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Something Needs to Be Done
hippiejon
Member Posts: 1,581 Arc User
We can't even have a front page blurb about past spotlight missions being respotlighted at this point without those who are clearly griefing the entire foundry community at this point, coming in and having yet another dig.
They have been allowed to make the STO Forums,and now front page articles on the website a caustic and hateful place for authors to try and visit.
They are arranging in game mass bombings of 1 star ratings on peoples missions.
I'm done.
Take your high road and shove it.
I probably can't get my stupid spotlight mission pulled to be unpublished. Whatever.
I've withdrawn from foundry challenge #6.
I will no longer be publishing any missions.
I will continue to watch, with interest, and if such a time comes that steps have been taken to improve the situation around here, and the situation is indeed improved, I will probably come back to it.
Until Then ... Later
(this is not an I quit thread. I will still be playing the game.)
They have been allowed to make the STO Forums,and now front page articles on the website a caustic and hateful place for authors to try and visit.
They are arranging in game mass bombings of 1 star ratings on peoples missions.
I'm done.
Take your high road and shove it.
I probably can't get my stupid spotlight mission pulled to be unpublished. Whatever.
I've withdrawn from foundry challenge #6.
I will no longer be publishing any missions.
I will continue to watch, with interest, and if such a time comes that steps have been taken to improve the situation around here, and the situation is indeed improved, I will probably come back to it.
Until Then ... Later
(this is not an I quit thread. I will still be playing the game.)
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Comments
Yes. I know - my mission have started to suffer the same fate.
I spent months on my series too, only to now be faced with griefers "Too $%^& long", "Ok", "Toooo long", "Toooo difficult" etc etc.
Its very disheartening to say the least. I've tried disclaimers, warnings, prompts - yet they still go ahead and rate it after I informed them of what they would be getting into.
Personally they should get rid of the rating system all together.
Every social media in the world allows rating approval. YouTube, Facebook, Linkedin. - it you do not like a comment or find it offensive you can opt to not have it displayed.
People could argue that this would lead to people only showing good comments.
Yes, well in the real world that's how things work. In any situations, where one finds oneself showing off your skills or resume, you show the good stuff....
That said I warned everyone several times why nerfing the clickies was a bad idea. I warned that you did not want grinders playing foundry missions. No one listened.
Human nature. The reward, or experience, that is offered for an activity will attract a particular type of person. If the reward is simply the experience itself you attract those who wish to enjoy said experience. If the reward is a gindy/farmer type reward you attract hose who enjoy getting the maximum reward for the least amount of time/effort.
I say once again Cryptic, hire someone with a psychology or sociology background or continue to make these mistakes. Your call. And no, a data annalist who pulls random TRIBBLE statistics from a data base with no ability to interpret what they represent is not a valid replacement for the above.
ive found the in game community much more friendly and much more appreciative of missions and authors. if you take the reviews themselves they tend to be positive. its the forums that get nastier but its the thousands in game that matter.
also as annoying as it is to see all this, most people are not stupid. they will see the 1 star review with the THIS is *%$&^ and realise that its either written by some kid or someone with an axe to grind and just ignore it, while paying attention to the thoughtful and well written responses.
The problem is the incentives currently encourage people to come to the Foundry to grind out resources (dilithium, fleet marks, etc). The Foundry should never offer a faster way of gathering resources than some other part of the game, no matter how optimized a mission is for doing so.
The rewards for playing Foundry missions should always be noticeably inferior to some other method of gaining resources, perhaps by about 20%. The rewards should provide a decent return for those who already enjoy playing stories, but they should not motivate people who want to maximize rewards to come in and distort what the Foundry is about.
The people who want to grind may be correct that a majority of the player base may not care about stories, but the problem is that those type of people should not be coming to the Foundry. The Foundry is for the minority who want stories, just like other parts of the game cater to different types of players.
In the end, stories require authors, and it's going to discourage a lot of people from bothering with the Foundry if their efforts are hidden beneath simple "Kill 25X" missions. This is going to be true for both STO and NW, so if some method of encouraging stories and discouraging grinders cannot be found, the resources going into developing the Foundry might as well just go elsewhere.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Twitter | Blog | Original Join Date: Dec 2007 | Gaming Setup | Raptr Profile | Gamer DNA
The opinions expressed in my posts are my own views and do not reflect on any other entity(s) or person(s) I may or may not represent at the time.
On a side note, the entire rating and search UI is flawed to the core. Or rather, I may say that it is a TRIBBLE poor, cheap as dirt solution. 30 mins of work and zero creativity usually result these kind of disasters...
