. From the front everything seemed OK, but when I walked around the back side (which someone might do if lost for a moment) I got instantly stuck when my head went under the edge of the building walking near a hill.
The important thing I guess that isn't conveyed by my OP, is I wouldn't be annoyed enough to rant about this stuff, if the mission storyline was forgetable and boring. This always seems to happen near the end of long, otherwise great missions. On the one I was doing right before the rant, I was one objective away from getting off a long map when I permantly lost a BOFF to a scenery trap. Playing on elite, the combat was pushing me to the edge having to call for help a couple times and revive fallen BOFFs. I was LOVING it! THIS was the reason I spent all that time in STFs getting MK XII Honor Guard set for me and MK XI sets for my tac BOFFs ... one objective left .... get to the console ... BOFFS get head stuck in scenery ...
Oh well I think I will log out and back and continue the mission. Mission had been almost an hour and a half long so was worth it. There had been no respawn points set at all in the mission and it started at the very beginning.
In no way do I underappreciatte the effort into foundry missions, and I always give dilithium to every mission I complete. It cost the author dilithium to make it so like it or not storywise, I always tip. My frustration is with uncompletable missions only.
It might surprise you to know that we don't really have a way to test boff pathing prior to publishing. The pathing is baked in once a mission is published. So, the BOs can have no trouble, even if an author playtests the map 40 times. However, as soon as we hit the publish button, there is no telling what the boffs may do. They might shoot through walls for no reason. They might jump into the inside geometry of a building. They might also get stuck on a spot that they never got stuck in.
Sometimes they just refuse to follow a player up a ramp or through a tunnel or up little steps.
Or, they might spawn halfway in the ground every 1 out 15 times the mission is played. I have a mission where my BOs don't even spawn at the spawn point, despite having no issues when playtesting it well over 100 times.
You're right that there are some things that we could do better. But, there are also some things that we just can't really control. Just look at alimac's missions. The guy spends months making these custom sets that are superb, and then he has to deal with player reviews about boffs acting like morons.
Also, a trick I sometimes use when I encounter ground spawn-point sticking issues is to set the spawn point a few meters above ground level, so that the player and BOffs spawn in mid-air and drop a short distance to the surface.
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
The scenery discussion actually gave me an idea to modify one of my maps in a way that will make better sense with the story.