The player community did not kill the Foundry. It failed because Cryptic refused to treat it like an actual part of the game whenever they had major updates. Changes to core components and scripts shared by the Foundry cause it to become unstable at best and unusable at worst. And because they did not replace developers who left, they simply did not have time to maintain everything else and the Foundry on top of it. That is their fault. Yeah the numbers told them that it wasn't being used. But the tools had become unusable, and when Foundry went down, it stayed down for WEEKS. Who can use something that is inaccessible? If they had kept a dedicated Foundry dev on staff, this could have been avoided.
But when it did work, there were some foundry authors who took it very seriously, in some cases offering missions that were superior to what Cryptic had been doing for a paycheck as their full-time JOB. The foundry players and authors were a niche among the community. Niches are good for MMOs. It means the MMO is healthy enough to sustain differing interests.
But that precicely means that the playerbase ignored the Foundry...yes, the Foundry had its issues for a long time and that definitely caused it to be ignored mostly by the playerbase, but you yourself agree that once it was fleshed out and the community managers promoted good content (even in the game there were promotions) only a hand full played. In other words, Cryptic pulled the plug and allocated the resources elsewhere.
To me that means the players ultimately abandoned the Foundry, not Cryptic. Apparently this MMO is not healthy enough to sustain that niche audience. Sad, but I understand that they run a business not a charity.
If you think that Cryptic abandoned the Foundry and other content, that is fine...in part it is obviously true, but it ain't the whole picture. The players decide what they want to play...all the content they have cut was never popular, for whatever reason.
> You are essentially trying to use the "English teacher book report" argument, where they go on about "what do you think the book was about?!" which is a pointless question to ask, or do a report about, when I can just look up what the the author stated what the book was about. Since thats the only thing that matters.
That is a sad interpretation. The viewer, reader, or player has to give something of herself to be moved by art. It cannot be only a one way process. You cannot relate to something without giving yourself.
Art is far more of an empathic “Bones” function than a logical “Spock” function.
If the auteur’s intent was the only thing you could learn from a work—that is troubling too. What if the author is dishonest or lying about her intent? What if there were psychological or historical motivations that the author did not realize or admit to herself? What if the author’s own interpretation of her work is not static but changes over time?
If interpretation was as obvious as just asking the author—life would certainly be easier. We wouldn’t need to interpret the Bible or rewrite history books ad nausium (Not looking it up tonight).
But it would certainly be less interesting. Part of the fun of conversation is not debating interpretations and points—but rather talking around points until we start to understand what the other person’s words mean—and maybe we can help to figure out what we think ourselves too.
I have a feeling this particular... debate... is at the point of "If Mod sees it someone's going to have a bad day". Its going back and forth, with shots fired.
I've resisted getting involved myself when the Foundry came up because its been explained why it was removed, MANY TIMES, by the Devs, and yet the conspiracy theroies always seem to win out, usually centering around malevelant intent or incompetence rather than simple system issues and the fact IT BROKE EVERY TIME THE GAME UPDATED. Let alone what many feel they want in game and claim can be done when the truth is that is virturally impossible with the current tech.
Anyways...
IMO probably a good idea to back off on that debate before it does turn into a flame war. Its going nowhere.
The player community did not kill the Foundry. It failed because Cryptic refused to treat it like an actual part of the game whenever they had major updates. Changes to core components and scripts shared by the Foundry cause it to become unstable at best and unusable at worst. And because they did not replace developers who left, they simply did not have time to maintain everything else and the Foundry on top of it. That is their fault. Yeah the numbers told them that it wasn't being used. But the tools had become unusable, and when Foundry went down, it stayed down for WEEKS. Who can use something that is inaccessible? If they had kept a dedicated Foundry dev on staff, this could have been avoided.
But when it did work, there were some foundry authors who took it very seriously, in some cases offering missions that were superior to what Cryptic had been doing for a paycheck as their full-time JOB. The foundry players and authors were a niche among the community. Niches are good for MMOs. It means the MMO is healthy enough to sustain differing interests.
