I've been trying for days now to complete three foundry missions for the daily, but it is almost impossible. Most of the foundry missions are unfinishable because NPCs don't spawn correctly or for some other reason. It's very frustrating. I'm almost ready to give up on foundry missions altogether.

Yes, season 7 broke 80% of our missions, and it's kind of disturbing that there are so many folks like you who are giving the foundry an honest hearing only to be justifiably frustrated.

The basic problem: If you get too far from a mob that you're supposed to kill, it forever disappears. If you have to return to a contact after moving too far away, he/she disappears.

Please have patience for the problem to be fixed. And please complain about the situation.

yep its broken, as its a little sad that there is no way for the general public to know this. the argument is that the more people who play missions, the more bug reports they can file and the faster they can track down the problem, but its not much good if the entire playerbase is being put off playing them.

they should take the foundry down until they can fix it.

Oh, so it's Season 7 which caused the problems. This explains a lot.

I'd just 10 minutes ago realized that the problems were connected to draw distance. I hope this get's fixed soon.

In the meantime, does anyone have recommendations for missions that can still be completed?

And in addition to this debacle, if you are able to actually complete a mission you are unable to rate, review or tip the author. When will this be fixed? So unfair to authors that have put much time and effort into the Foundry! Just sayin'!

The review thing wasn't a bug. It was intentional on Cryptic's part and has become standard practice for a season launch. They turn off reviewing for a while so the missions don't get downrated unfairly due to bugs we have no control over. I shudder to think how many of our ratings would down the tubes thanks to that NPC disappearing bug.

Anyway that particular bug seems to be fixed now, although there are about a dozen smaller bugs. Not sure when Cryptic will turn reviewing back on.

Not in my missions it hasn't. I am still suffereing from this as bad as ever. My missions have contacts and entire combat groups not showing up constantly. I would, frankly, have rathered the entire Foundry be kept down until this is dealt with.

That's irritating, is supposed to be fixed. Have you tried publishing the missions again since editing was turned back on? Have you posted in the bug forum or submitted a ticket?

Have you posted in the bug forum? If this is still a problem we need to bring attention to it.

Cryptic - breaking the Foundry horribly in new ways, since Season 4 (Bit yeah, at least they disable ratings as during season 4 - a mission of mine that had a 4.05 Star Rating (and one 1 Star after 120+ reviews) got another nine 1 Stars in the first hour of Season 4 's epic launch - with comments llike ("your dialogues are VERY screwed up" and "Why do you start in a Holodeck map with no way to continue" <--- All thanks to S4 Foundry updates which we were ALL assured multiple times by Zero had been THOROUGHLY tested.)

What really amazes me is how every season something MAJOR happens to the Foundry bug wise that takes over a month (sometimes longer) to correct. If the Foundry is a cornerstone of teh upcoming new Cryptoc MMO 'NeverWinter' - the constant and major issues brought to it withb each update need to to be better tested and caught. (It WOULD be nice if authors for example had a way to auto-transfer a holodeck mission to Tribble for a fuller test. I realize this may need new tech - but in the long run, I think it would allow for a more thorough testing of the Foundry with existing missions. I stiill think it's unreasonable to assume that authors should spend HOURS/DAYS recreating a working Holodeck mission on Tribble just for testing; and while QA does have the ability to copy over the Tribble Foundry mission base - obviously, they don't/aren't given enough time to do complete testing (if they were, we wouldn't be seeing the issues we are; or at worst we'd be fully aware BEFORE the update is pushed to Live.

I know it's probably not an easy thing, and I would also limit the amount of Holodeck missions that could be copied to Tribble to maybe one or two max per account - but in the end, I think allowing authors to copy/test their existing missions on Tribble themselves - and then report issues they see, would help QA and the Foundry team get these issues resolved BEFORE a patch goes Live, and at the very least, not cripple the Foundry (or worse get the playerbase who doesn't write missions, but just wants to play them, thinking stuff in the Foundry NEVER works right); for weeks to multiple months at a time EVERYTIME there's a new Season update.

I appreciate what Cryptic does to limit bad reviews when there's issues .like this beyond an author's control; but if you want to get players to just PLAY foundry missions, you have to be sure existing missions will work, or players who try and get burned/frustrated will never come back to use the Foundry.

Again (and unfortunately); the QA methods and procedures Cryptic currently has in place for updating and testing the Foundry before a major Season update are WOEFULLY inadequate (and it's NOT the fault of the QA testers who are doing what they're told and following testing procedures, when that testing system itself is flawed in obviously a major way. )

If Cryptic wants The Foundry to be a major draw/feature of their MMOs; they need to get a full and better/proper testing procedure that works in place for it. What they have in place now isn't really working well at all.