Right, I'll be passing on these, like I've done with all of the T6 fare so far. The ships don't look that special visually, and the "fighter jocks" theme couldn't be any more unsuitable for Star Trek, let alone STO, where the combat is pseudo turn-based.
Fighters being the Pilot ship class would have made much more sense. The ships in Trek are typically massive and badly suited for fancy maneuvers, which make very little sense in space combat anyway.
Actually, I've been playing this particular game for far longer than you. I've just seen the persistent movement to push the free to players out of the end game by adding consistently more powerful ships for real money only. Season 9 hit it particularly hard by not adding top tier ship that's easy to receive, like the free tier 5's Sovereign, Neghvar, and the like at level 40. They weren't the best ships, but they could compete at top tier. They had the health pools, they had the bridge officer slots, and they had the firepower. There's no such thing for tier 6. It's bad for long term game health, and will kill the in game population if it continues. I'm not one of said free to players, but I've noticed the decline.
I am a F2P. I don't have money to spend on games. I'm poor. But I just bought a Fleet T6 Faeht Intel Warbird for my new DR KDF/Rommie by buying 3 fleet modules from the exchange for EC, and converting some dil to zen for the other 2 modules. So, If you play the game hard enough, you don't have to shell out hard earned real money for zen store items.
Besides, they have to make money somehow or the game will disappear. so i don't see any reason why they shouldn't hold back some of the best stuff for the Zen Store.
I am actually developing an MMO of my own, which will also be free to play, and I intend to do the same thing. Playable for free, but the best of the best stuff for real money only. I just have to find the right balance, of course.
Actually, I've been playing this particular game for far longer than you. I've just seen the persistent movement to push the free to players out of the end game by adding consistently more powerful ships for real money only. Season 9 hit it particularly hard by not adding top tier ship that's easy to receive, like the free tier 5's Sovereign, Neghvar, and the like at level 40. They weren't the best ships, but they could compete at top tier. They had the health pools, they had the bridge officer slots, and they had the firepower. There's no such thing for tier 6. It's bad for long term game health, and will kill the in game population if it continues. I'm not one of said free to players, but I've noticed the decline.
T6 is about horizontal expansion rather than the vertical we saw with T5 with every ship needing to be progressively more powerful than the last.
Replacing the quarterly C-Store ships we have spec ship bundles - Pilot, Operations and Command ships - are not more powerful than each other, or the other T6 ships, they offer alternate mechanics so that people can adopt new styles of play and new tactics rather than just adding more DPS.
Now in addition to the spec ships, we have the iconics, which will eventually push all of the old T5Us to T6 like they did with the Pathfinder and Andromeda. These bring the older ships that people love in line with the spec ships while leveraging the old versions consoles to keep some of the value of old purchases.
So essentially, any T6 ship should be the equivalent of one of those T4 free ships - buy one, and it will stay relevant for a long time. With the exception of the Dauntless (which I consider to be very lackluster compared to the others) I would say that's pretty much true.
This is a GOOD thing for the game. It allows the game to progress without the power creep that was completely out of hand before Delta Rising. It's a smart move, you just have to step back and see the big picture.
It would also be nice if the Producer would step up and tell us all of this rather than us figuring it out on our own.
I actually like this idea considering my style requires an agile dogfight.
Slow cruisers bore me, science vessels have too many bells and whistles
and Destroyers have all around good stuff on them but can't defend worth TRIBBLE.
I prefer in your face guns blazing combat and close the distance fast with a target, shred his shields and drop the big one the target aka a TCD Tric then punch the afterburners and fly as far away as possible.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "This planet smells, it must be the Klingons"
It's great they're releasing all these new ships but at some point I think they're going to end up with more ships than active players at some point lol I get ships are their main revenue stream but there's no way they can sustain the game on "new ships" for the next 5 years.
Once they've saturated the market, they're likely going to release Cross-Specialization Tokens for all non-Faction and non-Specialist ships (IE: Everything EXCEPT dedicated Intel, Command, and Pilot ships), so that they can use other Specialist abilities on their existing Hybrid seats (no adding of new Hybrid seats; just adding the ability to use either Intel or Pilot on the Guardian's Lt Hybrid for example).
Just like how we see the Sheshar and Sovereign in their early Pilot News post able to use Pilot abilities. Of course, it'd only be for T6 ships that ARE NOT specialized.
