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Some grudging respect for Admiral Bobo
donperk
Member Posts: 200 Arc User
Honestly, this is not a troll.
I just wanted to point out that while the serious Foundry community, and apparently Cryptic, despises exploitative loot & accolade grinder missions, Admiral Bobo's author at least made the attempt to wrap an entertaining shell around the mission.
And that's the key thought here: I believe that Admiral Bobo was not popular because it was a grinder, but because it was an entertaining grinder. It had a simple story appropriate to its purpose. It had dialogue that walked the line between dark, introspective humor and outright silliness. It even had a character -- though not the player's character -- that acted as the voice of reason, expressing shock over the mindless slaughter and adding an additional level of dark humor.
Of course, after that we walk into the game exploit zone. But I would note that "Bobo" was not an AFK auto-fire mission, as I've seen a few accuse it of being. There was a ton of dialogue breaking up the waves of combat. You'd have to at least spam the [F] key at regular intervals.
Was it a good use of the Foundry? Arguably not. Was it an exploit grinder? Definitely. But at least it attempted to stretch beyond its grinder roots.
Bottom line: it was a fun mission to play -- once. I'll likely never play it again, but it was worth the price of admission to see what all the fuss was about.
So before casting more stones at our favorite Foundry whipping boy, at least consider that it made an overt attempt to be something more than just a grinder. And I think its popularity stemmed from that.
There's something in there we can all learn from.
I just wanted to point out that while the serious Foundry community, and apparently Cryptic, despises exploitative loot & accolade grinder missions, Admiral Bobo's author at least made the attempt to wrap an entertaining shell around the mission.
And that's the key thought here: I believe that Admiral Bobo was not popular because it was a grinder, but because it was an entertaining grinder. It had a simple story appropriate to its purpose. It had dialogue that walked the line between dark, introspective humor and outright silliness. It even had a character -- though not the player's character -- that acted as the voice of reason, expressing shock over the mindless slaughter and adding an additional level of dark humor.
Of course, after that we walk into the game exploit zone. But I would note that "Bobo" was not an AFK auto-fire mission, as I've seen a few accuse it of being. There was a ton of dialogue breaking up the waves of combat. You'd have to at least spam the [F] key at regular intervals.
Was it a good use of the Foundry? Arguably not. Was it an exploit grinder? Definitely. But at least it attempted to stretch beyond its grinder roots.
Bottom line: it was a fun mission to play -- once. I'll likely never play it again, but it was worth the price of admission to see what all the fuss was about.
So before casting more stones at our favorite Foundry whipping boy, at least consider that it made an overt attempt to be something more than just a grinder. And I think its popularity stemmed from that.
There's something in there we can all learn from.
Post edited by donperk on
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-Exploits need to be stamped out, not just in the Foundry but all across the game, that's the responsibility of any MMO company. That's all on Cryptic's end. The only thing for us here is to report what we think might be exploits. Whether it is or not is up to them.
-Grinders and story missions could live in peace if we get some kind of better search engine that separates the two.
Anything else?
No... it was an intentional exploit mission that wrapped an arguably humorous dialog around it.
I have no intent to praise Bobo as anything other than it is. I'm just saying that I think way too many people jump on the "Bobo" bandwagon without knowing what it actually is. Of all the exploit missions that are out there, "Bobo" is the one that people recognize. That means it had something to offer beyond the run-of-the-mill grinder. And it's author unabashedly set out to wrap a thin, funny story around a grinder. He'd be the first to tell you it's not a masterpiece -- that it's a piece of fluff.
BUT -- something about "Admiral Bobo" resonates. Even if it is an exploit mission, it stands out.
Do I want to see more Bobos? No, no and NO! But it's foolish for us to dismiss it without some examination of why it is popular and why it gets more plays and reviews than other grinders that don't even require you to sit at the keyboard. Why has "Bobo" become the mission we point to in disgust over some other mission.
Let's face it... "Admiral Bobo" is to Foundry grinders as Kleenex is to facial tissue. It's reasonable to ask "Why?" What distinguishes it? And is there something there that the "legit" authors can learn from?
Perhaps not... but it's worth asking the question and finding out rather than just assuming in our arrogance that there's nothing there.
Wouldn't you prefer a sweet poison though?
I agree with both of your points, but you are missing mine. Perhaps this is too emotionally-charged an issue to discuss here.
It's a game. Whatever is fun is great.
I've played this mission a number of times, and I still enjoy it.
Like drogyan said, if grinders and story missions could be seperated in the search engine (even just a little radio button or something that you can check "Show only missions that qualify for Foundry rewards"), a lot of the problem would solve itself. I know that my major problem with grinders is just trying to find story missions among a results list full of grinders.
