I actually did publish a couple of Foundry missions a long time ago. I put a lot of thought into varied combat, interaction goals and multiple map moves between painstakingly-created environments and short plots that at least had some logical consistency to them.
It was a MONUMENTAL pain in the tuchus. The whole process, even once I figured it out, made me want to punch a kitten. The only way I see myself ever doing that again is to figure out a replacement for the 1-click Officer Reports dilithium grind.
So, in other words, you have no interest in the Foundry as story-telling--it was a dilithium exploit that is no longer of use to you so it should go away for everyone. Nice.
I actually did publish a couple of Foundry missions a long time ago. I put a lot of thought into varied combat, interaction goals and multiple map moves between painstakingly-created environments and short plots that at least had some logical consistency to them.
It was a MONUMENTAL pain in the tuchus. The whole process, even once I figured it out, made me want to punch a kitten. The only way I see myself ever doing that again is to figure out a replacement for the 1-click Officer Reports dilithium grind.
yeah, I know what you mean, but... I like the current state of foundry, could be better, but it's better than it was.
So, in other words, you have no interest in the Foundry as story-telling--it was a dilithium exploit that is no longer of use to you so it should go away for everyone. Nice.
Not at all. I hope it's still there for anyone who enjoys using it as a vehicle for telling or reading your fan fiction. More power and the best of luck to you with that.
There's just nowhere near enough incentive for me to wade through all the TRIBBLE to find the occasional gem, let alone going through the eye-bleeding experience of creating it myself again.
Not at all. I hope it's still there for anyone who enjoys using it as a vehicle for telling or reading your fan fiction. More power and the best of luck to you with that.
There's just nowhere near enough incentive for me to wade through all the TRIBBLE to find the occasional gem, let alone going through the eye-bleeding experience of creating it myself again.
Read the description of the mission before you decide to play it. that usually gives you enough info.
Yeah, Nicha, play "Flight of the Kitty Hawk" and then tell me that you think all foundry missions suck....
Flight of the Kitty Hawk is one of my favorite set of missions. I will the run that set on other characters as well.
However, there are a couple of times where it gets bogged down in too much text being thrown at the player at one time. When I say too much, it refers to multiple screens of backstory interrupting the flow of the mission. One thing a Foundry author has to be careful of is bringing the "activity" in the mission to a grinding halt. Kitty Hawk is powerful enough overall to overcome this one shortcoming (I think it is in the second mission) and I heartily encourage STO players to give the Kitty Hawk missions a try.
But that is perhaps the one thing that sometimes causes me to hesitate when looking at Foundry missions is time. There are missions that look very interesting, but do say that they are 2-3 hours. That's too long for a single mission (30-90 is about my limit), especially considering that I never know if I'll have 2-3 hours of dedicated playtime on a given night.
For MMO writing, I think 30-90 is an appropriate length for single missions. Splitting a 2-3 hour mission into two missions would be ideal, but does require more Foundry slots for the more prolific writers.
If Cryptic wants the Foundry authors to take up the slack with regard to real storyline missions, then I think they should give them more slots up front so that they can write them more like story arcs than single massive story missions. Having a story *arc* go 2-3 hours or more is certainly not an issue for me since I can take them in bite size chunks, but for single missions it can be a little much.
Actually, the best missions in the game are foundry missions and there are dozens better than anything Cryptic has put out. Of course I'm sure YOURS put everyone's to shame, what with your "ridiculously high standards" and all. I'll look for them...
That is very subjective, though. I've played or attempted to play missions on the UGC list as "the best" missions, and some of them I never completed -- because they didn't live up to the hype or even to the standard dev content.
Others, like Kitty Hawk and A Will and a Barclay, kept me interested. A Will and a Barclay is a pretty good example of intermixing story text and player activity to keep the story flowing.
Some Foundry authors, however, seem to focus too much on the textual side and really drag the flow to a screeching halt. Most MMO players -- including those of us who play primarily for story content -- are not looking to read a novel in game. If the author stops us dead with multiple screens of long, scrolling text to fit in all the backstory you would find *over time* in a good novel, they're going to lose the player.
