The whole 'CBS don't want people flying alien ships' is a joke to be fair. The number of alien ships being flown must be a good 50% of players by now. A good portion of people playing this game must own at least one non-faction specific vessel.
Disclaimer; I don't know for a fact that it is/isn't 50%, I'm estimating. However there have been two Christmas events with Breen Ship Rewards, a Summer event with a Risian Reward, alongside countless Lock Box Ships. It's a fair conclusion.
The Jem'Hadar Attack Ship was the first time they offered a non-faction ship directly in the C-store by way of the winter package, according to the Wiki. Sort of like the later lock box ships, you only had a chance to win it.
Tuffli, Suliban Cell Ship & Voth Bulwark battleship: We all know these three ships at any one point were available in the c-store duty officer packs (275 zen if my memory serves correctly). I know they can be found on the exchange, but someone had to open them with money bought zen.
Lock box ships & Lobi ships: everything they offered in these boxes, whether it be a mirror faction ship or the grand prize ship, these still cost a bit of money to try and obtain. Like the duty officer pack ships, you can find these in the exchange as well, but remember that someone spend a lot of money to unlock it.
Breen ships & Risian Corvette: We know these required some effort to get, but there are some people out there that did want to get them. Not everyone did get them though so they count as harder to obtain.
I see the obelisk justified as a free ship giveaway storywise primarily because you escape on the ship.
The new anniversary ships are essentially a mix of the dyson sphere technology and normal faction tech. To me, they qualify as a ship that should be made some effort to obtain. People will no doubt spend some money in order to acquire one earlier, but at least they didn't make you pay.
Just give us a free 9-console slimmed down version as a reward for finishing the FE and you will mitigate the outrage. I created a separate petition for all to sign.
Come on Cryptic, do the right thing for a change!
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
It would seem that our FREE ship we're going to have to "work" for over the course of two weeks is going to have only 9 console slots...
(Yes, I know it has a secondary deflector, but that was promissed to be added to all science ships in the future).
I'm guessing a 10 console version will be sold a bit later...
As such I'm not sure I'll be willing to grind this new project only to end up purchasing an upgraded version in the future.
LMAO. Well that settles it. I wasn't planning on grinding it out and this just validates my opinion. This also completely silences the people who claimed this was a big upgrade and thus we needed to grind for it.
God Cryptic ... can you go 1 week without stirring up controversies? *facepalm*
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Wow so it looks like we're going to have to grind a few weeks for the 9-console version, and then they're just going to sell us a 10-console version in the c-store/fleet-store anyways.
Way to go Cryptic. You took the exact same formula and simply added a grind to it.
Wow so it looks like we're going to have to grind a few weeks for the 9-console version, and then they're just going to sell us a 10-console version in the c-store/fleet-store anyways.
Way to go Cryptic. You took the exact same formula and simply added a grind to it.
So now, you pay lobi ... lobi ... to get a 9 console ship. Muahahahah ... utter fail ... epic fail ... the words just don't do this lunacy justice!
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
The Jem'Hadar Attack Ship was the first time they offered a non-faction ship directly in the C-store by way of the winter package, according to the Wiki. Sort of like the later lock box ships, you only had a chance to win it.
Tuffli, Suliban Cell Ship & Voth Bulwark battleship: We all know these three ships at any one point were available in the c-store duty officer packs (275 zen if my memory serves correctly). I know they can be found on the exchange, but someone had to open them with money bought zen.
Lock box ships & Lobi ships: everything they offered in these boxes, whether it be a mirror faction ship or the grand prize ship, these still cost a bit of money to try and obtain. Like the duty officer pack ships, you can find these in the exchange as well, but remember that someone spend a lot of money to unlock it.
Breen ships & Risian Corvette: We know these required some effort to get, but there are some people out there that did want to get them. Not everyone did get them though so they count as harder to obtain.
I see the obelisk justified as a free ship giveaway storywise primarily because you escape on the ship.
