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How to monetize the Foundry
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
This is hopefully somewhat novel. I've seen discussion of selling asset packs to Foundry authors. I could maybe see this IF the packs GENUINELY include big features outside what you'd expect in standard development of STO... like 1920s New York map and kits or Victorian London, along with mob groups that are unique. And, in turn, if these assets are Foundry exclusive for awhile, as in, held off from Cryptic missions.
But that's not exactly what I'm thinking of, at the moment, as I know that will be controversial.
What I AM thinking of is the idea of selling VENDOR packs to Foundry authors.
A vendor would, of course, be a special kind of contact who manages a storefront with sellable items, like the vendors seen in game.
Now, what would be novel here is if the Foundry vendors each came with an exclusive item for sale for dilithium.
So I have a Dixon Hill tailor NPC, right? And he sells fedoras.
I buy the Dixon Hill tailor NPC. He can go inside any of my missions. His presence there generates interest in my missions. Anyone with the dilithium can buy the fedora (and this monetizes each fedora.) But people who want the fedora can only get it by finding a mission with a tailor NPC inside of it.
In effect, it's a method that authors can effectively use to buy advertising for their missions.
I'd also like to see more standard vendors included free, like a bartender, a general melee weapons vendor, an EV suit vendor, etc. So that I can have missions that require a kind of item and the means to get that item directly inside my mission.
But that's not exactly what I'm thinking of, at the moment, as I know that will be controversial.
What I AM thinking of is the idea of selling VENDOR packs to Foundry authors.
A vendor would, of course, be a special kind of contact who manages a storefront with sellable items, like the vendors seen in game.
Now, what would be novel here is if the Foundry vendors each came with an exclusive item for sale for dilithium.
So I have a Dixon Hill tailor NPC, right? And he sells fedoras.
I buy the Dixon Hill tailor NPC. He can go inside any of my missions. His presence there generates interest in my missions. Anyone with the dilithium can buy the fedora (and this monetizes each fedora.) But people who want the fedora can only get it by finding a mission with a tailor NPC inside of it.
In effect, it's a method that authors can effectively use to buy advertising for their missions.
I'd also like to see more standard vendors included free, like a bartender, a general melee weapons vendor, an EV suit vendor, etc. So that I can have missions that require a kind of item and the means to get that item directly inside my mission.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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to add to your idea of having special dilithium costume items, I was thinking... maybe not exactly add in more costume pieces but allow costumes with the uniform colour palette be able to have the off-duty colour palette. then you could use the Foundry costume editor to create uniform pieces in a colour you'd prefer then add the custom piece to the vendor, the vendor could be set out like the Lobi Store "not actually using Lobis but dilithium like you mentioned" so you can have your mission costume content, plus maybe batteries and so on and so forth... so for us ladies you could create a pink Vice Admiral coat.. that we can only get from your mission vendor.
also, I wanted to add in an idea that I'd like to see, an accolade creator, the accolades them selves probably wouldn't give the 10/20/50/100 accolade points but they could give a max of 5 points? with a custom Icon made by the foundry author in the way we create fleet badges?.
so say... in Nemesischikens "Do'it Duty" there are hidden parts of his mission where you find things, there could be an accolade set for that mission.
RachelJ88
Keep the ideas rolling stoleviathan99
I think this is a brilliant idea. It's capitalism in action and would serve the purpose of increasing support to the Foundry tool. If they don't do this, I would be willing to pay $5 for a functioning and good story-making tool.
No, your best bet is hoping that Cryptic finds a use for such assets in the main game and then ports them over to the Foundry.
What I have proposed before is I think they ought to make any c-store unlock a foundry unlock as well. Any new ship or uniform or whatever that comes along, if you buy it for a character, it unlocks in the foundry.
Plus, they could offer asset/map packs. Any new mission that comes out, offer a the assets and maps for authors to use for a few hundred c-points. I'd pay a few c-points to be able to use Nukara Prime or tacofangs' new Romulan outpost. To my mind it would be giving Cryptic return on the dev time necessary to hook those assets/maps up to the Foundry.
Hasn't that been their excuse for not developing KDF content? A smaller subset is playing it, so we won't put any resources there. Couldn't an argument be made for, if we support it, if we promote it and if we improve it (rewards, as you suggested, are needed, but that's just one small step) then more people will play it. Essentially, "if you build it, they will come."
That said I think the approach you described is what they will probably go with. But how much interest is enough. The spotlights (Fed side anyway) regularly get 1,000 extra plays in the week they're highlighted. The top missions have upwards of 30,000 plays. What's the threshold? I have a mission that's about to break 1,000 reviews. If it does, is that enough interest for Cryptic to start supporting the Foundry more?
Until rewards are added that are comparable to official content to incentivize people to play foundry missions, all of the self promotion in the world wont matter.
I obviously cannot really answer that question. But if you simply want my opinion, I would say it has nothing to do with the number of plays any single mission(or group of missions) gets, but rather with what percentage of the playerbase is using the foundry on a regular basis.
Its all just conjecture until we get a dev answer, and I don't expect to see one.
And what I wish is that all those players didn't have to be given a carrot to play what I think (purely opinion) is the best content in the game. I know that isn't realistic, so I agree they need to get some kind of reward system in place. If they do though, authors had better be ready for a deluge of bad reviews from people who don't understand the limitations of the Foundry.