What constitutes good novel writing does not necessarily translate into good MMO writing. For the game, text and player activity should be well-balanced. Immersion is not just about reading the story, it's about *participating* in it. The characters should be an active part of the story.
That's the reality of user-generated content. Some of it won't be as good as dev content, some of it will be better. Authors come from a lot of different backgrounds and have a lot of different skills and skill levels in the things it takes to make Foundry missions. Some of us, such as myself, are even professional writers. But, as you said, evaluating whether a mission is "good" is a subjective assessment, and its one each player has to make for themselves. Look at the reviews on any mission, you'll see a review that says "This mission sucks" right next to a review that says "This is the greatest mission ever." This has been happening since the first third-party mods were made for Doom and Quake. It all depends on what you like.
Players look for different things in their content. The actual devs deal with this every day. For every person yelling on the forums about wanting more story content, there's one yelling for PvP content.
You can't please everyone. There is, quite simply, no way around that.
That is very subjective, though. I've played or attempted to play missions on the UGC list as "the best" missions, and some of them I never completed -- because they didn't live up to the hype or even to the standard dev content.
Others, like Kitty Hawk and A Will and a Barclay, kept me interested. A Will and a Barclay is a pretty good example of intermixing story text and player activity to keep the story flowing.
Some Foundry authors, however, seem to focus too much on the textual side and really drag the flow to a screeching halt. Most MMO players -- including those of us who play primarily for story content -- are not looking to read a novel in game. If the author stops us dead with multiple screens of long, scrolling text to fit in all the backstory you would find *over time* in a good novel, they're going to lose the player.
What constitutes good novel writing does not necessarily translate into good MMO writing. For the game, text and player activity should be well-balanced. Immersion is not just about reading the story, it's about *participating* in it. The characters should be an active part of the story.
Just curious, but you talk about long text of back story, but what about conversations?
As an example, in part two of my series Allegiance, the mission starts with you meeting the senior officers and other characters that will be with you throughout the rest of the series. Now a number of the conversations are entirely optional, as has been suggested to me before, but the main briefing is not. It is long, but it is also interactive with the player to a degree and involves both an introduction to other characters as well as setting the tone for the series. Would you consider a conversation involving multiple characters (sometimes talking to the player, sometimes to other NPCs) an issue?
Play Star Trek: Allegiance - my first series in the Foundry
Just curious, but you talk about long text of back story, but what about conversations?
As an example, in part two of my series Allegiance, the mission starts with you meeting the senior officers and other characters that will be with you throughout the rest of the series. Now a number of the conversations are entirely optional, as has been suggested to me before, but the main briefing is not. It is long, but it is also interactive with the player to a degree and involves both an introduction to other characters as well as setting the tone for the series. Would you consider a conversation involving multiple characters (sometimes talking to the player, sometimes to other NPCs) an issue?
Breaking up the text as a conversation does indeed help. It gives more personality to the narrative and makes the player (at least in my case) feel more involved. It feels more "active" and is less daunting to the reader than a massive screen of text. I don't even mind a single large text screen; it's multiple such screens back-to-back that are more problematic.
What you are describing reads more dynamically. When you can do things to make it feel like the story is moving, you're more apt to keep the player's attention.
That's the reality of user-generated content. Some of it won't be as good as dev content, some of it will be better. Authors come from a lot of different backgrounds and have a lot of different skills and skill levels in the things it takes to make Foundry missions. Some of us, such as myself, are even professional writers. But, as you said, evaluating whether a mission is "good" is a subjective assessment, and its one each player has to make for themselves. Look at the reviews on any mission, you'll see a review that says "This mission sucks" right next to a review that says "This is the greatest mission ever." This has been happening since the first third-party mods were made for Doom and Quake. It all depends on what you like.
Players look for different things in their content. The actual devs deal with this every day. For every person yelling on the forums about wanting more story content, there's one yelling for PvP content.
