Cryptic Studios, creators of City of Heroes and Champions Online, are gearing up to release the Foundry toolset to players of space borne MMO Star Trek Online. The toolset will allow players to create their own missions, and then submit them to a database for the community to rate.
Players will be able to create entire star systems and planets from scratch, or edit pre-made versions created by Cryptic. Objectives, objects and characters can then be placed to create missions that span entire sectors of space. Cryptic are also putting aside some open world areas to allow for community made quests. In these areas, characters and objects associated with the community made mission will only be visible to those who are playing the episode.
Players won't be able to add extra models or artwork to the game, simply create missions using pre-existing content. Once an episode is created, others will be able to rate it using a five star system, and Cryptic are going to let members of the community sign up to be reviewers.
Superhero MMO City of Heroes received a similar editor called the Mission Architect. On the day it was released, users created more quests in one day than the development team had in five years. This could be a great way to give a flagging MMO a new lease of life. The toolset is currently in open beta for Star Trek Online players. For more information, check out the Foundry Q&A .
