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A Discussion Regarding Foundry Rewards, Conflicts and Other Important Foundry Topics
hippiejon
Member Posts: 1,581 Arc User
If you'd like to create another thread that is not going to cause flaming to occur (I mean, look at the title -- what do you expect?) with a better approach, feel free. And before this thread goes down the path I know it's going to go down on, /thread -Brandon
Challenge Accepted
A thread was started regarding the removal of rewards from the Foundry system.
I fully understand that there will be people who agree or disagree, but I believe that this idea merits some serious discussion.
IOR used to provide 1440 Dilithium , once a day for 3 missions.
This made the reward for playing Foundry not at all comparable to other places in the game.
Fleet Marks were added.
In a system that both requires an inordinate amount of Fleet Marks for progression, and where the clickie exploit (which was apparently our fault for not reporting it enough), this became a small daily source of FM for many people.
In order to both fix the clickies, and I believe inject both Dilithium and Fleet Marks into the player base, the IOR was changed to now just 1 mission, with the new addition of qualified 15 minute missions, repeatable every 30 minutes.
This is a grinders dream.
This is absolutely the opposite of what Dan Stahl, Brandon and all the Devs claim the Foundry was created for.
IF rewards are going to stay in the Foundry, I suggest the following.
Investigate Officer Reports should be returned to a daily repeatable, with a reward of 1440 Dilithium, and Fleet Marks.
Spotlight missions should have some sort of reward attached to them beyond the IOR daily. A random item box, which should include up to Level appropriate Very Rare Gear.
This is my attempt to create this discussion with a better approach.
Edit: Much better, thank you
I'll be passing this thread along to Stahl directly. Keep it civil, keep it constructive, keep it concise. Your feedback will be heard, whether someone posts that they are opposed or even have their own ideas -- we want to hear it all. -Brandon
Challenge Accepted
A thread was started regarding the removal of rewards from the Foundry system.
I fully understand that there will be people who agree or disagree, but I believe that this idea merits some serious discussion.
IOR used to provide 1440 Dilithium , once a day for 3 missions.
This made the reward for playing Foundry not at all comparable to other places in the game.
Fleet Marks were added.
In a system that both requires an inordinate amount of Fleet Marks for progression, and where the clickie exploit (which was apparently our fault for not reporting it enough), this became a small daily source of FM for many people.
In order to both fix the clickies, and I believe inject both Dilithium and Fleet Marks into the player base, the IOR was changed to now just 1 mission, with the new addition of qualified 15 minute missions, repeatable every 30 minutes.
This is a grinders dream.
This is absolutely the opposite of what Dan Stahl, Brandon and all the Devs claim the Foundry was created for.
IF rewards are going to stay in the Foundry, I suggest the following.
Investigate Officer Reports should be returned to a daily repeatable, with a reward of 1440 Dilithium, and Fleet Marks.
Spotlight missions should have some sort of reward attached to them beyond the IOR daily. A random item box, which should include up to Level appropriate Very Rare Gear.
This is my attempt to create this discussion with a better approach.
Edit: Much better, thank you
I'll be passing this thread along to Stahl directly. Keep it civil, keep it constructive, keep it concise. Your feedback will be heard, whether someone posts that they are opposed or even have their own ideas -- we want to hear it all. -Brandon Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
I think I like this approach as opposed to the other thread
Production Assistant & Art Director
Edit: Change of heart, based on feedback.
Never.
And I am not alone.
So what needs to happen is for the rewards to have more to do with the effort required to complete a mission. The problem with console-clickers wasn't that they were too quick (in fact, they were great projects of a type a novice might use to learn the basics of such a system) it was that there were three identical missions that triggered on the same console being clicked and they
And let me emphasize this
gave exactly the same reward as playing three hour-long epics.
Foundry missions should be rewarding, so they should absolutely provide dilithium, energy credits, expertise, and level-appropriate items, and they should be able to be any length at all.
And if I want to play them all day, there shouldn't be a penalty for that.
But the rewards need to be based on length, not tied to a minimum and not the same for a long mission as a short one.
So the solution, it seems to me, would be to discard the wrapper mission concept entirely and give awards per mission (with an appropriate cooldown) based in some way on their content, such as the average length calculation that seems to be currently used to qualify missions.
Oh, for what it's worth, the official storyline missions should probably award something that gives an incentive to play them too.
