From reading most of the comments, all of the comments/complaints/blame seem to be directed at the STO devs almost exclusively; however, if you read the article more closely this is also affecting Neverwinter. To me, this means that the "attention" might be better if it were at Cryptic as a whole than just this game and the people behind it.
Do you understand at all how colloquial English and mathematical estimation work? If you've got say, 38 apples, do you typically say you have "about 40 apples"? I think you do. And if one has 32 apples, one might say they have "about 30."
Based on the language used, we can infer that a little over a third of PC players use the Foundry. There's also significant evidence that the console population is significantly lower than the PC population, for several reasons (it's split between two OSs, established PC players didn't want to have to start completely over with leveling toons, and day-one bugs seem to take longer to patch). A late 2016 infographic said there were only a little over a million console players. (Google "Star Trek Online infographic" to find it, Firefox for Android isn't letting me copy-paste a citation.)
So, @darkbladejk's estimate is about as accurate as such estimates can be: you're looking at on the order of 2 million people using the Foundry. That is a significant number of people to cheese off as badly as this move has cheesed me off (I have one complete mission and three unfinished).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
> @artan42 said: > somtaawkhar wrote: » > > darkbladejk wrote: » > > The last infographic released showed 7 million active players. 40% of that is 2.8 million players. That's still a substantial amount of people. I don't like it anymore than anyone else here but I don't expect the business to keep going with it if it's not sustainable either. > > > > A. That infographic included how many players there are between all platforms. > B. The consoles don't have the Foundry, so you have to subtract out how many players the console version has from that calculation. > C. FOR LIKE THE FOURTH TIME NOW... I SAID LESS THAN LESS THAN. Say it with me now. LESS. THAN. > > LESS THAN > E > S > S > T > H > A > N > > So its even smaller then that. > > > > > It's still going to be between 30 and 30% or else the figure given would have been 'less than 30%' because of how people round things. People working things out as 40% is easier than 9 separate calculations so calm you knickers and let them get on with it.
Because of how people round numbers the figure will be somewhere between 35% and 40%
Dude, you need to stop. It's still not an insignificant number of players.
I will not tolerate people who actively, and intentionally, lie and misrepresent what I said to their own advantage. It is unbecoming behavior of anyone.
Who's misrepresenting something YOU said?
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Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
> @artan42 said:
> somtaawkhar wrote: »
>
> darkbladejk wrote: »
>
> The last infographic released showed 7 million active players. 40% of that is 2.8 million players. That's still a substantial amount of people. I don't like it anymore than anyone else here but I don't expect the business to keep going with it if it's not sustainable either.
>
>
>
> A. That infographic included how many players there are between all platforms.
> B. The consoles don't have the Foundry, so you have to subtract out how many players the console version has from that calculation.
> C. FOR LIKE THE FOURTH TIME NOW... I SAID LESS THAN LESS THAN. Say it with me now. LESS. THAN.
>
> LESS THAN
> E
> S
> S
> T
> H
> A
> N
>
> So its even smaller then that.
>
>
>
>
> It's still going to be between 30 and 30% or else the figure given would have been 'less than 30%' because of how people round things. People working things out as 40% is easier than 4 separate calculations so calm you knickers and let them get on with it.
Because of how people round numbers the figure will be somewhere between 35% and 40%
Yes that's what I intended to say. 35-39% for some reason beyond comprehension it's come out as 30 twice on autocorrect.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Because of how people round numbers the figure will be somewhere between 35% and 40%
Incorrect.
Especially in regards to game developers talking about their games. Many of them say things like "it's less then 50% of users", when the real number is closer to like 20% because things like exact user metrics are generally considered "secret" information that aren't supposed to be given out.
Don't be the reason for closing the only thread to speak our minds, somewhat freely, on this forum.
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
Sorry but I've been playing STO for around 7 years now and never felt the need to comment on something I've seen as being so negative but I had to post something in response to this, I am very disappointed and sad to see this.
In that time I have had alot of fun and made alot of friends sure, but it's felt like there has been dwindling care and attention to the playerbase more recently and this is a shining example. There were alot of people lost to Delta Rising and yes alot of people stayed but that must have taken a toll on the game and its resources, it almost cost us our fleet.
