I'll be honest, I couldn't really care less about F2P.

I don't particularly mind paying for content as long as it's good content. I left the original Star Trek Online after almost completing the original Klingon campaign because it had been mind-numbingly tedious except for the main campaign. After slaying Ambassador B'vat I more or less felt I'd done the majority of the "story content" that was keeping me motivated.

Having returned, I feel like a lot of improvement has been made. The "grind" is still there to a certain extent with the mobs of bad guys, Dilithium deposit scanning, and so-on but I think a better effort has been made to mix it up. The environments feel more alive, the characters more real, and the adventures more enjoyable.

There's still ample room for improvement but the game has gone from being "so bad it's average" to "actually pretty fun" for me. I think the Featured episodes have gone a long way to improving the game and if they continue to do them then I will be a happy camper.

Someone on these boards made the comparison that Cryptic had only a fraction of the time the original developers had to get the MMO up and running. It's interesting to imagine what it'll be like in four years game time and I tthink the results will only continue to get better.

It's been difficult to follow all the free to play stuff, and I haven't been testing it. I do wonder if there is something to be said for how fast level progression "spoiled" some players.

If anything, it seems like the amount of xp that people get from episodes and "big" missions should be reduced, so that they have to do patrols, exploration, doff stuff, etc. before their amount of xp reaches an amount comparable to having enough dilithium to buy a new ship once promoted. Along the way, there would be reason to craft at lower levels.

I may be completely wrong because I'm not testing any of this. It seems that most of the complaints that I've read come from people who power level using missions and FEs and then get angry when they might have to spend more time doing patrols, explorations, etc. in order to get dilithium that matches their big promotion.

Someone tell me if I'm completely wrong.

Anyways,

My two somewhat optimistic cents.

Outrageous! You are not allowed to be quietly optimistic! Get out there and start trolling for one side or the other!

Kirkfat, I certainly don't power-level. But the game before felt like I could progress at a steady rate with the amount of free time on my hands, which is only a few hours a week. Now, I can't, and that is my big issue. I don't have time for grinding, my attraction to STO was that it had very little grind at all outside of Klingons. My Kling made 51 about two months ago....been playing from launch. Not really "speed leveling".

There is still a lot of frustration that some of the planned season five features are probably now smoke. And of course, the usual AAF or whatever they call themselves nowdays people who want to bash Cryptic for ... the sake of bashing Cryptic.

Do you do the patrols or the assignments from admirals that tell you to go explore? Or, do you ignore the orders that you don't like?

Sorry, but I'm trying to get my brain around the concept of grinding, here. I realize that the scaling made a lot of this stuff non-rank specific. For better or worse, the bad part of STO has become optional and thus relegated to the category of grinding 5 or 5.

Still, you're a Starfleet officer. You have a list of assignments to complete, which includes patrols and exploration. That is part of the deal. Not everything is a big story mission. That isn't what Starfleet does. You are being hailed by an admiral, who has orders for you to do a task. It shouldn't be optional.

Instead, there are tasks that you must do, and you should have to do those tasks before getting promoted. You shouldn't get the promotion to go off into romulan space when you ignored 4 orders from higher ups to patrol and explore the sector that the story missions assigned you to.

I don't mind obeying orders. I do mind if I'm not given the option to do this *before* that.

Eh part of the fun of Star Trek Online is realizing you can pick and choose orders. I, for one, can't stand the "System Patrols." I'm not actually a HUGE HUGE fan of space combat and wish there was more ground missions. Which, I suspect, puts me in the decided minority.

I don't think you're crazy for wanting that.

But you're not into big booms?! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU MAN?!?

I tend to look at it like I did getting patrol orders from the US Navy.

Typically in mission planning you'd have a 'patrol package" and then , possibly, a port call, supply pickups, maybe even a CET launch.

The package was inclusive for that span of patrol time. Some things would need to be inflexible, like launching test packages, but most of it was up to the captain to figure out the order he wanted it done in, and when.

In the current arena, I have a package of tasks: some are high priority, some are low priority, and appearantly instead of getting orders from one admiral any idiot with a comm can issue me orders. That's not really analagous (or realistic) -- it would more like "go do (Featured Mission) and while you are there you can also pick up (one of several dailies, whatever).

TBH, it's more like my experiences as a deck seaman, when I could be ordered around by the captain, the first lieutenant, the leading seaman, and the deck petty officer, all of which wanted something done now. I did it in the order I liked, based on how important it was, and sometimes I would skip things knowing someone else would handle it.

That's the way I look at it. There are all these other captains out there -- someone else can patrol Risa.

Aye, but you are a Starfleet officer and you have your orders. Shouldn't you have to complete them? At what point did Captains of starships get to decide what they did or did not what to do?

"Hi Admiral! Oh yeah? You say that the Klingons are invading Bajor? Sorry, Admiral, but I don't feel like firing photons at the moment... Say, can I get my new ship now?"

This is STARFLEET, though.

Starfleet is MADE of Captains having broad discretionary powers. Besides, I'm contacted by like eight Admirals, six Commanders, and at least one terrorist cell leader (Franklin Drake) on a regular basis. I think Starfleet will forgive me if I have to pick and choose.