Unfortunately, before they do that they need a way to judge how long it took to play a mission, so we don't end up with a bunch of console clickers spitting out loot.
I guess from that standpoint the vendor may make sense, since it's not as easily abused. But really, it wouldn't take more than 5 minutes for "Joe Blows Market" to appear on the Foundry, which would effectively be a "console clicker' that consists of nothing but that vendor. So, realistically, it wouldn't end up bringing anyone to our missions.
I think it would be cool if we could add vendors regardless, though, even if only standard types with nothing special on them.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
You'll be happy to know that this tech has already shown up in the NW Foundry and it's only a matter of time before it filters its way over to STO.
As soon as they start selling foundry assets or elements I stop making missions right away. No need to ever *think* about it my decision is already made.
It's like making your own bread at home, then taking it to the baker and having to buy it to get it to pay the wage of the salsewoman. It makes no sense at all. Just a hint: if you want to sell bread, get to work and make it yourself.
I don't work for Cryptic and I don't intend to pay to give them what their game needs most, and TBH I'm pretty sure the current balance of the game is positive enough to provide some content you don't have to pay for... :rolleyes:
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Well if the only motive to publish new game elements is immediate profit I think PWE should sell cryptic now before the company brankrupts. But I'm confident they know that a game isn't only about c-store ships, fed c-store costumes, lockbox stuff. Players need something to do with that, and the Foundry is all what the studios management like: every single element they add means it will be used to create thousands of hours of gameplay. Which means damn cheap content for them, and we know how much they love that.
If they are unable to invest in their own game there's no point developping it anymore because it's already dying. So, believe me, they can provide foundry content without a cost for authors. Selling that would be pure greed and will for sure create a lot of discontentement in the author's community.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
I would really love for them to look at it like that, but thus far it seems to me that they haven't, because that's what their efforts seem to be focused toward: more lockboxes, more c-store ships, more fed costumes. Their last big update was a massive currency sink and the thing that people were most excited about, cost a ridiculous amount of real money in addition to the grind for a character-only unlock (fleet ships)!
I completely agree, so why aren't they doing it? In S6 we got a few new things, which are nice, but there are hundreds of other assets and elements that are there that have not been added, things we've asked for for more than a year.
Again I agree, but their pattern of decision making leading up to now has shown a reluctance to put resources into things that don't get them a return on investment. Mind you they haven't 100 percent given up on content that you don't have to pay for, but I do see a pattern. I hope I am proven wrong, I would love for them to put everything we want in the Foundry out of the goodness of their hearts, but it seems unrealistic.
Keep in mind this is all just speculation. Obviously neither I nor anyone else in this thread has the slightest say in what Cryptic will and will not do.
That's kind of what I was going for with the idea of Foundry exclusive vendors.
My thing is, more people play than author, I assume.
So if they charged authors for the rewards, they'd need authors to drop upwards of a hundred dollars for something like a costume or bridge officer. Because the economic opportunity cost of letting an author give the reward is that Cryptic can't sell the item. (Maybe this would work for less if they took things that already exist on the C-Store that were bad sellers and let Foundry authors get the right to hand them out.) The only way I could see to offset this would be by having authors agree that in exchange for certain rewards, they'll put C-Store ads in their mission completion dialogue or something like that because that would potentially offset the lost revenues. Or it could be indirect, like collecting player testimonials for C-Store items and then, if they use your testimonial, you get a reward from a list, including a Foundry reward option.
My thought was that by making it a vendor, they could charge dilithium and dilithium IS effectively money. (Depending on how they do their books but there are ways to treat all dilithium as cash, internally.) So part of the expense of the reward gets covered by each player and part gets covered by the author as a cheap one time fee to raise the profile of their mission.
I seem to be reading a trend in the posts that pop up like this. The thought is that if they made more money off of a feature, then they'd put more effort into it to make more. The logic is sound, I won't deny that. However, logic doesn't work in all situations, rational does.
We're forgetting that cryptic isn't huge. I don't know it's numbers, I won't pretend I do. But from what I know it is a small studio with personnel working to build, run, and maintain 3 separate games. Only a certain amount of them are working on STO, and only 5 or so are working on Foundry; primarily for NW.
The world we live in doesn't have replicators yet, so for now, people can't work to better themselves or their artforms/work for no pay. They need money for things like food, relationships, and vidja games like the rest of us. To get more people working on the Foundry via the Foundry making money it would have to make enough to justify the salaries of anyone put on the job to make more stuff/do more work. I'm not going to guess a salary, but it's probably little better than inter... err... slave labor.
If a monetized foundry was going to make enough money to hire a person, it would have to come from us. Or worse, players (who already don't have a reason other than personal interest) to pay for access beyond normal game fees.
I'll be blunt, we can't do that.
In fact, if they put out those things, we'd loose numbers and would get hurt more.
The best way the foundry can encourage more money to the game is as another thing for players to do, another reason for players to spend time in the game where they are exposed to more C-store objects, lock box keys, and anything else the F2P game can encourage them to spend money on if they'd like.
What's happening is I bet people are feeling starved enough for new assets and features in the Foundry that some are trying to say that they'd be willing to put up money just in order to get them. I don't think that's going to work.
I wish I could give an alternative other than simply waiting, which many authors are already vocal about being tired of doing, but I can't. Only thing we can, and should do, is play the game. If we have fun making the missions and playing them, that's what we do. If we've reached a point where it is unfun, we stop. That's what it comes to.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.