Would allow them to milk the market further and let the last few stubborn holdouts finally commit to a general T6 ship and a token to add one or two alternative specializations to the existing Specialization seat.
How awesome would it be if we could use the B'rel costume on the Klingon Pilot ship. That alone would sell thousands.
If this had included a BoP with the Piloting Maneuvers mechanic, I'd have bought a whole damn 9-Pack out of sheer gratitude... whether or not I actually wanted any of the rest. If any ship in STO could actually use the Piloting Maneuvers, it's the whole dang BoP line... poor squishy little things need a good way to avoid incoming fire. That, and I want a fun T6 BoP in general... but dang it, the Piloting Maneuvers would be a perfect addition to the way a BoP flies.
[EDIT] Okay, now that I'm past my initial disappointment... if there's a sale that brings them down to 10K Zen, and if they offer a full set of useful Starship Traits for my KDF and Rom characters (at least one of which makes the synergy between Reciprocity and All Hands On Deck look balanced), I'll probably end up picking them up. I just really hope that the Raptor isn't somehow "Qin'd" with its maneuverability, on a ship series that is intended specifically for maneuverability... seriously, not a Defiant/BoP/T'Varo?
Argh, nvm... judging them based on what they could have been, versus what they are, isn't fair to the folks that worked on them. If they are actually useful designs, I'll probably use them... just please don't randomly leave the KDF variants inferior for no real reason.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Do we at least get some PVE content or a new pvp map with this bundle this time. I'm tired of driving my new cars up and down the same driveway. Please don't bring up the season 10 missions. The creativity on those things makes me cringe. Last I played them I imagined a High school student saying "I gotta get these done, there due out tommarrow" looks at the clock and it says 11:59.
Do we at least get some PVE content or a new pvp map with this bundle this time. I'm tired of driving my new cars up and down the same driveway. Please don't bring up the season 10 missions. The creativity on those things makes me cringe. Last I played them I imagined a High school student saying "I gotta get these done, there due out tommarrow" looks at the clock and it says 11:59.
Why would they give us content with a ship release? That's as bad as asking why the art team isn't working on the lag issues.
Watching the ships use their maneuver abilities is actually pretty frackin' cool. It's a very quick translation in space position that can be done extremely frequently. We're getting some non-static-pictures prepared for ya'll to show off the cool new moves.
The team is working with customization for the ships once again. So you'll be able to see a lot of translatable parts as you mix-and-match how you design your ship.
You hate 3 packs? I hate 9 packs.... I much rather have 1 ship per faction with different parts as options, we dont need packs that are $100+. The Galaxy/Neg'var/D'Deridix pack was the best pack they have released in my book.
I was hoping cryptic had learned to just release 1 ship per faction at a time that were basicly copies so everyone gets the same thing and could love the ships equally without bleeding people for money.
Like you pointed out every time they release 3 packs you get 1 with good looks, 1 with good boff/console layout, and the last one gets some op trait vs the other 2. The G/N/D'D pack was awesome cause you didn't have to deal with that, and it was priced ok to get everything.
Ya no one make you buy anything, and to that end, I hope cryptic gets the msg from what I say next. I was going to buy the 3 pack if it had been like the last one, 1 ship per faction. That would have been $50-60 bucks. But because cryptic went back to the DSD type pack options, I now will be spending zero.
The DSD was a massive failure because of how they sold it, and it being way to gimick heavy. Shame I really liked the design of some of these new ships and pilot looked fun, but im not interested in getting 2/3rds TRIBBLE in a pack that I will never use, and even less interested in a 9 pack of ships where I spend more money for just as much stuff I wont ever use.
The old 3-9 pack selling idea was bad before traits, look at the scimitar, oddy, bort, or andorian ship packs let alone the DSD. People spend all that money and feel kinda cheated afterwards when they find out most of it isnt worth it.
Cryptic I ask you, stop doing packs the old way. If your going to do packs of ships keep them to being 3 ships 1 per faction, that are useful/good, and balanced. The more satisfied your customer feels with their item the more likely they will buy again from you. What most of us have learned is, if packs come out, buy 1 ship if that.
We are willing to spend money, but the more you ask for at one time aka 9 packs the less likely people can/will buy it. The less satisfied we are with our purchase the more likely we are to either buy less, or not at all.
Wow these are some seriously ugly ships. I thought race cars were supposed to have beautiful curved lines like a corvette and not look like a rat rod built in someones back yard.