You can't please everyone. There is, quite simply, no way around that.
Agreed. I tend to look at reviews if a story looks interesting to me and have noticed the same trends. I wrote one Mission Architect story in City of Heroes (Granny Granite and the Senior Moment Gang) and saw similar results. It was a solid 4-star, but those who didn't like it, well, didn't like it.
I intend to start poking around with the Foundry tools soon. It may be a good way to get back into writing again. Most of what I've written for the last nineteen years has been technical (white papers, procedures, etc.); I sincerely miss fiction writing. The only book I've published thus far is a small literary analysis of influences on The Lord of the Rings (I have two English degrees and now work as an XML analyst and programmer. Go figure.)
I don't think most people aim to make 2-3 hour missions, it just sort of happens by accident.
Also, length can be highly variable in some missions, depending on whether you interact with all of the NPCs, etc.
Understood. Writing short stories has always been difficult for me; I tend to think in "epic" terms sometimes.
To be honest, some of your stories are what I had in mind when I referenced 2-3 hours. The descriptions look intriguing, but finding the right time to play them is sometimes problematic. This is especially true when there is more than one story in a series and all of them at listed as multi-hour missions.
I'm just going to have to pick a time and dive in.
The focus on rewards seems odd to me, frankly, as the whole concept of the Foundry seems clearly more about boosting the game's story mission content. Turning Foundry into another way of item grinding would seems to be almost willfully missing the point. As long as random drops are on par with those in the Cryptic authored story missions, it'd be just fine. I doubt many foundry authors would be satisfied knowing people were playing their missions for the loot and ignoring the rest.
With increased rewards, or author-controllable rewards, you would see more people playing foundry... as a grind. And you'd get a influx of foundry missions and authors dedicated to no-story "go to system X, shoot all the things, collect loot" gameplay.
I don't think anyone is asking for mk xii supergear from foundry missions. In theory, some people won't participate in an aspect of a game if there is no perceived reward. The reward doesn't need to be huge. It's more psychological than anything else.
I love the foundry system, but I don't play many missions. I play all of the Spotlight missions, but little beyond that. Not because I don't want to, but because it's a total crapshoot. I may randomly find a great mission. Or I may end up with a pile of TRIBBLE. When prioritizing how I'll use my time, other things go in front of the foundry simply because of a lack of certainty. Since there is no gear reward, the only reward is having an enjoyable time. But that is very much not guaranteed.
My participation (and many others) would certainly increase with better search options. MOST foundry authors seem to be honest people. They try to give you an explanation of what the mission is before you take it. All they need to do is an extra step in the foundry creation process. A couple dozen checkboxes. Things like:
Space combat
Ground combat
Conversations
Gorn
Cardassians
You could just check which ones apply to your mission. When people search, they would have the same checkboxes that would work as extra search options. If I want a mission involving Cardassians and ground combat, I'd check those 2 boxes and I'd only get missions with both things.
I'd play a lot more foundry missions that way. A lot more.
I think, cryptic is aware of the foundry issues and with the spotlight missions they give us some good reason to play some foundry missions. My personal problem with this feature is, that they don't spotlight missions in other languages than english.
I'm a german player and i write my missions in german language just because there is a huge german community who doesn't naturally all speak english. The foundry is by far not unpopular. One of my missions has 1200+ plays and because it's in german language, i believe, most of the players were german ... so, just a part of the community.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Photonen im Wind a foundry mission by timeras13 Photonen im Eis a foundry mission by timeras13 Photonen im Schatten a foundry mission by timeras13
I think, cryptic is aware of the foundry issues and with the spotlight missions they give us some good reason to play some foundry missions. My personal problem with this feature is, that they don't spotlight missions in other languages than english.
I'm a german player and i write my missions in german language just because there is a huge german community who doesn't naturally all speak english. The foundry is by far not unpopular. One of my missions has 1200+ plays and because it's in german language, i believe, most of the players were german ... so, just a part of the community.
