Nobody can find my missions, except for a custom search

kirksplat · July 2013

Hey Frost, could you please communicate with us on this? The "top-rated" lists shows 50 missions, with no way to browse further. It's the same with the "hot" list. Only 1 of my missions can be found because it is a spotlight. Otherwise folks need to know to search my author name.

Why? Why is each category only showing the top 50 missions in that category? There are hundreds of missions, if not thousands, not getting plays because... well, how could someone know that it's out there?

Please tell us why.

designationxr377 · July 2013

I want to second my concern about this. The top 50 missions only limits wider searching to those authors people know. There is a large amount of content out there from people who aren't in the top slots or have spotlights.

Pretty sure you'll say "Yep, it's a bug, and it's on the list" but I'm cool with that.

painkillerjayne · July 2013

Actually, it may be worse than that...

I did a search by author last night and had only one mission come up. If I'm remembering correctly it was like part 6 or something. I wanted to try out this person's missions, but I'm not gonna start with part 6.

I'm pretty sure HippieJohn has more that one mission on the Fed side. Are the rest just not republished yet, or am I actually not getting missions that are there to show up on a search?

commandermic · July 2013

painkillerjayne wrote: »

Actually, it may be worse than that...

I did a search by author last night and had only one mission come up. If I'm remembering correctly it was like part 6 or something. I wanted to try out this person's missions, but I'm not gonna start with part 6.

I'm pretty sure HippieJohn has more that one mission on the Fed side. Are the rest just not republished yet, or am I actually not getting missions that are there to show up on a search?

i remember someone wrote at the german foundry forum that there was a little change on some maps for the maximum height were objects can be placed. so there are missions with objects that are out of that maximum height, and these missions won't be republished till the author has corrected that and republished manually. i don't know if this is cause of this issue, but it may be one possibility.

captainhunter1 · July 2013

I'll throw my vote in here as well regarding this issue.

It's a terrible blow to STO that one of it's coolest features, the Foundry, is currently hamstrung by this very limited display of missions.

As Kirkfat said above, there are hundreds and hundreds of missions available for play and yet the 'system' is currently limiting it to showing only 50.

And as I said in another thread, If I were a typical player (only ever clicking on the 'Spotlight' and "Browse All" buttons), I would think the Foundry offered very little content to the game.

There are only a small fraction of Foundry players that are even aware that a 'Search" function exists, and those of us who do, can only search for things we know about (like authors names or specific mission names...we've already played). So, sorry new missions or authors - - you are doomed to never be played, as no one can see you.

We need to get back the ability to see and scroll through a large number of missions, just like we had before the last big update.

kirksplat · July 2013

A part of me hopes that they intentionally did this when most missions were broken, just like they severely restrict the hot list when there is a rampant exploit.

I really hope that it's not working as intended. It was hard enough to get plays under the old system, and the rewards system made it even harder for new authors.

My god, just look at the "top rated" on kdf side. 32/50 are grinders and farm missions. So, for the average player who uses the Foundry UI as it's intended, there are exactly 28 good story missions for a kdf player. There is simply no way for he/she to know what else is out there.

That's the Foundry's first impression: A ton of grinders and farm lootz 101s.

Edit: Also, looking that the list Fed-side, I see tons of grinders and not much from many of the most well-known authors like alimac30, Admiral Murphy, etc.

I can't find "City of the Polmar Rae" or "The Spirits of Ramok Nor" which are arguably the two most famous Foundry missions. However, it's very easy to find "loot-O-matic 3000" and "Farm 101 ACD." Let's see, how about Revo's "The Worst of All Worlds," which had 20k plays and dominated the old lists... it's nowhere to be found.

commandermic · July 2013

kirksplat wrote: »

A part of me hopes that they intentionally did this when most missions were broken, just like they severely restrict the hot list when there is a rampant exploit.

I really hope that it's not working as intended. It was hard enough to get plays under the old system, and the rewards system made it even harder for new authors.