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
It doesn't matter what missions are in the game, people will grind because they want stuff.
My character Tsin'xing
That is all.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The fixes are obvious, and they've been gone over many times, but so far nothing has been done. I don't think anyone would give a damn about the grinders if there were a separate list for story missions.
Click here for my Foundry tutorial on Creating A Custom Interior Map.
I agree with Nagorak it is the listing that hurts (my mission only has plays because I promote it on the forums). Attacking grinders on the forums hurts authors too since we were blamed for the nerfing of foundry rewards.
Parallels: my second mission for Fed aligned Romulans.
The question is, what do you define as serious? I have to say i noticed a lot of elitist attitude arround here.
Does it need to be some canon Trekie story to be considered as serious?
Does it need to be 1-2 hours long to be considered as serious?
Does it need to resort to things like travel 30km -> Interact -> Get attacked -> travel 50km -> Interact -> Get attacked...hm what now? Oh well because it was so much fun the first two times let's do it 3 more times kinda mechanics to achive that mission length and to be taken serious?
Not to defend the grinders in general but i sure as hell used them and i am pretty sure everyone does or has used them at one point.
Question is who decides what is good and what is not? You? No ,Me? No, The girl next door? No, Cryptic? Not even them.
The simple truth is the community as a whole does, and every fact shows the community seems to like them be it for good or ill.
The only solution to end this kind of debates lies on Cryptic's end, what they need to add (as a required "must be filled") is a "Chosse type of Mission" just like you choose language, due to your choice the mission will, after being published, put into the respective category tab (these tabs need to be added first of course), instead of the "everything in one show all tab" TRIBBLE we have now, then every player will have easier access to what he/she is searching for and because every category has its own rankings the "Why are there only grinders on top" come to an end.
Hell the review section as it is currently is the worst i have ever seen it shows all and i mean ALL that never made it out of there, thousands of missions resulting in a nice little lagfest, this also makes it harder to get reviews on actual missions because noone can be bothered to browse through this hell.
Sorry for the Off Topic could not help it, to tell the truth i dont know that Admiral Bobo its probably Fed side i assume? Not doing much over there other than hanging out with the fleet.
But from what i get it sounds like someone tried to put a little humor into the whole grinding mess, and since iam always in favor of humor i tend to agree with your point.
End Note: If it sounds aggressive at parts be aware that this is not intended.
Serious, is definitely not the term I would have used. There are a lot of different styles of missions out there with different purposes. Some are meant to be serious, some are meant to be light-hearted, some are little more than environments, some just pit you against lots and lots of enemies of a single type.
I don't have a problem with any particular style though I do wish that there was a better search so that you could search and browse through missions of the style that you wanted to play.
I do have a very specific problem, however, with how some particular missions are structured. Cheating the system to get more currency than the devs intended. Whether that's dilithium or EC. It's still an exploit and should be dealt with in some way.
Edit: And yes, I am a humour fan myself but inserting humour into a mission that is designed specifically to exploit the games rewards system does not stop the mission from being an exploit.
The Foundry is a service. It's a service which support the game by adding content where Cryptic cannot. The foundry, as with every tool, isn't something that can be handled by everyone.
This means "we", the authors, actually adding an extra service to STO. That doesn't mean we are entitled to say what others can and cannot play.
As an author myself I'm more or less *meh* and *shrug* concerning this Admiral BoBo thing; we have a foundry search engine and spotlight listing to our disposal. If people do play your mission, it's because they want it, they do the effort nonetheless if it's visible in the list or not.
As a player I'm unable to see Admiral BoBo's mission as an exploit.. Why? There's a drop-cap installed, right? If this wasn't the case, sure; then it would certainly have been an exploit. This means it's actually intended design by Cryptic to cater both "sides".
As a software engineer myself I can say; everything will come with a cost.
This next question is not meant to be aggressive;
Do you want to get rid of what you might consider "exploitive" missions? Then beware the double-edged sword; this will not only hurt your current foundry playerbase (today's grinders can be next week story-players) but it might even harm your own mission as well (like mission which uses social maps after previous weeks patch).
This quote is such a signal; are we really "the elitarian" people? Are we actually portraying that? Do we actually want that?
There can't be light without darkness, no good without bad.
Let's take a totally different point of view... 1985, Live aid; one of the greatest shows in the world. Even though it was for a good cause, these artists were still seen as an elite group. Take a good look at this particular clip.
This is what we have to do, again. We're here to service the players, not the other way around.
And this.. is my $0.02 .