But that precicely means that the playerbase ignored the Foundry...yes, the Foundry had its issues for a long time and that definitely caused it to be ignored mostly by the playerbase, but you yourself agree that once it was fleshed out and the community managers promoted good content (even in the game there were promotions) only a hand full played. In other words, Cryptic pulled the plug and allocated the resources elsewhere.
To me that means the players ultimately abandoned the Foundry, not Cryptic. Apparently this MMO is not healthy enough to sustain that niche audience. Sad, but I understand that they run a business not a charity.
If you think that Cryptic abandoned the Foundry and other content, that is fine...in part it is obviously true, but it ain't the whole picture. The players decide what they want to play...all the content they have cut was never popular, for whatever reason.
The Fooundry was barely supported from day one. Hell, in a game update TO the Foundry, it was clear Cryptic QA testing failed (IE they tested a change made to the Foundry for NW - and must have assumed if it work in NW - no need for testing the STO branch - because once released it BROKE nearly every mission made and caused numerous authors to get 1 star ratings with players asking how ANYONE could run the misssion, etc... That particular change also screwed up the STO editing system so that Authors couldn't even attempt to see what briooke and if any sort of 'fix' was possible from their end.
^^^
After that, Cryptic started the policy of disabling comments for a wekk after any major patch in case the Foundry broke (which it often did.)
The Foundry was further abandoned by the regular playerbase because Cryptic could NEVER fix their STO backend to actually be able to load a Foundry map in a reasonable amount of time (IE - In general Foundry Maps took sometimes MINUTES to load (again not due to anything the player authors did - more that Cryptic again could never get the system working because they never really allocated any of their programmer's time due to the Foundry not being sufficiently monetized (IE - Cryptic never figured out any RMT scheme that they felt would work for the Foundry.)
^^^
Funny thing is - I USED to believe it was outright Cryptic willful neglect (RE: The map loading times) - but given that after 10 years the Cryptic Engine and Backened map load times are still honestly abysmal - I think it's more they honestly don;'t have network engineers or programmers who really understand their own engine; and if anyone ever did, they moved on from Cryptic to other companies (or retired) long ago; and the people left are often flailing about just trying to keep the whole setup from collapsing (need observable proof: The rubber banding and lag issues that have persisted for YEARS and continue to persist even as Cryptic tries to claim they're aware and "working on fixing it..."
But yeah, the players didn't abandon the Foundry because they thought it was a bad idea per se - it's the fact that Cryptic themselves never really finished developing it to an actual state where one could call it reasonably functional overall - and because they couldn't monetize it in a more direct way - they saw no need to waste any time on it when they could put Dev and Programmer resources on things that more directly increased STO and Cryptic profitability.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
The player community did not kill the Foundry. It failed because Cryptic refused to treat it like an actual part of the game whenever they had major updates. Changes to core components and scripts shared by the Foundry cause it to become unstable at best and unusable at worst. And because they did not replace developers who left, they simply did not have time to maintain everything else and the Foundry on top of it. That is their fault. Yeah the numbers told them that it wasn't being used. But the tools had become unusable, and when Foundry went down, it stayed down for WEEKS. Who can use something that is inaccessible? If they had kept a dedicated Foundry dev on staff, this could have been avoided.
But when it did work, there were some foundry authors who took it very seriously, in some cases offering missions that were superior to what Cryptic had been doing for a paycheck as their full-time JOB. The foundry players and authors were a niche among the community. Niches are good for MMOs. It means the MMO is healthy enough to sustain differing interests.
But that precicely means that the playerbase ignored the Foundry...yes, the Foundry had its issues for a long time and that definitely caused it to be ignored mostly by the playerbase, but you yourself agree that once it was fleshed out and the community managers promoted good content (even in the game there were promotions) only a hand full played. In other words, Cryptic pulled the plug and allocated the resources elsewhere.