I outlined a constructive plan to solve this issue, then they blew the forums, so I can't and won't quote it.
I know, that's a bit idealistic, especially as cryptic will nerf that as well.
In regards to comments, I really don't see why it can not be designed so that comments have to be approved by the author of the foundry mission prior to publication?! Most websites have this option. (i.e. YouTube, Blogger, etc...) Especially as pointed out earlier, there are children actually authoring these missions and inevitably will have their parents supervising said comments as well.
This is as much a family game as it is an opportunity to attract new people to Star Trek. People who want to behave a certain way can just as well go play Eve. :rolleyes:
The real issue is the negative / caustic/ hateful culture that has formed.
1 star me all you want. Not really bothered by that.
The current rating/tip system is desperately in need of an overhaul anyway.
Cryptic have, by inaction, allowed these idiots to ruin the forums and the now the main page articles.
They refuse to just come out and state what the Foundry is intended for and What will be considered exploits, allowing these pea brains to believe that obvious exploits are intended game features.
They allow the belief that ANY small subset of players could influence the company and Dev team to the sort of patch that happened last week to fix the exploit.
We demonized the exploits. Until personal attacks started from the cheater community our rage was directed at the missions. Not the people making them. These folks have started a campaign of personal attacks against a number of authors.
To be clear.
I can feel a change coming.
I can tell that Brandon, and others actually care about the Foundry, and would like to find some pleasant way to get this resolved. I truly wish them the best of luck.
I wonder, what sort of profit margin Cryptic/PWE has with this game? If it's thin enough, it may very well be that ANY small subset of players could influence the company, as alienating ANY small subset of players would quickly take PWE from making money to bleeding it.
Mind you, this sort of problem is hardly unique to STO - it goes a long way toward explaining the cult of the "lowest common denominator" in any number of endeavors. In STO's case, the lowest common denominator is the grinders.
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
I agree with this post, but I'd go even further.
I'd like to return to a time when there was a complete disconnect between the Foundry and what this game has become. This rewards system is privileging a MMO style of game play where players seek out the most X for the least amount of Y.
The Foundry should be about stories for the sake of stories, not for the sake of filling a bucket.
Actually Cryptic is making money by saving money. There is a direct correlation between story foundry missions and Cryptic development time. As story foundry missions increase, the amount of time Cryptic must spend on story development decreases proportionately. Multi-episode foundry jaunts have replaced Featured Episodes. While authors continue to churn out missions, Cryptic is lowering overhead by paying their employees to work on another aspect of the game than new Featured Episodes or mission arcs.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
This right here ^.
I'd love to see the rewards stay for the Foundry (maybe once a day?) so that folks who like story content can get a reward for their time spent, but making official content more attractive for grinding (STFs, PvP matches, etc) would certainly take care of the Foundry grinder-mission issue.
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
You have an excellent attitude.
Such a departure from the complaining foundry authors.
Something else that needs to change is the name calling from both sides. "Whiny authors" and "entitled grinders" both need to understand that both sides have legitimate concerns. Name calling will just turn into more name calling which will not help any legitimate discussion.
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
Thank You, Zorbane.
This is exactly the opinion I am trying to raise in myself.
I refer anyone with any opinion on the matter to this post.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=7847311&postcount=10
Let's start talking about solutions instead of putting all this energy into fighting with each other. Fights like this are counter productive.
I'm done with name calling and stupid fights about whats the right kind of play and who believes who is entitled to what , where and why. Anyone who actually wants to productively join in a discussion about how to improve the Foundry experience are welcome to join that other thread.
I am requesting that the mods shut this thread down.
It is an invitation to more bitterness between people.
I wrote it early this morning before I'd had my cup of Earl Grey, Hot.
peace
please join the other thread for constructive discussion where we're done calling each other names and actually trying to figure things out.
Let this thread die.
My character Tsin'xing
1) Foundry authors make peace. All of them. Name-calling and "my needs are more important than your needs" get us less than nowhere.
2) Get rid of the recent nerfs made to the Foundry. Changing "Timid Creature" fixed nothing, it just amplified the general bitterness of the issue.
3) Either abolish Foundry rewards, or make them inferior to those of devote grind missions. That way the grinders are busy grinding in the designated areas, and story authors can craft stories without worrying about reviews complaining about length and content.
"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
This I 100% agree with. This situation really has gotten out of control. There is no need for people to be so abusive towards each other and to shout down or bury productive discussions.
