As for the 20 minutes average time, what determines the average time? You might set up your mission to actualy take 20-30mintes and then 10 people roll up that are just awesome players and blow it away in 10.. now your 'average' time is jacked. Does this also mean I could make a mission where you only enter a map to click a console and then afk for 6 hours tabbing into the game every now? Get 6 or 7 friends to do that too making the average time calculate to 6 hours to complete? That would take a while to remake the average time lower then 20 minutes unless it does not keep updating after the initial 5 players that give it the average time.
I'm guessing that this will be tested be enterprising and ingenious individuals with curious minds very soon after the servers go back up.
Of course the obvious solution to people finding ways to exploit the system(whatever its implementation) would be for the devs to play through every mission in the foundry and approve them manually - maybe after a couple of hours they would be willing to acknowledge that the reward/time does not make any sense, or make foundry content more appealing.
I'm guessing that this will be tested be enterprising and ingenious individuals with curious minds very soon after the servers go back up.
Of course the obvious solution to people finding ways to exploit the system(whatever its implementation) would be for the devs to play through every mission in the foundry and approve them manually - maybe after a couple of hours they would be willing to acknowledge that the reward/time does not make any sense, or make foundry content more appealing.
They don't have the time to create missions for this game, do you think they have time to actually play the game ?
:rolleyes:
Not to be mean, but I bought a sub so I COULD create foundry content, I won't bother now since I know nobody will waste time playing user created content.
You know, it never ceases to amaze me; just when I think you guys are finally doing something right, you completely botch it up like this. What do I mean? You want people to spend at LEAST an hour to get the same reward they would for 15 minutes doing the exploration daily. How exactly do you think that encourages people to play foundry missions? If you are going to require people to play at LEAST an hours worth of missions, you better give them a higher reward than that.
Well, to be fair, in order to do those exploration clusters in 15 minutes, people warp out of the kill 5/5 space mobs, which take like 20 minutes at least (for me).
...talking to players is like being a mall Santa. Everyone immediately wants to tell you all of the things they want, and you are absolutely powerless to deliver 99% of them.
They don't have the time to create missions for this game, do you think they have time to actually play the game ?
:rolleyes:
Not to be mean, but I bought a sub so I COULD create foundry content, I won't bother now since I know nobody will waste time playing user created content.
Well, it's got to be some kind of improvement, right? Before these changes, there was absolutely no MMO incentive to play a real Foundry mission, if you could instead click 3 consoles. Now there is at least some incentive.
Is it lousy? Maybe. 1 hour (if you're lucky) for 1440 dilithium doesn't compare to any other way of earning dilithium in the game.
Wait, well maybe it does now. EX: How long does it take to earn the ECs to buy the 5 items of contraband? That's like 200k ECs if you don't run the confiscate daily.
Folks say that they can get 8000 in an hour, but it seems like their main methods were clickies and B'tran.
So, maybe the dilithium grinders can correct me here. How long does it take to earn 1440 dilithium, not counting B'tran, the clickies, or the contraband? Let's say you're doing a combination of the sat repair, dilithium mining, and some other daily? Please factor in the time of sector space travel, assuming you don't have a transwarp.
Wait, well maybe it does now. EX: How long does it take to earn the ECs to buy the 5 items of contraband? That's like 200k ECs if you don't run the confiscate daily.
All the grinds DO run it daily so it doesn't cost as much, otherwise would be stupid. Also most have a bunch of Klingon alts for even more contraband from raiding
So, maybe the dilithium grinders can correct me here. How long does it take to earn 1440 dilithium, not counting B'tran, the clickies, or the contraband? Let's say you're doing a combination of the sat repair, dilithium mining, and some other daily? Please factor in the time of sector space travel, assuming you don't have a transwarp.
I'm not a dil grinder, I can still get more than 2k dil in around a half hour. You know how? Run elite STFs. Hell even with their reduction in rewards to 960 dil, I'll still be getting double the dil per hour of the new foundry mission. Also, assuming dil grinders don't have transwarp is stupid, I know ones that bought the Excelsior just for the computer.
Well, to be fair, in order to do those exploration clusters in 15 minutes, people warp out of the kill 5/5 space mobs, which take like 20 minutes at least (for me).