To me that means the players ultimately abandoned the Foundry, not Cryptic. Apparently this MMO is not healthy enough to sustain that niche audience. Sad, but I understand that they run a business not a charity.
If you think that Cryptic abandoned the Foundry and other content, that is fine...in part it is obviously true, but it ain't the whole picture. The players decide what they want to play...all the content they have cut was never popular, for whatever reason.
It was very well received when it launched. But when it kept going down every time Cryptic updated the core game, and kept taking longer and longer to be brought back up, of course the players AND foundry authors stopped using it. Because of Cryptic's lack of enough manpower, it became an increasingly large pile of steaming TRIBBLE, to the point where it became too hard for them to fix, let alone maintain.
Cryptic killed the Foundry through neglect. Like I said, how can one use a feature that is buggy as hell or disabled more than it is functional and available?
There is this, given that at any one time there was only one dev that worked on the foundry, and that was in their off time.
Foundry authors didn't stop using it. It just kept becoming more of a pain to use it, meaning it took far longer to create something in it. I was still working in it up until they shut it down. I'm actually still in the discord channel that was used for foundry help. There was even a subforum here for the Foundry itself.
The authors and quite a lot of players were disappointed in the loss of the Foundry. I'm sure a great many authors would even remake their stories if they brought it back, or introduced a newer version of it. The only thing here they would have to do, that played a part in it being shutdown, is to make sure that Foundry missions could not be used to complete endeavors.
But right now, the Foundry, like the Calendar, fall in the "Legacy Code" excuse, meaning there's no one at Cryptic that knows how to work on them. The same goes with Gozer's PvP code, no one at Cryptic knows how to work on it.
It was very well received when it launched. But when it kept going down every time Cryptic updated the core game, and kept taking longer and longer to be brought back up, of course the players AND foundry authors stopped using it. Because of Cryptic's lack of enough manpower, it became an increasingly large pile of steaming TRIBBLE, to the point where it became too hard for them to fix, let alone maintain.
Cryptic killed the Foundry through neglect. Like I said, how can one use a feature that is buggy as hell or disabled more than it is functional and available?
na, it was only "popular" when it was used to exploit dilithium... While I believe you are not wrong to say Cryptic neglected it, I think this is basically the Chicken or Egg question, in other words, what came first.
I truely have no recollection of any hype regarding the Foundry...never, appart from the occasional mission or people trying it out for themselves...
I don't even believe it was well received at the beginning...pretty sure participation fell short of cryptics expectations, even when it was working.
But this is a baseless debate anyway without any numbers. I can only speak from my experience and the people I played with at the time. Based on that I can clearly say that it was extremely niche from the start, and having only one developer working on it and maintaining it (which clearly was not enough) means to me at least that nobody at ryptic saw it developing into something grand and that their internal numbers supported that viewpoint. If it ever was well received and on demand, having only one developer allocated to it after its release would seriously raise eyebrows. In other words they wouldn't neglect anything that was as popular as you claim. That would make no sense at all. And by all the "well meant" Cryptic bashing, to say they killed a perfectly well received feature just because is completely bonkers. There definitely were rational reasons to abandon it, and probably that one dev still saw potential in it, that's why he kept it going alone.
I rarely used it myself, and funny enough, I almost never had any major issues. But that's subjective, because obviously it was constantly down for extended periods.
We could actually start a poll and see if the Foundry actually was used by many player regularely when it was available, although I don't believe the forum community would be a fitting sample size and many have left for other games a long time ago too.
We used to have a Foundry Spotlight, where the Devs would highlight certain, well done Foundry missions. I think that was Trendy's thing back in the day.
na, it was only "popular" when it was used to exploit dilithium... While I believe you are not wrong to say Cryptic neglected it, I think this is basically the Chicken or Egg question, in other words, what came first.
I truely have no recollection of any hype regarding the Foundry...never, apart from the occasional mission or people trying it out for themselves...
I don't even believe it was well received at the beginning...pretty sure participation fell short of cryptics expectations, even when it was working.
<snip>
Not entirely correct.
