Foundry: First Impressions

So, the Foundry has been live on STO nearly a month.  I can say that I have not played a single Foundry mission, as I've been too busy working on my own.  So, from an Author's point of view, how is the Foundry?

Well, the fact that it's taken me this long and I'm still nowhere near finished is a good indication that the Foundry is not something that a casual gamer is going to get into very deeply.

The mission I'm working on is not a terribly complicated plot, despite being something of a "whodunit".  The player is basically gathering facts in order to solve a problem.  This would be a completely boring mission if not for the branching dialog capabilities of the Foundry.

The Foundry's Story mode is reasonably intuitive, and the advanced dialog editor is not indecipherable.  Once you know how, it's easy to construct complex dialog trees with loops and interconnected branches.  The only downside here is that there is no way to truly fail an objective and thus no way to use that failure to trigger anything else.  The Costume editor is not bad, but needs more costume parts and options.

The real problem with the Foundry, and the place where the learning curve is exceedingly steep, is the Map editor.  Since this is the foundation for everything you're able to do in the Foundry, this is where Cryptic needs to get it right.  So allow me to walk you through some of the challenges I've faced in trying to build my mission.

First, I needed this mission to take place entirely on board a ship.  Your mission MUST start from a mission "door" so it was necessary that the player travel to one of these doors in order to start the mission.  Not a show-stopper, just a bit of an adjustment.

The very next challenge was that there are no good ship maps currently in the Foundry.  A generic Federation ship interior map for the Engineering deck just like I find when I visit my own ship's interior would have been ideal.  But, no such luck.  There is a Federation type bridge map, which was good to start with but not good enough for the rest of my mission.  From the available parts, I think I might have had an easier time building the interior of a Borg ship.

So, I had to take a generic ship interior map (which doesn't look much like the inside of a Federation vessel, by tthe way) and section off everything but one room and one corridor.  It took me 20 minutes just to properly position a turbolift in place of an opening to another room.  I had to build a room containing a warp core from scratch; it wasn't easy and the result was not very satisfying.  Given that we've seen such rooms in-game already, I don't think it would be asking too much to have a map with a complete warp core room and external corridor for each faction.

Placing objects on the map is a very repetitive exercise involving:

1. Finding a suitable object from the list of available objects.  Despite search filters, this isn't easy to do.

2. Placing the object on the map.  This involves placing the object by drag and drop and then fiddling with the X,Y,Z coordinates as well as the object's rotation.  There's no ruler or guide to help you align things.  Also, I would have expected the Y coordinate to be on the horizontal plane, like on a sheet of graph paper.  But no, it's on the vertical.  It gets especially difficult when you're trying to connect objects.  It would be great if there were some intelligent "snap-to-grid" or "snap-to-object" feature, but there isn't.

3. Play the map.  This is where you find out that the object isn't where you expected it to be, isn't facing the direction you thought it would, or discover that it doesn't really look right where you chose to place it.  So you bounce back and forth between the map editor to tweak the coordinates and playing the map until the object is right where you want it.  Getting an actor to sit down properly is nearly more headache than it's worth.  I don't mind the initial placing of objects on a map grid, but there really needs to be a mechanism for being able to move those objects into place from a 3D view.

Finally, I really would have liked to be able to adjust the lighting to set the proper mood... but that isn't one of the things you can customize just yet.

I really like the idea of the Foundry, and I'm rooting for it to succeed.  But it's painfully obvious that it still needs a lot of work before the average user is able to produce a half-decent original mission without a great deal of trial-and-error.

Have you used the Foundry yet?  What's your impression?

Late News Dept: .COM Signed for DNSSEC

.COM has been signed as of March 31st... When will big companies switch over to DNSSEC?
A Red-Letter Day

I have a suspicion that most of them will be dragged to it kicking and screaming by their marketing and legal departments.

Foundry Scheduled to go Live March 28!!!

