Ok, so I came back to STO after being away for a while. During that time, I played Neverwinter, and loved doing foundry work there. So...I thought I would start playing with the foundry here as well.
I have to say, the STO Foundry is horribly underpowered compared to Neverwinter.
This foundry completely lacks the means to make anything worthwhile.
No sound options, no 3D editing, no customization of NPC outfits, just to name a few.
What takes 2 minutes to do in Neverwinter would take hours to do here.
I thought maybe I was missing an update or something, but after reading through the forums, I'm completely at a loss as to why anyone does foundry stuff in STO.
It's like going from playing Halo on the Xbox One to playing Adventure on the Atari 2600.
I have seen nothing about if they plan to improve the foundry here or not, but I'm hoping I just missed something. I'm not talking about adding a few new objects, or giving more default map templates.
I mean things like:
- The ability to completely create your own map from scratch.
- Be able to edit an NPC actor's looks and costume anyway you like with absolutely ANY outfit in the game.
- The ability to add any kind of sound to any part of a map and give it an audio radius.
- Dynamic and diverse lighting affects.
- Particle affects
- Dynamic pathing of ships and NPC, making them respond to things dynamically
- Add in 3D Editting so you can Play the Map and then edit the position of anything on the map, or rotate it in any axis.
....all of which are possible in Neverwinter's Foundry.
Does anyone know if they are actually planning to put any effort into the foundry here or are they just adding a few things here and there to keep soaking up as much money as they can before scrapping the game?
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I'm referring to adding an NPC actor to a map, then clicking on them and edit their default costume, and be able to give them any outfit you wish.
The reason for the differences is that the STO Foundry was the first product. The NW Foundry is a separate product that evolved from STO. Unfortunately each is specific to its parent game, so they can't just cut-n-paste and have the same features in each. Based on history, I don't expect many if any of the NW tools to be implemented in STO's Foundry.
So, if your main goal is to use the most advanced tool to make stories, then NW will be your better bet. However, if you want to tell a science fiction story, you'll have to adapt to the STO tool. There is one place where the STO Foundry excels over the NW Foundry, and that is in coversations. In NW, you can only have a conversation between the PC and a single NPC. In STO, you can switch between multiple NPCs. That lets you tell a different kind of story than you can in NW.
The STO tools frustrated me a lot at first when I came back from NW, but over time, I found I could do a lot of the same things, albeit with a lot more effort. The community here is very helpful, so if you think you should be able to do something, ask, and likely someone will give you help.
You'll also find that there isn't an achievement/reward system for making/playing Foundries in STO. Authors mostly seem to do it for the fun of telling a Star Trek story. And that is the primary reason (for me at least) to work in the STO Foundry.
I never cared much for the foundry reward system anyway. And I am not after the most advanced systems. I make things in the foundry because I enjoy being creative. I just did not expect the STO foundry to be so cumbersome.
I was just shocked into asking if there were plans to improve it.
Once you finish, be sure to post. There is a hit squad of players who seek out beta missions and play/review them to get them out of For Review.
The Foundry is not a big money maker for Cryptic. It's benefit is in player retention and satisfaction. However it has historically not had a huge author base or player base, the causes for which you may surmise on your own. What that means is that no, we don't get a lot of dev attention. We get some though. We do get periodic updates. We have a couple of devs who dedicate some of their non-scheduled time to helping us out with adding costumes, ships, npc groups, and detail objects. This has been far better in the past four or five months than it have almost any time in the past four years. We're getting dozens if not hundreds of new Foundry doors added with Season 10. By the time testing is done we should be able to set a mission at any star system on the map.
Within the past month we also had a major update with the Top 3 system, which basically pops up buttons for three random missions from the top 100 rated missions any time you pull up to a star system. Anecdotally (since I don't have any real numbers) this has increased plays of Foundry missions by a huge amount. Will this mean we might get some more dev attention... maybe. I have hope that it will.
With that in mind, the relative lack of love for the Foundry might actually be interpreted as a very good thing. Or to be more precise, if the devs ever do seriously beef up the Foundry it might be a sign that the doomsayers are finally onto something.
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Exactly.
Foundry was put into STO as Beta Testing for the (then upcoming) release of Neverwinter.
We received Foundry so we could test it for Neverwinter.
Every great feature we ever suggested was put into Foundry...for Neverwinter.
I have been here since one week before launch, and I have watched it all happen from start to now.
This is exactly how it was introduced to STO...as a Beta Test for Neverwinter.
The fact that we still have Foundry at all is probably more akin to an amazing thank you from Cryptic for helping them produce such an amazing tool (in Neverwinter).
