Recently, one of the daily missions available to all players via the “Available” tab in the mission journal, Investigate Officer Reports, stopped being offered to those playing Foundry missions. This mission disappeared without being noted as a change in our patch notes and without comment from any member of the STO team, and for that lack of visibility we would all like to express our sincerest apologies to the STO community. However, this mission was intentionally removed and will remain unavailable for at least the near term.
This action was taken as we work towards an overhaul that we are looking to make to Foundry rewards throughout the game. The details of this overhaul are still being iterated on while it is in development, but one of the major thrusts of those changes is that no one should be missing out on rewards because they forgot to take an obscure daily mission found in a menu that most players do not utilize – we want all players to be equally compensated for seeking out and playing Foundry content.
The Foundry is very important to STO and we all enjoy seeing the amazing stories its authors are able to put together to expand the Star Trek universe. The overhauls we are planning are meant to aid in highlighting the amazing work being done in the STO community and rewarding those who seek out that work.
We look forward to further communication with the players about the future changes we are planning as those details become available.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
Cryptic Studios Team Member
0
Comments
Sounds like great timing management.
1) no communication. I know you already apologized for this, but my question is *why* did it take so long to get this extremely vague answer?
2) you shouldn't *remove* content until your replacement is ready. You said you are still iterating a reward revamp, which is fine. But until that is actually ready, there is no reason to rip out what people already have in game.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Unless it was being abused I agree that you should have waited to have the replacement ready first before yanking the IOR mission.
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Hopefully we will see something soon. :)
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I do think the goal of the revamp sounds good, and I look forward to seeing it.
Lack of patch notes aside, why on Earth remove it before the overhaul has even left the drawing board stage? Do you realise how silly the phrase no one should be missing out on rewards sounds now that everyone will miss out on rewards for the foreseeable future?
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"Somebody" jumped the gun and took it out without thinking about the near term consequences...
Now They have to back-track and cover their behinds with an apology that sounds forced and more than a tad bit insincere.
<grumble..., grumble..., grumble...>
(I'm having a bad day, so if this sounds more snarky than usual, my apologies)
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Really? You remove a reward BEFORE whatever reward revamp is finished and released? Come on, is Al Rivera (Captain Geko) really that upset that it rewarded Dilithium and honestly believes the mission was somehow over rewarding and costing Cryptic money? you guys REALLY need to start PLAYING your own game on the Live servers the way your playerbase does on occasion and stop punishing sad base every time some threshold is crossed on your datamined spreadsheets.
Overall I have to say:
1) I was already sure it was intentional and not an oversight or a bug, as this isn't the first time Cryptic has done a kneejerk response to the Foundry wrapper missions with rewards.
2) Don't insult my intelligence saying "Oh, it was just an accident/oversight that we forgot to tell the playerbase anything officially until now..." It was the classic maneuver of "Hey, lets just pull it and see if anyone really notices; and if they do, we'll just pull out the standard apology and tell them something new is in the works..."
In the end, yes, it's just a game, but come on; don't treat us like we're idiots. If you guys felt the reward was too good based on time spent to obtain/risk/reward - just say so and more on. I have a feeling in 3 months if someone brings up anything about the "Foundry Reward Revamp" mentioned here; the Dev team response will be - "Wait, What?" (I place it right up there with the comment Gekko made after the Doff System UI revamp of "This revamp will help us integrate Doffing into the STO Gateway in the future..." -- you remember the STO Gateway, right? It's the one thing in STO that MORE abandoned (development wise) then the Foundry itself.
If I end up being wrong, I'll happily eat crow at the appropriate time; but given we can't even get developer/programmer time to get the Foundry search UI to display more than the top 50 mission results from a search (something players have been requesting since the Foundry went Live; OR get a final fix to the rating system so that the ratings displayed/used in a search are LOWER then the actual star ratings a mission has (originally done as a stop gap to try and get the 5 Star Grind for Resources EXP missions to not dominate the top 50 results - yet said 'stop gap' seems to have morphed into 'final solution'); please excuse me if I fail to believe ANYTHING is really being done for the Foundry (aside from Zeronious Rex, Tacofangs and a few other Devs trying to add new assets to the Foundry on their spare time, and if their PCs don't crash in the attempt.)