According to Dstahl, the Foundry is in final testing and is on track to be released to Holodeck on Monday, March 28.

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=3452967&postcount=19

I haven't spent a lot of time yet thinking about the stories I want to tell.  I only tried an early version of it on Tribble and it was too soon to tell what was going to be possible.  Features I wanted weren't there yet.

With the inclusion of branching dialog and some of the other new features, this could be a huge boost for replayability.  I can't wait to get in there and start tinkering with the release version!

So, what story do YOU want to tell?

STO Public Service Announcement

Just a reminder, there are three days left from today to claim your limited time FE reward for the "Cloaked Intentions" series.  If you need that Reman Science Bridge Officer, get him while he's still interested in joining your crew.

A Rear Admiral, Lower Half, By Any Other Name...

Before I get into my little rant, I'd like to point out that the latest Engineering Report is up on the STO website:

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=207260

I love the game, but there's one little annoyance that I can not shake.  And that is how the game uses the character's name and rank in mission text.

The most visible and controversial evidence of this are players who have reached the exalted rank of Rear Admiral.  The game assigns the proper formal ranks of "Rear Admiral, Lower Half" and "Rear Admiral, Upper Half".  Unfortunately, there is no code that correctly interprets the informal verbal address of "Admiral".  So instead of being "Admiral G'eek", I was for a time known in mission text as "Rear Admiral, Lower Half G'eek".

It would have been far worse if my character's full formal name had been in play; "Rear Admiral, Lower Half G'eek, Son of N'erd" is quite a mouthful in conversation.  And very, very disruptive for immersion.

I understand the need in game for distinctive ranks, and that it is probably hard-coded all over the place.  I'm not expecting that to change.  The simple fix for the Rear Admiral annoyance is a simple substitution filter that applies only to mission text.  The substitution itself is but a minor exercise.  The game logic that would implement it might be far less simple, but I imagine it would be something achievable.  At least in newer missions, if it couldn't be easily backported to old missions.  But the problem goes beyond that, I'm afraid.

The game assumes a Western naming convention, for another thing.  First name, Last name.  There is little room for any creative parsing of a non-Western name.

The point I am getting at is that the game should have the right "tags".  There should be a user-configurable tag for [PreferredName] that gets used pretty much everywhere and guarantees that the player will be addressed in the way that they expect.  There should also be a user-configurable [FormalName] tag that insures that the player is addressed properly in a formal situation.  Both tags should have reasonable defaults so that players only need to mess with them if their names are getting misparsed.  [FormalRank] and [Informal Rank] would be determined by the game, allowing them to be precisely applied in mission text.  Beyond that, there should be tags for [Faction], [Species] and [Gender] and various gender pronouns and game logic that allows them to be used in missions for mission text and for mission triggers.

Imagine the flexibility!  The level of immersion that would be possible in both Cryptic-authored missions and in player-created Foundry missions!

Imagine a mission in a diplomatic setting, where the player is not only addressed by his Formal Rank and Formal Name in the appropriate situation but where one of the alien delegates might react angrily because of the player's Faction or Species!

Or to take a classic Trek example, it could be "Captain James T. Kirk" or "Captain Kirk" or just "Jim".

I know it's not happening in the near future.  Cryptic has quite enough on their plate at the moment.  But 'Never' is a poor solution to what appears to me to be an unfortunate and annoying limitation in the game.

Show of hands: Who wants to be Assimilated?

I follow the official STO boards as often as I can, and one recurring theme that I see popping up from time to time is the suggestion from players that the Borg STF's should be available for solo players.

What part of "Task Force" is unclear here?  In every other MMO that uses the term, it means "Content intended for team play".  Cryptic continues to reiterate that STF's will never be revised for solo play.  And though I tend to play solo most of the time, I have no problem with this.