My god, just look at the "top rated" on kdf side. 32/50 are grinders and farm missions. So, for the average player who uses the Foundry UI as it's intended, there are exactly 28 good story missions for a kdf player. There is simply no way for he/she to know what else is out there.

That's the Foundry's first impression: A ton of grinders and farm lootz 101s.

Edit: Also, looking that the list Fed-side, I see tons of grinders and not much from many of the most well-known authors like alimac30, Admiral Murphy, etc.

I can't find "City of the Polmar Rae" or "The Spirits of Ramok Nor" which are arguably the two most famous Foundry missions. However, it's very easy to find "loot-O-matic 3000" and "Farm 101 ACD." Let's see, how about Revo's "The Worst of All Worlds," which had 20k plays and dominated the old lists... it's nowhere to be found.

totally agree. it's bad to see so much grinders at the list. but i think that is not only the problem of the new limited list, it's also a problem of the new weighted rating. i don't know well about what it was like at the english missions list before compared to what it is now, but at the german missions list i see now more grinders at the top of the list than before.
as far as i see grinders are getting much players fast, and get mostly good ratings, too. for instance two of my story missions where at the top 20 of the list, as well as there were some other story missions there. but now they are not at the list anymore, the top 20 are almost only grinders.
so now i really worried about this...i think if they won't change that, some day we will have list that shows only grinder missions....
that's the last we need, i prefer much more story missions, we have already to much grinders.

skyline475 · July 2013

I'll go ahead and /sign this too.

I know most of this game has already turned into a grind fest. Please don't make our mission with actual story miss out to the ones that are just kill, kill, kill....

robeasom · July 2013

I sign this
As I was wanting to make a foundry mission but don't see the point if it won't be played because it can't be seen because of Grinders

thunderfoot · July 2013

A real shame what kirkfat reported. What should be one of STO's greatest strengths, the ability for fans to produce and publish missions for other fans to use, is being hamstrung to the point of uselessness. I went and tried using the Search function in the Foundry just before coming here. One(1!) story based mission came up. All of the rest were simply loot grinders. Depressing to say the least. Newer players miss out on some great stories and missions. Which many will never know even exist. Unless someone tells them about these now hidden jewels.

Two Suggestions which may help.

1) Authors, could you please post a list here of your missions? And can we please have the Mods Sticky that thread? I know it is inconvenient and I don't like it either because it is a very poor work around. But it is the best I could come up at the time. If I have part of the name, I should be able to beat the Foundry Search into submission enough where it gives me what I want.

2) Dev Team, could we please adapt the current Foundry Search to something similar to the Exchange Search? With Categories? Grinders, Story Arcs, Authors by Alphabetical Listing might be a place to start. I know, I know. There are a ton of things which need to be addressed first and as soon as you can you'll get around to checking this out.

Is there a thread somewhere where players can post reviews? I'd be more than willing to help out when and where I can with any of this.

nenfis · July 2013

Good.

Search for months not working properly and has been reported and is on the list to sort it out. When finished neverwinter, neverwinter foundry, selling the product to another company, as they did with STO maybe bother to repair hundreds of errors foundry, by now it endure.

A greeting.

skyline475 · July 2013

thunderfoot006 wrote: »

A real shame what kirkfat reported. What should be one of STO's greatest strengths, the ability for fans to produce and publish missions for other fans to use, is being hamstrung to the point of uselessness. I went and tried using the Search function in the Foundry just before coming here. One(1!) story based mission came up. All of the rest were simply loot grinders. Depressing to say the least. Newer players miss out on some great stories and missions. Which many will never know even exist. Unless someone tells them about these now hidden jewels.

Two Suggestions which may help.

1) Authors, could you please post a list here of your missions? And can we please have the Mods Sticky that thread? I know it is inconvenient and I don't like it either because it is a very poor work around. But it is the best I could come up at the time. If I have part of the name, I should be able to beat the Foundry Search into submission enough where it gives me what I want.