Perhaps you can talk to the German Community Manager (if there is one) to set up a German Spotlight thing similar to how it was before. It won't be on the UI but at least it will give German missions more exposure.
Hello Germany, big fan of some of your metal bands \m/ \m/
Anyway, Just drew BranFlakes' attention to that request. He said on twitter that the EU team would be looking for German missions to spotlight. So maybe some movement there, cheers!
So because I read all these threads, including the ones in the other forums going almost two years back, I have come to this conclusion:
The true reason the Foundry isn't used by more players is in fact that there is no one overarching reason. Every player who does not play the Foundry has a different reason why they don't. It might be a lack of reward, it might be an aversion to non-official content, it might be they don't want to read, it might be that there are not enough missions in their native language, it might be... etc, etc. There are a million true reasons why people don't play Foundry missions.
Therefor, there can be no silver bullet that will suddenly get everyone playing and enjoying themselves. Which kinda sucks, but there you go. There are plenty of little things Cryptic can do if they want to spend the time on it. I hope they do, but where they put their resources is, as always, their choice. In any event, all we authors can do is to keep trying to make great missions.
Understood. Writing short stories has always been difficult for me; I tend to think in "epic" terms sometimes.
To be honest, some of your stories are what I had in mind when I referenced 2-3 hours. The descriptions look intriguing, but finding the right time to play them is sometimes problematic. This is especially true when there is more than one story in a series and all of them at listed as multi-hour missions.
I'm just going to have to pick a time and dive in.
Well, don't feel obligated or anything. I know my missions are long, especially Dereliction Duty. I didn't realize how long it was when making it, and also made the mistake of front loading most of the optional conversations at the start of the mission.
I guess the trick I would say with DD is if you start playing it but don't have a lot of time, you can spend time on U.S.S. Atlas Deck 13 until you finish everything or get bored, and then you can quit and come back the mission another time and just rush through Deck 13 (shouldn't take more than 5 minutes) and just do the actual mission.
I've tried to keep the others a little shorter, but I run into the issue where it's not really realistic to break up the mission after every single map. So, they still end up being a little bit long.
Really though, we have the advantage with the Foundry of not having to cater to absolutely everyone. It would be nice though if there was some way to select the mission length you want, etc. As has been mentioned we've been asking about that for a long time.
I don't think most people aim to make 2-3 hour missions, it just sort of happens by accident.
Also, length can be highly variable in some missions, depending on whether you interact with all of the NPCs, etc.
Yeah.... don't play my Treasure Hunt mission if you're in a hurry. It's long, not because of the story, but because you need to fight a small army, and not all at once.
Speaking of other languages, I remember playing a mission that was either in Czech or Hungarian once. It was fun. I couldn't read it, but it was fun.
As for story, one way to mix the two approaches is to have optional dialogue branches for exposition. that way people can skip reading the wall of text. But only if they want to.
It is kind of amusing that all these guys threatening to quit playing Foundry missions think that we care, when they never even played the missions, they just did console clickers. :rolleyes:
It's not like we're getting royalty payments for the number of players visiting the Foundry tab or something like that.
You made a very good point here. I was so angry when I read the "flame- and hate-war" because of the clickies-removal... Now after I thought about your words I could calm down a bit
Not all of us only console clicked, the reality is there is little time in the week to run Foundry missions, on the weekend it is a different story. The problem in removing the ability for people to use the foundry daily is they stop using it all together, once its out of mind that is it. Combine this with the endless grinding for fleet marks, dilithium, romulan marks and omega marks that is now required is going to put Foundry out of touch for pretty much everyone.
I have no problem with the Foundry missions and people wanting to be creative in their own way, I do have major issues with people telling others how they should play the game. There are a lot of these people in this thread.
Removing console clicking is going to do nothing at all for the foundry. Missions aren't played because, like almost everything in the game, the interface is absolutely terrible. This isn't going to be fixed anytime soon, just like the awful exchange interface.