Ok fine, 20 minutes then. Thats still far less than at LEAST an hour to complete 3 foundry missions.
You can run two elite stfs in half an hour? I'm just asking. I've haven't played a stf in well over a year. Wow, they really did cut them up.
I'd probably assume that most players aren't as hardcore. What do get playing a stf at normal?
Umm, you can run all 3 elite space ones in less than an hour getting the optional in all of them. Pretty sure the optionals are 15 mintes on them all, lol I don't even pay attention anymore since it should always be gotten.
And what have you even been doing for the last year if you have done none? Maybe thats why it takes you 20 minutes to kill 5 ship groups in the clusters. Killing the ships takes me longer to fly between them then it does to actually kill them all. That along with defending the outpost from attackers, aid the planet and data samples are the ones I will do. I just don't do the beam to surface ones.
Still see this as a lousy change, and average time vaires way way to much for players.
Twilight, Particle Physicist that stole the ship.
Original Signup date: August 4, 2008
LTS since Pre-Order
...talking to players is like being a mall Santa. Everyone immediately wants to tell you all of the things they want, and you are absolutely powerless to deliver 99% of them.
And what have you even been doing for the last year if you have done none?
I make and play foundry missions. Sometimes I take a break. Lately, I've been learning the doff system for the first time. Seems like every new system is a spin off or reskin of that doff system, so I figure it's probably time to finally learn what to do with my doffs.
So, maybe the dilithium grinders can correct me here. How long does it take to earn 1440 dilithium, not counting B'tran, the clickies, or the contraband? Let's say you're doing a combination of the sat repair, dilithium mining, and some other daily? Please factor in the time of sector space travel, assuming you don't have a transwarp.
Warp in a pvp match without shields, make sure the other team acknowledges it, it'll last 3-4 minutes AT MOST (if you have dumb opponents) and with 3 matches you get 1440 dilithium. You can repeat the mission unendlessly.
Queue for the Starbase 24. 5 minutes grind for 980 diithium now.
Play any STF. Most of them can be completed in 15 minutes or less: 980 dilithium + new shinies.
Play the Pi canis sorties as a KDF. If you're good enough you'll get the freighter's optional and it's 4000 dilithium for 15 minutes of work.
And of course if you play the doff system, dilithium will quickly and magically fall in your account tab!
So the foundry isn't "profitable". I didn't say it has to be worth doing it but most people will step away from it since it's not rewarding at all. They might not even bother to open the foundry tab (they had to for their clickies), which is worse than ever.
And of course only well-established authors will get their new missions out of the limbo. While it could make some people here happy, I won't bother releasing the 4-5 projects I've been working on till they find a way to reward people for playing missions with less than 5 plays.
Warp in a pvp match without shields, make sure the other team acknowledges it, it'll last 3-4 minutes AT MOST (if you have dumb opponents) and with 3 matches you get 1440 dilithium. You can repeat the mission unendlessly.
Queue for the Starbase 24. 5 minutes grind for 980 diithium now.
Play any STF. Most of them can be completed in 15 minutes or less: 980 dilithium + new shinies.
Play the Pi canis sorties as a KDF. If you're good enough you'll get the freighter's optional and it's 4000 dilithium for 15 minutes of work.
And of course if you play the doff system, dilithium will quickly and magically fall in your account tab!
So the foundry isn't "profitable". I didn't say it has to be worth doing it but most people will step away from it since it's not rewarding at all. They might not even bother to open the foundry tab (they had to for their clickies), which is worse than ever.
And of course only well-established authors will get their new missions out of the limbo. While it could make some people here happy, I won't bother releasing the 4-5 projects I've been working on till they find a way to reward people for playing missions with less than 5 plays.
OK, then 1440 for an hour of Foundry is LOUSY. I stand corrected, lol.
You just gave cryptic a list of what to nerf next.
:mad:
There are even worse tricks, I haven't mentionned them yet but if they keep nerfind dilithium sources everywhere I think most players will take it as a declaration of war - and I'll give my sweet ways to get unending flows of dil. :P
So, maybe the dilithium grinders can correct me here. How long does it take to earn 1440 dilithium, not counting B'tran, the clickies, or the contraband? Let's say you're doing a combination of the sat repair, dilithium mining, and some other daily? Please factor in the time of sector space travel, assuming you don't have a transwarp.