The new anniversary ships are essentially a mix of the dyson sphere technology and normal faction tech. To me, they qualify as a ship that should be made some effort to obtain. People will no doubt spend some money in order to acquire one earlier, but at least they didn't make you pay.
Again huge wall of text to justify what? And I think I was very funny but I think you and my wife have the same sense of humor, she never laughs at my jokes. :D
The whole 'CBS don't want people flying alien ships' is a joke to be fair. The number of alien ships being flown must be a good 50% of players by now. A good portion of people playing this game must own at least one non-faction specific vessel.
Disclaimer; I don't know for a fact that it is/isn't 50%, I'm estimating. However there have been two Christmas events with Breen Ship Rewards, a Summer event with a Risian Reward, alongside countless Lock Box Ships. It's a fair conclusion.
Nearly every pug I have joined in the past month or so has had at least 1 alien ship. So that makes it (roughly, of course) 1 in 5 at the very least. One of my characters drives an alien ship exclusively, I have 7 but 2 are banks and 2 are seldom played, so that is 1 out of 3 for me. 50% is high, but 25% is probably a decent ballpark. 50-75% of players probably own and fly at least one sometimes, but at a guess much lower for the "main character's main ship". I dunno, do you include zen ships that are "alien" like the cat carrier or the nauscissian offerings etc? Or do you mean "unfriendly alien" like the lockbox ships...??
FWIW I would fly more alien ships if I had them. Because several of them are outstanding, and as a romulan (mostly) player, these alien ships are often better due to the "tactical only" nature of the rom faction ships.
LMAO. Well that settles it. I wasn't planning on grinding it out and this just validates my opinion. This also completely silences the people who claimed this was a big upgrade and thus we needed to grind for it.
God Cryptic ... can you go 1 week without stirring up controversies? *facepalm*
Agreed Qapla'h
So the supper Doopler, Moopler, Blloper Humangousluper ship is just 9 consoles.
I will get ONE for my rom sci, probably. But its not going to be a must have for all 7 of mine for sure. If the mood strikes me a second one for a gimmicky tac build is possible, but probably I will not bother.
I can't even imagine anyone at Cryptic saying "Yes, surely players will enjoy doing this tedious minigame every day for two weeks". No. If I were to guess it was more like "Let's force players to do something tedious and repetitive so they'll get bored fast and will buy some Master Keys for our brand new Lock Box and then they'll get their Qmendations from the Lobi Store $_$".
Honestly, it's amazing how Cryptic constantly manages to suck out all the fun out of their game.
"No, you can't play the content you want even though you log in every day! Now back to the hamster wheel with you!".
It's more like, "Let's force players to do something tedious and repetitive so they'll get bored fast and go do something other than STO in their free time so we can all get fired and collect unemployment."
I will get ONE for my rom sci, probably. But its not going to be a must have for all 7 of mine for sure. If the mood strikes me a second one for a gimmicky tac build is possible, but probably I will not bother.
I made the mistake to make my KDF science and now I am :mad: Is there anyway to make my science change to Tactical, some kind of stone of change in the C-Store?:D
I made the mistake to make my KDF science and now I am :mad: Is there anyway to make my science change to Tactical, some kind of stone of change in the C-Store?:D
nope.
reroll like a boss...
it would of been better if the tactical mode was 4/4 and not 4/3
It's probably well known that I usually post pro cryptic threads. I encourage players to buy the new cstore ships and discourage a lot of the whining.
I do have some concerns about the anniversary event after reading much of the feedback. The concern is not the complaints about the grind, but the level of people who are unhappy and wonder if they will participate not just in this but future things as well. "I quit" posts are fine - usually they are meaningless, but so many posts of "I will play but am disappointed" - those concern me and should concern cryptic as well.
While the ship might be very good and many people might begrudgingly do the 15 days of grind, I just get the sense that they will be left with a bitter taste in their mouths.