I disagree with this; I think one should have to work for one's rewards. But I am NOT for eliminating grinders. I mean, when I have a new build to test, that's the kind of mission I'll need to see just how much I can handle coming at me all at once, without messing up an STF team during the learning curve.
I'm not even sure changing the rewards is necessary. I really think that the biggest problem is the UI and the fact that grinders and story missions are on the same list and rating system. Separating them so that people can see which is which and not view one list cluttered up with missions they don't want and are no longer tempted to ue the rating system to sort punitively would solve it. Want story? Click this tab. Want a grinder? Click this one instead.
Some of us have been hashing out how that might look in the Tagging thread.
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.
I'm not even going to go into the fact the rest of the game is just about grinding. I wish someone besides PWE had bought Cryptic at this point. There are other F2P models that have proven successful. That's all I'll say about that.
Here's an analogy of what I feel has happened to the Foundry. The town symphony placed an ad in the paper advertising free drinks. In response, a bunch of bikers showed up and started drinking, fighting, belching, revving their engines and otherwise making a nuisance of themselves. The bikers then claimed that the symphony was a great place, but that no one wants to listen to classical music, so instead heavy metal should be played. The problem here wasn't that no one wanted to hear a symphony, it was that the advertising strategy and incentive was not matched to the proper crowd.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
Option 2 is the only thing that will calm the majority of the player-base down that is ticked off and attacking the Forum Authors.
I think changing the rewards is absolutely essential. There are always going to be problems as long as long as shorter missions are privileged over longer missions and that is how it currently is. The ideal mission is not one second longer than 15 minutes, and has nothing but combat. That provides the most rewards. Anything longer or less combat intensive is automatically inferior in terms of rewards for time spent.
People didn't play the clickies because they thought they were amazing, but they provided the best return on your time. We're just one small step removed from that now. The reward structure has been inherently unfair from the very start. The rewards, not the player base, are responsible for the type of missions we're seeing. Don't doubt for a second that if a 2 hour mission gave better reward/time than the current grinders that people would be playing them instead. They might not like them any more than the clickies, but they would play them. It has nothing to do with the missions themselves, it's the system that is responsible for what people are choosing to play.
In addition, I think its dangerous to have the Foundry be on the cutting edge of grinding. It maximizes the incentive to try to exploit the system. If you make it just a little bit less efficient you take away much of that impetus. If we don't back away from the edge, the Foundry features are going to constantly end up getting nerfed in order to try to stop all the abusive behavior that continually occurs, and it's going to be worse for all of us.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
There's like a handful of you guys in here. Most of the player base has never even laid eyes on the forums.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
That negativity will continue till its un-nerfed...Sad but true.. However even though I stated in a few threads how I feel I will not be rating up nor down on any of those missions as I do in fact read the descriptions and decide from there if I want to play it or not.
Putting them under separate tabs means it doesn't matter which type is higher--jusy be clicking the correct tab, you'd only see missions of the type you want rated against each other, not against missions of the other type.
Agreed that the in-game economy is messed up. Other inputs need to be devised by Cryptic--AND more content as opposed to grinds.
I disagree with calling grinders the "wrong" crowd. But I would suggest creating a separate venue for that metal concert--so both can have what they want without disturbing each other.
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.
They're the wrong crowd because they are motivated by nothing other than maximizing how fast they get resources. Just wait and see, if the rewards aren't reduced so the Foundry isn't the best way to grind it's going to be a revolving door of nerf after nerf.
With a UGC system there are always going to be ways to exploit things if you're motivated enough to find them. We've already basically lost the timid creatures because of that. The next thing that can be nerfed is having friendly groups help you fight enemies. Then we can remove invisible walls because they can allow afk missions by having enemy groups fight each other, and not the player.
It's better to make it slightly less optimal to use the Foundry for grinding before we lose half the functionality due to a few people abusing it (or they will claim they're the majority).
Grinders and people who like combat missions are not the same thing. Combat missions have been there all along. There were those who liked them, but overall no one played them anymore than any other Foundry missions. It's not like there was this huge unsatisfied demand for them that suddenly was met. The grinders didn't care until they learned they could get rewards faster than anywhere else. That's all the true grinders care about. They couldn't give a damn about what type of mission it is or anything else. If they could get a better return in an STF or Tau Dewa they would be gone tomorrow.
So, I'm pretty firmly convinced that grinders should not be encouraged to use the Foundry. I see this problem as being about a lot more than combat vs story. People who want combat missions, to test builds, or just because they enjoy them, are more than welcome, but that type of person is distinct in motivation from the grinders.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.