And since your wrong, no need to read any further. If the foundry had really good rewards, people would play it regardless of any "hesitation" regarding quality. Star clusters arent quality missions(Borg searching for relics from their 3rd dynasty) but people play them for the daily. Nuff said.
Irony, had you actually read the rest of the post you would have saw where the other half of the trust issue prevents that from ever happening.
Well, don't feel obligated or anything. I know my missions are long, especially Dereliction Duty. I didn't realize how long it was when making it, and also made the mistake of front loading most of the optional conversations at the start of the mission.
I guess the trick I would say with DD is if you start playing it but don't have a lot of time, you can spend time on U.S.S. Atlas Deck 13 until you finish everything or get bored, and then you can quit and come back the mission another time and just rush through Deck 13 (shouldn't take more than 5 minutes) and just do the actual mission.
I've tried to keep the others a little shorter, but I run into the issue where it's not really realistic to break up the mission after every single map. So, they still end up being a little bit long.
Really though, we have the advantage with the Foundry of not having to cater to absolutely everyone. It would be nice though if there was some way to select the mission length you want, etc. As has been mentioned we've been asking about that for a long time.
Thanks for the tips. I'll probably find a time when I can play it straight through. And don't worry, it's not because I feel obligated; I've been interested in trying this mission for a while.:)
Some Foundry authors, however, seem to focus too much on the textual side and really drag the flow to a screeching halt. Most MMO players -- including those of us who play primarily for story content -- are not looking to read a novel in game. If the author stops us dead with multiple screens of long, scrolling text to fit in all the backstory you would find *over time* in a good novel, they're going to lose the player.
What constitutes good novel writing does not necessarily translate into good MMO writing. For the game, text and player activity should be well-balanced. Immersion is not just about reading the story, it's about *participating* in it. The characters should be an active part of the story.
Purely theoretical on part, as I've yet to publish a foundry mission myself, but I feel like this is the sort of a good example of where the old "show, don't tell" adage comes into play.
Any time you have something that involves a large text dump, IMO it's best to take a step back and think about how you could communicate much of the same info through direct player experience. Even if it means substantially lengthening the mission by adding maps and/or objectives, or even splitting the mission into parts, it's generally going to be more engaging for the player to learn that stuff in the course of doing stuff than by reading a big block of text.
Have the player discover things themselves instead of be briefed on them by NPCs whenever at all possible. If an NPC has a backstory that's too large, consider separating that story out and developing it into a mission in its own right. If the big backstory is too relevant to the original mission, then set the original mission aside so you can focus and publish the backstory mission first.
IMO the "trust issue" is more about pessimism on the part of players than anything else.
As a former player with the "trust issue" this is basically it. For the longest time I didn't play Foundry missions because I expected them to be major TRIBBLE and glorified fan fic.
EDIT
For clarity almost all teh missions I've played have been great. The vast majority that I've played have been given 4 or 5 stars
As a Foundry player, I want to play one or two full missions a day (5 objectives or so, each) for a total of about 30-60 minutes of gameplay and I want comparable (not necessarily equal) rewards to what I'd get playing a standard Cryptic mission of the same sort.
I did clickies because I DOFF with alts and it was, frankly, rewarded behavior that gave me a chunk of Dilithium for doing it. Now that the clickies are gone, I won't miss them that much. I always felt a little dirty doing them. But requiring me to play three missions a day at 30-60 minutes a pop is just too much. Not going to happen, which means my Dilithium grinding -- and by extension my contributions to fleet holdings -- is going to suffer.
I want Cryptic to fix how they reward ALL Foundry missions. Yes, by all means exclude the quickies and the clickies. But anything that takes at least 15 minutes to run should get some reward, including the Dil and Skill points players need to progress in the game.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Agreed. Currently the time:reward ratio is not balanced compared to the other ways to get rewrds
Yep, I don't think anyone would argue that there isn't a million better rewards systems that could be implemented for playing Foundry missions. Unfortunately, though we have proposed about that many ideas for one, Cryptic has moved at a snail's pace with regards to the Foundry. I think part of the reason people are so up in arms about the removal of one-click dailies is that they were here for so long and ignored by Cryptic for so long (thereby giving tacit approval) that their removal seems arbitrary.