This.
Exactly This.
Let's face it, people don't do the IOR mission to experience great foundry missions. People do it to get dilithium and fleet marks. It's a great option for players who don't have the time to run an STF, FA or some of the other lengthier ways of getting these.
When the clicker missions were removed MANY fleets' progress was brought to a dead stop and some fleets died as a result. Caspian division ended up absorbing 2 smaller fleets who were adversely affected because of the change.
I can get behind the idea hippiejon is proposing as long as the mission qualification is reduced to 10 minutes and the requirement for fleet marks and dilithium is GREATLY reduced all across the game.
Granted, being that this is a text-only place of discussion, it can be easy to misread someone's intent with what they say since we can't see body expression, facial cues, etc., that are a part of face-to-face communication.
Ok, so with that said, here is my non-inflammatory list of possible solutions:
1.) Improve the UI to allow for sorting of grinder missions and story missions. From what I've read, this seems to be the most popular solution among the non-flamers on both sides of the debate. I understand there may be a lot of behind-the-scenes work by the dev's that may make this impractical, at least for the near future.
2.) Remove all rewards from Foundry missions, at least until a better means of sifting through the missions is found. I consider this to be a fairly draconian solution to the problem, but may lead to less hatred after the initial storm blows over.
3.) Return things to the way they were prior to the previous change and try to make some sort of peace between the sides. This is probably just a pie-in-the-sky dream of a solution.
4.) Nuke the Foundry. Obviously not a solution anyone wants, but if the whole thing is too far gone to salvage, it may be best to just cut our losses, deal with the aftermath and move on.
I realize that both sides are pretty heavily invested in their particular situations so there will be no easy solutions. Honestly, I really do think an improved sorting function in the UI is the way to go. If it can't be implemented immediately, then it should be put on the list for Season 8 (or whatever it's going to be called) or Season 9 at the latest.
This is Walter Cronkite, signing off...
Let's look at the issues:
Exploits -
I'll leave economy for the devs to figure out. If not working as intended, fix it. Just try not to break something else in the process, please {:0) (but the current 'passive until shot' will allow me to do something I wanted with less work, so that's good, but we still need true passive). but, Exploits need to be fixed because they are exploits. That's pretty simple.
Clutter of all kinds of missions, making it hard to find story versus grinder, combat only, etc. -
Add a selection box to foundry. Story Focused (words and combat) - Non-Combat - All combat - Test mission. Make it limited, but encompassing. Then when someone searches, they can select All Combat and get what they want. There would be no real incentive (aside from being a jackArmus) to incorrectly tag your mission.
Authors can also #hastag their missions with things like #puzzles #story #diplomatic or whatnot which can be searched for. This can be abused, but it can be done now and with no change to current systems (far as I know)
Rewards -
My opinion is leave them in. If I do a mission for Sulu and do a lot of talking and get my diplomatic on, I get in-game rewards. I should also get rewards for doing the same in Foundry, or for blowing TRIBBLE up, or for solving puzzles. I'm in the game, the game gives rewards, why make Foundry different? If they play a legitimate combat mission (exploit free) then why not get fleet marks like they would for shooting ship at their starbase? I'd not like it if I played featured episodes, as good as they are, but all I got was story. It's the same thing.
The word jackArmus is my new favorite thing to say.
S.S. Doff Lundgren
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
create a system where an author has to select his mission as a story mission or a combat patrol mission on creation (get everyone to manually republish their mission at the next big update. this will also filter out some of the old dead missions). these then slide into one of two tabs. everyone who wants to find quick, short grind missions can do so. everyone who wants story missions can do so as well. this stops people treading on each others toes as the first step.
make a difference between the two tabs. give the grind mission fleet marks and dilithium if you are not worried about how quickly people earn them and let them go about their business and grind as much as they like. its no skin of anybody's noes.
make the story tab rewards more attractive which is offset by the longer missions. perhaps add a goody bag that gives a random items, doff pack, boost, lock box key etc. players who then play these get a good story (hopefully) and a more juicy reward for their effort.
It lets people know where their favourite type of mission is located, its neater, and lets everyone do their own thing. grinds can play a couple of quick grind missions back to back, someone else can play one story mission and get an equivalent or better reward plus a good story.