2) Dev Team, could we please adapt the current Foundry Search to something similar to the Exchange Search? With Categories? Grinders, Story Arcs, Authors by Alphabetical Listing might be a place to start. I know, I know. There are a ton of things which need to be addressed first and as soon as you can you'll get around to checking this out.

Is there a thread somewhere where players can post reviews? I'd be more than willing to help out when and where I can with any of this.

Those are good ideas. I especially like the second one. I once saw someone's idea to have a subscriber type option where players can subscribe to authors to be notified about new/ updated missions. Kind of like youtube's model.

As far as your last question, there are a few that do reviews and post them in the Mission database area of the foundry section. To name a few there is evil70th, catstarsto, aswell as a few others. If you feel like doing reviews just go ahead and create a thread asking for authors mission's and their mission ST-ID's. If you need a template I'd just ask evil or catstar if you could use theirs? They're pretty nice guys so I'm sure it wouldn't be an issue.

There is also StarbaseUGC.. which I've never been successful in setting up an account there to get my missions reviewed/ sponsored. So my missions are still kind of left in the back round, but now that the series is finished I plan on trying to at lest try to market them better.

commandermic · July 2013

skyline475 wrote: »

Those are good ideas. I especially like the second one. I once saw someone's idea to have a subscriber type option where players can subscribe to authors to be notified about new/ updated missions. Kind of like youtube's model.

subscribe to authors would be a great option. categories for foundry missions would also be a good idea, but i don't have much hope that we ever get this. as far as i know cryptics intentions on the foundry, they developed it for story missions while they see grinders as a kind of a tolerated exploit.

crypticfrost · July 2013

Thanks for posting. I'll see what I can do.

nagorak · July 2013

kirksplat wrote: »

Edit: Also, looking that the list Fed-side, I see tons of grinders and not much from many of the most well-known authors like alimac30, Admiral Murphy, etc.

I can't find "City of the Polmar Rae" or "The Spirits of Ramok Nor" which are arguably the two most famous Foundry missions. However, it's very easy to find "loot-O-matic 3000" and "Farm 101 ACD." Let's see, how about Revo's "The Worst of All Worlds," which had 20k plays and dominated the old lists... it's nowhere to be found.

It honestly makes you question whether to even bother with the Foundry. Nothing is being done to counter the proliferation of quickly made grinder missions at the expense of story missions that take tens or hundreds of hours to make.

And now it's been made even worse. I enjoyed the Foundry, but I'm starting to have difficulty ignoring the writing on the wall.

The real issue is that we have some people, like Frost, who help us out as part of their job, but it's pretty clear that the upper echelons just don't give a damn.

thunderfoot · July 2013

crypticfrost wrote: »

Thanks for posting. I'll see what I can do.

Glad to see this. Hope it moves forward with some speed. There are some very talented story tellers amongst the players of this game who have given generously of their free time to share something special with the rest of us. They deserve better than to be hidden away behind yet another in an endless series of cheaply earned loot drop missions. Don't get me wrong, I like loot drops as much as the next player. However, using the Foundry more as a way to get rich quick or as a alternative to an arcade shoot'em up rather than to tell good quality Star Trek stories seems a violation of the spirit of the intent. I like to think of the Foundry missions as the true Endgame content of STO. Wish there was a way for others to see this as well.

skyline475 · July 2013

thunderfoot006 wrote: »

Glad to see this. Hope it moves forward with some speed. There are some very talented story tellers amongst the players of this game who have given generously of their free time to share something special with the rest of us. They deserve better than to be hidden away behind yet another in an endless series of cheaply earned loot drop missions. Don't get me wrong, I like loot drops as much as the next player. However, using the Foundry more as a way to get rich quick or as a alternative to an arcade shoot'em up rather than to tell good quality Star Trek stories seems a violation of the spirit of the intent. I like to think of the Foundry missions as the true Endgame content of STO. Wish there was a way for others to see this as well.