I'm quite sure these missions were not an intended consequence from the introduction of the wrapper, but if Cryptic did not approve of this use of the Foundry, they should have moved to end it far sooner.
Comments
So, in other words, you have no interest in the Foundry as story-telling--it was a dilithium exploit that is no longer of use to you so it should go away for everyone. Nice.
My character Tsin'xing
Not at all. I hope it's still there for anyone who enjoys using it as a vehicle for telling or reading your fan fiction. More power and the best of luck to you with that.
There's just nowhere near enough incentive for me to wade through all the TRIBBLE to find the occasional gem, let alone going through the eye-bleeding experience of creating it myself again.
My character Tsin'xing
Flight of the Kitty Hawk is one of my favorite set of missions. I will the run that set on other characters as well.
However, there are a couple of times where it gets bogged down in too much text being thrown at the player at one time. When I say too much, it refers to multiple screens of backstory interrupting the flow of the mission. One thing a Foundry author has to be careful of is bringing the "activity" in the mission to a grinding halt. Kitty Hawk is powerful enough overall to overcome this one shortcoming (I think it is in the second mission) and I heartily encourage STO players to give the Kitty Hawk missions a try.
But that is perhaps the one thing that sometimes causes me to hesitate when looking at Foundry missions is time. There are missions that look very interesting, but do say that they are 2-3 hours. That's too long for a single mission (30-90 is about my limit), especially considering that I never know if I'll have 2-3 hours of dedicated playtime on a given night.
For MMO writing, I think 30-90 is an appropriate length for single missions. Splitting a 2-3 hour mission into two missions would be ideal, but does require more Foundry slots for the more prolific writers.
If Cryptic wants the Foundry authors to take up the slack with regard to real storyline missions, then I think they should give them more slots up front so that they can write them more like story arcs than single massive story missions. Having a story *arc* go 2-3 hours or more is certainly not an issue for me since I can take them in bite size chunks, but for single missions it can be a little much.
That is very subjective, though. I've played or attempted to play missions on the UGC list as "the best" missions, and some of them I never completed -- because they didn't live up to the hype or even to the standard dev content.
Others, like Kitty Hawk and A Will and a Barclay, kept me interested. A Will and a Barclay is a pretty good example of intermixing story text and player activity to keep the story flowing.
Some Foundry authors, however, seem to focus too much on the textual side and really drag the flow to a screeching halt. Most MMO players -- including those of us who play primarily for story content -- are not looking to read a novel in game. If the author stops us dead with multiple screens of long, scrolling text to fit in all the backstory you would find *over time* in a good novel, they're going to lose the player.
What constitutes good novel writing does not necessarily translate into good MMO writing. For the game, text and player activity should be well-balanced. Immersion is not just about reading the story, it's about *participating* in it. The characters should be an active part of the story.
Players look for different things in their content. The actual devs deal with this every day. For every person yelling on the forums about wanting more story content, there's one yelling for PvP content.
You can't please everyone. There is, quite simply, no way around that.
Just curious, but you talk about long text of back story, but what about conversations?
As an example, in part two of my series Allegiance, the mission starts with you meeting the senior officers and other characters that will be with you throughout the rest of the series. Now a number of the conversations are entirely optional, as has been suggested to me before, but the main briefing is not. It is long, but it is also interactive with the player to a degree and involves both an introduction to other characters as well as setting the tone for the series. Would you consider a conversation involving multiple characters (sometimes talking to the player, sometimes to other NPCs) an issue?
Also, length can be highly variable in some missions, depending on whether you interact with all of the NPCs, etc.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Breaking up the text as a conversation does indeed help. It gives more personality to the narrative and makes the player (at least in my case) feel more involved. It feels more "active" and is less daunting to the reader than a massive screen of text. I don't even mind a single large text screen; it's multiple such screens back-to-back that are more problematic.
