Well, watching some of the other threads it appears the Foundry has had a "Borg" upgrade for Season 7.
There is no set criteria for a mission to qualify - as apparently the Foundry now actively adapts to new input (much like Borg drones adapt to different weapons fire).
So apparently missions are going to qualify some days, and not qualify other days, depending on how people play them (or drop them )
Does this mean that regardless of how much effort we as authors put into a mission (we could make one 100 hours long), that an algorithim that averages the number of plays/minutes can arbitrarily 'de-qualify' it for 'report' credit, thus torpedoing it from general play?
This is a significant problem. The "number of minutes to play" scenario is flawed at best. While I think 15-20 minutes per mission isn't bad (although I've played a few 10-minute missions that I think should qualify because they have more story to them than a lot of patrol/exploration missions), that metric is faulty because some players just click through the text and dramatically skew the numbers.
Those are the players who don't really want to play Foundry missions, they just want quick fleet marks or dilithium. Unfortunately, they are negatively impacting those of us who do enjoy the missions, but would like to receive the appropriate rewards as well.
Well, I can guarantee that Dereliction Duty should always qualify. Even if you try to rush through, I think you'd have a hard time doing it in less than 20 minutes. Of course, time/benefit-wise you'd be better off doing just about anything to get dilithium than actually playing my missions.
That said, I think that the best solution would be to do away with the Foundry daily entirely and just give credit based on how long it takes a person to play an individual mission. So, if it takes you 20 minutes you get X dilithium and if it takes you an hour you'd get 3x dilithium.
I don't know if that's possible, but it would be the best solution. Even if someone was just sitting in the mission stalling, at least they'd have their character tied up, so it's not really that easily abused. The rewards could be capped at 2 hours or so to prevent someone from just AFKing all day in a mission while they are at work.
If your intention is the grind dilithium then you are looking in the wrong place. The Foundry is there to provide stories for people to play. The investigate officer reports mission is just a reward for playing them.
That's exactly my point. I'm not saying that the Foundry is useless. It's just useless on the standpoint of Dilithium. So why have a dilithium "incentive" to play them at all if the incentive is not worth it? It's not an incentive if you don't make MORE dilithium/hour playing Foundry missions than playing other kinds of missions.
If I'm interested in playing user-created content, I will play it even if I make no dilithium doing it. If I'm interested in making dilithium with the time I spend on the game, I will not play Foundry missions at all since it's basically a waste of time. The meager reward is not worth it.
That's exactly my point. I'm not saying that the Foundry is useless. It's just useless on the standpoint of Dilithium. So why have a dilithium "incentive" to play them at all if the incentive is not worth it? It's not an incentive if you don't make MORE dilithium/hour playing Foundry missions than playing other kinds of missions.
If I'm interested in playing user-created content, I will play it even if I make no dilithium doing it. If I'm interested in making dilithium with the time I spend on the game, I will not play Foundry missions at all since it's basically a waste of time. The meager reward is not worth it.
On the other hand, episodes and storylines are my favorite part of the game. The dev-created episodes have zero dilithium attached to them; the Foundry has the wrapper. So I could spend an hour playing dev episodes and get no dilithium or an hour playing Foundry episodes and get 1440 dilithium.
Now, to be clear, I do both. And I will play a lot of the shorter Foundry story missions that do not qualify for the daily too. Just pointing out that if story missions are your thing, then the Foundry is certainly *not* useless on the standpoint of dilithium.
If their goal for the incentive was for players to try different foundry missions, why not allow any foundry mission to count regardless of the time* provided that it only counts once/avatar?
*Of course after any player goes through and the mission takes <5min then it's automatically removed from rewarding any other players (i.e. it's deemed a clickie).
There are Four Lights... say no to ARCFleet: 1st Order of Role-Players' Guild - gaming together since 2004
I understand that Cryptic would prefer not having us grind for dilithium on the "console" missions in the foundry, but I disagree with the attitude of some of the posters here. The foundry is just as much an option for players who what to earn Dil & Fleet marks as play any other mission. It isn't some holy grail for a special group. I personally enjoy changing things up a bit and can only run the dailys for a while before feeling like "run 100 of Defara daily ... click here again ..."
