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Theme: 2021 Legendary Bundle Ships
Guests: systems designer Jeremy Randall and lead ship and UI artist Thomas Marrone
Stream started with Thomas' cat lazing around and Mike's (named "Chatty") attacking the camera.
Also, Thomas had nice "Captain Proton" shirt.
- None of the trio had information about why bundle's pricing is what it is, as that's outside of their area of competence.
- 10 legendary ships from 10th anniversary bundle nearly burned people out, but they felt that for such a date they should've done that.
- Jeremy: "Ten was not reasonable."
- Excelsior and Ambassador were chosen because they're Enterprise B and C, as they already have other Enterprises covered with previous bundle (except J).
- Before they decided on general cross-faction flying for all ships, they were thinking about making cross-faction HMS Bounty to "test the waters".
- Vor'cha was chosen because it was contemporary to Ambassador and Excelsior and Thomas just likes the ship's design in general.
- They're unlikely to make dedicated T6 Kamarag, so they rolled it into Vor'cha.
- B'rel was chosen because otherwise bundle was becoming way too eng-heavy.
- That was one of main reasons D7 wasn't included in bundle.
- T3 Ambassador and Kamarag were the first ships that were made by Jeremy.
- Holographic Worf boff is an account unlock.
- There would be more KDF legendary ships.
- Vo'n'talk looks notably old and unrefined, especially with exposed piping running outside of the ship.
- In another sad loss to Magic, Jette moved to their team. As such, those 4 ships are the last ones she made for the game.
- L!B'Rel is 4/2 simply because B'rel retrofit and Kor are 4/2, simple as that.
- Raiders were initially envisioned as KDF sci ships.
- About flanking: raiders either have cloak + normal flanking or no cloak and improved flanking.
- Temer actually had normal flanking all that time. That was just persistent description error.
- They took the opportunity to update the consoled as they was getting seriously obsolete by now.
- Mike screwed up by showing us screen twice in a row, and since it was nothing major, he quickly resigned to showing it.
- "Oh my god. Oh well. You know what? Here it is. Enjoy."
- As such: next event is Storm the Spire and the Breach, with reward being "Molor's flaming sword".
- New event campaign rewards are 2 T6 zen coupons, 1500 lobi or single promo/lockbox ship char unlock.
- The fact that Qo'nos shipyard's model and interact space were different things is a sign of very old code.
- They included Ch'Tang's and Qaw'Dun's consoles to L!B'rel because they really doubt that they'd ever do legendary versions of them.
- Vor'cha was chosen to be K'Mpec's Qo'nos One because the first time we saw the ship, it was carrying him.
- It, along with J'mpoc's I.K.S. Kri'stak, were made in the image of Gorkon's ship.
- Thomas is surprised that it took that much to get "A good day to die" name on a trait. Jeremy said that there's already a ground one and they probably should do something about it.
- Sometimes when they say "we did something by hand" they mean "we wrote the script that did that thing from the scratch", like for recent cross-faction unlock that modified each and every ship in game.
- They chose DIS style for Excelsior because they felt that they exhausted every canon and reasonable design, so remembered how they TMP Shenzhou and made a reverse.
- Generally higher-ups trust the design team to show what exact ships to make and don't interfere in the matter.
- When they were designing "target that explosion" trait, they thought that they'd never make another Excelsior and just slapped it on the random ship. Now that they made Legendary Exelcior, they felt they HAD to put that trait on.
- From what Thomas knows, while designing original Excelsior, Paramount wanted to make unusually-looking ship, so they designed ship with main Starfleet traits, but using japanese industrial design principle of the time.
- Implementing ships from other ST games includes too much legal issues, as designs have their own owners, so Cryptic would rather use their own talents.
- Horatio uses oval saucer to differentiate from other Ambassadors who have perfect saucers and twin neck to remind of STO designs like Odyssey.
- Horatio was made by EC Henry.
- Thomas likes Henry's work, particularly imperial Nebulon-B for SW.
- Upon discovering that legendary Ambassador was way too much like OG one, they chose specs to be irregular combination. They knew that it probably wouldn't be meta.
- New!L!Ambassador has cloak because it's a prime-intel ship.
- L!Gal-X lacks cloak because it already has cloak console. Jeremy was unable to answer why L!Konnie don't have one.