I assume you dont mean Grinders most of those i see dont even qualify especialy with the recent change , you probably refer to those "Pizzaservice" and "Search 20 bottle things" there a tons of those in the review section and i see why that is a problem however that too should vanish with the time on static maps being excluded now.
About the so called exploits i dont see any exploiting in those grinders enemies arent passive they fight back now, and there is the lootcap to prevent excessive use, i cant see anything that falls under that definition am I missing something?
In terms of rewards my personal opinion here is, why dilithium? The one currency everyone never has enough of...they should go back to fleet marks as they are less enticing.
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
The mission was great because it made up for the time spent doing those god awefull sub missions to get marks it was nice knowing after you got your marks you got a little dillithium to boot.
I agree with crypitic's failsafe approach to end the exploit but I do ask them to look at this mission and remove the red flag it was not an exploit mission!!
They put a blanket over all social zones so unfortunately some legitimate missions (depending on your definition!!!) were affected as well. It's also an automatic thing so its not like some poor intern at Cryptic went through every single mission and flipped some magic switch.
On a somewhat related note I was planning on making a mission that only takes place in social zones but I guess that isn't possible anymore
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
[/SIGPIC]
Good point i keep forgeting that there are people who prefer to play fleetless, still a possibility arround that would be to add an exchange npc that trades the fleetmarks for EC or Reputation marks or whatever.
Now here's the core of the issue. It comes down to two things, the rating system, and the search system. There are many grinders and exploits at the top of search list. Why? Well because the rating system in the game sucks. It's not about quality, its about enjoyment. If someone likes a mission, in most cases they will 5 star. If they don't like it, 1 star. If they don't care it use to be 3 stars before you had to pick a rating. With exploits and grinders, the only people playing them and those seeking them out for rewards. What's to hate about them if you want rewards and get them, so they get so many five stars to push to the top of the list. With other quality mission with work put into them, its reviews get a bit more complicated as those people will actually be looking for aspects other than fast rewards in most cases. So this breaks off into the other situation we have where a vague 5 star rating system doesn't cut it. People each have their own unique way of picking their star rating, most picking 5 if they just enjoyed it in the same way. It's obvious there's a problem with the rating system, as when reviewing missions myself and recording the star rating of said missions, they are always around 4.1 in the star rating. All of it evens out so really in the end the rating system doesn't matter in game.
Then we have the search that in all honestly does fix a lot of the current issues with the foundry as a whole. This is another issue Cryptic has ignored for almost a year. I noticed plays for my missions dropped quite a bit last December and have been at a standstill ever since. I heard other authors had the same issue too as well. Plays for foundry missions have gone down quite a bit since the beginning of the year. You could blame it on spotlight missions getting all of the attention, but the reason I believe many missions don't get played is because of the crappy search system. It isn't even because we don't have search tags but because of this 50 mission cap or whatever it is. If someone knows exactly when that came into play I would like to know, but I'm thinking drops in plays are because of this change. For anyone looking of a mission outside the spotlights, they will only see 50 missions on these search lists with no way of bringing up more missions unless they search for something in the search box. At that point they have to know what to search for. This is a major flaw in the search that has caused so many great missions to be buried. And then we've got on top of that a majority of people not knowing about the foundry because of how poorly it is integrated in this game unlike Neverwinter. It's pretty hidden in STO with no attention drawn to it like Neverwinter which you can accidentally run into it.
In the end, the thing people should be angry about is the search Cryptic has left unfixed for so long, and people need to continue to tell Cryptic to fix this so that they don't ignore this issue. If this isn't one of the fixes for the Foundry in this update they hinted at in 6 months or so, I'll be extremely disappointed and I'm sure many others will too...
It made the title of my foundry mission ironic.....
Parallels: my second mission for Fed aligned Romulans.
This. At the end of the day, this.
It depends on the grinder...
Utilising a certain collection of foundry features and certain settings it is possible to set up a foundry mission so that player has to literally do nothing. Their ships spew out fire out automatically, the ships you are fighting are severely gimped for their defense. As a result the NPCs are killed quickly without basically any input from the players. This is certainly an exploit.
Other grinders, such as BoBo at least require the player to be active in the process and as such this makes them straddle the line so much as exploits are concerned. Yet still the other basic elements of the exploit grinders are there. Gimping enemy NPCs so they are easy to kill to more efficiently get the elite loot they drop.
Other grinders, you have to do the normal amount of work to destroy ship and get the appropriate rewards for your work. These aren't my particular thing but these are perfectly fine and I'm quite happy for people who enjoy these missions to play them.
Alcohol is technically a poison. Some people even prefer such a poisoned drink over the alternatives. It can also be fun & enjoyable if it is used in moderation.