Things improved for a time after that but we've been greeted with more and more repetitive grinds and sinks that we have to work for such as more reputations, T6 reputations, fleet project dil sinks and such and I admit the rewards for completing them are useful but it adds alot of time into the game. There have also been alot of obvious money grabs with the store and while I appreciate money has be made to keep the game going it could have been done differently while also providing more interesting content and changes.
Endeavours are another recent addition and I can see the logic in adding them to give another incentive to log in daily but they are just one more thing to grind for expecially when it seems like alot of the PVE queues don't get used so you have to wait a good while for some of them though you can go and run battlezones or the like for some of the tasks there it's still another step.
The above issues and more tie to how much time is needed to progress and stay up to date in the game, not everybody has enough of it to spend everyday working on all of the needed tasks and the foundry was a good reprieve for many by giving an alternative as well as the ability to be creative and even freely roleplay with friends and other fleets while being able to express themselves and add content for others between the story arcs. Also you should take into account the work some people have put into just creating missions or scenarios with this and in return they simply get a non combat pet? If everything they have worked for and created is all going to be just deleted, I am very saddened to see that.
For the majority of people we will get a costume badge we can use but that comes at the expense of alot of gameplay freedom and diversity and quite possibly a good chunk of your playerbase and with that income as well.
I already know several of the remaining members in our fleet feel very strongly about this and may well leave altogether as a direct result. I am in two minds myself despite being active for these 7 years and also being a lifetime subscriber . I can't even think how much money I have put in during that time either.
You absolutely must offer something in return for this if you are not going to retract this decision, consider something like expanding existing maps or player capacity in them to help make up for the sudden loss of freedom. But it is already clear you have upset alot of your playerbase with this and if you cannot make amends with them and keep them playing you will lose so many active players, please consider that carefully.
This is rare....me critisizing Cryptic. What planet are you on!? A few years ago you promised a new era of exploring in STO after removing the 'Exploration' clusters, only to give us an expanded Alpha Quadrant, with very, very little to explore and you said in response to complaints to use the 'Foundry' and 'explore' the missions there! Now you are removing that because you have lost the 'legacy' knowledge that it required.....so rewrite the code! There's no excuse to shrink the game any further. Cryptic just have not delivered what they said they were intending to do, instead you're going backwards!
You've still yet to implement Ship Interiors into the Console versions and fix graphical/animation bugs on the console that I reported over a year ago!
The enjoyment I had with the last two Episodes and TFO on the PC has been utterly wiped.
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
Because of how people round numbers the figure will be somewhere between 35% and 40%
Incorrect.
Especially in regards to game developers talking about their games. Many of them say things like "it's less then 50% of users", when the real number is closer to like 20% because things like exact user metrics are generally considered "secret" information that aren't supposed to be given out.
You're speculating now and making your own assumptions.
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Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Todd Howard has talked about it in a handful of interviews over the years, and after the claim was repeated a few years ago some people on Nexus took SteamSpy data on how many people owned the game, and compared it to how many unique downloads the top mods on the Nexus have, and the numbers were about 20% of the top most downloaded mods on the Nexus. Most mods had far lower numbers.
This is a 100% reversal of the facts. Even Arthmoor, the guy who makes the unofficial Patches for Bethesda games, has noted that each new Bethesda game is not only less buggy then the last one, but also has more official bug fixes then the last.
Thanks for the info. I do hope Bethesda doesn't ditch the modding tools. I haven't played any of their content since the launch of Fallout 4, which was a big letdown - content and story wise for me. I didn't even bother checking state of the modding community since then.
Anyhow, I'm sad to see the Foundry go. Anything that expands player's options is a plus for me, especially since I find most of STO's "endgame" content seriously underwhelming.
The last infographic released showed 7 million active players. 40% of that is 2.8 million players. That's still a substantial amount of people. I don't like it anymore than anyone else here but I don't expect the business to keep going with it if it's not sustainable either.
[...] This leaves us with 730,000 - 1,204,500 PC players using the Foundry.
So the game just got smaller for 0.7 to 2.799 million players. Regardless of whatever the actual number really is - this still makes me very sad.
There are times when acknowledging another player's loss is the appropriate thing to do. This is would be one of those times.