My primary suggestion to stop some of this play apathy - the worst kind of dissatisfaction, would be to reduce the number of runs from 15 down to 10. Over the space of almost 30 days, this should take significant amounts of player angst away.
I dunno, do you include zen ships that are "alien" like the cat carrier or the nauscissian offerings etc? Or do you mean "unfriendly alien" like the lockbox ships...??
Nah, I was specifically on about the non-faction alien ships. Orion/Gorn/Caitian etc I deem as faction ships (which they are).
FWIW I would fly more alien ships if I had them. Because several of them are outstanding, and as a romulan (mostly) player, these alien ships are often better due to the "tactical only" nature of the rom faction ships.
See, I'm the opposite. I admit to have unboxed a Galor and Jem Hadar Heavy Escort in my time here (and the Chel Grett) though I don't use any of them anymore, I don't even have them. I deleted the character they were on some time ago.
As it stands, I prefer to use faction specific ships. If I'm playing Federation I use a Federation ship, if I play a Klingon (I have a single Klingon character) I play in a Klingon ship, and if I'm a Romulan I play in a Romulan ship. The only exception would be the Tal Shiar Adapted Ships, but they're at least semi-romulan in design. The same would apply to these Spire Anniversary Ships if I did grind for them (which I wont).
We must have some kind of go back on time mission that can give us a "token of rerolling", so I can change my science for tactical (Oh mine I gave Cryptic an idea for a new item in C store the "Token of Rerolling"):D
It's more like, "Let's force players to do something tedious and repetitive so they'll get bored fast and go do something other than STO in their free time so we can all get fired and collect unemployment."
More like "so we can all move over to working on that cool new secret project instead of maintaining this antique."
But back on-topic, what stops me from doing these grinds is how alt-unfriendly they are. They addressed this for reputations, and then keep adding more with the same issue, which tells me that they didn't understand the problem in the first place.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
We must have some kind of go back on time mission that can give us a "token of rerolling", so I can change my science for tactical (Oh mine I gave Cryptic an idea for a new item in C store the "Token of Rerolling"):D
the idea was screamed cried and talked about a million times nothing so far
It's probably well known that I usually post pro cryptic threads. I encourage players to buy the new cstore ships and discourage a lot of the whining.
I do have some concerns about the anniversary event after reading much of the feedback. The concern is not the complaints about the grind, but the level of people who are unhappy and wonder if they will participate not just in this but future things as well. "I quit" posts are fine - usually they are meaningless, but so many posts of "I will play but am disappointed" - those concern me and should concern cryptic as well.
While the ship might be very good and many people might begrudgingly do the 15 days of grind, I just get the sense that they will be left with a bitter taste in their mouths.
My primary suggestion to stop some of this play apathy - the worst kind of dissatisfaction, would be to reduce the number of runs from 15 down to 10. Over the space of almost 30 days, this should take significant amounts of player angst away.
Something to consider.
You know what else would help, but that Cryptic would *never* do (because it'd actually require more work)?
Make the thing you do each day:
1. Fun to do.
2. Not the same thing each day.
3. Different but not more complex/hard/tedious.
Yes, we all have those little "chores" that we do -- not because we really want to, but because they lead to something else we want.
For example, I'm currently grinding fleet marks toward some fleet upgrades. I also need dilithium. Is there one event that earns both at the same time? Not that I know of.
So at the moment I'm choosing to do the fleet mark queues. Not earning more than a pittance of Dilithium. I can play one or the other, or mix my time in between the two, but it's quite impossible to play both at the same time. If I grind the one, the other is sure to suffer.
Fortunately, there are a number of PvE missions I can choose from. I'm actually playing content I was never interested in playing before and I'm discovering that it's not the bad experience I thought it would be. I'm even starting to enjoy them.
(At least till the Fleet starbase defense mission popped up Borg... that was a bit of a disaster)
But imagine that there was only one mission to play that earned a handful of fleet marks. Over and over and over again. Right. Cryptic was smart enough not to do that. So why don't they recognize that this is the same kind of thing?