The Foundry was put out during Cryptic's dark days under Atari. It was a brilliant move to add content to the game when it was sorely needed - because Atari was basically not paying Cryptic (anyone remember that Cryptic couldn't even afford coffee cups at the time?)
The real issue, as you mentioned, was visibility. The Foundry had a somewhat hidden interface which made access difficult. On top of that, the interface itself was hard to navigate. Most people thought there were 50 missions in the Foundry. Yep, 50. This was because the interface only showed the first 'page' of 50 missions, with no way to browse past that point. If you wanted to see other missions, you had to know the name of the mission, or author, etc. Now who's gonna know the name of a mission in-game if they've never played it?? So yeah, the vast majority of the playerbase got bored of the same 50 missions - well those who could find the Foundry interface in the first place.
Cryptic did try to address this in several ways over the years - Foundry Spotlights, adding the Foundry gateway to the missions window, Top 3 missions at planets, etc. But these efforts were again hindered by the fact that only the same 50 missions ever showed up to the average player.
And here's the kicker - there were over 90,000 missions in the Foundry when it was shutdown. 90,000.
So sad that the powers that be couldn't look long term at such an incredible, massive source of content that was freely produced for their game. So many possibilities - not the least of which would be a basis for a nearly endless, content rich exploration system.
We used to have a Foundry Spotlight, where the Devs would highlight certain, well done Foundry missions. I think that was Trendy's thing back in the day.
It was still happening when the Foundry was shutdown. The thing about this is, you had to apply for a mission spotlight in the Foundry. The thing about it was, you had to make sure it worked and that it was as perfect as you could get it. Once you posted for spotlight, you could no longer edit it. So a lot of work went into Foundry spotlight missions by the authors.
As for other reasons that played into the Foundry being shutdown, other than the apparent neglect it received. As I mentioned earlier, there was the using it to complete endeavors, instead of playing Cryptic missions for them.
There was also the dil farming side of it.
The accolade completion side of it.
Item farming maps. This is often referred to as the EC farming side of it. The was maps setup to make drop farming easier. Thus all you had to do was pickup the drops, sell them to a vendor or recycle them, rinse and repeat.
So while it brought us a great many good stories and maps. It was also being abused or exploited for various other reasons.
Which I'm sure with it being shutdown, Cryptic has seen an uptick in mission play and such, from those that are chasing after the powercreep of Endeavors.
Yeah, and they got rid of Foundry in Neverwinter as well. Before recently, with the Cryptic 20th Anniversary, I got back into playing Neverwinter again. My Characters there had last logins of late 2013. A Character had a Quest to do a Foundry Mission but that was impossible so I just had to drop it.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
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.'
Yeah, and they got rid of Foundry in Neverwinter as well. Before recently, with the Cryptic 20th Anniversary, I got back into playing Neverwinter again. My Characters there had last logins of late 2013. A Character had a Quest to do a Foundry Mission but that was impossible so I just had to drop it.
The Foundry for Neverwinter is where STO's Foundry came from. They were both shutdown at the same time. So, not only could they not work on STO's, they also couldn't work on Neverwinter's. Reference, "Legacy Code".
As for other reasons that played into the Foundry being shutdown, other than the apparent neglect it received. As I mentioned earlier, there was the using it to complete endeavors, instead of playing Cryptic missions for them.
Except Cryptic gave no damns about this. People even asked them if this was part of the reason why the Foundry was shut down, and they point blank responded no it wasn't, even pointing out how there was endeavors to do Foundry missions because the whole point of the endeavor system was to get people to play more foundry content among other little played content.
Again a problem, as I used RP maps, you know like foundry made house maps to complete said endeavors. This took all of about 2 minutes, most of that being map transfer time in and out. The Admiral's quarter map on DS9 was great for it, this one took all of 10 seconds to go from the door to the padd that ended it, and endeavor complete. While I do know they wanted to draw more attention to the Foundry this way. So, it was a good idea on Cryptic's part. But one that turned out to be easy to complete. This and you could literally make a map that was blank, just put a console in near the spawn in point that ended it, endeavor complete. Not exactly the attention Cryptic was going for.