I don't think that some arbitrary "20 minute" rule should apply. Some of the missions I've had to slug through have been junk. I would like to see this fixed. I'm like a lot of people who have a limited amount of time to play and would like some variety (that the foundry offers). Please Cryptic, fix this and maybe work on the "inventory full" issue with collecting rewards in Defara! ... But don't let me get started on that subject.
Well now that the Foundry editing is back up, I'd really like to hear from the Devs about what we need to do with our missions to make them qualify for the daily. This whole not telling us and just axing out missions left right and centre is not doing the Foundry, or the people who use it, any good.
Also as has been said many times, you really need to rethink the time issues. If I explore a star cluster for 1440 Dil and get three scanning missions, then I'm done in five minutes. Yet you're axing missions from the Foundry which take 10 - 15 minutes to finish. Either stop what you're doing, or increase the reward, you know, maybe with the Dil you ripped out of the B'tran cluster.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Comments
This is a significant problem. The "number of minutes to play" scenario is flawed at best. While I think 15-20 minutes per mission isn't bad (although I've played a few 10-minute missions that I think should qualify because they have more story to them than a lot of patrol/exploration missions), that metric is faulty because some players just click through the text and dramatically skew the numbers.
Those are the players who don't really want to play Foundry missions, they just want quick fleet marks or dilithium. Unfortunately, they are negatively impacting those of us who do enjoy the missions, but would like to receive the appropriate rewards as well.
That said, I think that the best solution would be to do away with the Foundry daily entirely and just give credit based on how long it takes a person to play an individual mission. So, if it takes you 20 minutes you get X dilithium and if it takes you an hour you'd get 3x dilithium.
I don't know if that's possible, but it would be the best solution. Even if someone was just sitting in the mission stalling, at least they'd have their character tied up, so it's not really that easily abused. The rewards could be capped at 2 hours or so to prevent someone from just AFKing all day in a mission while they are at work.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
That's exactly my point. I'm not saying that the Foundry is useless. It's just useless on the standpoint of Dilithium. So why have a dilithium "incentive" to play them at all if the incentive is not worth it? It's not an incentive if you don't make MORE dilithium/hour playing Foundry missions than playing other kinds of missions.
If I'm interested in playing user-created content, I will play it even if I make no dilithium doing it. If I'm interested in making dilithium with the time I spend on the game, I will not play Foundry missions at all since it's basically a waste of time. The meager reward is not worth it.
On the other hand, episodes and storylines are my favorite part of the game. The dev-created episodes have zero dilithium attached to them; the Foundry has the wrapper. So I could spend an hour playing dev episodes and get no dilithium or an hour playing Foundry episodes and get 1440 dilithium.
Now, to be clear, I do both. And I will play a lot of the shorter Foundry story missions that do not qualify for the daily too. Just pointing out that if story missions are your thing, then the Foundry is certainly *not* useless on the standpoint of dilithium.
*Of course after any player goes through and the mission takes <5min then it's automatically removed from rewarding any other players (i.e. it's deemed a clickie).
Fleet: 1st Order of Role-Players' Guild - gaming together since 2004
I don't think that some arbitrary "20 minute" rule should apply. Some of the missions I've had to slug through have been junk. I would like to see this fixed. I'm like a lot of people who have a limited amount of time to play and would like some variety (that the foundry offers). Please Cryptic, fix this and maybe work on the "inventory full" issue with collecting rewards in Defara! ... But don't let me get started on that subject.
Also as has been said many times, you really need to rethink the time issues. If I explore a star cluster for 1440 Dil and get three scanning missions, then I'm done in five minutes. Yet you're axing missions from the Foundry which take 10 - 15 minutes to finish. Either stop what you're doing, or increase the reward, you know, maybe with the Dil you ripped out of the B'tran cluster.