Now, having read the new Dev Blog, I'm willing to admit that I have more than a little interest in the new ships. I'm going to want to try to get at least one, if not all three variants. So I'll have to change my priorities again and my other projects are going to suffer for it. But if for some reason I can't make the time to complete the event (it's happened to me more than once) I'm going to be really ticked off.
I hope this Anniversary mission is as amazing as Sphere of Influence was. Sounds like I'm going to be playing it a lot, so it better be. And hopefully there's enough replay value in it to keep it from getting to be a chore.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I hope this Anniversary mission is as amazing as Sphere of Influence was. Sounds like I'm going to be playing it a lot, so it better be. And hopefully there's enough replay value in it to keep it from getting to be a chore.
It'll have to be better than SoI.
I only had to play through that twice to get everything from it.
I'm going to have to play this, what, 15 times?
"YOU LOVED THE OBELISK, NOW NEW FACTION SPECIFIC SHIPS WITH 750% MORE GRIND!"
I believe the replayable mission for the Q-commendations is the party pooper mini-event of previous years, not the new FE. It's the one where you chase mini versions of Q at Starfleet/klingon Academy.
"I quit" posts are fine - usually they are meaningless, but so many posts of "I will play but am disappointed" - those concern me and should concern cryptic as well.
You make an excellent, subtle point.
This should be a far more worrying reaction than a lot of posts written in all caps with many, many !!!!!!!!'s.
This ill thought out decision is modifying the unwritten contract unilaterally.
It's probably well known that I usually post pro cryptic threads. I encourage players to buy the new cstore ships and discourage a lot of the whining.
I do have some concerns about the anniversary event after reading much of the feedback. The concern is not the complaints about the grind, but the level of people who are unhappy and wonder if they will participate not just in this but future things as well. "I quit" posts are fine - usually they are meaningless, but so many posts of "I will play but am disappointed" - those concern me and should concern cryptic as well.
While the ship might be very good and many people might begrudgingly do the 15 days of grind, I just get the sense that they will be left with a bitter taste in their mouths.
My primary suggestion to stop some of this play apathy - the worst kind of dissatisfaction, would be to reduce the number of runs from 15 down to 10. Over the space of almost 30 days, this should take significant amounts of player angst away.
Something to consider.
While I understand the reason for the thread merger, I just hope that cryptic has not closed the door on considering modifying this event. It's been going for 4 years when many people had predicted it's doom - I would hate to see the anniversary event become a sour note instead of a celebration that the game is still going strong!
So, we know they are science destroyers. We know they have some cool mechanics and they are introducing the secondary deflector to the game.
We also know they are nine console slots, and unlike all prior anniversary ships they will require a grind.
First the good. The Romulans desperately need two things, another science ship, and a full carrier. This will address one of those problems as it is a Romulan design that uses a singularity core, good. Secondary deflectors look interesting as does the transformation not only affecting stats but boff layout. It also will be the first non-lockbox science ship designed by the KDF. That is good.
Now, the bad:
1000 Qmendations will be required to get one. Unlike all other ships requiring a long and tedious grind, these have only nine console slots. Bran says that the reason these have grind attached is that they have new mechanics and are special. Now, maybe I'm just overly cynical but that to me sounds a lot like "There is no way these ships will work right when we release them, so we want people to grind in order to beta test them for us". The fact that they are only nine console slots suggests that there will be a Lobi version, which is overly greedy. They have effectively combined the worst aspects of all giveaways.
The good parts of the bad:
Apparently we will be getting 400 of the required Qmendations when we play the new FE for the first time. I don't know what to say about this, other than, from my understanding it isn't there to really help us, rather to make up for the fact that this event won't be running as long as winter or summer.
