Make own Star Trek Online missions

By Robert Purchese Published 28 October, 2010

Cryptic's MMO revamp idea two.

Cryptic Studios is trying new things to bolster the popularity of MMOs Star Trek Online and Champions Online. Its newest invention? Player-made missions. And Star Trek Online will integrate them first.

Dubbed The Foundry, the toolset allows anyone to make a story, fill it with encounters and play around with the scenery. You can either start a world from scratch or tinker with pre-made templates - Cryptic even allows existing STO areas to be used.

But The Foundry is not a modding tool.

"No. The goal of this toolset is to allow players to put their stories in the Star Trek universe using the same look, feel, and capabilities that Cryptic's own design team utilises," The Foundry FAQ states. "So while there are a lot of features for creating content, players cannot import their own images, 3D models, or audio into the game."

A five-star rating system will be implemented for the Community Authored Episodes. Judging them will be reviewers picked from the game's community, and nothing will be offered to the masses without passing their eyes first.

To begin with, custom rewards for Community Authored Episodes can't be made using The Foundry. But judging by the wording of the FAQ, they may be added at a later stage. What's more, "expanded functionality" such as missions aboard ships, is being "considered".

The Foundry toolset currently needs beta testing. If you have an existing Star Trek Online account you qualify.

City of Heroes - the Cryptic-created MMO that NCsoft ran away with in 2007 - introduced a very similar toolset in 2009 called the Mission Architect. The results "astounded" NCsoft and Paragon Studios.

In an effort to compete with its own genre-leading creation, Cryptic announced yesterday that Champions Online would soon turn free-to-play. Therefore, the chances of Star Trek Online adopting the same business model down the line must be high.

Star Trek Online was released at the beginning of the year but wasn't the genre-shattering launch the licence perhaps deserved. Eurogamer awarded a deflated 6/10. Cryptic Studios admitted it could do better and has promised to support the enterprising MMO even as "several other projects" - including online RPG Neverwinter - are revealed to be in development there.

Star Trek Online has Scotty lot to do.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (13) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • mingster #1 2 years ago

    Make your own star trek missions using the Artemis Spacehip Bridge Simulator.
    http://artemis.eochu.com/

  • TheTingler #2 2 years ago

    Sounds an excellent idea. I'd certainly give that a go. Just go free-to-play with Star Trek too Cryptic and I'll be right back in there immediately. I do enjoy the game, especially with the soundtracks from the movies turned on in the game's music player, but I'm not going to pay that extortionate subscription fee.

  • Cosquae #3 2 years ago

    I'll be curious to see how they manage to balance rewards (go 3 paces to the left. Collect OMFGWTFBBQ! weapon as reward and a bajillion credits) in this as well as how CBS react to non-star trek missions in the game (Anyone want to take odds on how long it will be before a player generated mission comes on to destroy the death star?)

    If spore has taught us anything about player generated content is this... expect penises.

  • Bigmac1910 #4 2 years ago

    Awesome, now I can do their job for a monthly fee.

  • iokthemonkey #5 2 years ago

    I'd prefer to see them make the game, you know, fun. STO is just so damned boring.

  • skullstorm #6 2 years ago

    This is cryptics answer for everything.

  • dagas #7 2 years ago

    Great, I bet the trekkies can make better missions than the developers considering how much they love Star Trek.

  • FortysixterUK #8 2 years ago

    An amazing opportunity to make STO adventures based on TV episodes ,movies and books with lots more surface exploration and combat.
    I like the idea of STO, but found during the first few months it was 90% starship combat, and very light on ground skirmishes, so I ended up cancelling the sub.
    There is so much potential here. Please get it right Cryptic.

  • epiazk #9 2 years ago

    Never played a game of theirs, but they sound like they mass produce "meh" :(

  • cw- #10 2 years ago

    With this feature being added... if STO went F2P, I'd love to give it ago and create some missions!

    Downloaded and played the demo to see if it was worth getting.. and no, no it wasn't (as a paid MMO)

  • sneetch #11 2 years ago

    A five-star rating system will be implemented for the Community Authored Episodes. Judging them will be reviewers picked from the game's community, and nothing will be offered to the masses without passing their eyes first.

    Sounds good, I always imagine player generated missions to be "U hav to kill kingons!" where half the NPCs say "LOL" at least once. This sounds a lot better. Mind you, I don't think I'd spend my time writing one (or reviewing them).

  • jkerr91 #12 2 years ago

    Since Daniel Stahl became the new Exec Producer, taking over from Craig Zinkievich there have been some mild improvements. He's not held back either when it comes to accepting that things aren't right with the game.
    I've been involved with STO since beta and i think it has bags of potential but right at this moment in time it just isn't realising it. Saying that the game is a lot better now than it was at launch and we still have several key updates coming down the line which will hopefully improve the game further. I'm not gonna write it off just yet!

  • hobojebus #13 2 years ago

    They need to fix the ground combat before they do anything else, its a laggy buggy affair thats not balanced at all if you come across a group of NPC's that have 2 healers and an engineer they just dont die unless your a tac officer.