Trealus+defense contract+aid the Sh'mar = ~15 mins for 5 deuterium surplus + 1440 dil (inc travel from sol to Eta Eridani where they are all located), even quicker if you start at SFA and do the Lore mission which takes seconds to get 480 dil, and substitute it for one of the EE missions. For brutal travel time efficiency, you use the episode replay function(skirmish) and transwarp for EC which is very cheap on the klingon story arc missions - the Eta dailies also drop space equipment which can be vendored (common engine/deflector/shield are going to earn good EC). Casual players who don't have good combat set-ups will take longer to complete the space combat portions - but the combat for each of the three missions is trivial if you have half decent DPS (kill 6/7 trash mobs)
Explore strange new worlds can be completed much quicker if you combine it with a diplo mission in the same sector (aid the planet is an official console clicker at the cost of 10 commodities (750 EC for things like shield generators)) - you can avoid ground missions if you want to by aborting them, and getting two scan missions will resolve the wrapper very quickly indeed.
A reasonable PUG can do infected elite within 15m, a good team can do it in less than 10 without breaking a sweat(1100dilS6->960dilS7). Dil mining takes ~8-10mins to do all five zones(you can hail dailies and leave them unresolved, and double up during a dil mining event the following day for maximum return on your time).
With all content, different people will complete it at different rates - but the current level of foundry rewards is a long way below what official content is rewarding even if you are not trying to be time efficient.
I know some of you take a lot of pride and joy in creating Foundry missions,some are very good....but it doesn't take away the fact that players are not properly rewarded for the time invested playing that mission.If you made a great mission,great dialogs,nice balance of action.....but it takes me 2 hours and I'm left empty handed when I'm done.....sorry,but I won't play your mission.
Personally I would like to see Foundry missions (15-20 min playtime) being integrated into the exploration clusters that offer special rewards,good missions that people are willing to hunt for in the clusters.
But as far as the daily goes,I'm not going to spend 2 hours playing Foundry content for the pitiful amount of Dilithium the daily offers....I have easier ways of making that amount of Dilithium.(that doesn't include Zen :mad: %&#)*^%&&%)&#@ PWE :mad:)
The PWE/Cryptic sweatshop...not where the game is made,but where the game is played!
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
not really.. it asked if the new rewards were incentives.. and well the incentive is extremely low compared to other content in the game that can give more and better stuff.
Twilight, Particle Physicist that stole the ship.
Original Signup date: August 4, 2008
LTS since Pre-Order
Wow, okay then that's me out of the foundry for good. I have much better and more profitable things to be doing in that hour required that earns me much more than 1440 Dilithium.
Cryptic, I thought you were in favour of the Foundry? This decision leads me to believe you do not want people to use it....
Maybe, just maybe, the reward numbers will get tuned once, they datamined the new system?
Maybe even to the point where each mission rewards dilithium directly based on average playtime?
The one-click system was a nice and easy way to earn dilithium, but I was expecting it to be fixed. It was surprising that they let us misuse it for so long. I'm guessing it paid at least for 2 or 3 of my Zen ships from the store, let alone all those fleet marks I was able to contribute.
My guess is that i will stop running Officer Reports altogether. The one-click system not only allowed me to run the common 1-minute missions, but enabled me to run one "real" foundry mission, combined with two one-clicks, which was in my opinion a nice reward. 1440 dilithium for a 20 minute mission was about the same rate with what i was making in elite STF.
Also missions in the foundry are often incomplete, misleading and buggy. Nothing is more frustrating than playing a mission and not being able to finish it because there is a contact missing/not spawning, you don't know where to go next, text switching from English to Hungarian or Boffs getting stuck 30 minutes into the mission.
I'd rather use one of the more reliable ways to earn dilithium. Perhaps I'll invest in 4-8 more Characters to farm/turn in contraband and colonists to compensate.
You just gave cryptic a list of what to nerf next.
:mad:
I really doubt that those methods are new to Cryptic. Any halfway decent company running an mmo will keep an eye on where players get currency and how fast they get it.