I would suggest that any authors who want to save their works document their Foundry missions, how they were written, put together, assets used and the like. Screenshots of scenery, climatic moments, etc. Just for the future to look back on and enjoy in some fashion.
I would like to know if anybody has any clue about which online games or mmos have user generated content abilities like the foundry has had. Let me know please. Thanks. And my hat's off to the foundry and it's authors, etc.
The exact number doesn't really matter, because that so and so many percent of the players used it doesn't tell you how often or how important it is to them.
What matters is that it was a unique selling point with a lot of potential - that broke every few updates for weeks or months. That tends ot imply a few things:
- Maintaining it is hard.
- Maintaining it had not a high priority.
Which suggests it wasn't really doing well.
I would be careful to call this a "short-sighted" decision, by the way. I doubt giving up on a unique selling point like this is something done without a lot of thought. It's a risk, removing a big feature that cost a lot. But not removing also has clear risks - like needing resources to maintain it that could be spend on other, future or existing features and make the game better in different ways.
That doesn't mean anyone has to like the decision - not even the people at Cryptic.
---
I think however all content creators that spend time and effort to build stuff in the Foundry, from social zones, to grinders, to story missions or just to tinker with the possibilities. It's sad to see your creations go, but no one can take away the joy of having your creation come to life in game, or the joy it might have given to people playing your content. Hopefully you will find new outlets for your creativity.
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"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
What a waste of good content made my canon adhering pplayers. Can't imagine a bigger FU to these players and yeah a little useless item sorts this out real good.
The devs and CM's didn't make this (IMHO counterproductive) decision, the bean-counters did.
Give the devs and CM's a break.
The media is (finally) reporting that the 'Attention Economy' has peaked, time gates and sinks are becoming too obvious and tedious in most games and media platforms, and the gaming companies are feeling the effects of the resulting "time re-prioritization" by their customers first. Shutting down the Foundry and adding Endeavors both seem to me to have been conceived to buck this trend in different ways. Bean-counter decisions.
All I can say is that I hope that fancy data-mining/metrics system they invested in a few years back knows something that the folks who play the game don't, or it'll be a short ride from here.
For my part, I won't be contributing any more money to an obviously-shrinking game. Sorry.
Such sad news, I almost can't believe it has come to this and I'm actually reading this.
I urge you to reconsider, though I know your decision is probably set in stone by now.
You're tearing off the one thing that made STO really unique. The foundry was a longevity guarantee when the even so scarce content dries out. I literally was 100% certain that sometime in the future, when the game's sunset is would be on the horizon - the foundry would be the thing that keeps it chugging and online for a while more. This decision now.....I can't even....
Salute to all the foundry authors who gave up vast portions of their free time and life, to make some really amazing missions for us to enjoy! o7 We will miss your work.
Decisions like these are why the best Developers no longer work at Cryptic.
We had amazing devs who worked on the game as a labor of love, like Dan Stahl (one of the very few who loved KDF), but they were pushed out by others like Geko, who use the game a a fanboy love-fest (laser dinos, because WoW had it first?)
This decision is mired in several points I was well aware of:
-They never kept anyone trained on it, which should have been in a contract to keep it maintained.
-They hate how we use it to get around broken systems that are in place (Herald kills only count on raiders)
-They hate how we use it to farm loot (EC gains are absolute TRIBBLE, and have been for years)
I am firmly convinced that this move will push the game into "Maintenance Mode", as a large number of players loved the Foundry (I know of several hundred).
The last infographic released showed 7 million active players. 40% of that is 2.8 million players. That's still a substantial amount of people. I don't like it anymore than anyone else here but I don't expect the business to keep going with it if it's not sustainable either.
Better math would be
-7.3 million captains as stated by the anniversary infographic.
-Divide that by two to separate out the players from both consoles from those on PC(PC= 50%, Xbox = 25%, PS = 25% split)
-This leaves us with 3,650,000 on PC.
-Giving STO a comparative Foundry usage to other games that have user generated content leaves us with 20-33% of the PC playerbase using the Foundry
-This leaves us with 730,000 - 1,204,500 PC players using the Foundry.
And this is a VERY HIGH estimate.
