Command Bridge Officers and the new way to unlock (buy) powers in STO

aelfwin1

I was reading the Blog about the Command Bridge Officers, and this bit in the Q&A got me thinking :

Q: What ships/seats allow the use of Command Officer abilities in Space?

A: In order to utilize the Command Officer space abilities, you must be flying a starship that has a Hybrid Command Officer Bridge Officer seat. They are not usable in “Universal” Profession seats, or existing Intelligence Specialist Bridge Officer seats. The line-up of starships that will have hybrid Command Officer seats has not yet been announced, but keep your eyes on our website for those announcements!

Many of us were somewhat surprised by the low number of playable ships introduced in DR , but I guess we figured that down the road more ships would appear .

I'm not sure that I've seen many (or any) post by players who speculated that Intel powers will require an Intel ship and any other Specialization down the line will require their own specific Officers that will have to be flown in their own specific ships (to be purchased for 3000 zen a pop) .

After discussing this and having listened to a positive spin on it: "with older ships you got one one console to unlock one power, with Intel & co. ships you have the option to unlock more powers" -- so in the end I came back k to my original thoughts, namely that this is a new and convoluted way to sell power (not ships) but maybe this was needed once the "magic" of selling the original IP ships was gone .

Your thoughts ?

nimbull

I honestly think they're going to make stations too confusing going down this road. The classic science/engineering/tactical is all they really need quite frankly. But the order of the day is micro-transactions so this will up those as opposed to clean and simple designs. Intell/Command/etc is really just going to make things more confusing I think. Especially since Universal isn't universal anymore.

adorenko

they need to just change the Intel slots to a slot "name" that works for any of these new BoFFs that end up coming down the pipe.

coupaholic

Thinking on it, it's not the fact that certain powers need to be bought that bothers me - it's more how powerful these new abilities will be.

On the surface I won't mind ships and unique powers being locked behind a paywall, so long as they are not grossly overpowered when compared with vanilla ships and abilities. If a player wants to sink money into a new ship, and time to unlock the abilities from a spec tree then all power to them.

If this get's handled right then Cryptic will have earning potential from new ships for years to come. They could release a group of new ships for each specialization that comes along, and many more on top with these new Hybrid seats.

mustrumridcully0

aelfwin1 wrote: »

After discussing this and having listened to a positive spin on it: "with older ships you got one one console to unlock one power, with Intel & co. ships you have the option to unlock more powers" -- so in the end I came back k to my original thoughts, namely that this is a new and convoluted way to sell power (not ships) but maybe this was needed once the "magic" of selling the original IP ships was gone .

Your thoughts ?

The new specializations and the new ship tier are certainly an attempt to motivate people to buy the new ships. They need their ship sales, because a part of their business runs on it, and they have basically completed the canon line up of ships (aside from obscure ktibashes, of course).

I like that there are new BO powers, but I would have preferred if they had done it without specializations. It will be an even worse nightmare to balance then the game already is, and that just means to me it will never be balanced and they may only fix the worst outliers.

But I still hope that they will continue to base some of their ships (like they did with the Intrepid) on IP ships. Even if it means to some "rebuyin a ship I already own", I don't care as much about that, as I care about the fact that it also means I can kitbash more. I can't bring myself to buy something like the Odysee 3 ship pack because there is seemingly 0 customziation optons (that's not entirely true, you got materials and patterns, but that is just not enough for me).



I don't think it's all bad, because it combines bringing new abilities and gameplay options to the game, but it is obviously also with built-in monetization, and I would prefer a gurantee that new ships also offer rich customization options.