Well, to be fair, in order to do those exploration clusters in 15 minutes, people warp out of the kill 5/5 space mobs, which take like 20 minutes at least (for me).
I can do one of those cluster 5/5 6/6 missions in 5 minutes easy.....
So, maybe the dilithium grinders can correct me here. How long does it take to earn 1440 dilithium, not counting B'tran, the clickies, or the contraband? Let's say you're doing a combination of the sat repair, dilithium mining, and some other daily? Please factor in the time of sector space travel, assuming you don't have a transwarp.
I get 10 contraband in half an hour, more if I use all my toons.
Doing the three dailies in Eta Eridani I net 1440 Dilith in 20 minutes if I take my time.
The best way to incentivise the foundry would be IMHO a daily for a single foundry mission which rewards time spent in that mission pro-rata, with a fixed upper limit to prevent people from AFK farming - this would effectively lock out exploitation by multiple alts due to the need to be in the mission to earn the dil, but still allow players to enjoy the foundry missions and be properly rewarded.
I would suggest that 2800 dil/hour would be a good place to put the rate and to max out payout lenght to 1 hour - encouraging authors to keep their content concise(or break it into sensibly sized episodes)and giving players the confidence to invest their time, knowing that they will be getting a worthwhile reward for their time.
Maybe, just maybe, the reward numbers will get tuned once, they datamined the new system?
Maybe even to the point where each mission rewards dilithium directly based on average playtime?
I really hope so. On your first point, none of this has been tested by players on tribble. Last time I looked, there was a bug where none of the missions counted for the wrapper. It will be pushed live soon enough.
The second point would be ideal. I personally have no interest in playing the game as some others here do. How can it be fun to drop your shield just to get pvp over with? Click 3 consoles?
That seems to be the philosophy: Get X over with as quickly as possible to get X dilithium. Fun is irrelevant.
I can't play a game like that. It's like mowing the lawn of an MMO, for no reason other than stuff.
But, if I could just play for fun, get good stories, and even get some MMO rewards for playing the game for fun, then that would be cool. The stories are their own rewards sometimes, but, still, getting something comparable to the time invested would be nice.
I think the core design issue comes down to risk versus reward.
Cryptic has never been great at rewards that match that.
PuGs are a risk and other games give increased rewards to PuGs but Cryptic doesn't have that in its PvE queue.
Likewise, with Foundry, I think Cryptic probably underestimates the "risk" of trying out unprofessional content and tends to look at the rewards in terms of what players do instead of compensating adequately for the risk.
The economic cost of a decision depends on both the cost of the alternative chosen and the benefit that the best alternative would have provided if chosen. Economic cost differs from accounting cost because it includes opportunity cost.
Cryptic tends to ignore economic costs when weighting gear or content. (Seriously, anything that costs 50 Lobi should be Mk XII purple and useful in endgame content.)
On top of that, like I say, I think they're under-estimating the players' appraisal of risk, which will cause many players to skip doing something they perceive as intrinsically unrewarding. And you can and should make up for that with extrinsic (rewards, loot, gear) rewards... also recognizing that extrinsic rewards are less valuable than intrinsic ones and that tasks that lack solid intrinsic motivation don't simply need EQUAL extrinsic rewards to make up the difference but need BETTER or HARD TO APPRAISE extrinsic rewards.
If you're taking me to see Paul McCartney? I'll drive.
If you're taking me to see Sean Lennon? Eh. If you're paying for gas.
If you're taking me to see someone I've never heard of, you either have to hype him up or offer to buy me dinner on the trip.
I'm conscious of this kind of branded approach in my missions. I tried to do something that Cryptic didn't in each one. Part of it boils down to choice.
But here's the rundown for me as an author:
"Currents Turned Awry" - You get to visit the Enterprise-D (alternate version) and see a ship's holodeck play out in a fairly believable way. You get a text entry by Picard and get to see a character mentioned but never shown in TNG. The whole thing is basically a crossover with the timeline from "Tapestry."
"Yesterday is Tomorrow" - Puzzle style deliberately modeled on Judgment Rites. More Trek lore than any Cryptic mission, building off every 20th and 21st century time travel story in every series. As close to a cinematic ending as the Foundry can produce and an attempt at Bioware-y style relationships with NPCs, coupled with gratuitous men and women (your choice) in bikinis.
