I too like Champions and also want the Foundry, it will come but it seems that they want to tweak it for Champions in a specific way that requires extra work. Whether that is just an excuse or the actual case is up for debate.

Aside from NemCon and the upcoming Alerts System, the Nemesis feature seems as if they either didn't know what to do with it or they had no intention on doing anything with it. Then again we have only recently escaped the development freeze that occured just before Cryptic was sold off to Perfect World Entertainment, so they probably couldn't do anything even if they wanted to.

Enjoy the free game for now LL. :)

Custom missions and Nemesis sound like two things that should go together.

The devs have said in Ask Cryptics before that the Foundry is a massive undertaking and not just a simple case of importing the Foundry code into Champions but getting Champions ready for the Foundry code as well.

Currently the Foundry team is working on Neverwinter full time getting the Foundry ready for launch, I'm willing to bet though that the first open slot in their development window will be pounced on by Robobo for Champions Online but don't expect to see it happen till a few months after Neverwinter is released.

Because it's easier to make a few costumes to shut people up.

Not to mention that Champions is in the middle of a large overhaul as it is. So if we were to get a foundry, it won't happen until Cryptic's major changes are done and bug free.

Or as bug free as we get around here....

Programmers are inherently lazy. We do the smallest, easiest tasks first and stick to those only so long as there's more of them to do. If there's a constant incoming stream of small, easy to implement things, we'll never get around to the more substantial stuff. I say we because I'm a programmer and this rings true for nearly all programmers in every company and freelancers and sole owner/proprietor types as well.

Why? Because of misused SCRUM meetings and other such managerial tactics used by executives who actually don't know how to do stuff themselves. They try to run a meritocracy because that seems to make sense to them. They don't realize that there is no objective metric by which merit can be measured.

In addition, bug fixes are typically considered by executives as having no business value. Bug fixes don't let you advertise new features, they aren't as marketable. Think about it though, what looks better on an ad "Now with fewer bugs!" or "Now with all new stories and content!" hmm? Quantity of bullet points are better than quality of bullet points.

This is why stuff like the Foundry is likely to never see the light of day on CO. Frankly, I think the only reason they did it for STO is because it was easier to offload responsibility for the lack of content onto the players than it was to actually pony up and make new content.

So long as we, the players, accept the constant influx of costumes and the occasional comic episode as being substantive enough, they're going to continue being lazy and put it off, declaring it to be "too hard".

Larry Wall said it best: The three great virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris (page references are, of course, to the second edition of the Camel Book):

Laziness
The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer. Also hence, this book. See also impatience and hubris. (p.609)

Impatience
The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and hubris. (p.608)

Hubris
Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and impatience. (p.607)

You're working in a code shop, right? Get assigned code tasks and you're measured by how many of them you complete? And get no top-down view of where your code fits in the great whole?

There are other ways of working.

Hey, if you have executives in your SCRUM meetings you are doing them wrong. Very, seriously, appallingly wrong.

Quite literally true. And the downfall of many an otherwise promising programming team. That's why it's so very, very important that your team leader understands this and that he runs interference for you so that you can do the thing you love and that you're good at - program code.

Any company with any kind of service contracts, support level agreements, upgrade policies, or the like will have a QA department that will - if for no other reason than their continued employment - fight for bugs being corrected as a very important metric for the next release. It isn't an either/or proposition, after all.

I think you're being a bit negative - but that's just me being a programmer myself and reading into your post above, I might be wrong. The devs have gone on record saying they'd love to have the foundry in CO, and that they're looking for a way to make it happen. Right now they're retooling the entire stats framework, perhaps that will also let them make inroads into getting the foundry in there.

Lets just say I've had a very unpleasant career.

Yeah, that's what it sounded like. You have my sympathies.