...Watching the ships use their maneuver abilities is actually pretty frackin' cool. It's a very quick translation in space position that can be done extremely frequently. We're getting some non-static-pictures prepared for ya'll to show off the cool new moves...
It's too bad these new ship animations and abilities aren't useable on our existing ships. I might consider paying money to use them, but I don't want to change ships to do so.
>shrug<
Oh well, a feature I won't use then. C'est la vie.
As for the ship appearance, it's hard to tell from the three small provided pictures, but I can't say I'm overwhelmed by any of them. Certainly not enough to buy just for the appearance.
Looks like these are a pass for me.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
It's been a progression like this since around S7...with nothing ever suggesting it would ever change.
Plus, all the immunity gimmicks in the world still don't cover 100% uptime, still rely on human reflexes to execute, and the new ones require being limited to one of a few ship choices that cost money/farming time.
Oh, and to the guy that said this is as gimmicky as the DSD pack, you're absolutely right.
I don't think they learn from failures. They just keep trying the same thing in order to try and get a different result. What is that the definition of.....
Well, the Fed ship just does not look like a Fed ship. Maybe some sort of slow civilian transport or a small freighter. Really strange direction to take for a ship you'd expect to look sleek and fast. It looks slow and unmaneuverable
The KDF ship at least looks somewhat like you might expect. It looks like a mix between a Vor'Cha, a Bird of Prey, with a bit of Raptor thrown in. It looks fairly aggressive and predatory.
While I like how the Romulan ship looks, it doesn't look like I'd expect a Romulan ship to look. There's no real separation of the pylon 'wings' from the main body that gives the appearance of a bird of prey. More like some sort of predatory alien fish.
Fed ship to me looks more like some modern muscle cars, but the klingon one actually says "hirogen" to me more than klingon. Aesthetically, for me, they rank: Fed>Rom>KDF
I may be interested in getting the Fed Pilot ship for my Fed tactical; whom I usually keep in escort-like vessels. I've gone from the Tempest, to the Phantom, to the Aquarius. The pilot ship may be next, considering that's where I invested my spec points on that character.
I'm indifferent to the Klingon ship. As for the Romulan one, I'm not seeing much appeal in it either... it does look vulture-like in my eyes (I am willing to wait and see what the other variants look like before deciding I want nothing to do with it).
After another 5-7 new Specializations and the market sufficiently saturated and T6 versions of the most popular ships made (including a T6 Sovereign; because they'd never do a T5U.5 Upgrade of an Upgrade).
Then they'll milk you dry off allowing upgrading of existing Hybrid seats on non-Specialized ships (aka everything EXCEPT ships with Specialist abilities and Cmdr Hybrid seats) to use another Specialization.
1 Token to add an alternate Specialization to an EXISTING Hybrid seat on any ship.
So 1 Token to turn the Lt.Cmdr. Sci/Intel seat on a Sheshar to LtCmdr. Sci/Intel/Pilot. Another token to make it Sci/Intel/Pilot/Command.
No honestly...this makes me laugh so hard, so no other ship
A has a helmsman
B cant rotate its axis it prevent the shields being hit from top to dorsal
C cant go reverse....bodly going forward because.....
D cant do a quick burst forward akin more like a true ramming speed
At the speeds these likely can. No.
As we've seen on the shows, the big ships can do so, but are huge molasses slow maneuvers.
Fix the lag. Fix the lag. Fix the lag. Fix the lag.
Given your sig, surely you remember ESD after the anniversary dropped...how it took half an hour to walk from beam-in to the exchange. I'll grant that Season 10 is a bit worse for queued events, but most other places in the game are good. As folks have said above, the people qualified to work on the issue already are, and if there were a silver bullet, we would already have it.
I don't think they learn from failures. They just keep trying the same thing in order to try and get a different result. What is that the definition of.....
As long as people keep buying them enough to make it profitable, they'll keep cranking them out like clockwork.
As you can tell by some of the people in this thread alone, there are very willing customers for this new gimmick.
When they stop making money off of it, they'll change their tune. I may not like it, but I can't say this is a failure on their part if it's keeping the bills paid. Which, evidenced by the last bundles -- it most certainly is.
Comments
Fighters being the Pilot ship class would have made much more sense. The ships in Trek are typically massive and badly suited for fancy maneuvers, which make very little sense in space combat anyway.