"Final Judgement" - A quicker made contest entry but it's a prequel to The 2800. The showpiece here is a trial dialogue puzzle in a pretty doggone elaborate trial room that I think holds up to almost any Cryptic map design. The trial dialogue is questionable legally speaking but I wanted to keep it fun and deliberately made it run contrary to real law in all the ways that the Trek legal system would tend to be unrealistic. There was a deliberate attempt to be Phoenix Wright inspired and the prosecutor is pretty much Phoenix Wright of Borg.
"The Inner Darkness" - My most novel-y mission. Again, I tried for more lore than Cryptic would ever dare attempt and this time the showpieces are action on accurately scaled interiors, elaborate sets that hold up to or exceed Cryptic quality of atmosphere and, the big one: I used Jean-Luc Picard. There's EULA bending to get around the likeness issue. Also, I used Geordi's son mentioned in All Good Things and again in the STO novel and I made him a TRIBBLE captain, something people have been requesting for decades in Trek. So far, it hasn't gotten pulled for the Picard use, which I built using a broad reading of the EULA.
When I make a mission, I try to give you something groundbreaking in some way. Otherwise, I figure, what's the point? I don't think Cryptic missions need to be AS groundbreaking but I think player missions do.
Next, as reparations for the text I've subjected people to and in light of changes, my next mission will be probably THE most arcade action ground mission the Foundry has ever produced. In that it is modeled on early 80s arcade games and being packaged as a holo-program.
For the most part I believe that grinders and people who do foundry missions are oil and water and will never mix. So I say don't try to set up the foundry to make grinders happy since it's not meant for them anyway.
Someone who feels like grinding today will do whatever event gives them the most dilithium for the shortest amount of time. They walk away feeling happy even though the content they're playing is boring as TRIBBLE because the reward is what they were seeking in the first place.
If you turn the foundry into an exploitable grind fest you will destroy it. The writers won't bother writing good stories anymore since the most popular missions will be clickers. The good stories will be buried in a pile of click fests, and it will be impossible to find the good ones in the mess. The writers won't get good feedback (recognition being their reward for writing a good story) and will give up.
If you want more people to use the foundry make it easier to use. It's friggin hard to sort through the crappy ones to find a good mission and I've given up doing so. For the most part I look for banners advertising foundry missions in the forums!
As for rewards, well there were a couple of really good suggestions from previous posters (sorry I can't remember who they were), have a reputation system that gives you a cool Boff / ship skin / costume that you can only get by doing foundry missions and gives you no advantage in PVP or even PVE.
That's all the incentive that you need.
Thanks for the rundown on your missions Leviathan, I'm going to add them to my "must play" list.
Maybe, just maybe, the reward numbers will get tuned once, they datamined the new system?
Maybe even to the point where each mission rewards dilithium directly based on average playtime?
Maybe, just maybe, if they actually listened to the feedback they got from their test server we wouldnt even be having this discussion. But of course, they dont. So if they ignore feedback on Tribble, why should we expect any more on live?
Comments
I'm guessing that this will be tested be enterprising and ingenious individuals with curious minds very soon after the servers go back up.
Of course the obvious solution to people finding ways to exploit the system(whatever its implementation) would be for the devs to play through every mission in the foundry and approve them manually - maybe after a couple of hours they would be willing to acknowledge that the reward/time does not make any sense, or make foundry content more appealing.
They don't have the time to create missions for this game, do you think they have time to actually play the game ?
:rolleyes:
Not to be mean, but I bought a sub so I COULD create foundry content, I won't bother now since I know nobody will waste time playing user created content.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Well, to be fair, in order to do those exploration clusters in 15 minutes, people warp out of the kill 5/5 space mobs, which take like 20 minutes at least (for me).
No wonder people in the game were saying "RIP B'tran"
"There is no problem in the universe that can't be solved with a bribe, a paid assassin, or an overpowered fighter." - Chubain from Jumpgate Evolution
Well, it's got to be some kind of improvement, right? Before these changes, there was absolutely no MMO incentive to play a real Foundry mission, if you could instead click 3 consoles. Now there is at least some incentive.