- It was somewhat unclear from comment whether more prime-temporal ships are just coming or coming in foreseeable future.
- "Ambassador Worf" holo-boff's traits: Aggressive, Superior Honor, Superior Photonic Lifeform, Warrior. Visuals not editable.
Comments
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but don't some of the ships from the original bundle have different weapon layouts from the previous variants. This sounds like an excuse (one of several, at least that is my impression), and a poor one at that.
Also, they want you to put a full year of effort, 5 events, into the new event campaign for a Promo ship that is still a single character unlock? TRIBBLE that...
The alternative is that they make it an account unlock and that tanks the promo ship prices because people no longer need that ship for all their characters.
Hmmm, I was going to sign up for playtesting Magic, until they switched to include the actual card game into that game. Ironic.
You make it sound like a bad thing... and I would point out, after having chosen one ship if it were an account unlock, you still need to to purchase any other promo ships on an individual character basis. There are also the Mudd pick 3 bundles which are account unlocks.
> 'L!B'Rel is 4/2 simply because B'rel retrofit and Kor are 4/2, simple as that.'
>
> Someone correct me if I am wrong, but don't some of the ships from the original bundle have different weapon layouts from the previous variants. This sounds like an excuse (one of several, at least that is my impression), and a poor one at that.
You are correct. In 10th ani bundle the gunport loadouts have been changed on a few ships.
Cryptic used that last year to down or upgrade legendary ships compared to their previous releases.
The way they are arranged have a huge impact on the diversity of build options and and therefore if a legendary ship sets itself apart and deserves the name.
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This part confused me as well.. what about the 10 ship bundle was ‘unreasonable?’ Because reducing it to only four doesn’t seem to save the player much money, so if the original pack was ‘unreasonable’ this one is unfathomable.
Also strange that they say the D7 wasn’t included because the pack was too ‘Engineering Heavy.’ Well, being that the D7 is the ship they know everyone wants, and the Fed Bundle gave players access to the highly desirable Constitution Class.. why not use the D7 instead of the Vor’Cha? I know that Thomas likes the Vor’Cha, but I would hope that’s not why it’s in the pack over the D7 that everyone wants. I won’t make any assumptions on that front, but it doesn’t exactly read well.
According to the contest based on it, the expectation of them doing 10 ships again was unreasonable. They did it last year because it was a big anniversary for them. Between Hector, the ship artists, Jette and Jeremy, making all 10 ships for release at the same time was a time consuming process. (If I recall right, they usually have a longer time to work on ships for expansions. I bet doing the 10 ships for the anniversary was a shorter window than what they usually tned to do). It didn't sound like it was something they wanted to repeat for a second time.
Am I missing something, or is this really just people getting upset about "Muh 5 forward weapons! Because 5 is more than 4 so it must be the betterest!"..?
And on another tangent, am I the only one who's glad the Legendary D7 ISN'T part of this terrible bundle and is thus eligible to be in a standalone(/cheaper) offer instead?
Anyways, pardon my plague-addled rambling/venting. Probably the saddest news from this stream was seeing Jette move on from space-magic to fantasy-magic. Their comprehensive understanding of this game's mechanics is going to be missed.
Because 'stealth bomber' would be a very niche build and not what most people are using the ship for. This is not a judgment on that type of build or it's effectiveness, it's just not the most common use case.
It's not as much of an issue as you might think. Generally, the concept is to try and 'vape' the target before they can return fire, this is done using a cloaked approach, ambush bonus, raider flanking and all the critical hit and damage you can pack into a ship. Should your opening volley not be enough to end the engagement, there are plenty of things in game that can make the Raider tanky enough to make it's escape, hit the battle cloak and give them another shot. You are absolutely right though that Raiders are not ideal for prolonged engagements, you want to get out of them, battle cloak and re-enter on your terms.
If they are running a standard beam layout, then yes. Otherwise in the case of Dual Cannons, Dual Heavy Cannons or Dual Beam Banks, having 5 fore is a very big advantage. It's most prevalent in Dual Beam builds that lack many good rear 360' weapons due to the silly restrictions on Omni Beams. When you're trying to play an ambush style Raider that depends on dealing as much as possible inside that Ambush duration.. the 5th forward is simply a must have. Honestly, any raider with only 4 forward is sub par.. all of them. There is no case where 5 forward is worse then 4, at most if you're using all single beams then both layouts are the same. A 5 forward layout is more versatile and lets you build a number of different ways. In my opinion, 5 Fore should be standard on Raiders.
