This topic has been raised and re-raised multiple times this year, initially starting with the Summer Event. I can already hear the cries of my fellow gamers that are going to rip this forum post to shreds, but that won't stop me from saying what I need to say. Making these event ships year-exclusive is not a good idea, whatsoever. I've never played an MMO that removes and time-gates content as much as STO does, and honestly making these ships so limited in availability is only serving to hurt newer players by discouraging them from participating in these events.
Looking at the Winter Event item store, you can see that every past item available from that vendor is still available this year, whether it be the kit modules, outfits, or weapons. Even the Breen Warp Core/Singularity Cores are available again. Since those items are available yearly without fail, why can't the event ships, for Summer, Winter, and Anniversary be that way as well? Most MMOs that I've played or heard of make the rewards for these special events available each year, they just add new stuff on top of the old rewards. Why can't it be that way for STO?
These changes to event ships were made many months after the events were run the past year; that's not much notice given to players for such a drastic change. The playerbase wasn't given a last-chance event or anything, we were just told that this was how it will be and there's nothing we can do about it. The justification given to the community for these changes was that of "exclusivity and collectability". Unfortunately, those two words are in conflict with each other. Collectability is defined as "being capable/worthy of being collected", while exclusivity is defined as "the state of being limited or hard to access", with its root word exclusive being defined as "excluding or not admitting other things/restricted or limited to the person, group, or area concerned".
Even the rarest items in the world can still be collected by the Average Joe if they put enough time, effort, and resources into acquiring those items. However, when an item or items are only available for a limited time and then completely removed from any market or trading network in existence, they no longer become collectible, just exclusive. For example, a rare, limited-edition comic book can be sold at one point and then removed from the general market. That comic book, however, can still be obtained in places like Craigslist, Ebay, Amazon, and a variety of 3rd party sellers after the comic book's initial printing/sales period. The supply can run out, sure, but it can still be obtainable if someone wants it enough. On the flip side, if that comic book never makes it to those off-market sellers, then it can't be collected by any means.
That's what's happening with these event ships. With the recent changes they are now just exclusive, time-gated rewards for which one had to be in the right place at the right time to get. It's not as if there are spare Chel Gretts, Risian Corvettes, and Samsars just floating around on the Exchange or available on the Lobi Store/C-Store that one can pick up if they so desire. They are gone completely, with no way to get them other than going back in time and playing the event when it last occurred. One can't collect something if its not available to collect.
Another issue with restricting these event ships to the year they were released is that they complete sets with other ships. The Samsar comes with a console that completes the 4-piece set with the Command Battlecruisers/Warbirds from the C-Store. Now that that Anniversary Event is over, that set bonus is rendered incompletable to those that missed it. The Breen ships are another example. With four ships now contributing to the console set, that leaves a lot of times that someone could've missed an event and are no longer able to complete the set. The Nandi as well contributes to a set bonus with a Lock Box reward ship, the D'Kora Marauder. Now those people fortunate enough to get the D'Kora will be unable to complete the set with the Nandi if they happened to miss out on the most recent Summer Event.
I understand that part of the reason why these changes were made was because people were pooling the tokens needed to earn these ships and holding them over 'til the event next year. With the new tokens being restricted to the year of the event, this issue has disappeared, yet the event ships are time-gated as well. Why not make every past event ship available when their respective events roll around? People will still have a limited time to earn those event ships because the tokens no longer work after that year's event is over, but the rewards will be available if people put enough effort and time into acquiring them. People will participate in the event each year regardless, because if they don't they'll have to wait a whole year for the event to come around again, and they will have even more grinding to do with the introduction of another event ship.
I urge you, Cryptic Studios, to reconsider your decisions regarding time-gating event ships. As a retroactive change made five-going-on-six years into STO's life cycle, it's honestly just causing more harm than good. This is especially considering that this change was unnecessary to make aside from wanting to enforce a policy of exclusion and division between veteran players and newer players, using these what-should-be festive and fun events as the testing ground for these changes. I fear that there may come a point where players that find this game in the future wouldn't want to participate in these events because they serve to remind them of the things they've missed and will never have the chance to earn. These events were never exclusive to those of us who have been playing longer than others, so why make the awesome rewards these events offer like this?
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Don't worry. Every event ship is better than the previous year's.
Only Mirror Invasion and CC event had better rewards than today's.
Yea I'm in this situation too. I would like to have the 4 piece console set but unable to now. I was looking forward to the winter event, but now It kind of takes the fun and pride out of it.
He also did not personally attack the devs over their decision. There maybe hundreds of these threads spread out over over various sites, but atleast this one is in the proper format to defend this point of view.
pot meet kettle.
what does this exclusivity add to the game? and no whiny little brats feeling special cause they happened to playing the game at the right time does't count.
and it wasn''t limited tell this year. why? reasons.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
The Nandi and Chell Gret.
I just couldn't be bothered to do it which is my own fault. Now I wouldn't mind having a choice of ships as I posted above but I'm not going to blame Cryptic for my own choices.
Right now though - only 1 alt can claim the new ship. Unsure if it's a bug.
In fact the number of rows of slots also seemed to have been reduced by about three also right after you Slot the Ship.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Seems like they gave plenty of warning this sort of thing was on the table.
This would only be valid if it referred to this years event but it doesn't. People also need to remember that the item required to fill said projects isn't available any more, so even if players did slot the projects out of foresight they wouldn't have been able to complete them anyway, which voids their statement.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
There are always Big Spender types who have buckets of Lobi lying around, and get the Summer/Winter ships the first day by just throwing Lobi at the event vendor. It's not a cheat, it's just being super wasteful. /shrug
The warning was given during last years event, which was the last time those ships were going to be made available. If you slotted the project then, you can complete it now using the new currency, so they actually gave a 1 year 'grace period.'
If it wasn't taken advantage of then, then the time has passed.
I don't get what everyone is all in an uproar over anyway, they're just T5 ships. The ships they give away now are T6 ships, and actually pretty nice ones. It's not like they missed out on some great thing that everyone MUST have.
The only reason most people want these older ships is because they don't currently have them and they don't like that anyone else does. I hardly even see anyone flying the older Breen Ships anymore because they have been replaced by superior T6 versions.
People complain just for the sake of complaining.
ROFL
2014's winter ship was T6. The carrier. Thou you also need the raider ship (T5) too if you wanted the frigate pet.
Exclusivity isn't an issue for me, what does it matter to me what ships other people have? Or that I should feel 'special' because I was here earlier and got a ship that they can't own. Collectibility isn't an issue either, since it's not about 'collecting' (you can't aquire or trade them later), it is simply an issue of 'were you here at that time and had 25 days to spend on it'?
Personally, I can't see any 'good' for the game coming out of locking these ships away. I *could* see putting them on a rotation, or offering a special ship-acquiring event, or making some other, game-oriented way of obtaining them. But simply saying 'look at these lovely ships! Too bad they're not for you!'; that's not adding anything for anyone.
I'm hearing rumours some people can't, if it works for you then be happy.
A lot of T6's aren't that great anyway, a good number of T5's are actually still better than their T6 equivalents. Also like @tigeraries said:
So there's good reasons for it. Also there's the set bonuses for the consoles.