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Tomorrow is a good day for grinders!
psycoticvulcan
Member Posts: 4,160 Arc User
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=7060481&postcount=14
Check out the first bullet point. And celebrate. Loudly.
Check out the first bullet point. And celebrate. Loudly.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
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My character Tsin'xing
Just because they're grinders doesn't mean they don't appreciate good story content.
What Cryptic has done is add a further incentive to play Foundry missions. Undoubtedly a bunch of grinders will be awed by the fantastic stories and forget all about dilithium.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
It doesn't make much of a difference for those players. If they're not willing to play for the story, they'll stay away from the good missions just as they did during the Clickie exploit. This makes things better for them and no worse for us.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
I'm just skeptical. I guess we'll find out after the patch.
Only thing better would be if you automatically were provided with the dilithium reward when completing a Foundry mission, provided it took you at least 30 minutes (measuring your own play time).
It's not necessarily that easy to do. For example, on my mission Dereliction Duty, you can spend over an hour talking on the Atlas to everyone on the deck, or you can go straight to the briefing and then back to the turbolift, spending less than 10 minutes aboard. So, how do you treat a map like that in terms of splitting up the mission?
That's an extreme example, but the point is the amount of time it takes someone to play a mission can vary wildly. We also don't have access to any sort of data to help us judge the length either.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
At current prices of 105 per 1 Zen, one could make 438 Cryptic Points per day. :eek: (though there's that pesky "can only refine up to 8000 Dilithium per day" rule; it'd still be in the account to eventually refine and trade)
@drogyn: I was kind of hoping a few more issue with the foundry would be fixed before ratings were turned back on, but at this point we're stuck. As for the IOR chance, I really think its going to depend if your mission is grind worthy anyway if this is going to make much of a change.
You figure those that are just grinding will be searching for the quickest, least complicated mission that qualifies and spamming it like High Yield Torpedo. Just mentioning you have significant story element in the description will probably keep them away.
The good side to this is it's more likely to draw in players who might like playing a story mission but didn't have the time to invest in one and still need to do two other ones to get the marks/dil. From what I read from Branflakes, the cooldown time starts at ACCEPTING the mission, not completion (though I want to see this for myself first). If this is the case someone could play through nagarok's stuff and cash in after each episode without needing to wait.
I can see it affecting us by grinders rushing through our shorter missions and causing them to no longer qualify for the daily
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
Many people who never bothered before will start giving foundry missions a go. A lot of them will just power grind the shorter missions but I have no doubt we will get new UGC adhearents as well.
There is now a reasonable reward for playing our missions. Hell, I'm all about the foundry and I'm sure even I'll play more player missions now that I can combine it with my dil grinding. This is good stuff.
In fact, you know what? I'm going to go buy something from the C Store just because of this. Positive reinforcement, baby!
Yeap overall this is a great change to the daily/mission. Haven't felt this good about the Foundry in a while.
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
As some have said, now people only have to give 15 mins to earn their rewards more people might be inclined to try foundry out - some would grind the same mission over and over just for rewards but some would be entertained enough to play different missions and enjoy the content.
As I enjoy the content already, I will get more rewards for playing more missions - in theory I could use it as the main source of all my currency apart from Omega and Rommie marks. And if I'm in the mood for just a few standalone missions I can use the cool down for the odd FA or STF.
It's a win win in my eyes, and I'm very happy with it.
Yes, I agree..... more ways to get Fleet Marks is a welcome change.
I am still pushing that we just have Marks instead of the 3 flavors we have now.
but this change definitely helps.
Thx
Locutus
Delirium Tremens
Tier 4 Starbase, Tier 3 Embassy
http://dtfleet.com/
To my mind it will be bringing in a lot of people who have absolutely no respect for what we do, all those people in the threads in the general forum who said we are a "waste of time" and why would they ever want to just read someone's "fanwank" etc etc. The first change in the daily got rid of those people, but you can bet they'll be coming in huge numbers if they can make up to 46k dilithium a day.