First off, thank you for contributing to the discussion in a constructive way
Ok, so with that said, here is my non-inflammatory list of possible solutions:
This indeed seems that it would be the single best solution of all the solutions that have been discussed. It would require a great deal of work, however.
There is serious wisdom in this as a short term solution.
Not looking for a return to the way things were, because thus far, we have seen nothing that actually works come from the team at Cryptic. A new solution needs to be found, and a "peace" between all the people who are obviously very passionate about this would be the best way to make that happen.
Look, I am the first to admit that both sides of this argument went over the top.
Fine.
That's done.
Let's be over that.
As many people as have gotten themselves involved in this fiasco, with as much passion as we all have about it, putting our thinking together on a solution that works for everyone ... imagine what that could accomplish.
Yes, compromises would have to be made on all sides of the issue.
But lets answer some really basic questions here.
What do you want to get out of the Foundry ?
How can the Foundry community help support what it is the player base is looking for?
How can the community help support Foundry authors?
etc etc
A concise and honest discussion could work wonders.
Since I now Brandon is reading this thread.
Flakes, how about an In Game Open House roundtable about these things ?
I don't think we have reached that point yet.
All I am saying , is ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZC7sqImaM
I agree with this in principle, which is why I've long advocated for rewards. However, the implementation of the rewards systems has never matched this sentiment. The wrapper immediately led to the clickies for obvious reasons. Likewise, the minimum time criteria immediately led to short grinders for obvious reasons.
If the devs are incapable of adding in a rewards system that rewards a player more for playing an epic 90 minute story v. a short grinder, then all they are doing is privileging the short grinder over the 90 minute story.
It's the same story with the clickies. The clickies were privileged, before the community was blamed for not policing itself.
Both systems of rewards worked against the story-tellers, while working for players who needed stuffz in the least amount of time for the most amount of stuffz.
If there is no alternative to that trap, then I say remove the trap.
Yeah, I can see that. I think it's possible, somehow, but have to think about it for a while to come up with ideas.
S.S. Doff Lundgren
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Three different IORs
Light IOR (current rewards)
Medium IOR (better rewards)
Heavy Duty IOR (bestest of stuffz)
A foundry mission would fail into each category depending on it's average time of completion. A new disclaimer would be automatically attached to a mission, based on its play time.
If it doesn't qualify, it gets the red text. If it does qualify for one of the three categories of rewards:
"This mission fulfills the Heavy Duty IOR" There would need to be a way where the mission doesn't change categories while a player is playing it, based on its play time.
Maybe once every maintenance cycle, the average play time is calculated, instead of in real time.
I think hippyjon has the right idea- return the IOR back to daily (to keep the farming in check) and offer a 'bonus' to the spotlight play. To completely remove rewards for foundry play will slaughter incentive to play these missions and to suggest rewarding spotlight mission players the only reward from foundry missions will kill incentive for new authors to participate in mission creation. Not everyone is capable of creating missions at your level, and if rewards are offered ONLY for those missions then ONLY a handful of authors will 'own' the foundry.
Sorry to be blunt, but the attitude you convey will narrow the field of participation in authoring instead of widening it.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Kirksplat, I'm not sure this will work.
Unfortunately, I suspect that grinders will simply increase in length, or at least as far as people's inventories can contain without bursting, in order to make maximum rewards.
That's part of why I believe the solution to this is less in the rewards and more in the UI--or that at the least, any change in rewards MUST be accompanied by a change in the UI to allow the full separation of story and grinder missions. (We are hashing out possible solutions to this in the Tagging thread.)
That's not to say you have a bad idea by any means, but simply to raise the possibility that without a UI overhaul, story missions will continue to suffer no matter what the reward structure. Personally, I am not in favor of removing the rewards; I do not think you can convince players--even many story fans--to do something for nothing. But I think that restructuring the rewards alone has proven to be an incomplete solution. All we're going to do is move the goalposts for those with exploit missions, unless a comprehensive solution is taken.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Not a bad idea. Still doesn't prevent someone from sitting idle in a mission designed for people to sit idle in, but if dilithium is a time based currency ... I dunno. I still think an AFK mission is not how it is intended to work.
I'm not entirely sure that the afk grinders are an exploit, as Dungeon Defenders has a mode where you set up a defense and let it go. Doing the same with boffs isn't a terrible idea, but if the goal is 'lewts' and not 'set up a defense to meet the challenge' then it's just an afk mission to reach a timer with loot.