What you are describing reads more dynamically. When you can do things to make it feel like the story is moving, you're more apt to keep the player's attention.
Agreed. I tend to look at reviews if a story looks interesting to me and have noticed the same trends. I wrote one Mission Architect story in City of Heroes (Granny Granite and the Senior Moment Gang) and saw similar results. It was a solid 4-star, but those who didn't like it, well, didn't like it.
I intend to start poking around with the Foundry tools soon. It may be a good way to get back into writing again. Most of what I've written for the last nineteen years has been technical (white papers, procedures, etc.); I sincerely miss fiction writing. The only book I've published thus far is a small literary analysis of influences on The Lord of the Rings (I have two English degrees and now work as an XML analyst and programmer. Go figure.)
Understood. Writing short stories has always been difficult for me; I tend to think in "epic" terms sometimes.
To be honest, some of your stories are what I had in mind when I referenced 2-3 hours. The descriptions look intriguing, but finding the right time to play them is sometimes problematic. This is especially true when there is more than one story in a series and all of them at listed as multi-hour missions.
I'm just going to have to pick a time and dive in.
I don't think anyone is asking for mk xii supergear from foundry missions. In theory, some people won't participate in an aspect of a game if there is no perceived reward. The reward doesn't need to be huge. It's more psychological than anything else.
I love the foundry system, but I don't play many missions. I play all of the Spotlight missions, but little beyond that. Not because I don't want to, but because it's a total crapshoot. I may randomly find a great mission. Or I may end up with a pile of TRIBBLE. When prioritizing how I'll use my time, other things go in front of the foundry simply because of a lack of certainty. Since there is no gear reward, the only reward is having an enjoyable time. But that is very much not guaranteed.
My participation (and many others) would certainly increase with better search options. MOST foundry authors seem to be honest people. They try to give you an explanation of what the mission is before you take it. All they need to do is an extra step in the foundry creation process. A couple dozen checkboxes. Things like:
Space combat
Ground combat
Conversations
Gorn
Cardassians
You could just check which ones apply to your mission. When people search, they would have the same checkboxes that would work as extra search options. If I want a mission involving Cardassians and ground combat, I'd check those 2 boxes and I'd only get missions with both things.
I'd play a lot more foundry missions that way. A lot more.
I'm a german player and i write my missions in german language just because there is a huge german community who doesn't naturally all speak english. The foundry is by far not unpopular. One of my missions has 1200+ plays and because it's in german language, i believe, most of the players were german ... so, just a part of the community.
Photonen im Wind a foundry mission by timeras13
Photonen im Eis a foundry mission by timeras13
Photonen im Schatten a foundry mission by timeras13
Perhaps you can talk to the German Community Manager (if there is one) to set up a German Spotlight thing similar to how it was before. It won't be on the UI but at least it will give German missions more exposure.
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
Anyway, Just drew BranFlakes' attention to that request. He said on twitter that the EU team would be looking for German missions to spotlight. So maybe some movement there, cheers!
So because I read all these threads, including the ones in the other forums going almost two years back, I have come to this conclusion:
The true reason the Foundry isn't used by more players is in fact that there is no one overarching reason. Every player who does not play the Foundry has a different reason why they don't. It might be a lack of reward, it might be an aversion to non-official content, it might be they don't want to read, it might be that there are not enough missions in their native language, it might be... etc, etc. There are a million true reasons why people don't play Foundry missions.
Therefor, there can be no silver bullet that will suddenly get everyone playing and enjoying themselves. Which kinda sucks, but there you go. There are plenty of little things Cryptic can do if they want to spend the time on it. I hope they do, but where they put their resources is, as always, their choice. In any event, all we authors can do is to keep trying to make great missions.
Well, don't feel obligated or anything. I know my missions are long, especially Dereliction Duty. I didn't realize how long it was when making it, and also made the mistake of front loading most of the optional conversations at the start of the mission.