A. The PC anniversary inforgraphics mention CAPTAINS, not PLAYERS. Many players have like 10 different captains, which massively skews that number.
B. Last I heard the consoles are closer to par with the PC in terms of players then the split I gave
Realistically, we are looking at numbers that are likely closer to 1/2 or 1/3 that, somewhere around 240,900 - 602,250 users using the Foundry.
We weren't given a breakdown of how many of that 7.3 million were on pc vs on console. If you have specific numbers then that's information that even my cohorts and I don't have access to and only someone at Cryptic could give out. Aside from that 7.3 million any other numbers are pure speculation. The only numbers given for any breakdown between pc vs console populations are over a year old back in the 8th anniversary and there is no way of knowing if that breakdown is still 100% accurate. Since we don't know if that breakdown is still accurate we can only safely assume the populations are equal to each other. Thus we divide the population evenly meaning we divide our 7.3 million by 3 to get 2,433,333 players. Using the 40% number that has been thrown around we would multiply our number by 0.4 to get our 40% number which gives us 973,333 players accessing the foundry. That's still well over 1/3 of the total PC players which is not an insignificant number. This would mean more than 1 in every 3 players has accessed or actively used the foundry at some point.
Now if we assume the 8th anniversary numbers are still accurate there is 62% pc vs 19% on xbox and 19% on PS4. So once more we would multiply our 7,300,000 by 0.62 in order to get our 62% in which case we get 4,526,000 players total on pc. Now if we take this a step further and multiply this by the 0.4 to get our 40% that's been tossed around we get 1,810,400 players that regularly access the foundry. That number is very significant.
Even if we assume only 20% you're still looking at about 486,666 (assuming evenly split populations) or 905,200 assuming the 8th anniversary graphics are still correct. Either way those numbers are still significant.
As for the comment regarding other games that have user generated content, that is pure speculation as there is no basis to assume those same numbers apply to STO. Thus it's pure assumption and is not a valid argument to make. Without access to actual numbers there is no way to know for certain and any numbers thrown out there are pure speculation and nothing more. So this leaves us with 3 options.
1: You're speculating and making up your own numbers to fill in the gaps.
2: If you're going to insinuate your numbers are official then that would mean someone at Cryptic is leaking something they're not supposed to
3: Virtually every single person on this forum missed a newly released info dump.
Somehow I don't think it's versions 2 or 3. Debating actual stats is one thing, but speculation is moot and based in pure subjectivity with no rational basis in reality.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
I've felt like STO has been going downhill for a long time with everything new being more grind instead of more fun, but this? This is the worst news possible. There's always been foundry missions to break up the monotony between new story episodes, but if that's all going away what's left? The same story missions that, while usually fun, are mostly not worth more than one playthrough. TFOs? The same thing over and over.
So yeah, without the foundry what's left to do for fun after all the official content has been done to death?
"Our team at Cryptic strives to create excellent content and maintain a high standard of quality for our games. However, the legacy knowledge required to maintain the Foundry at our quality standards is no longer available. Our goal is to continue creating top-notch content for our current and upcoming games - and the development time and resources required to maintain the Foundry would impede on these new features and systems. To reiterate, this decision does not impact any other game feature or content development for Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, Champions Online, or future titles."
What dev time and resources? Show me in the last 3 years how many times the foundry was mentioned in the patch notes.
As far as I know, most of the Ships, costumes and enemies added to the Foundry in the last years was done in devs spare time.
Like others have said. I will never spend another cent on this game.
Wow. Seems to be a trend of players feeling like their future purchases on this game will be short loved and poorly invested.
And what do you mean legacy knowledge- did an employee leave or something?
Pfft what's next sad news STO is coming to an end? I do hope you're ire planning major expansions to gameplay because shrinking games end up in the bin <<< my advice
I'm sad to see this. I haven't played much foundry lately, but it was nice to have. When they took away the exploration that was my favorite part of the game. Just so, the foundry is others' favorite part.
so to the less than troll. how about doing some empathy lessons - probably can find some online!
oh and there is nothing remotely like 7.3 million players. That is captains created all time. There is more like 20,000 very active players.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
The Foundry authors are some of the most dedicated players in the whole game, actually creating entire missions for players, not just flying round in the existing game.