S.S. Doff Lundgren
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Well, we're about to see the spread of a new kind of AFK grinder, which is far more reliable than boff grinders.
The only thing a player has to do is not go idle. We'll see how rapidly this new type of grinder takes off.
It doesn't matter if boffs are well-equipped or if a player even has an impulse engine. If he/she can just make it to that ESD wall panel... rewards.
I personally think the missions where you are supposed to just start and let it run until time expires are an exploit. I think there should be at least some effort on your part.
However, if the timers were set correctly, maybe it's something that could be lived with. Say you get 1440 dil for 90 minutes of "play". Since dil is supposed to be a time based currency, the person doing a 90 minute AFK mission is not going to be able to do anything else until said mission is complete. Yes, I know you could run it on different machines and other things to get around that, but I don't think the majority of people have the hardware or technical expertise to do that, so I doubt it would be a major hit on the game economy.
Maybe have a sub-timer that kills the mission if no input is received for 10 minutes or something.
You only need two tabs, two sections to the foundry. Union and non-union.
Call them whatever you like.
Anybody that wants to be listed in the union section and have their work be thought of as
art can submit that work to the player-custodians of said group. This group could automatically include anybody that's been spotlighted and they could vote on other worthy authors as original panelists and would grow when a new author has his/her work accepted the first time. It won't matter what type of mission it is, only if it's approved as true to the union standards by a minimum number of his peers. Also, anything listed in this section may only be voted on by other members of the union, (authors). So missions would have ratings more in line with what you would see on Jupiter Files where they've been analyzed.
The other tab/section of the foundry can be for everybody else. Any author of any type of mission who doesn't care how their material is perceived by other authors and is willing to have the general playing public give them their star rating.
You wouldn't need to change anything else. The artistic folk would have their own section where their work could only be judged by other authors of their club. Even the grinders in this section would meet their ethical standards.
I don't know why there would be any complaints if you did this. The artsy folks would have their own place insulated against angry mobs, and would be rated by people they feel are their equals. The average TRIBBLE player could simply choose what mood he's in. Do I play a real story tonight from the Union "hall of fame" section, or do I look for a means of farming in the non-union area?
Don't touch rewards, let players decide what they're in the mood for from these less
polluted lists.
You're not getting it.
I understand that you are mad.
Please don't use the thread to subtley work in jabs, and extremely subtle name calling along with the meat of your idea.
Now as to the idea.
You are suggesting what many before you have, which is a seperation of combat and non combat oriented missions. So we can assume that you have some agreement with that idea.
As to the way you present it, with the subtle insinuations and disdain.
Leave it behind please.
If you can't. Please stay away until you can.
There is actually the possibility for progress here, if we can start to leave the name calling and disdain behind us and work toward a solution.
Thanks for your opinion. Seriously, Brandon has already told us that Dan is watching this thread for potential solutions. That's what this is about.
All ideas are welcome here.
Have a good day Man
Edit to Add : If my interpretation of your intent was not correct, I apologize. It is just the way I read what you write above. Text only communication is very difficult to judge intent.
On every point.
And I was calm when I wrote it.
Take a deep breath, I'm not your enemy.
I proposed giving serious authors more control of their environment.
More later
peace
Dstahl described a rewards system as (paraphrasing) "Now that is something we're actually working on..." He then described a system we'd get in January. It is not the system that we got in December, a few days after that interview was posted.
So, is the system that we got in Dec. the same as talked about by Dan? Or, was it a temporary measure while a different system is being designed?
Dstahl endorsed the idea that a longer missions should give better rewards. So, the system he described is different than what we got with the standard reviews for any mission that qualifies, regardless of its length.
Is there something being done, but delayed into Feb.? Or was it delivered early, and this is what we got?
I return the favor. Calm Down Bro. Removing rewards now after the long battle to get them is crazy talk.
What I would love to hear is how Dan thinks he's going to manage this dilemma in Neverwinter which I assume will be magnified by at least two. Isnt NW mostly foundry, with little Cryptic missions required to be made?
The solution is Cryptic must trust Foundry authors to manage this part of the game since its obvious they arent going to hire people to check every mission. And they need to start paying players dilithium to be trusted. SOMEONE human has to manage foundry content. Its obvious no magic programed equation is going to work without exploiters finding ways around it.