I am a F2P. I don't have money to spend on games. I'm poor. But I just bought a Fleet T6 Faeht Intel Warbird for my new DR KDF/Rommie by buying 3 fleet modules from the exchange for EC, and converting some dil to zen for the other 2 modules. So, If you play the game hard enough, you don't have to shell out hard earned real money for zen store items.
Besides, they have to make money somehow or the game will disappear. so i don't see any reason why they shouldn't hold back some of the best stuff for the Zen Store.
I am actually developing an MMO of my own, which will also be free to play, and I intend to do the same thing. Playable for free, but the best of the best stuff for real money only. I just have to find the right balance, of course.
T6 is about horizontal expansion rather than the vertical we saw with T5 with every ship needing to be progressively more powerful than the last.
Replacing the quarterly C-Store ships we have spec ship bundles - Pilot, Operations and Command ships - are not more powerful than each other, or the other T6 ships, they offer alternate mechanics so that people can adopt new styles of play and new tactics rather than just adding more DPS.
Now in addition to the spec ships, we have the iconics, which will eventually push all of the old T5Us to T6 like they did with the Pathfinder and Andromeda. These bring the older ships that people love in line with the spec ships while leveraging the old versions consoles to keep some of the value of old purchases.
So essentially, any T6 ship should be the equivalent of one of those T4 free ships - buy one, and it will stay relevant for a long time. With the exception of the Dauntless (which I consider to be very lackluster compared to the others) I would say that's pretty much true.
This is a GOOD thing for the game. It allows the game to progress without the power creep that was completely out of hand before Delta Rising. It's a smart move, you just have to step back and see the big picture.
It would also be nice if the Producer would step up and tell us all of this rather than us figuring it out on our own.
Unfortunately they are no longer available. But there might be a free T-6 ship coming in this summer's event.
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
Slow cruisers bore me, science vessels have too many bells and whistles
and Destroyers have all around good stuff on them but can't defend worth TRIBBLE.
I prefer in your face guns blazing combat and close the distance fast with a target, shred his shields and drop the big one the target aka a TCD Tric then punch the afterburners and fly as far away as possible.
Once they've saturated the market, they're likely going to release Cross-Specialization Tokens for all non-Faction and non-Specialist ships (IE: Everything EXCEPT dedicated Intel, Command, and Pilot ships), so that they can use other Specialist abilities on their existing Hybrid seats (no adding of new Hybrid seats; just adding the ability to use either Intel or Pilot on the Guardian's Lt Hybrid for example).
Just like how we see the Sheshar and Sovereign in their early Pilot News post able to use Pilot abilities. Of course, it'd only be for T6 ships that ARE NOT specialized.
Would allow them to milk the market further and let the last few stubborn holdouts finally commit to a general T6 ship and a token to add one or two alternative specializations to the existing Specialization seat.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
If this had included a BoP with the Piloting Maneuvers mechanic, I'd have bought a whole damn 9-Pack out of sheer gratitude... whether or not I actually wanted any of the rest. If any ship in STO could actually use the Piloting Maneuvers, it's the whole dang BoP line... poor squishy little things need a good way to avoid incoming fire. That, and I want a fun T6 BoP in general... but dang it, the Piloting Maneuvers would be a perfect addition to the way a BoP flies.
[EDIT] Okay, now that I'm past my initial disappointment... if there's a sale that brings them down to 10K Zen, and if they offer a full set of useful Starship Traits for my KDF and Rom characters (at least one of which makes the synergy between Reciprocity and All Hands On Deck look balanced), I'll probably end up picking them up. I just really hope that the Raptor isn't somehow "Qin'd" with its maneuverability, on a ship series that is intended specifically for maneuverability... seriously, not a Defiant/BoP/T'Varo?
Argh, nvm... judging them based on what they could have been, versus what they are, isn't fair to the folks that worked on them. If they are actually useful designs, I'll probably use them... just please don't randomly leave the KDF variants inferior for no real reason.
Escort ships are not really my thing since switching to Cruisers.
Why would they give us content with a ship release? That's as bad as asking why the art team isn't working on the lag issues.
Here you go:
https://youtu.be/jZYTyWeYLg4?t=1m56s
I was hoping cryptic had learned to just release 1 ship per faction at a time that were basicly copies so everyone gets the same thing and could love the ships equally without bleeding people for money.