If you wanted to TRIBBLE off a more dedicated group of players who devote a huge amount of time and effort to the game then I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone worse to target.
And then there are all the players who actually use the Foundry created content; either because they enjoyed the missions, they wanted more to do when Cryptic's own release schedule was drier than a Vulcan desert, or maybe just because it helped with ship testing/endeavors/socialising etc.
Even if less than 40% of players used it, i'm assuming that means more than 30% so that is still around 1/3rd of the players. By comparison how many players make use of the Romulan faction......or the Jem'hadar faction? Yeah.....probably less than 1/3rd of the players.
You're removing content to improve the game....
So seeing as you'll not be wasting all those precious resources maintaining enormously massive task (/s) of keeping the Foundry running we'll see a vast improvement elsewhere in the game now?
...
..
.
Somehow I seriously doubt that will be the case with you guys.....
Star Trek Online, it was fun while it lasted. The Foundry was my go-to for story content when the usual grind got stale (which was often). Now I have even less motivation to log on. Perhaps it's time to call it a day. If-for any reason you change your mind-give me a holler.
Comments
Do you understand at all how colloquial English and mathematical estimation work? If you've got say, 38 apples, do you typically say you have "about 40 apples"? I think you do. And if one has 32 apples, one might say they have "about 30."
Based on the language used, we can infer that a little over a third of PC players use the Foundry. There's also significant evidence that the console population is significantly lower than the PC population, for several reasons (it's split between two OSs, established PC players didn't want to have to start completely over with leveling toons, and day-one bugs seem to take longer to patch). A late 2016 infographic said there were only a little over a million console players. (Google "Star Trek Online infographic" to find it, Firefox for Android isn't letting me copy-paste a citation.)
So, @darkbladejk's estimate is about as accurate as such estimates can be: you're looking at on the order of 2 million people using the Foundry. That is a significant number of people to cheese off as badly as this move has cheesed me off (I have one complete mission and three unfinished).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
> somtaawkhar wrote: »
>
> darkbladejk wrote: »
>
> The last infographic released showed 7 million active players. 40% of that is 2.8 million players. That's still a substantial amount of people. I don't like it anymore than anyone else here but I don't expect the business to keep going with it if it's not sustainable either.
>
>
>
> A. That infographic included how many players there are between all platforms.
> B. The consoles don't have the Foundry, so you have to subtract out how many players the console version has from that calculation.
> C. FOR LIKE THE FOURTH TIME NOW... I SAID LESS THAN LESS THAN. Say it with me now. LESS. THAN.
>
> LESS THAN
> E
> S
> S
> T
> H
> A
> N
>
> So its even smaller then that.
>
>
>
>
> It's still going to be between 30 and 30% or else the figure given would have been 'less than 30%' because of how people round things. People working things out as 40% is easier than 9 separate calculations so calm you knickers and let them get on with it.
Because of how people round numbers the figure will be somewhere between 35% and 40%
Who's misrepresenting something YOU said?
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Yes that's what I intended to say. 35-39% for some reason beyond comprehension it's come out as 30 twice on autocorrect.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Don't be the reason for closing the only thread to speak our minds, somewhat freely, on this forum.
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
In that time I have had alot of fun and made alot of friends sure, but it's felt like there has been dwindling care and attention to the playerbase more recently and this is a shining example. There were alot of people lost to Delta Rising and yes alot of people stayed but that must have taken a toll on the game and its resources, it almost cost us our fleet.
Things improved for a time after that but we've been greeted with more and more repetitive grinds and sinks that we have to work for such as more reputations, T6 reputations, fleet project dil sinks and such and I admit the rewards for completing them are useful but it adds alot of time into the game. There have also been alot of obvious money grabs with the store and while I appreciate money has be made to keep the game going it could have been done differently while also providing more interesting content and changes.
Endeavours are another recent addition and I can see the logic in adding them to give another incentive to log in daily but they are just one more thing to grind for expecially when it seems like alot of the PVE queues don't get used so you have to wait a good while for some of them though you can go and run battlezones or the like for some of the tasks there it's still another step.