I would say you're the only one, just because we know that there is no way it's going to end up with it being in any way 'cheaper' to get the D7. They're keeping that back to be the center piece in some heavily bloated $200 pack where that ship is literally the ONLY thing anyone wants.
For what it's worth though, I hope you're right and I am wrong.
Conversely, if you're really looking to min-max big hits from ambush and flanking, it just seems way more logical to go for extreme kinetic/epg AoE hits that really take advantage of the higher damage multiplier ceiling(while benefiting from unique nature of EBC the craft provides).. For 'bomber' builds, you really don't need much in the way of forward weapons; 2-3 is plenty. (Having more aft weapons means you can hybrid into high-burst mine tele-ambushes as well.)
I digress though. People want what they want I guess, and I'm last person who should be judging others for enjoying silly buildcraft.. especially if that want to pay this much for it.
Thanks for the discussion, Sea - I appreciate the civil opportunity to have vented my petty frustration over an outcry that strikes me as.. illogical.
It's not as if some of the Legendary Ships in the 10th anniversary bundle have a different weapons layout... oh wait, they do!
These are good rewards for such a long campaign.
So it didn't take nearly 1/10 of the effort they claim it took them to make the change, unless they had to redo the "script" - god, they can't even use the proper language, smh - a hundred times over.
This should finally put things into perspective for those that still insist that it was PWE that made the decision.
"Discovering"? The specs of each ship are there for everyon to see so, once they decided those 4 ships were the ones that were going into the bundle, why not check them?
Not that I believe for one second that they changed it for any other reason than the uproar everywhere, btw, but still: is it really so hard to check *before* making something? Apparently, yes.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
“There would be more KDF ships,” but what?
Or do you mean there “will be more KDF Ledgendary ships”— the grammar is wrong—I hope you mean the latter.
Once again, you're absolutely not wrong.
To be totally honest man, Raiders are more of a thing you do when you are just sick of doing the 'better thing.' A Scimitar for example, can do basically everything a Raider can do.. only better. It has 5 forward, full commander tactical, battle cloak, a hangar of Romulan Drones and it can literally park in the middle of a firefight and be just fine. All those ships you mentioned.. absolutely right again.. a raider is something you do knowing this but you do it for fun. This explains why you rarely see Raiders, Raptors or Escorts in the game world today. Right now, you see Temer Class Raiders because it's the 'new shiny' but even as good as it is, in a couple weeks they're all be dry docked because people will realize exactly what you said. Raiders have no actual place, because there is always a heavy ship that can do everything they can do and more. Sad, but it's true.
I have actually never done that, I don't really know jack about Kinetic builds.. but that sounds like an attractive option indeed.
Back at ya man, and not petty at all.. your points were all valid.
Ten ships for 200-300 bucks of Zen not reasonable... riiiight. Complete disregard for customers that aren't just fanboys that buy everything.
Concerned about the bundle being "engineering-heavy", but last years bundle had plenty of cruisers. Right.
Their reasoning for the "legendary" B'rel having to be 4/2 made no sense & they glossed-over examples of other ships disproving but it was self-serving so that's why they said it.
Very telling & a bit laughable how they avoided going into the pricing details of this bundle.
Them saying the Temer only has Raider Flanking after all that time advertising it having Improved Raider Flanking is a bit of false advertising imo & I'd be wanting my buy-out refunded if I had done so if that ability factored into it.
The biggest news imo is: that Jette is leaving, or has already left, STO for the Magic The Gathering game. Since this livestream just confirmed my sourness towards this bundle I felt this was the bigger more impactful news of STO.
I don't think it's a good bundle, I think it's decent after the changes they made, but not at this price.
Four ships and a number of gambleboxes for roughly the same price you got the ships-only-version of last years bundle.
Ten ships for 200+ bucks are not reasonable ya kno...
Yeah if there is one thing that is a clear downgrade with the B'rel its the science console removal. They should have kept the console layout the way it was. At least if you didn't X your Kor you can essentially get it back that way.
Original Galaxy X was 4/4 so the Legendary Galaxy-X is 5/3 simple as that... oops.
Yes I agree they need to change the console layout 4 science consoles, especially to take advantage of the commander science the b'rel can use.