One of the main reasons for this pro-solo sentiment is the exclusive Borg set.  Can't get it any other way, and I fully agree that there should be an exclusive reward for the Borg STF's.  Cryptic has suggested that there will eventually be other sets, hopefully some obtainable outside of an STF, and I think this will satisfy many players who --

• Can't or won't play an STF and, 
• Can't or won't craft the Aegis set at Memory-Alpha.

Homogenizing all of the game content so that all missions and all rewards are easily available to any group of any size is a bad idea, and I'm glad to see Cryptic standing fast.  Hard core players need the kind of challenges offered by Endgame content like the Borg STF's, and they deserve the exclusive rewards they get (as long as I don't have to face them in PvP!  I don't thrive on humiliation).

The concern I have revolves around Endgame content.  There is a story that solo players are missing out on.  It would be nice if there were other, complimentary missions available at that level that helped to fill in some of the blanks and had different rewards.  Even at Vice Admiral, players want something to DO that isn't mindless grind.

Someday, I hope I can get together with members of my Fleet and we can tame the STF beasties at least once in our fictional careers.  Cryptic has promised a difficulty slider for the STF's and this should help ease the concerns that they are PUG team-wipe train wrecks; missions to be avoided as a waste of time for those who aren't experienced team players.

What do you think?  Will more sets fill in the demand?  Will more single-player Endgame content help?  Will the difficulty slider for STF's end the debate once and for all?

The Romulans...

They're obviously going to be the next faction in the game, but what does that actually mean? There's been a lot of talk about them being fractured, that there could be a civil war, and even that there could be sides that lean towards the Federation and the Klingon Empire (though I honestly don't see that happening without some huge event to do away with centuries of hate and distrust). For the faction itself, though, I think certain things need to be considered:

1. The home base (akin to Qo'nos or Earth Space Dock). For me this absolutely HAS to be something like Romulus. Losing that planet, as much as it helped the storyline and the like, was a loss to the Star Trek universe, and honestly, playing a game as a Romulan and not being able to visit some grand Romulan City (akin to the planet from "Cutting the Cord", though with more) would be something that would hurt. People are still clamouring to this day for Earth to be included, and I honestly believe it's a necessity.

2. The races. I'm a perfectionist that will only have a Klingon crew on a Klingon ship (and once we get more PVE content, will have a Gorn ship with Gorn crew and so on), and as such with the Romulans will most likely be the same route. That said, three starting races does seem a tad small. The Romulans, Remans and Hirogen are great, but I can't help feeling that they could do with a little more just for variety's sake.

3. The ships. For me, this is the most important part of the entire thing. Yes, obviously we'll get the D'deridex (T5 cruiser hopefully), and the Mogai (T5 escort), but what of the others? Yes, we'll get the Hunter Escort (Hirogen ship), and the Bird of Prey, but there are still going to be massive holes in the tiers. To that end, I'd like to see the ships used in TNG episodes like "The Defector", "The Next Phase", and the shuttle seen in the DS9 episode "In The Pale Moonglight". If we get those added to what's in the game already, I think we'll be fine.

4. The Eras. People are going to want their TOS ship patterns and their TNG/DS9 uniforms and weapons (though thankfully as of the latest series, we have the disruptor), and my bet is that Cryptic will of course use the C-Store for such things.

5. The missions. By no means the least important part of the whole thing, people are going to want missions involving subterfuge and sneaking around rather than diplomacy or blunt force. Thankfully Cryptic being Star Trek fans themselves means that the odds are good for such a thing.

That's how I feel about the Romulans as they are: There's a good foundation already laid, and as long as the Klingons get their content issues sorted during the year, there should be little to no problem getting the Romulans out in to the game, and their faction, if it's even half as good as people are hoping, will make a lot of people very happy.

Links:

The Defector - Romulan Scout Ship
The Next Phase - Romulan Science Vessel

^ As you can see, both ships are quite similar, so a tier one ship might be the answer for those designs.

In The Pale Moonlight - Romulan shuttle