The above issues and more tie to how much time is needed to progress and stay up to date in the game, not everybody has enough of it to spend everyday working on all of the needed tasks and the foundry was a good reprieve for many by giving an alternative as well as the ability to be creative and even freely roleplay with friends and other fleets while being able to express themselves and add content for others between the story arcs. Also you should take into account the work some people have put into just creating missions or scenarios with this and in return they simply get a non combat pet? If everything they have worked for and created is all going to be just deleted, I am very saddened to see that.
For the majority of people we will get a costume badge we can use but that comes at the expense of alot of gameplay freedom and diversity and quite possibly a good chunk of your playerbase and with that income as well.
I already know several of the remaining members in our fleet feel very strongly about this and may well leave altogether as a direct result. I am in two minds myself despite being active for these 7 years and also being a lifetime subscriber . I can't even think how much money I have put in during that time either.
You absolutely must offer something in return for this if you are not going to retract this decision, consider something like expanding existing maps or player capacity in them to help make up for the sudden loss of freedom. But it is already clear you have upset alot of your playerbase with this and if you cannot make amends with them and keep them playing you will lose so many active players, please consider that carefully.
You've still yet to implement Ship Interiors into the Console versions and fix graphical/animation bugs on the console that I reported over a year ago!
The enjoyment I had with the last two Episodes and TFO on the PC has been utterly wiped.
You're speculating now and making your own assumptions.
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Thanks for the info. I do hope Bethesda doesn't ditch the modding tools. I haven't played any of their content since the launch of Fallout 4, which was a big letdown - content and story wise for me. I didn't even bother checking state of the modding community since then.
Anyhow, I'm sad to see the Foundry go. Anything that expands player's options is a plus for me, especially since I find most of STO's "endgame" content seriously underwhelming.
There are times when acknowledging another player's loss is the appropriate thing to do. This is would be one of those times.
My character Tsin'xing
What matters is that it was a unique selling point with a lot of potential - that broke every few updates for weeks or months. That tends ot imply a few things:
- Maintaining it is hard.
- Maintaining it had not a high priority.
Which suggests it wasn't really doing well.
I would be careful to call this a "short-sighted" decision, by the way. I doubt giving up on a unique selling point like this is something done without a lot of thought. It's a risk, removing a big feature that cost a lot. But not removing also has clear risks - like needing resources to maintain it that could be spend on other, future or existing features and make the game better in different ways.
That doesn't mean anyone has to like the decision - not even the people at Cryptic.
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I think however all content creators that spend time and effort to build stuff in the Foundry, from social zones, to grinders, to story missions or just to tinker with the possibilities. It's sad to see your creations go, but no one can take away the joy of having your creation come to life in game, or the joy it might have given to people playing your content. Hopefully you will find new outlets for your creativity.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Edit:
What a waste of good content made my canon adhering pplayers. Can't imagine a bigger FU to these players and yeah a little useless item sorts this out real good.
Give the devs and CM's a break.
The media is (finally) reporting that the 'Attention Economy' has peaked, time gates and sinks are becoming too obvious and tedious in most games and media platforms, and the gaming companies are feeling the effects of the resulting "time re-prioritization" by their customers first. Shutting down the Foundry and adding Endeavors both seem to me to have been conceived to buck this trend in different ways. Bean-counter decisions.
All I can say is that I hope that fancy data-mining/metrics system they invested in a few years back knows something that the folks who play the game don't, or it'll be a short ride from here.
For my part, I won't be contributing any more money to an obviously-shrinking game. Sorry.
I urge you to reconsider, though I know your decision is probably set in stone by now.
You're tearing off the one thing that made STO really unique. The foundry was a longevity guarantee when the even so scarce content dries out. I literally was 100% certain that sometime in the future, when the game's sunset is would be on the horizon - the foundry would be the thing that keeps it chugging and online for a while more. This decision now.....I can't even....
Salute to all the foundry authors who gave up vast portions of their free time and life, to make some really amazing missions for us to enjoy! o7 We will miss your work.
We had amazing devs who worked on the game as a labor of love, like Dan Stahl (one of the very few who loved KDF), but they were pushed out by others like Geko, who use the game a a fanboy love-fest (laser dinos, because WoW had it first?)