A personal aside:
These sorts of grinds make me feel unwanted as a player. When the Chell Grett was introduced in 2012 I had cancer. I couldn't get out of bed to grind every day if I even remembered. Chemo takes a lot out of you, to say the least. To muster the Lobi needed to have the ship ready when I was on the mend would have cost hundreds, at a time when I had steep medical bills to pay and no way of knowing just how much my life would ultimately cost me. Shortly thereafter I had to have my first account shut down to recoup as much of the money I spent on the game as possible to pay down my bills. I lost a lot. I won't go into exactly how much, but it hurt. Then, in the summer of 2013 I had a second scare, which required a lot of travel and forced me to sacrifice my second account, which was a lifetime subscription and a legacy pack. Obviously this precluded me from getting the Risian a Corvette, as well. I did not get that lifetime sub refunded, by the way. I am now on my third account and second lifetime subscription. Without enumerating exactly how much I've lost, you can probably guess at how much this has hurt me.
I love this game, which is why I have returned twice now. And yes my situation is extremely uncommon, but it really serves to illustrate a point. These grinds wouldn't be an issue for me if they weren't time limited. They wouldn't be an issue for me if the Lobi cost wasn't so far beyond everything else in the game. I've heard all the excuses, about rarity, about effort, seeing the content we built for you, and they're just that, excuses. You NEED an accessible option for those of limited resources, be it time or money or both. If the barriers of entry are there for the reasons repeatedly espoused by the devs or Bran, they are not succeeding at their intended design.
Comments
I don't find that amusing at the least.
The Jem'Hadar Attack Ship was the first time they offered a non-faction ship directly in the C-store by way of the winter package, according to the Wiki. Sort of like the later lock box ships, you only had a chance to win it.
Tuffli, Suliban Cell Ship & Voth Bulwark battleship: We all know these three ships at any one point were available in the c-store duty officer packs (275 zen if my memory serves correctly). I know they can be found on the exchange, but someone had to open them with money bought zen.
Lock box ships & Lobi ships: everything they offered in these boxes, whether it be a mirror faction ship or the grand prize ship, these still cost a bit of money to try and obtain. Like the duty officer pack ships, you can find these in the exchange as well, but remember that someone spend a lot of money to unlock it.
Breen ships & Risian Corvette: We know these required some effort to get, but there are some people out there that did want to get them. Not everyone did get them though so they count as harder to obtain.
I see the obelisk justified as a free ship giveaway storywise primarily because you escape on the ship.
The new anniversary ships are essentially a mix of the dyson sphere technology and normal faction tech. To me, they qualify as a ship that should be made some effort to obtain. People will no doubt spend some money in order to acquire one earlier, but at least they didn't make you pay.
Come on Cryptic, do the right thing for a change!
- Judge Aaron Satie
It would seem that our FREE ship we're going to have to "work" for over the course of two weeks is going to have only 9 console slots...
(Yes, I know it has a secondary deflector, but that was promissed to be added to all science ships in the future).
I'm guessing a 10 console version will be sold a bit later...
As such I'm not sure I'll be willing to grind this new project only to end up purchasing an upgraded version in the future.
LMAO. Well that settles it. I wasn't planning on grinding it out and this just validates my opinion. This also completely silences the people who claimed this was a big upgrade and thus we needed to grind for it.
God Cryptic ... can you go 1 week without stirring up controversies? *facepalm*
- Judge Aaron Satie
Way to go Cryptic. You took the exact same formula and simply added a grind to it.
So now, you pay lobi ... lobi ... to get a 9 console ship. Muahahahah ... utter fail ... epic fail ... the words just don't do this lunacy justice!
- Judge Aaron Satie
Again huge wall of text to justify what? And I think I was very funny but I think you and my wife have the same sense of humor, she never laughs at my jokes.