I'm with you on that one. Marketing the foundry as for end-game content would certainly increase the number of "story-goers" that leave after playing all the vanilla missions. Maybe if PWE would start advertising the STO foundry like they do the NW foundry we might get some better attention :X

kirksplat · July 2013

nagorak wrote: »

It honestly makes you question whether to even bother with the Foundry. Nothing is being done to counter the proliferation of quickly made grinder missions at the expense of story missions that take tens or hundreds of hours to make.

And now it's been made even worse. I enjoyed the Foundry, but I'm starting to have difficulty ignoring the writing on the wall.

The real issue is that we have some people, like Frost, who help us out as part of their job, but it's pretty clear that the upper echelons just don't give a damn.

I wish I could offer a counter-argument. I think that they probably care, but it's the lowest of lowest of priorities, kind of like some of them actually care about pvp. Whether anything is put on a schedule or assigned to somebody's workbench is a different story.

Btw, I can't find a nagorak mission, without a custom search.

nagorak · July 2013

kirksplat wrote: »

I wish I could offer a counter-argument. I think that they probably care, but it's the lowest of lowest of priorities, kind of like some of them actually care about pvp. Whether anything is put on a schedule or assigned to somebody's workbench is a different story.

Btw, I can't find a nagorak mission, without a custom search.

Yeah, I sort of figured as much. Oh well.

pardusian141 · July 2013

thunderfoot006 wrote: »

Glad to see this. Hope it moves forward with some speed. There are some very talented story tellers amongst the players of this game who have given generously of their free time to share something special with the rest of us. They deserve better than to be hidden away behind yet another in an endless series of cheaply earned loot drop missions. Don't get me wrong, I like loot drops as much as the next player. However, using the Foundry more as a way to get rich quick or as a alternative to an arcade shoot'em up rather than to tell good quality Star Trek stories seems a violation of the spirit of the intent. I like to think of the Foundry missions as the true Endgame content of STO. Wish there was a way for others to see this as well.

I'm with you with that comment. I've made a few foundry missions in my lifetime but they've been drowned out by the recent grindfest that the foundry has turned into. Not only that but my main foundry mission Qo'nos attack, was hammered on by foundry updates. I'm working on a sequel for that mission but I feel that it too shall be drowned out by the grinds... I ended up pulling the rest of my missions off because of the updates and the inability to get in and repair them.

thedukeofrock · July 2013

We are indeed in a sad, sad state of affairs. As Kirkfat stated (Kirksplat), now we cannot even see the work of the great Nagorak without a custom search.

Forgive me if I sound pessimistic, but this will eventually cause a huge foundry fallout for a lot of the real authors as bad as the infamous Season 4 crash did. Some will be lost and not return.

Hell, like KF said, if some of us did not have spotlight missions, nobody would even know we existed. I cannot even imagine being a new author with the "new" rating system in place. Have a new mission, get a friend or two to play it, rate it, and get it on the list......
Good luck with that!

I write reviews on StarbaseUGC, but have suspended it for a while due to the situation. I like to at least have the option of finding new missions on the list and contacting the Authors to see about doing the write up on them, but now, just frikkin loot this, frikkin loot that.
(Loot-o-Matic! WTF is this, a washing machine or a game about Star Trek??????)

My Spawn of Medusa series is basically been damaged due to the 4th part having irreparable map damage that has effected several of our missions. I have folks playing the series wanting to complete it hitting a block wall because there is a missing part now.
t took me longer to build this damaged map than any other map I have ever done. Aside from the object placement, it had effects, puzzles, and the root of the story moving onto the major discovery in the mission leading up to the final part 5.

Like I said before, this is as distressing to most of us "real" foundry authors as was the Season 4 crash, and it will cost the game good content in the long run, as well as the addition of new talented authors now stuck in oblivion under the loot jobs and the new rating system.

Oh wait, the Romulan season has new content, the heck with the foundry that filled the content gap while we built it. We can just forget about it for a while until we need them again

nagorak · July 2013

I guess my question is, if people can't even see your missions, what is the point of even making them? It's one thing if they're way down the list, sure many would not make it down there, but at least some will. But, if you're just off in no man's land then it's totally pointless.