This decision is mired in several points I was well aware of:
-They never kept anyone trained on it, which should have been in a contract to keep it maintained.
-They hate how we use it to get around broken systems that are in place (Herald kills only count on raiders)
-They hate how we use it to farm loot (EC gains are absolute TRIBBLE, and have been for years)
I am firmly convinced that this move will push the game into "Maintenance Mode", as a large number of players loved the Foundry (I know of several hundred).
We weren't given a breakdown of how many of that 7.3 million were on pc vs on console. If you have specific numbers then that's information that even my cohorts and I don't have access to and only someone at Cryptic could give out. Aside from that 7.3 million any other numbers are pure speculation. The only numbers given for any breakdown between pc vs console populations are over a year old back in the 8th anniversary and there is no way of knowing if that breakdown is still 100% accurate. Since we don't know if that breakdown is still accurate we can only safely assume the populations are equal to each other. Thus we divide the population evenly meaning we divide our 7.3 million by 3 to get 2,433,333 players. Using the 40% number that has been thrown around we would multiply our number by 0.4 to get our 40% number which gives us 973,333 players accessing the foundry. That's still well over 1/3 of the total PC players which is not an insignificant number. This would mean more than 1 in every 3 players has accessed or actively used the foundry at some point.
Now if we assume the 8th anniversary numbers are still accurate there is 62% pc vs 19% on xbox and 19% on PS4. So once more we would multiply our 7,300,000 by 0.62 in order to get our 62% in which case we get 4,526,000 players total on pc. Now if we take this a step further and multiply this by the 0.4 to get our 40% that's been tossed around we get 1,810,400 players that regularly access the foundry. That number is very significant.
Even if we assume only 20% you're still looking at about 486,666 (assuming evenly split populations) or 905,200 assuming the 8th anniversary graphics are still correct. Either way those numbers are still significant.
As for the comment regarding other games that have user generated content, that is pure speculation as there is no basis to assume those same numbers apply to STO. Thus it's pure assumption and is not a valid argument to make. Without access to actual numbers there is no way to know for certain and any numbers thrown out there are pure speculation and nothing more. So this leaves us with 3 options.
1: You're speculating and making up your own numbers to fill in the gaps.
2: If you're going to insinuate your numbers are official then that would mean someone at Cryptic is leaking something they're not supposed to
3: Virtually every single person on this forum missed a newly released info dump.
Somehow I don't think it's versions 2 or 3. Debating actual stats is one thing, but speculation is moot and based in pure subjectivity with no rational basis in reality.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
So yeah, without the foundry what's left to do for fun after all the official content has been done to death?
What dev time and resources? Show me in the last 3 years how many times the foundry was mentioned in the patch notes.
As far as I know, most of the Ships, costumes and enemies added to the Foundry in the last years was done in devs spare time.
Like others have said. I will never spend another cent on this game.
And what do you mean legacy knowledge- did an employee leave or something?
Pfft what's next sad news STO is coming to an end? I do hope you're ire planning major expansions to gameplay because shrinking games end up in the bin <<< my advice
so to the less than troll. how about doing some empathy lessons - probably can find some online!
oh and there is nothing remotely like 7.3 million players. That is captains created all time. There is more like 20,000 very active players.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
The Foundry authors are some of the most dedicated players in the whole game, actually creating entire missions for players, not just flying round in the existing game.
If you wanted to TRIBBLE off a more dedicated group of players who devote a huge amount of time and effort to the game then I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone worse to target.
And then there are all the players who actually use the Foundry created content; either because they enjoyed the missions, they wanted more to do when Cryptic's own release schedule was drier than a Vulcan desert, or maybe just because it helped with ship testing/endeavors/socialising etc.
Even if less than 40% of players used it, i'm assuming that means more than 30% so that is still around 1/3rd of the players. By comparison how many players make use of the Romulan faction......or the Jem'hadar faction? Yeah.....probably less than 1/3rd of the players.
You're removing content to improve the game....
So seeing as you'll not be wasting all those precious resources maintaining enormously massive task (/s) of keeping the Foundry running we'll see a vast improvement elsewhere in the game now?
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Somehow I seriously doubt that will be the case with you guys.....
"No matter where you go...there you are."