Is it lousy? Maybe. 1 hour (if you're lucky) for 1440 dilithium doesn't compare to any other way of earning dilithium in the game.
Wait, well maybe it does now. EX: How long does it take to earn the ECs to buy the 5 items of contraband? That's like 200k ECs if you don't run the confiscate daily.
Folks say that they can get 8000 in an hour, but it seems like their main methods were clickies and B'tran.
So, maybe the dilithium grinders can correct me here. How long does it take to earn 1440 dilithium, not counting B'tran, the clickies, or the contraband? Let's say you're doing a combination of the sat repair, dilithium mining, and some other daily? Please factor in the time of sector space travel, assuming you don't have a transwarp.
Your right it doesn't compare, most ways earn more then it
All the grinds DO run it daily so it doesn't cost as much, otherwise would be stupid. Also most have a bunch of Klingon alts for even more contraband from raiding
I'm not a dil grinder, I can still get more than 2k dil in around a half hour. You know how? Run elite STFs. Hell even with their reduction in rewards to 960 dil, I'll still be getting double the dil per hour of the new foundry mission. Also, assuming dil grinders don't have transwarp is stupid, I know ones that bought the Excelsior just for the computer.
I'd probably assume that most players aren't as hardcore. What do get playing a stf at normal?
Yeah, thats not what I'm talking about. You still get the 1440 from the "Explore Strange New Worlds" daily.
Ok fine, 20 minutes then. Thats still far less than at LEAST an hour to complete 3 foundry missions.
Umm, you can run all 3 elite space ones in less than an hour getting the optional in all of them. Pretty sure the optionals are 15 mintes on them all, lol I don't even pay attention anymore since it should always be gotten.
And what have you even been doing for the last year if you have done none? Maybe thats why it takes you 20 minutes to kill 5 ship groups in the clusters. Killing the ships takes me longer to fly between them then it does to actually kill them all. That along with defending the outpost from attackers, aid the planet and data samples are the ones I will do. I just don't do the beam to surface ones.
Still see this as a lousy change, and average time vaires way way to much for players.
Twilight, Particle Physicist that stole the ship.
Original Signup date: August 4, 2008
LTS since Pre-Order
I make and play foundry missions. Sometimes I take a break. Lately, I've been learning the doff system for the first time. Seems like every new system is a spin off or reskin of that doff system, so I figure it's probably time to finally learn what to do with my doffs.
Warp in a pvp match without shields, make sure the other team acknowledges it, it'll last 3-4 minutes AT MOST (if you have dumb opponents) and with 3 matches you get 1440 dilithium. You can repeat the mission unendlessly.
Queue for the Starbase 24. 5 minutes grind for 980 diithium now.
Play any STF. Most of them can be completed in 15 minutes or less: 980 dilithium + new shinies.
Play the Pi canis sorties as a KDF. If you're good enough you'll get the freighter's optional and it's 4000 dilithium for 15 minutes of work.
And of course if you play the doff system, dilithium will quickly and magically fall in your account tab!
So the foundry isn't "profitable". I didn't say it has to be worth doing it but most people will step away from it since it's not rewarding at all. They might not even bother to open the foundry tab (they had to for their clickies), which is worse than ever.
And of course only well-established authors will get their new missions out of the limbo. While it could make some people here happy, I won't bother releasing the 4-5 projects I've been working on till they find a way to reward people for playing missions with less than 5 plays.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
You just gave cryptic a list of what to nerf next.
:mad:
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
OK, then 1440 for an hour of Foundry is LOUSY. I stand corrected, lol.
There are even worse tricks, I haven't mentionned them yet but if they keep nerfind dilithium sources everywhere I think most players will take it as a declaration of war - and I'll give my sweet ways to get unending flows of dil. :P
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
My paint job and my bobblehead look awesome on my new mech.