Again a problem, as I used RP maps, you know like foundry made house maps to complete said endeavors. This took all of about 2 minutes, most of that being map transfer time in and out. The Admiral's quarter map on DS9 was great for it, this one took all of 10 seconds to go from the door to the padd that ended it, and endeavor complete. While I do know that wanted to draw more attention to the Foundry this way. So, it was a good idea on Cryptic's part. But one that turned out o be easy to complete. This and you could literally make a map that was blank, just put a console in near the spawn in point that ended it, endeavor complete. Not, exactly the attention Cryptic was going for.
And again, why would they care? All that matters is that you logged in an played the game so the metrics look good. I typically complete my endeavors in less then 20 minutes each day.
They didn't care about accolade farming, they didn't care about endeavor farming, and they had long since nerfed dil and EC farming from Foundry missions into oblivion.
Accolade, per character.
Dil, per character
EC, per character, unless you had an account/fleet bank to use.
Endeavour, account wide perk.
Now, I'm not saying they cared much about it. Just that the system was easy to exploit to complete it. Granted, on this one, I would have just preferred they dropped the endeavor, and left the Foundry. Even in it's broken state, it was still usable. A bit more of headache to build maps in, but still one could do it.
The second part there is a reason the Foundry didn't draw a lot of attention. The rewards were TRIBBLE, plus any drops you happened to pick up. Add to this, other than the top three listed for a system in sector space, there wasn't anything to even remind the player it existed. This means that until the Endeavor, a great many players probably didn't even know it was there. If they would have added a button like the "site-to-site" like the one for Summer event, that called up a list of foundry missions for the area. It would have drawn more attention to it than the endeavor did.
I know for accolade farming, it had a hindrance against the Federation. You couldn't farm the Klingon rebel kill accolade this way. As it stands, for this accolade, I believe there is currently only 1 NPC in the entire for that counts for this, and I think that's the naussican boss that spawns on Nimbus.
But again, as I said, it's part of the reason, a drop in the bucket, so to speak. The main reason as I said, is the neglect it received, which brought to the point where they couldn't fix it. And we all know what Cryptic does with things they can't fix, remove it from the game, the calendar being another example of having something removed cause they can't fix it.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
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.'
Exactly, so why would they care if you farmed them?
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
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.'
Exactly, so why would they care if you farmed them?
Didn't say they did. Just that endeavors was a small drop in the bucket of it. If I had went through the trouble to make something like the Endeavor system, and players found a way to do it without playing the intended content for it, I'd be slightly annoyed about it. Of course, some of my annoyance would be at myself, for not thinking about that possibility.
Personally, on this one, I would have rather they dedicated the time to fix the Foundry, instead of creating and introducing the Endeavor system.
But, that's just me. I'd rather have the Foundry than the powercreep.
You didn't but the perennial Defender of the Universe did.
Ah, that 'Kill 10 Captains' Foundry Mission was my go to for Killing Captains. Now I use 'Overgrown Caves' for Easy and Advanced and the Elachi Discovery Ground TFO for Hard.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
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.'
It would be nice if they let us know what they are working on... and in a written format, not a video. And here, not reddit.
(Especially considering that the reddit mods are not Cryptic employees or overseen by such & have banned people for "complaining too much".)
They did that and got crucified whenever they did not deliver what they hyped. And they got crucified a lot. They are idea rich and eager (at least that was my impression from back then when the dev still interacted with the community); but they (not the individuals but the company entity as a whole) have the attention span of a 5y old with ADHD in Disneyland.
Comments
But that precicely means that the playerbase ignored the Foundry...yes, the Foundry had its issues for a long time and that definitely caused it to be ignored mostly by the playerbase, but you yourself agree that once it was fleshed out and the community managers promoted good content (even in the game there were promotions) only a hand full played. In other words, Cryptic pulled the plug and allocated the resources elsewhere.