I myself have created two missions that over time have gotten good reviews; but given how unintuitive the Foundry search interface is; and how hard it is to even get a decently reviewed mission (read any non Spotlighted mission) any plays by players; for myself, it's not worth the time it takes to make content, only to see it never used by the playerbase. If an author doesn't already have a mission out there, or a large 'cheerleading' group, there's little chance of even a good/well thought out new mission ever getting enough plays/rankings to EVER appear in the 'Top 3' system that displays Foundry missions as you approach a Star System. hell - most of the time, you don't even see full three to choose from (or they're the exact same choices every day/time), so I have to wonder if even that Foundry function is WAI - and if it's not, we all know what chance it ever has of being looked at for a fix (Hint: that chance is: Zero.)
So, yeah, sorry if I think your response doesn't pass the smell test. (And it's sad because the Foundry IS (IMO) a great feature; yet it's left to languish as Cryptic moves on to the more important aspects of STO as they see it; and that's the next STO Season's Lock Box.
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Yeah, but how do you *really* feel?
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
I was just listening to the Stream from Valikin, with Odenknight, Yuzral and others.
You really haven't learnt your lesson on how not to treat your playerbase.....
Unless I'm mistaken, do foundry missions no longer reward dilithium based on average playtime of the mission?
original join date 2010
Member: Team Trekyards. Visit Trekyards today!
Translation:
We wanted to pull Investigate Officer Reports down with the intention of nerfing it into the ground but feared players would take notice and object, therefore, we decided to "accidentally" remove it and devise a complicated formula to add the daily "bonus" automatically, concealing the nerf as a QOL improvement for all those players out there confused as to how this game works.
You know. like how the exploration zones were sooo confusing and they did us all a favor by removing them.
*eyeroll*
I'm beginning to believe "Removal" is the new "SOON™".
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Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Did you also know the the 10 of 10 Tour of Duty Reward for the KDF Admiralty Missions did not get the Bonus Dilithium Weekend bonus? I may have missed that but did anyone ever see anything about that one?
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
But thanks for finally addressing that it was actually removed intentionally and was not a bug.
Again though, that doesn't change the point that they shouldn't remove what we have until they are actually ready to put the new system in game. As she said, they don't even have a date when this will happen, so yeah.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Can't wait to see what the dev team cooked up.
Now, about figuring out how to apologize for wrong intel... (I recommended the "Investigate Officer Reports" to an acquaintance just a few days ago, and I said [at the time] that it's missing because of a bug ^^).
-
"To boldly go to the stars on the wings of the faithful."
Emphasis added.
In other words, most foundry players didn't take the daily to begin with, and it wasn't fair for people who knew about the daily to earn more rewards doing the same content as people who didn't know the daily even existed.
For all we know, maybe the reason they removed the daily before the new reward system is in place is because of an exploit being used by some people. Of course I doubt they would talk about it if that were the case.
Honestly I'm not a foundry type player, though I had played some missions a long time ago that had great stories.
My advice is to stop complaining and stop being angry over a single mission. It's not like it's hard to get 960 dil. Wait and see what new system they have in store for us. If it isn't to your liking, or you feel it could be improved, feel free to leave polite feedback on the forums.
Really? It's unfair for players who MAKE USE of what was included in the game for years that other players either didn't bother to look (or the Dev team didn't bother to include much about the Foundry in ANY STO new player tutorial)? Come on, next you'll be saying it's 'unfair' that some players have better gear then other players...<--- that's about the same logic as what you've posted above. If no one really knew of, or made use of this mission, this thread wouldn't exist.
Further - you don't think asking for them to list the removal of a mission in patch notes; is valid feedback (complaining as you called it); or that letting them know it took a couple of weeks to get any official response to a valid question or is:
"Hey, there used to be a mission that was available on a daily basis, but now it's gone...is this a bug?" again is 'complaining and not a valid question to want a response for?
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