Nearly every pug I have joined in the past month or so has had at least 1 alien ship. So that makes it (roughly, of course) 1 in 5 at the very least. One of my characters drives an alien ship exclusively, I have 7 but 2 are banks and 2 are seldom played, so that is 1 out of 3 for me. 50% is high, but 25% is probably a decent ballpark. 50-75% of players probably own and fly at least one sometimes, but at a guess much lower for the "main character's main ship". I dunno, do you include zen ships that are "alien" like the cat carrier or the nauscissian offerings etc? Or do you mean "unfriendly alien" like the lockbox ships...??
FWIW I would fly more alien ships if I had them. Because several of them are outstanding, and as a romulan (mostly) player, these alien ships are often better due to the "tactical only" nature of the rom faction ships.
Agreed Qapla'h
So the supper Doopler, Moopler, Blloper Humangousluper ship is just 9 consoles.
This comes to mind
http://youtu.be/96jPvL85MjM
I will get ONE for my rom sci, probably. But its not going to be a must have for all 7 of mine for sure. If the mood strikes me a second one for a gimmicky tac build is possible, but probably I will not bother.
I made the mistake to make my KDF science and now I am :mad: Is there anyway to make my science change to Tactical, some kind of stone of change in the C-Store?:D
nope.
reroll like a boss...
it would of been better if the tactical mode was 4/4 and not 4/3
I do have some concerns about the anniversary event after reading much of the feedback. The concern is not the complaints about the grind, but the level of people who are unhappy and wonder if they will participate not just in this but future things as well. "I quit" posts are fine - usually they are meaningless, but so many posts of "I will play but am disappointed" - those concern me and should concern cryptic as well.
While the ship might be very good and many people might begrudgingly do the 15 days of grind, I just get the sense that they will be left with a bitter taste in their mouths.
My primary suggestion to stop some of this play apathy - the worst kind of dissatisfaction, would be to reduce the number of runs from 15 down to 10. Over the space of almost 30 days, this should take significant amounts of player angst away.
Something to consider.
See, I'm the opposite. I admit to have unboxed a Galor and Jem Hadar Heavy Escort in my time here (and the Chel Grett) though I don't use any of them anymore, I don't even have them. I deleted the character they were on some time ago.
As it stands, I prefer to use faction specific ships. If I'm playing Federation I use a Federation ship, if I play a Klingon (I have a single Klingon character) I play in a Klingon ship, and if I'm a Romulan I play in a Romulan ship. The only exception would be the Tal Shiar Adapted Ships, but they're at least semi-romulan in design. The same would apply to these Spire Anniversary Ships if I did grind for them (which I wont).
We must have some kind of go back on time mission that can give us a "token of rerolling", so I can change my science for tactical (Oh mine I gave Cryptic an idea for a new item in C store the "Token of Rerolling"):D
More like "so we can all move over to working on that cool new secret project instead of maintaining this antique."
But back on-topic, what stops me from doing these grinds is how alt-unfriendly they are. They addressed this for reputations, and then keep adding more with the same issue, which tells me that they didn't understand the problem in the first place.
the idea was screamed cried and talked about a million times nothing so far
you sig makes me type this but can the cow jump over the moon?
system Lord Baal is dead
You know what else would help, but that Cryptic would *never* do (because it'd actually require more work)?
Make the thing you do each day:
1. Fun to do.
2. Not the same thing each day.
3. Different but not more complex/hard/tedious.
For example, I'm currently grinding fleet marks toward some fleet upgrades. I also need dilithium. Is there one event that earns both at the same time? Not that I know of.
So at the moment I'm choosing to do the fleet mark queues. Not earning more than a pittance of Dilithium. I can play one or the other, or mix my time in between the two, but it's quite impossible to play both at the same time. If I grind the one, the other is sure to suffer.
Fortunately, there are a number of PvE missions I can choose from. I'm actually playing content I was never interested in playing before and I'm discovering that it's not the bad experience I thought it would be. I'm even starting to enjoy them.
(At least till the Fleet starbase defense mission popped up Borg... that was a bit of a disaster)
But imagine that there was only one mission to play that earned a handful of fleet marks. Over and over and over again. Right. Cryptic was smart enough not to do that. So why don't they recognize that this is the same kind of thing?
