PvP that is worth while.... Take a clue from Dark Age of Camelot....
(Unfortunately this game is on its death bed, because we lost 2/3rds of our Player base to WoW.)
An integral part of Dark Age of Camelot is the concept of Realms. Realms are entirely independent worlds that exist within the larger world of the game. There are three distinct Realms in Dark Age of Camelot - Albion, Midgard and Hibernia. Think of these three Realms as foreign countries with well defended borders and different languages.

The primary principle is that each of the Realms is at war with each of the others, and that they cannot even communicate with each other. Realm vs. Realm combat (known as RvR) occurs in special level-specific battlegrounds and in the New Frontiers.

There are battlegrounds available for characters level 1 to 49. Battlegrounds are smaller RvR areas and entry into each is limited by level. The first battleground is level 1-4, the next is 5-9, the third is 10-14, and so forth, ending at level 49. The battlegrounds are a good place to learn now to use your RvR skills before venturing out into the main RvR zones in New Frontiers.

The New Frontiers are recommended for characters that have attained a fairly high level and have mastered the skills of their class. Generally, to be effective at RvR, it is good to join a group of other characters with balanced skills. There are many specific strategies for fighting in RvR, as opposed to fighting monsters found throughout the game.

There are specific goals that come with RvR. One is to gain notoriety within your own Realm. This can gain you special points called Realm Skill Points. You can use Realm Skill Points to train your character in special skills that cannot be trained in any other way.

There are also special castles, or keeps, and controlling the majority of those keeps can bring benefits to the entire Realm. Certain keeps contain magical items called Relics. If a Relic is controlled by its home realm it will be stored in a Relic keep beyond a special Mile Gate. If member of an opposing realm can steal an enemy Relic, they can then install that Relic in one of their standard keeps. If a Realm controls both their own relics and an enemy Relic of the same type, all members of that realm will gain benefits from the Relic Magic. Warfare over the Relics and various castles in the frontier areas is a primary aspect of RvR.
------------------------------------------------------
Here is an example....

Each Keep, has 4 Towers... And in order to gain access to the enemy Realm's Relic keep... You have to Capture all of a Keep's 4 towers and the keep itself... do this with 4 of their Keeps... and it unlocks 1 of the enemies Relic Keeps.


Why not do the same thing with STO???? Have battle areas or "Skirmish areas" until the End Game, where everyone is a Senior Captain or Admiral, can go out and fight for their faction. Have 3-4 planets in a solar system.... You have to capture each planet in the solar system to gain control of that system.... Planets can be secured and held on the Ground.... by capturing strategic areas of interest... simultaneously while our ships are flying around in space, making sure there aren't any Klingon ships coming up to transport their people down on the ground so on and so forth....
Interlace the space/ground combat system.
And if you capture and hold a solar system, it gives the Federation or Klingon factions a bonus... like, While you control this system, you will have +100 to shields at all times... or you will have +20 to all Beam arrays...


Make it worth our while To go PvP... not just some useless Instance where I you walk away going "ok that was fun and pointless... back to the grind"
I want to be able to lead on the ground... Capture and hold a planet, and to not let go of that planet.. I want to actually feel like I'm in a War with the Klingons...

If you can't tell, I'm an Avid Fan of PvP... To me, PVP in an MMO will make or break the game. There is only so many times I can go 'visit' DS9 before the game loses my intrest, no matter how much I love Star Trek...
I want to feel like I'm actually fighting for something... like the whole Level Grind was worth it....

Sorry that this is such a long winded post.

I hate to tell you this, but Cryptic has a habit of taking MONTHS for single power changes. Even if they wanted to do this (not saying they should or shouldn't, just saying IF they did want to), it would likely be half a year or more before you saw them able to put it in. And that's with nothing else distracting them.

Cryptic is just not that large of a company.

Neither was Mythic when they came out with Dark Age of Camelot

Those useless instances are a grind...

Yeah for Klingons.... I understand that the true source of XP...

For Feds... there is nothing "alluring" for PvP right now. Feds come out with nothing to show for it, except a bit more XP.

And what was written was more of an 'End Game' scenario... That typically the higher level players will engage in combat that will earn bonuses for their factions...
It should be open to all levels, but if you show up as an ensign, you'll get 1 shotted.

Pew! Pew! Pew!

Because, as I said, they are a small company and this is all they have the time/resources for. Look, if they narrowed the scope this much BEFORE release, I don't see how anyone could seriously expect them to completely redesign the pvp system after it's gone live. It gets exponentially more difficult to do so, and they didn't magically double in size once release hit. To the contrary, they shift some of their resources from development to maintenance, so they actually get less.

If somehow the game keeps high population numbers for a year or so, you'll see people being added to development enough to maybe make some changes in an expansion, but that's about the earliest you'll even get an indication something will happen.

Well, EVE was pretty small too and if there were 5,000 people on the server all at one time (2003-2004) it was considered a big thing. But CCP kept plugging away.

Unfortunately, I don't know if that's the business model Cryptic has. It seems they have a "make it and then make another MMO" mentality. It may be good for their pocket book short term and maybe that's all they want.

Still, a Star Trek MMO, that's pretty much like like SWG. You mess that one up and you can look forward to changing careers.