:P
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Trealus+defense contract+aid the Sh'mar = ~15 mins for 5 deuterium surplus + 1440 dil (inc travel from sol to Eta Eridani where they are all located), even quicker if you start at SFA and do the Lore mission which takes seconds to get 480 dil, and substitute it for one of the EE missions. For brutal travel time efficiency, you use the episode replay function(skirmish) and transwarp for EC which is very cheap on the klingon story arc missions - the Eta dailies also drop space equipment which can be vendored (common engine/deflector/shield are going to earn good EC). Casual players who don't have good combat set-ups will take longer to complete the space combat portions - but the combat for each of the three missions is trivial if you have half decent DPS (kill 6/7 trash mobs)
Explore strange new worlds can be completed much quicker if you combine it with a diplo mission in the same sector (aid the planet is an official console clicker at the cost of 10 commodities (750 EC for things like shield generators)) - you can avoid ground missions if you want to by aborting them, and getting two scan missions will resolve the wrapper very quickly indeed.
A reasonable PUG can do infected elite within 15m, a good team can do it in less than 10 without breaking a sweat(1100dilS6->960dilS7). Dil mining takes ~8-10mins to do all five zones(you can hail dailies and leave them unresolved, and double up during a dil mining event the following day for maximum return on your time).
With all content, different people will complete it at different rates - but the current level of foundry rewards is a long way below what official content is rewarding even if you are not trying to be time efficient.
Personally I would like to see Foundry missions (15-20 min playtime) being integrated into the exploration clusters that offer special rewards,good missions that people are willing to hunt for in the clusters.
But as far as the daily goes,I'm not going to spend 2 hours playing Foundry content for the pitiful amount of Dilithium the daily offers....I have easier ways of making that amount of Dilithium.(that doesn't include Zen :mad: %&#)*^%&&%)&#@ PWE :mad:)
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Twilight, Particle Physicist that stole the ship.
Original Signup date: August 4, 2008
LTS since Pre-Order
Maybe, just maybe, the reward numbers will get tuned once, they datamined the new system?
Maybe even to the point where each mission rewards dilithium directly based on average playtime?
My guess is that i will stop running Officer Reports altogether. The one-click system not only allowed me to run the common 1-minute missions, but enabled me to run one "real" foundry mission, combined with two one-clicks, which was in my opinion a nice reward. 1440 dilithium for a 20 minute mission was about the same rate with what i was making in elite STF.
Also missions in the foundry are often incomplete, misleading and buggy. Nothing is more frustrating than playing a mission and not being able to finish it because there is a contact missing/not spawning, you don't know where to go next, text switching from English to Hungarian or Boffs getting stuck 30 minutes into the mission.
I'd rather use one of the more reliable ways to earn dilithium. Perhaps I'll invest in 4-8 more Characters to farm/turn in contraband and colonists to compensate.
I really doubt that those methods are new to Cryptic. Any halfway decent company running an mmo will keep an eye on where players get currency and how fast they get it.
I can do one of those cluster 5/5 6/6 missions in 5 minutes easy.....
I get 10 contraband in half an hour, more if I use all my toons.
Doing the three dailies in Eta Eridani I net 1440 Dilith in 20 minutes if I take my time.
It is possible to do ALL the space Elite stf's in half an hour, maybe less
I would suggest that 2800 dil/hour would be a good place to put the rate and to max out payout lenght to 1 hour - encouraging authors to keep their content concise(or break it into sensibly sized episodes)and giving players the confidence to invest their time, knowing that they will be getting a worthwhile reward for their time.
I really hope so. On your first point, none of this has been tested by players on tribble. Last time I looked, there was a bug where none of the missions counted for the wrapper. It will be pushed live soon enough.
The second point would be ideal. I personally have no interest in playing the game as some others here do. How can it be fun to drop your shield just to get pvp over with? Click 3 consoles?
That seems to be the philosophy: Get X over with as quickly as possible to get X dilithium. Fun is irrelevant.
I can't play a game like that. It's like mowing the lawn of an MMO, for no reason other than stuff.
But, if I could just play for fun, get good stories, and even get some MMO rewards for playing the game for fun, then that would be cool. The stories are their own rewards sometimes, but, still, getting something comparable to the time invested would be nice.
Cryptic has never been great at rewards that match that.
PuGs are a risk and other games give increased rewards to PuGs but Cryptic doesn't have that in its PvE queue.
Likewise, with Foundry, I think Cryptic probably underestimates the "risk" of trying out unprofessional content and tends to look at the rewards in terms of what players do instead of compensating adequately for the risk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_cost
Cryptic tends to ignore economic costs when weighting gear or content. (Seriously, anything that costs 50 Lobi should be Mk XII purple and useful in endgame content.)
