No More Foundry rant.

[Lizzy]

I've been back on two weeks now and i'm shocked to see the Foundry has been removed. Gone completely.

It's such a shock, but more than that... and I don't want to make this a doom thread, but it just seems like that's it. It's ended now. This is no longer a world of limitless possibilities. We can have whatever content the DEVs give us... and only that. It has now become STO incorporated. As perhaps it always was.

I was never that interests in new ships or new skins. I don't look down on others for it, it's just...

Let's say the you could have depth or breadth, but not both. Well, i'd rather have depth. I'd rather see the trivial explored well. So maybe the Foundry had to go.

But then why is it that it all feels so trivial? There's no opportunity cost except time here. There are no choices you make in the game that you're stuck with now. Your Race, Gender, Faction, etc. sure, but it's all "Try this new ship skin, it's shiny". Why? The experience is different, cosmetically as well as functionally, yes. But it seems like we're asked to jump to the next thing before we realize how shallow the previous thing is.

Lizzy has about twenty Boffs or something. And if I did that for my fourteen FED alts it would be... a lot. Two hundred and Eighty! And over time I might have, say, half that, but why? I don't know how many specialization there are at this point, six or something, so if I have three times that for every class it does even out to about eighteen, sure. But again I ask why?

My Captain, my ship, my crew. That's what i want. That's what i want to see with other players. I remember traveling to One's cell ship and seeing her Boffs when we were Doffing For Suliban's (No relation to Cruising For A** I might add). It was great to see other players choices. My favorite areas in the game tend to be he Ground area of the Dyson Sphere or somewhere else where you could see other people's Boffs. It's not that I didn't like space, it's just that i don;t get an idea of who anyone is from their ship. I can never hail another player and see them, on a pop up window, on their bridge. That's ... sad. I write Bios for my Boffs that no one will read.

The Foundry's disappearance marks an end to the community filling in for the perceived gaps. Social maps and 'missing stories' are gone. There was almost a dialogue between the DEVs and Community.

You know what I've been doing since I logged back in? Filling in Dilithium for fleet projects, Cleaning out my inventories, Doff recruiting at the Academy, Rep projects. I've been boldly going nowhere and that's fine, it's my choice, but with everything out there seeing so shallow, I king of prefer sticking to the places that feel like they have the most depth. I imagine the mundane activities on ESD or the Academy, because it makes me think of a world lived in by real people. And that's what the Foundry used to have. It would tell the little stories. The side quests. But we don;t have those anymore, we have Doffing.

And I remember what it was like when the fleet met up. And I miss that too.

[daBelgrave]

Hey, good to hear from you!

I personally haven't logged on since January, and probably won't until I build a new computer probably early next year, but I have been following enough STO news that I heard about the Foundry leaving. I hate to see parts of the game disappear forever, especially without any replacement. There's only so many times one can play through story missions before they become too repetitive, and the Foundry was one of the few ways to get some variety.

I also read they're discontinuing XMPP support for lifetime subscriptions.