What I can see is these players coming in droves and picking up the first mission they can find that doesn't have the red text, probably without even reading the mission description. God help those of us who haven't put in clearly where the mission starts. Then they'll just go and F through every dialogue, faceroll every mob and sprint to the end to do it all as fast as possible.
So then:
-Puzzle? wtf 1 star!
-Too much dialogue to F through? wtf 1 star!
-More than 2 maps to load? wtf 1 star!
AND on top of this the patch notes say nothing about bug fixes and lets face it if you look at the bug forum we have some serious problems:
-Shuttle noise? wtf 1 star!
-Boff pathing? wtf 1 star!
-Disappearing NPC? wtf 1 star!
I know some of you will say "just ignore them" and I'd be more than happy to except these will tank the overall mission ratings of you good and honest Foundry authors who made real story missions that are not for these grinders in the first place (which they don't give a TRIBBLE about). Your missions will fall to the bottom of the list and be hard to find for good honest players who really get what we're all about.
PLUS we'll start seeing missions again designed to be the minimum requirements for the daily, clogging up the system with the same TRIBBLE we were all so happy to see gone.
Trust me I do not like being this negative. If I'm wrong and this turns out as good for the Foundry as you all think it will I will be ecstatic and I'll go leave tips on all your missions.
My character Tsin'xing
The thing is that these folks who grind and grind and grind can still make more dil running two 15 minutes stfs (with the omega mark trade in for an additional 500 dil). They won't have to read or think or explore. They know exactly what needs to be done in a given amount of time. They don't have to traverse sector space to begin their grind.
I see this as rewarding folks seeking a different kind of content: story. I don't think we'll see an invasion of grinders. The "earn this!" PvE interface that they use has no foundry and the foundry interface doesn't explain how to earn the dilithium playing foundry. Not saying that this tribal knowledge is a good thing, but it's not exactly going to funnel the gen playerbase into the foundry. Rather it seems to give folks who enjoy story and know how to find missions an additional incentive to play ugc rather than farm snowballs.
Even I looked at that wrapper and thought, "My god, it's going to take me 3 hours." Now, I can say goodbye to grind and still contribute to my starbase. This is a great day for me. I'm probably never, ever going to play the repetitive Cryptic content again. I may not get 8000 dilithium a day, but I'm going to have fun just playing ugc and feel rewarded for it.
I have four VA and I'll find some decent length (read non-minimal time) mission to run for the Daily. Best case scenario will be finding a different one for each character that suits their character type (Tac, Eng, Sci) and current starship so to avoid grinding the same mission four times just to get the Daily completed.
Once that is done, since these toons are level capped, and I have already been through Nukara (mind numbingly boring after a short while), Deferi daily (almost as bad), what I will do is play one of the longer UGC missions. If I like that mission style and mechanics, I'll look to do other missions by the same author. This will keep things fairly fresh, still get the marks and dil to help out my fleet and not feel like a grind as much.
This is also my last workweek for the year, so I'll have plenty of time to get this rolling. I'm looking forward to seeing what the Foundry Authors are able to do with the mission toolset. Who knows, doing this might provide a creative spark that will cause me to try my hand at creating a mission or two. We'll see.
Until this change a grind type player never had any incentive to play a Foundry mission, but for 50 fleet marks instead of 75 Omega marks, if I am getting the same dilithium reward and spending the same amount of time I would otherwise in a STF then my whole group is excited, after all we now have legit alternatives to the same 8 STFs over and over.
he question though is what missions are there that fills that role? I'm in the 99% of players who have no idea what those missions are named.
Rules of Acquisition at Priority One
However, I'm willing to give this a shot and see how it tests. There is a fair chance those grinders will only go up to the 8k daily cap, if they do that, and will probably end up finding themselves in their own hidey-hole missions. The numbers on Cryptic's end will be the clincher.
If this does lead to something like KF's prediction, we all win.
((Also, a lot of us getting nailed by people speed running through our missions via the f key, if the reward was based on the actual time they spent in a mission, and that red text is just a warning if the avg says it's too low... wouldn't that solve the problem of speed running down our missions? If that isn't how it works already and people haven't noticed. We've only been at this a few weeks.))