To me that means the players ultimately abandoned the Foundry, not Cryptic. Apparently this MMO is not healthy enough to sustain that niche audience. Sad, but I understand that they run a business not a charity.
If you think that Cryptic abandoned the Foundry and other content, that is fine...in part it is obviously true, but it ain't the whole picture. The players decide what they want to play...all the content they have cut was never popular, for whatever reason.
> (Quote)
> You are essentially trying to use the "English teacher book report" argument, where they go on about "what do you think the book was about?!" which is a pointless question to ask, or do a report about, when I can just look up what the the author stated what the book was about. Since thats the only thing that matters.
That is a sad interpretation. The viewer, reader, or player has to give something of herself to be moved by art. It cannot be only a one way process. You cannot relate to something without giving yourself.
Art is far more of an empathic “Bones” function than a logical “Spock” function.
If the auteur’s intent was the only thing you could learn from a work—that is troubling too. What if the author is dishonest or lying about her intent? What if there were psychological or historical motivations that the author did not realize or admit to herself? What if the author’s own interpretation of her work is not static but changes over time?
If interpretation was as obvious as just asking the author—life would certainly be easier. We wouldn’t need to interpret the Bible or rewrite history books ad nausium (Not looking it up tonight).
But it would certainly be less interesting. Part of the fun of conversation is not debating interpretations and points—but rather talking around points until we start to understand what the other person’s words mean—and maybe we can help to figure out what we think ourselves too.
I've resisted getting involved myself when the Foundry came up because its been explained why it was removed, MANY TIMES, by the Devs, and yet the conspiracy theroies always seem to win out, usually centering around malevelant intent or incompetence rather than simple system issues and the fact IT BROKE EVERY TIME THE GAME UPDATED. Let alone what many feel they want in game and claim can be done when the truth is that is virturally impossible with the current tech.
Anyways...
IMO probably a good idea to back off on that debate before it does turn into a flame war. Its going nowhere.
The Fooundry was barely supported from day one. Hell, in a game update TO the Foundry, it was clear Cryptic QA testing failed (IE they tested a change made to the Foundry for NW - and must have assumed if it work in NW - no need for testing the STO branch - because once released it BROKE nearly every mission made and caused numerous authors to get 1 star ratings with players asking how ANYONE could run the misssion, etc... That particular change also screwed up the STO editing system so that Authors couldn't even attempt to see what briooke and if any sort of 'fix' was possible from their end.
^^^
After that, Cryptic started the policy of disabling comments for a wekk after any major patch in case the Foundry broke (which it often did.)
The Foundry was further abandoned by the regular playerbase because Cryptic could NEVER fix their STO backend to actually be able to load a Foundry map in a reasonable amount of time (IE - In general Foundry Maps took sometimes MINUTES to load (again not due to anything the player authors did - more that Cryptic again could never get the system working because they never really allocated any of their programmer's time due to the Foundry not being sufficiently monetized (IE - Cryptic never figured out any RMT scheme that they felt would work for the Foundry.)
^^^
Funny thing is - I USED to believe it was outright Cryptic willful neglect (RE: The map loading times) - but given that after 10 years the Cryptic Engine and Backened map load times are still honestly abysmal - I think it's more they honestly don;'t have network engineers or programmers who really understand their own engine; and if anyone ever did, they moved on from Cryptic to other companies (or retired) long ago; and the people left are often flailing about just trying to keep the whole setup from collapsing (need observable proof: The rubber banding and lag issues that have persisted for YEARS and continue to persist even as Cryptic tries to claim they're aware and "working on fixing it..."
But yeah, the players didn't abandon the Foundry because they thought it was a bad idea per se - it's the fact that Cryptic themselves never really finished developing it to an actual state where one could call it reasonably functional overall - and because they couldn't monetize it in a more direct way - they saw no need to waste any time on it when they could put Dev and Programmer resources on things that more directly increased STO and Cryptic profitability.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Yes.
