Being censored on PWE StarTrek Online Forums

Hi Everyone,

When I received the news of Foundry being removed from the game, I wrote an enpassioned response to the post which gave suposed reasons why the foundry was being taken away.

I forcefully, but not excessively rudely, pointed out how statements in that contradicted each other and gave a blow by blow response to their post.

This was subsequently deleted from their forums.

In giving the highest level of "benefit of doubt", as I like to do, the person deleting the posts may have considered the passionate and animated way I pointed out the contradictions of their statement too forceful, in that they made the person posting the reasoning look very bad (what they posted made them look bad really) as I pointed out without mercy the obvious contradictions and how the original statement was seemingly fabricated.

I am not railing against the decision to disallow my post, but against the fact the post was pulled in its entirity!

Freedom is the ability to make any opinion, but also the responsibility to self tempor and if one does not do so to have others step in.

I regret that I have not located the copy I made of the post in question, this was definitely a mistake to not do, but then I never imagined that such levels of censorship existed (having prior to this worked on freedom loving internet sites encouraging user input).

It's possibly PWE may label me a "trouble maker" for responding to this censorship, it remains to be seen if I am penalised within their organisation for standing up to this infringing of liberty.

Kind regards,
Serry.

In context, I will reproduce my reply as best as possible here (this includes excerts from PWE StarTrek online forums, reproduced here for context and coloured blue:

"On April 11, we are sad to announce that we will be sunsetting the Foundry system for Neverwinter and Star Trek Online."

"1) Foundry was built over the course of a year (6-7 years ago) by programmers who are no longer with the company. They passed on their knowledge as best they could, but the game has moved on. Foundry has a tendency to break with each update and it can take a week searching the code for a fix."




Here they state that "Foundry has a tendancy to break with each update" this, as a pointed out, means that foundary code must be intermixed with main game code and the foundary reasonably tightly coupled with the main engine. I argued that since developers are touching code that breaks it, they might wish to perform more professional expected development practices, like unit testing and automation and regression testing, as a first and second developers should be understanding the codes full extent when modifying its function.

"2) ~ Every time the Foundry broke, the engineers had to spend time fixing it instead of working on updating systems and the tech underneath."

Here I pointed out how this is clearly untrue as they frequently turned off foundary all together after releases and also how foundary had never worked 100% right anyway. Also my demand was not for a flawless foundry experience but for them to keep it available and I would be happy to work to keep my missions working.

"3) Developers have spent a year discussing whether they could keep the Foundry or not. EVERYONE has been fighting to find a way to make it tenable to keep the Foundry going: Julia, Vincent, QA, Thomas, Al, Jeremy, Andre have all been working on it, but none of the solutions have 
worked."






Clearly, if nothing is working, you should be focusing on increasing developer understanding of code before wading in and making serious breaking changes. If you have not time or budget to do that, just simply leave the foundary up and say "it is what it is".

"4) Can just the missions be kept online?

Yes, but that doesn't fix the problem, because when the Foundry breaks, the missions break. And then they still have to spend time fixing it."



So, you let players know the troubles you face, add a "donate" button inside foundary so people can contribute to it's up keep, its a increadibly simple business decision.

"5) Could a separate server be created that never updates to host the Foundry missions?

Yes, but extra resources would have to be spent on a server that's on a different build from the game and that causes tons of headaches, not to mention it splits the playerbase, which is something you try 
to avoid in MMO games."


You don't need to split the player base, we are already split, Console has a seperate player base! Also, you have Tribble and Holodeck already!

"6) Everyone loves the Foundry and what the players have contributed to it, and if there was away to keep it going, they would have. They tried EVERYTHING. They do care deeply about what the players have done with the Foundry, but this was the best decision for the business as a whole, for the health of Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, and Cryptic Studios."



The above is clearly untrue, if you try everything then things happen. It's only when you fail to try one or more somethings your blocked. Saying you ran out of budget to try is fine, but then make players who want that feature able to pay for it, then if people DONT you have a legitmate reason to say "we tried", facts are you DIDN'T try, becuase you never tried ASKING us to pay for the feature.

"9) Is there an engine overhaul coming because of this change?

Not because of this change, and there's not an "engine overhaul" coming, but a lot of the things the programmers are working on right now are quality of life fixes and a lot of "under the hood" changes that make the games better: animations and just day-to-day life of playing the game better. Some are being developed for the upcoming project: Magic the Gathering, some for Neverwinter, Star Trek, and Champions, but no matter where they are developed, all Cryptic games work on the same ecosystem, so they make all of the games better. There is a core team of programmers working on all of these updates."



So your developers are working ""fixing"" things players haven't asked for? Quality of whos lives?

"10) There is virtually no reason why those missions cannot be made part of the actual game.

No, that is actually incorrect, and they know, because they tried. The Foundry missions do not run on the same system as the in-game missions. A herculean effort was made by Al and Thomas to convert Foundry missions to in-game missions. It turned out that it would take months of work for each individual mission, because of the way the Foundry is setup and the way their editing tools are setup. It's still a hope, but if there's not a way to do it efficiently and to a quality that they expect, then they can't do it. If they just took the missions and dumped them on live, there's a good chance that the missions wouldn't work as designed: assets in the wrong place, objective not completable, etc."


So, you say here the foundary missions do not run on the same system as the in-game missions. So, if this is true, how you you keep breaking it then? Yes? go on.. oh wait no you delete my post instead of answer that question.


"12) Is this part of a wider plan to rid Cryptic Studios of "legacy tech?" Are you moving on to new games, new platforms, new engines, etc.?

Tech upgrades happen always. New things being worked on for Magic the Gathering go into new things for all the games. Every game has different systems and that works differently sometimes, but there is an angle towards improvement at Cryptic Studios right now and that means going into the old things they have and trying to make them better."


Why don't you try to make Foundry better? oh yes, your company funding doesn't care for their players.

"20) How many years does Star Trek Online have left?

Hopefully, another decade. This is not a reflection on the life cycle of any of the games. It's a reflection on the state of the company, that they are moving towards the future and have to dedicate programmer resources towards new technologies instead of constantly fixing old ones. The STO, NW, and CO are all showing strong numbers and are profitable."


This negative thinking is already in progress, they have already written us off to a decade. I want to be with people who make games because they love what they make! Meaning they maintain what they create and don't keep changing it for no purpose or advantage to the players.


"23) Can the Foundry source code be made open to the public?

No, that's proprietary Cryptic Studios code."




This is the worst sort of selfishness, if a person is going to be using something, yes keep it to yourself and private, but if your writing it off, so it goes to waste you should do all you can to let someone else enjoy it.


"26) Why the short lead time?

Actually, this was the longest lead time that could be given. The CEO was very adamant that the Foundry wasn't left broken and not fixed. He wanted to make sure that everyone had time to finish their missions."




Please get a better CEO. The foundary is a loved tool, it's never worked properly but players loved it dispite of that. To take it away is to poke your players base in the eye then ask them to support you.

For the record, this was my reply and it ended with:

LEAVE OUR FOUNDRY ALONE!