Like you pointed out every time they release 3 packs you get 1 with good looks, 1 with good boff/console layout, and the last one gets some op trait vs the other 2. The G/N/D'D pack was awesome cause you didn't have to deal with that, and it was priced ok to get everything.
Ya no one make you buy anything, and to that end, I hope cryptic gets the msg from what I say next. I was going to buy the 3 pack if it had been like the last one, 1 ship per faction. That would have been $50-60 bucks. But because cryptic went back to the DSD type pack options, I now will be spending zero.
The DSD was a massive failure because of how they sold it, and it being way to gimick heavy. Shame I really liked the design of some of these new ships and pilot looked fun, but im not interested in getting 2/3rds TRIBBLE in a pack that I will never use, and even less interested in a 9 pack of ships where I spend more money for just as much stuff I wont ever use.
The old 3-9 pack selling idea was bad before traits, look at the scimitar, oddy, bort, or andorian ship packs let alone the DSD. People spend all that money and feel kinda cheated afterwards when they find out most of it isnt worth it.
Cryptic I ask you, stop doing packs the old way. If your going to do packs of ships keep them to being 3 ships 1 per faction, that are useful/good, and balanced. The more satisfied your customer feels with their item the more likely they will buy again from you. What most of us have learned is, if packs come out, buy 1 ship if that.
We are willing to spend money, but the more you ask for at one time aka 9 packs the less likely people can/will buy it. The less satisfied we are with our purchase the more likely we are to either buy less, or not at all.
Is this really going to be an actual Barrel Roll or just the a mis-named Aileron Roll?
It's too bad these new ship animations and abilities aren't useable on our existing ships. I might consider paying money to use them, but I don't want to change ships to do so.
>shrug<
Oh well, a feature I won't use then. C'est la vie.
As for the ship appearance, it's hard to tell from the three small provided pictures, but I can't say I'm overwhelmed by any of them. Certainly not enough to buy just for the appearance.
Looks like these are a pass for me.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Fed... Looks OK except for those 4 exposed hose? Coils?
Plus, all the immunity gimmicks in the world still don't cover 100% uptime, still rely on human reflexes to execute, and the new ones require being limited to one of a few ship choices that cost money/farming time.
Kurland here!
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9111383-pilot-bridge-officers
Cause...well...you know.
Not by game, lore, and RL classification they wouldn't be.
Corvettes are the Smallest ship that is considered a Warship (RL classification also used in game and lore).
Runabouts are small personal transports.
I don't think they learn from failures. They just keep trying the same thing in order to try and get a different result. What is that the definition of.....
Fed ship to me looks more like some modern muscle cars, but the klingon one actually says "hirogen" to me more than klingon. Aesthetically, for me, they rank: Fed>Rom>KDF
I'm indifferent to the Klingon ship. As for the Romulan one, I'm not seeing much appeal in it either... it does look vulture-like in my eyes (I am willing to wait and see what the other variants look like before deciding I want nothing to do with it).
After another 5-7 new Specializations and the market sufficiently saturated and T6 versions of the most popular ships made (including a T6 Sovereign; because they'd never do a T5U.5 Upgrade of an Upgrade).
Then they'll milk you dry off allowing upgrading of existing Hybrid seats on non-Specialized ships (aka everything EXCEPT ships with Specialist abilities and Cmdr Hybrid seats) to use another Specialization.
1 Token to add an alternate Specialization to an EXISTING Hybrid seat on any ship.
So 1 Token to turn the Lt.Cmdr. Sci/Intel seat on a Sheshar to LtCmdr. Sci/Intel/Pilot. Another token to make it Sci/Intel/Pilot/Command.
At the speeds these likely can. No.
As we've seen on the shows, the big ships can do so, but are huge molasses slow maneuvers.
There is mass and thruster power. Nice RL example of the type of physics is the Dawn Spacecraft Ion propulsion system.
Given your sig, surely you remember ESD after the anniversary dropped...how it took half an hour to walk from beam-in to the exchange. I'll grant that Season 10 is a bit worse for queued events, but most other places in the game are good. As folks have said above, the people qualified to work on the issue already are, and if there were a silver bullet, we would already have it.
As long as people keep buying them enough to make it profitable, they'll keep cranking them out like clockwork.
As you can tell by some of the people in this thread alone, there are very willing customers for this new gimmick.
When they stop making money off of it, they'll change their tune. I may not like it, but I can't say this is a failure on their part if it's keeping the bills paid. Which, evidenced by the last bundles -- it most certainly is.