By the way, I hate to ask, but I really have been swamped in RL lately and just have no time at all to get into the game. I would be eternally grateful if someone has the time to do a cursory run through just to see if my missions are even working. If there is some sort of unfixed map bug with some maps then that doesn't sound promising.

sajanus2 · July 2013

Just want to add another vote of support for this thread. In my opinion the foundry is the coolest part of the game and the feature that makes it worth playing. It is the number one source of story driven content in the game.

I know there is more than fifty missions, and I have had to resort to random search words ("tholian" or "Vulcan" for example) to find new missions and authors. This should not be necessary. "Browse all" should mean exactly that: browse all, not just the top few missions. I have toyed with the idea of publishing my own stuff, but I agree with the point that has been made several times here already. If no one will ever see it why should I even bother trying?

And right now I can't even be sure the search function is working properly anyway. The author of "Spawn of Medusa" commented earlier. I did a title search trying to find the series and got listings for parts one, two, three, and five. Since there is a part five, I assume there is a part four. But where is it? Pulled temporarily by the author? Broken and not yet republished? Invisible due to a poor search engine? I have absolutely no way of knowing.

I realize with a feature like the foundry the game developers are only going to be able to do so much, but a bit more information about things like this would be helpful. How about a list (preferably in game) of missions due to be republished or something like that? Publication dates in the mission descriptions would also be helpful. If I see part one was published in 2011 then I know I will probably never see part two. Unless it has been temporarily pulled for some reason, so it would be nice to be able to check on that some how. But I realize setting up something like that could be difficult.

If I really had thousands of missions available to play, I wouldn't mind a bit of chaos. Even if we just had one long, complete list, I would be happy. But if we are only going to be able to view fifty missions at a time then we need to have a much better search engine to help us find everything, and to make sure that new authors have a chance of being discovered.

And to top it all off, the only reason I am here complaining in the forums instead of running a foundry mission right now is that for the second or third time this month I think the foundry seems to be down and I can't get into any missions. It is a good thing Trek is such a cool game because it is one of the glitchiest products I have ever seen.

thedukeofrock · July 2013

nagorak wrote: »

I guess my question is, if people can't even see your missions, what is the point of even making them? It's one thing if they're way down the list, sure many would not make it down there, but at least some will. But, if you're just off in no man's land then it's totally pointless.

By the way, I hate to ask, but I really have been swamped in RL lately and just have no time at all to get into the game. I would be eternally grateful if someone has the time to do a cursory run through just to see if my missions are even working. If there is some sort of unfixed map bug with some maps then that doesn't sound promising.

On a possible spark of good news for you, at least the missions with the broken maps
(i.e one of mine and one of Altexist's use the same map) did not appear to republish due
to the mission having tasks you cannot complete due to "items out of map area" Basically all our items are where they were put originally, without the map there, just a black spot, so if your missions are published, the maps are most likely OK.

markhawkman · July 2013

yeah due to the base map being reduced in size, my mission "The Beta Rana Incident" now has 910 errors preventing it from being republished.

painkillerjayne · July 2013

nagorak wrote: »

I guess my question is, if people can't even see your missions, what is the point of even making them? It's one thing if they're way down the list, sure many would not make it down there, but at least some will. But, if you're just off in no man's land then it's totally pointless.

By the way, I hate to ask, but I really have been swamped in RL lately and just have no time at all to get into the game. I would be eternally grateful if someone has the time to do a cursory run through just to see if my missions are even working. If there is some sort of unfixed map bug with some maps then that doesn't sound promising.

I recently played "Dereliction Duty" and it seemed pretty well bug-free. I'm sure there were a few convos and hidden thingies I didn't see, but your maps on that one were fine.

Btw, awesome mission. As soon as I get 3 hrs free time I'm going to play the next one.

Nobody can find my missions, except for a custom search

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