I guess the trick I would say with DD is if you start playing it but don't have a lot of time, you can spend time on U.S.S. Atlas Deck 13 until you finish everything or get bored, and then you can quit and come back the mission another time and just rush through Deck 13 (shouldn't take more than 5 minutes) and just do the actual mission.
I've tried to keep the others a little shorter, but I run into the issue where it's not really realistic to break up the mission after every single map. So, they still end up being a little bit long.
Really though, we have the advantage with the Foundry of not having to cater to absolutely everyone. It would be nice though if there was some way to select the mission length you want, etc. As has been mentioned we've been asking about that for a long time.
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Speaking of other languages, I remember playing a mission that was either in Czech or Hungarian once. It was fun. I couldn't read it, but it was fun.
As for story, one way to mix the two approaches is to have optional dialogue branches for exposition. that way people can skip reading the wall of text. But only if they want to.
My character Tsin'xing
You made a very good point here. I was so angry when I read the "flame- and hate-war" because of the clickies-removal... Now after I thought about your words I could calm down a bit
Thx.
I have no problem with the Foundry missions and people wanting to be creative in their own way, I do have major issues with people telling others how they should play the game. There are a lot of these people in this thread.
Removing console clicking is going to do nothing at all for the foundry. Missions aren't played because, like almost everything in the game, the interface is absolutely terrible. This isn't going to be fixed anytime soon, just like the awful exchange interface.
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Irony, had you actually read the rest of the post you would have saw where the other half of the trust issue prevents that from ever happening.
Thanks for the tips. I'll probably find a time when I can play it straight through. And don't worry, it's not because I feel obligated; I've been interested in trying this mission for a while.:)
Purely theoretical on part, as I've yet to publish a foundry mission myself, but I feel like this is the sort of a good example of where the old "show, don't tell" adage comes into play.
Any time you have something that involves a large text dump, IMO it's best to take a step back and think about how you could communicate much of the same info through direct player experience. Even if it means substantially lengthening the mission by adding maps and/or objectives, or even splitting the mission into parts, it's generally going to be more engaging for the player to learn that stuff in the course of doing stuff than by reading a big block of text.
Have the player discover things themselves instead of be briefed on them by NPCs whenever at all possible. If an NPC has a backstory that's too large, consider separating that story out and developing it into a mission in its own right. If the big backstory is too relevant to the original mission, then set the original mission aside so you can focus and publish the backstory mission first.
My character Tsin'xing
As a former player with the "trust issue" this is basically it. For the longest time I didn't play Foundry missions because I expected them to be major TRIBBLE and glorified fan fic.
EDIT
For clarity almost all teh missions I've played have been great. The vast majority that I've played have been given 4 or 5 stars
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 did clickies because I DOFF with alts and it was, frankly, rewarded behavior that gave me a chunk of Dilithium for doing it. Now that the clickies are gone, I won't miss them that much. I always felt a little dirty doing them. But requiring me to play three missions a day at 30-60 minutes a pop is just too much. Not going to happen, which means my Dilithium grinding -- and by extension my contributions to fleet holdings -- is going to suffer.
I want Cryptic to fix how they reward ALL Foundry missions. Yes, by all means exclude the quickies and the clickies. But anything that takes at least 15 minutes to run should get some reward, including the Dil and Skill points players need to progress in the game.
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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
Yep, I don't think anyone would argue that there isn't a million better rewards systems that could be implemented for playing Foundry missions. Unfortunately, though we have proposed about that many ideas for one, Cryptic has moved at a snail's pace with regards to the Foundry. I think part of the reason people are so up in arms about the removal of one-click dailies is that they were here for so long and ignored by Cryptic for so long (thereby giving tacit approval) that their removal seems arbitrary.
I'm quite sure these missions were not an intended consequence from the introduction of the wrapper, but if Cryptic did not approve of this use of the Foundry, they should have moved to end it far sooner.
I've heard some pretty nice stuff about the NW system, and I'm hoping that gets here.
My character Tsin'xing