On top of that, like I say, I think they're under-estimating the players' appraisal of risk, which will cause many players to skip doing something they perceive as intrinsically unrewarding. And you can and should make up for that with extrinsic (rewards, loot, gear) rewards... also recognizing that extrinsic rewards are less valuable than intrinsic ones and that tasks that lack solid intrinsic motivation don't simply need EQUAL extrinsic rewards to make up the difference but need BETTER or HARD TO APPRAISE extrinsic rewards.
If you're taking me to see Paul McCartney? I'll drive.
If you're taking me to see Sean Lennon? Eh. If you're paying for gas.
If you're taking me to see someone I've never heard of, you either have to hype him up or offer to buy me dinner on the trip.
I'm conscious of this kind of branded approach in my missions. I tried to do something that Cryptic didn't in each one. Part of it boils down to choice.
But here's the rundown for me as an author:
"Currents Turned Awry" - You get to visit the Enterprise-D (alternate version) and see a ship's holodeck play out in a fairly believable way. You get a text entry by Picard and get to see a character mentioned but never shown in TNG. The whole thing is basically a crossover with the timeline from "Tapestry."
"Yesterday is Tomorrow" - Puzzle style deliberately modeled on Judgment Rites. More Trek lore than any Cryptic mission, building off every 20th and 21st century time travel story in every series. As close to a cinematic ending as the Foundry can produce and an attempt at Bioware-y style relationships with NPCs, coupled with gratuitous men and women (your choice) in bikinis.
"Final Judgement" - A quicker made contest entry but it's a prequel to The 2800. The showpiece here is a trial dialogue puzzle in a pretty doggone elaborate trial room that I think holds up to almost any Cryptic map design. The trial dialogue is questionable legally speaking but I wanted to keep it fun and deliberately made it run contrary to real law in all the ways that the Trek legal system would tend to be unrealistic. There was a deliberate attempt to be Phoenix Wright inspired and the prosecutor is pretty much Phoenix Wright of Borg.
"The Inner Darkness" - My most novel-y mission. Again, I tried for more lore than Cryptic would ever dare attempt and this time the showpieces are action on accurately scaled interiors, elaborate sets that hold up to or exceed Cryptic quality of atmosphere and, the big one: I used Jean-Luc Picard. There's EULA bending to get around the likeness issue. Also, I used Geordi's son mentioned in All Good Things and again in the STO novel and I made him a TRIBBLE captain, something people have been requesting for decades in Trek. So far, it hasn't gotten pulled for the Picard use, which I built using a broad reading of the EULA.
When I make a mission, I try to give you something groundbreaking in some way. Otherwise, I figure, what's the point? I don't think Cryptic missions need to be AS groundbreaking but I think player missions do.
Next, as reparations for the text I've subjected people to and in light of changes, my next mission will be probably THE most arcade action ground mission the Foundry has ever produced. In that it is modeled on early 80s arcade games and being packaged as a holo-program.
Someone who feels like grinding today will do whatever event gives them the most dilithium for the shortest amount of time. They walk away feeling happy even though the content they're playing is boring as TRIBBLE because the reward is what they were seeking in the first place.
If you turn the foundry into an exploitable grind fest you will destroy it. The writers won't bother writing good stories anymore since the most popular missions will be clickers. The good stories will be buried in a pile of click fests, and it will be impossible to find the good ones in the mess. The writers won't get good feedback (recognition being their reward for writing a good story) and will give up.
If you want more people to use the foundry make it easier to use. It's friggin hard to sort through the crappy ones to find a good mission and I've given up doing so. For the most part I look for banners advertising foundry missions in the forums!
As for rewards, well there were a couple of really good suggestions from previous posters (sorry I can't remember who they were), have a reputation system that gives you a cool Boff / ship skin / costume that you can only get by doing foundry missions and gives you no advantage in PVP or even PVE.
That's all the incentive that you need.
Thanks for the rundown on your missions Leviathan, I'm going to add them to my "must play" list.
Maybe, just maybe, if they actually listened to the feedback they got from their test server we wouldnt even be having this discussion. But of course, they dont. So if they ignore feedback on Tribble, why should we expect any more on live?