For example, certain trusted foundry authors are given instant reward activated publishing rights. So if they have one spotlighted mission or three quality published missions, any future mission they publish gets instant rewards and shows up foundry reward content. This is standard rewards publishing. Spotlighted missions can offer the sweet mk XII loot. These authors, guys like Alimac, Kirkfat, Havraha, etc are given this publishers responsibility and are also given watchers status. A watcher can be people appointed by Brandon who may not publish their own missions, but can be trusted to activate rewards on a foundry mission that isnt exploiting anywhere, people like Terrilynn Shull. Pay these watchers X dilithium for every mission they review. Yes Cryptic, you must pay watchers SOMETHING. Since dilithium costs are so stinking high, dilithium salary is a good start. Reward privileged authors will turn that reviewer salary into missions anyways.
And Brandon watches the Watchers. If a watcher signs off on a mission to activate standard rewards, their digital signature appears with the mission. If an author, or other watcher, or player feel a watcher abused his privilege, they report it, Brandon sees it, and if they promoted an exploiting mission, they are permabanned from watcher status and dilithium pay. If a privileged author goes rogue and makes something exploity, they are banned 6 months from their instant reward publishing status. Only Brandon bans and removes privileges.
Dan, you have to trust trustworthy players or Neverwinter will fold if you dont trust anyone.
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
Submitting to player policing should be the cost of being placed in a different, more artistic-minded side of the foundry where grinders would not pollute the list.
That won't happen if it's a voluntary grouping.
Personally, I like the idea of making wrapper rewards more sensitive to the amount of time and effort actually spent doing a mission. There's got to be some kind of metric that would work out.
-Morgan.
I thought the authors were writing for the joy of it, and just wanted to remain visible in a list, not dictate how everyone should act. Why do you care what rewards I get? I don't understand.
If your audience is too small, that's not an excuse to burn down the theater. Decide if it's worth your time to write and if you get joy from it. That should be the motivation.
On the "Project" page in the Foundry Editor there is, beneath the Mission Description, a largely vestigial "Notes" section that no one uses or needs. I made lots of notes when doing missions but did it on paper which I could actually look at while in the editor.
Get rid of this and use the space for author created tags. You would enter them (whatever tag you wanted) and have them separated by a semicolon. These entries become searchable in the existing Foundry UI with a radio button called "Search Tags."
If "Search Tags" is checked, whatever you put in the search field is directed to this (and only this) section. This will allow the player looking for a certain type of mission to get just those types of missions and the tags could (as stated above) be anything.
EXAMPLES:
* I like to play as a mirror universe Fed. I know those missions are out there but don't know what they are called or how to find them. I type "mirror" and I now have a list of all the mirror universe missions in the Foundry.
* I see my KDF Gorn as a separatist who hates the Empire. I type "Gorn separatist" and I have a list of those.
*I want to do simple space combat mission or a ground combat one, or a mixed one. Easy to sort them.
* I want to do a diplomacy mission but I only know the names of one or two of them. I can now find all of them.
* I want a Klingon war mission, or a Romulan one, or a Ferengi one, and so on. Whatever I am looking for I can get at quickly and easily and don't have to wade through thousands of titles looking for it.
Not only would it separate the story missions from the grinders, it would allow people to find the TYPE of story or grinder mission I want. With this ability far more people would play foundry missions because they could play what they want without having to do an unreasonable amount of research. It adds functionality, not removes it, and doesn't panelize anyone for making any type of mission.
BENEFITS:
* There is no impetus for attacking what I don't want to see on the list--I won't see it anyway.
* Rating will become (more) fair since I would be rating the mission on its own merits and not a desire to push certain things onto the top of the list.
* It will encourage more people to create Foundry missions to fill-in the gaps they find in what they want to play.
* New missions will get out of review much quicker since they will be seen and part of much shorter lists. Right now almost nothing gets out of review (even by established authors) without "Rumble" or "Farm" in their titles.
* Lists generated in this way will be varied and far more missions will be noticed. Right now anything not in the top 20 or so ever gets looked at--yet another issue (which has been lost in the heated arguments going on elsewhere) solved as a bonus.
* Minimal amount of work involved on Cryptic's end so it could be done fairly easily.