There is this, given that at any one time there was only one dev that worked on the foundry, and that was in their off time.
Foundry authors didn't stop using it. It just kept becoming more of a pain to use it, meaning it took far longer to create something in it. I was still working in it up until they shut it down. I'm actually still in the discord channel that was used for foundry help. There was even a subforum here for the Foundry itself.
The authors and quite a lot of players were disappointed in the loss of the Foundry. I'm sure a great many authors would even remake their stories if they brought it back, or introduced a newer version of it. The only thing here they would have to do, that played a part in it being shutdown, is to make sure that Foundry missions could not be used to complete endeavors.
But right now, the Foundry, like the Calendar, fall in the "Legacy Code" excuse, meaning there's no one at Cryptic that knows how to work on them. The same goes with Gozer's PvP code, no one at Cryptic knows how to work on it.
na, it was only "popular" when it was used to exploit dilithium... While I believe you are not wrong to say Cryptic neglected it, I think this is basically the Chicken or Egg question, in other words, what came first.
I truely have no recollection of any hype regarding the Foundry...never, appart from the occasional mission or people trying it out for themselves...
I don't even believe it was well received at the beginning...pretty sure participation fell short of cryptics expectations, even when it was working.
But this is a baseless debate anyway without any numbers. I can only speak from my experience and the people I played with at the time. Based on that I can clearly say that it was extremely niche from the start, and having only one developer working on it and maintaining it (which clearly was not enough) means to me at least that nobody at ryptic saw it developing into something grand and that their internal numbers supported that viewpoint. If it ever was well received and on demand, having only one developer allocated to it after its release would seriously raise eyebrows. In other words they wouldn't neglect anything that was as popular as you claim. That would make no sense at all. And by all the "well meant" Cryptic bashing, to say they killed a perfectly well received feature just because is completely bonkers. There definitely were rational reasons to abandon it, and probably that one dev still saw potential in it, that's why he kept it going alone.
I rarely used it myself, and funny enough, I almost never had any major issues. But that's subjective, because obviously it was constantly down for extended periods.
We could actually start a poll and see if the Foundry actually was used by many player regularely when it was available, although I don't believe the forum community would be a fitting sample size and many have left for other games a long time ago too.
Not entirely correct.
The Foundry was put out during Cryptic's dark days under Atari. It was a brilliant move to add content to the game when it was sorely needed - because Atari was basically not paying Cryptic (anyone remember that Cryptic couldn't even afford coffee cups at the time?)
The real issue, as you mentioned, was visibility. The Foundry had a somewhat hidden interface which made access difficult. On top of that, the interface itself was hard to navigate. Most people thought there were 50 missions in the Foundry. Yep, 50. This was because the interface only showed the first 'page' of 50 missions, with no way to browse past that point. If you wanted to see other missions, you had to know the name of the mission, or author, etc. Now who's gonna know the name of a mission in-game if they've never played it?? So yeah, the vast majority of the playerbase got bored of the same 50 missions - well those who could find the Foundry interface in the first place.
Cryptic did try to address this in several ways over the years - Foundry Spotlights, adding the Foundry gateway to the missions window, Top 3 missions at planets, etc. But these efforts were again hindered by the fact that only the same 50 missions ever showed up to the average player.
And here's the kicker - there were over 90,000 missions in the Foundry when it was shutdown. 90,000.
Many of these missions were as good or BETTER than the official Cryptic content, as stated by the devs themselves. Here is a small list of some absolutely stunning missions the Foundry made available for play - THAT MOST PEOPLE IN-GAME NEVER KNEW ABOUT. https://arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1073772/the-sbugc-list-of-great-missions-2-0/p1
So sad that the powers that be couldn't look long term at such an incredible, massive source of content that was freely produced for their game. So many possibilities - not the least of which would be a basis for a nearly endless, content rich exploration system.
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
It was still happening when the Foundry was shutdown. The thing about this is, you had to apply for a mission spotlight in the Foundry. The thing about it was, you had to make sure it worked and that it was as perfect as you could get it. Once you posted for spotlight, you could no longer edit it. So a lot of work went into Foundry spotlight missions by the authors.