Now, having read the new Dev Blog, I'm willing to admit that I have more than a little interest in the new ships. I'm going to want to try to get at least one, if not all three variants. So I'll have to change my priorities again and my other projects are going to suffer for it. But if for some reason I can't make the time to complete the event (it's happened to me more than once) I'm going to be really ticked off.
I hope this Anniversary mission is as amazing as Sphere of Influence was. Sounds like I'm going to be playing it a lot, so it better be. And hopefully there's enough replay value in it to keep it from getting to be a chore.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
It'll have to be better than SoI.
I only had to play through that twice to get everything from it.
I'm going to have to play this, what, 15 times?
"YOU LOVED THE OBELISK, NOW NEW FACTION SPECIFIC SHIPS WITH 750% MORE GRIND!"
It'll have to be 750% better.
You make an excellent, subtle point.
This should be a far more worrying reaction than a lot of posts written in all caps with many, many !!!!!!!!'s.
This ill thought out decision is modifying the unwritten contract unilaterally.
Muck about with that sort of thing at your peril.
While I understand the reason for the thread merger, I just hope that cryptic has not closed the door on considering modifying this event. It's been going for 4 years when many people had predicted it's doom - I would hate to see the anniversary event become a sour note instead of a celebration that the game is still going strong!
We also know they are nine console slots, and unlike all prior anniversary ships they will require a grind.
First the good. The Romulans desperately need two things, another science ship, and a full carrier. This will address one of those problems as it is a Romulan design that uses a singularity core, good. Secondary deflectors look interesting as does the transformation not only affecting stats but boff layout. It also will be the first non-lockbox science ship designed by the KDF. That is good.
Now, the bad:
1000 Qmendations will be required to get one. Unlike all other ships requiring a long and tedious grind, these have only nine console slots. Bran says that the reason these have grind attached is that they have new mechanics and are special. Now, maybe I'm just overly cynical but that to me sounds a lot like "There is no way these ships will work right when we release them, so we want people to grind in order to beta test them for us". The fact that they are only nine console slots suggests that there will be a Lobi version, which is overly greedy. They have effectively combined the worst aspects of all giveaways.
The good parts of the bad:
Apparently we will be getting 400 of the required Qmendations when we play the new FE for the first time. I don't know what to say about this, other than, from my understanding it isn't there to really help us, rather to make up for the fact that this event won't be running as long as winter or summer.
A personal aside:
These sorts of grinds make me feel unwanted as a player. When the Chell Grett was introduced in 2012 I had cancer. I couldn't get out of bed to grind every day if I even remembered. Chemo takes a lot out of you, to say the least. To muster the Lobi needed to have the ship ready when I was on the mend would have cost hundreds, at a time when I had steep medical bills to pay and no way of knowing just how much my life would ultimately cost me. Shortly thereafter I had to have my first account shut down to recoup as much of the money I spent on the game as possible to pay down my bills. I lost a lot. I won't go into exactly how much, but it hurt. Then, in the summer of 2013 I had a second scare, which required a lot of travel and forced me to sacrifice my second account, which was a lifetime subscription and a legacy pack. Obviously this precluded me from getting the Risian a Corvette, as well. I did not get that lifetime sub refunded, by the way. I am now on my third account and second lifetime subscription. Without enumerating exactly how much I've lost, you can probably guess at how much this has hurt me.
I love this game, which is why I have returned twice now. And yes my situation is extremely uncommon, but it really serves to illustrate a point. These grinds wouldn't be an issue for me if they weren't time limited. They wouldn't be an issue for me if the Lobi cost wasn't so far beyond everything else in the game. I've heard all the excuses, about rarity, about effort, seeing the content we built for you, and they're just that, excuses. You NEED an accessible option for those of limited resources, be it time or money or both. If the barriers of entry are there for the reasons repeatedly espoused by the devs or Bran, they are not succeeding at their intended design.