Star Trek games have never really been popular for UGC (or much at all in all honesty from a 20+ year Trekkie), but Neverwinter was.
Bottom line:
We tested it for Neverwinter, and made suggestions which were then implemented in the finished product...which is Foundry in Neverwinter.
We now remain with the "underpowered" "Beta" version, but at least we have that much.
I, for one, am very excited we still have Foundry at all as I assumed it would be yanked out when Neverwinter launched with the finished version
I wouldn't say that exactly. Elite Force, Armada, Bridge Commander and the Starfleet Command series had (and may still have) huge modding communities. A lot of the other games haven't been moddable. This is probably the first time we've seen developer-sponsored UGC yes, but there has been a healthy community of UGC makers around Star Trek games for 15 or more years.
My character Tsin'xing
This is all true.
I am sorry for not including these titles in my OP.
What I was referring to were the more commercially known games.
The PC games have tried to cater to the fanbase, and many have done well...from what I have heard from many other Trek fans.
I was referring to the ones that even non-Trek fans know about: The TOS anniversary NES game, the Genesis TNG game, the PS3/XB1 J.J.-Trek game, and any other home console game...even though home console game UGC IS possible.
Also, while the PC games you mentioned allowed Modding, and players adding their own ships, did they also allow players to create their own missions which could be played by others, and easily accessed online?
If so, then my statement is indeed inaccurate, and I apologize.
If not, then I stand by my statement that Star Trek games have normally been received by the general public as being a niche market with little profitability or interest in quality UGC production tools...or just plain "horrible" (the last statement not being my own opinion, though I DO find some Trek games to be horrible).
The point was that Star Trek UGC has not been seen as profitable.
The games you mentioned had to be sold BEFORE the player could try the UGC; STO is free.
So...UGC stlll isn't really making anyone a dime; it's more like charity or a special gift from the producers of the game.
I have not personally experienced ANY of the titles of which you mentioned as they will not install on my Windows 8 Notebook.
Also, I have played Elite Force on a home console, and LOVED it...even though I usually hate shooters, but there was no UGC for it.
So I am not judging them or including them because doing so would definitely be an unjust abuse of a purely unfounded opinion.
I try to refrain from such statements...though they do happen when I am not properly medicated ;-)
I WOULD like to know more about the games you mentioned.
Feel free to PM me any information you think would be helpful in constructing a well-informed idea of them.
Stay shiny ;-)
You forgot Legacy, the Star Trek game the modding community tried DESPERATELY to save, but was just beyond saving. Which is unfortunate, that game had a lot of potential. I actually did 5 reskins ... though only 1 was serious, a dominion war Connie refit (take that CBS!). The others I did were silly fan boy things, for example the one I never released was a Dominion war NX class refit with the Rebel Alliance symbol painted on the saucer mirror universe style.
You're quite correct in that UGC is not exactly a moneymaker, which is a main reason why the Foundry doesn't get a lot of development. It's benefits are more, intangible. UGC extends the life of a game. It keeps players around when they've finished all the official content. Now that we're getting more exposure for our missions thanks to the Top Three system, I think we'll see more of this and see it being recognized more by the general playerbase. Occasionally it can make some direct money. I've actually bought a couple games in the past cause I knew there were cool mods for them (Sins of a Solar Empire for instance). Worth noting that the Foundry was actually created while this game was still subscription-only.
Modding is generally the province of PC games, which is why you may never have encountered them for Star Trek console games. The PC version of Elite Force, for examples, has thousands of multiplayer maps, character skins and more. Single player story-based missions were far more difficult and time consuming to make, so there are fewer of them, but there are some. http://eliteforce2.filefront.com/
The Starfleet Command series was actually very similar to how STOs space combat works, just without a third dimension. They were quite fun, but complicated, almost more of a simulator. There are thousands of custom-modeled ships that people made for it. I'm not sure where the best place to find those is today. SFC2 doesn't even work on my computer anymore
As evilmark444 says, ST: Legacy also has all kinds of mods. I never found any that fixed the game's horrible control scheme though...
Map editors used to be pretty standard in RTS games. Not sure how many do it these days. I know when the Total War series switched to full-3D they stopped including a map editor.
Honestly, it's been so long since I played that game I don't remember what the controls were like, lol. Aside from the basic story, all I remember is toroedoes having ammo, and you could go to warp in a similar way to STOs full impulse.
If it wasn't for the fact I had learned how to do some basic modding on it, I probably wouldn't remember it at all.
If it goes through your server though... then it's harder to say you have no knowledge of it.
My character Tsin'xing