As for other reasons that played into the Foundry being shutdown, other than the apparent neglect it received. As I mentioned earlier, there was the using it to complete endeavors, instead of playing Cryptic missions for them.
There was also the dil farming side of it.
The accolade completion side of it.
Item farming maps. This is often referred to as the EC farming side of it. The was maps setup to make drop farming easier. Thus all you had to do was pickup the drops, sell them to a vendor or recycle them, rinse and repeat.
So while it brought us a great many good stories and maps. It was also being abused or exploited for various other reasons.
Which I'm sure with it being shutdown, Cryptic has seen an uptick in mission play and such, from those that are chasing after the powercreep of Endeavors.
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.'
The Foundry for Neverwinter is where STO's Foundry came from. They were both shutdown at the same time. So, not only could they not work on STO's, they also couldn't work on Neverwinter's. Reference, "Legacy Code".
Again a problem, as I used RP maps, you know like foundry made house maps to complete said endeavors. This took all of about 2 minutes, most of that being map transfer time in and out. The Admiral's quarter map on DS9 was great for it, this one took all of 10 seconds to go from the door to the padd that ended it, and endeavor complete. While I do know they wanted to draw more attention to the Foundry this way. So, it was a good idea on Cryptic's part. But one that turned out to be easy to complete. This and you could literally make a map that was blank, just put a console in near the spawn in point that ended it, endeavor complete. Not exactly the attention Cryptic was going for.
Accolade, per character.
Dil, per character
EC, per character, unless you had an account/fleet bank to use.
Endeavour, account wide perk.
Now, I'm not saying they cared much about it. Just that the system was easy to exploit to complete it. Granted, on this one, I would have just preferred they dropped the endeavor, and left the Foundry. Even in it's broken state, it was still usable. A bit more of headache to build maps in, but still one could do it.
The second part there is a reason the Foundry didn't draw a lot of attention. The rewards were TRIBBLE, plus any drops you happened to pick up. Add to this, other than the top three listed for a system in sector space, there wasn't anything to even remind the player it existed. This means that until the Endeavor, a great many players probably didn't even know it was there. If they would have added a button like the "site-to-site" like the one for Summer event, that called up a list of foundry missions for the area. It would have drawn more attention to it than the endeavor did.
I know for accolade farming, it had a hindrance against the Federation. You couldn't farm the Klingon rebel kill accolade this way. As it stands, for this accolade, I believe there is currently only 1 NPC in the entire for that counts for this, and I think that's the naussican boss that spawns on Nimbus.
But again, as I said, it's part of the reason, a drop in the bucket, so to speak. The main reason as I said, is the neglect it received, which brought to the point where they couldn't fix it. And we all know what Cryptic does with things they can't fix, remove it from the game, the calendar being another example of having something removed cause they can't fix it.
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.'
Nothing. They give titles and some minor buffs. Which the buffs aren't even a concern for end game, that's how minor they are.
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.'
Didn't say they did. Just that endeavors was a small drop in the bucket of it. If I had went through the trouble to make something like the Endeavor system, and players found a way to do it without playing the intended content for it, I'd be slightly annoyed about it. Of course, some of my annoyance would be at myself, for not thinking about that possibility.
Personally, on this one, I would have rather they dedicated the time to fix the Foundry, instead of creating and introducing the Endeavor system.
But, that's just me. I'd rather have the Foundry than the powercreep.
Ah, that 'Kill 10 Captains' Foundry Mission was my go to for Killing Captains. Now I use 'Overgrown Caves' for Easy and Advanced and the Elachi Discovery Ground TFO for Hard.
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.'
They did that and got crucified whenever they did not deliver what they hyped. And they got crucified a lot. They are idea rich and eager (at least that was my impression from back then when the dev still interacted with the community); but they (not the individuals but the company entity as a whole) have the attention span of a 5y old with ADHD in Disneyland.