Well I joined for the welcome back weekend, I'll point out that first of all I have a one year subscription but haven't played for months.

First of all the game has progressed leaps and bounds since launch, but for me STO still isn't quite 'right'. I'll note down a few impressions.

Space Combat, still the jewel in the crown of STO's gamplay. Yet a few reservations.....

1. Progression

There's no real sense of progression here, your ship and abilities increase however your fighting the same groups of three frigates, a cruiser/battleship etc. Basically your gameplay (other than the new abilities) doesn't change. For me the game would work better if you are fighting a single tougher frigate or destroyer rather than a group of three. Instead of 'weakened' battleships, rank up the crew so that frigate/destroyer becomes a named ship and captain. Or even (if you want big ships), perhaps converted merchant shipps (in a historical sense adding 'Q-Ships'...check out wiki if your not familiar with the term). Then as you progress, add extra frigates to the light groups and add Cruisers and finally Battleships. It helps to keep a sense of scale and stop enemy shipping seemng trivial in capabilities.

2. 'I have to follow rules, why don't they?'

Pet peve been around since CB. NPC torpedo attacks have a 360 arc/ Can overload a torpedo, then launch a normal torpedo etc. Not a biggie I suppose, yet I know when I'm flying a BoP my torpedos don't fire 360 etc. Stops me thinking about how I'm positioned in relation the the enemy ships, and only have to worry about MY orientation to them (or keep my shields revolving, while attacking just the one shield). With the NPC special attacks having a 360 degree arc, II don't feel 'rewarded' for postioning myself in the rear arcs etc (which you do in PvP).

Minor points here, as the space combat mechanics are very good and enjoyable. Any 'grinding' impression is re-enforced by no sense of progression (see my first point above).

Ground Combat.

3. Overload

Basically too much going on at the same time. Trying to co-ordinate the irrational AI of your BOs, focusing your attacks (and the BOs) on the major threats, and remembering to trigger your abilities AND firing at the same time. I think this is one of the major causes of frustraion at the Ground Combat system. I can play PvP on the ground, and its more enjoyable than in PvE. I think this is due to I'm only controlling the single avatar, and can keep up with whats going on. The fix here is to perhaps scale some of the ground scenarios down to just one or two BOs and scale back the number of enemy opponents (could be done for the episodic content/missions).

4. Feels 'clunky'.

I suppose this feeling comes from STO's attempt to mimic the fast gameplay of games like ST Elite Force. Yet in an MMO enviroment (lag etc) is it do-able? The gameplay tends to lead the expectation of the players to expect a fast paced game they are familiar with (with scripted encounters that allow NPCs to better interact with the enviroment etc). Yet STO doesn't deliver do to the fact its an MMO (and a lot of the enviroment is 'generic' so it can be re-used). This coupled with the overload issue above tends to leave the players feeling the Ground Combat is unreponsive.

So whats the fix here (IMHO)? Difficult to say, the issue of overload is probably one of the worst for me. Possible fixes could include turning some abilites into passives, allowing a Dragon Age stye AI script for the BOs to try and make the BOs co-operate with MY style of gameplay etc. As STO's Space Combat forms its greatest draw, the Ground Combat forms STO's greates flaw.

Other stuff.......

Crafting/upgrade system. Vastly improved (well there wasn't really a system at launch), yet similar to CO you bascially get to craft items after you have already outlevelled them (unless you spend a lot of time in the genesis missions)

Difficulty Slider, love it. I can set the slider to elite and play space combat at CB difficulty. HOWEVER, attempting some ground missions on the same settings leads to an insta wipe of the away team (extremely frustraiting). The fix would be to again look at the difficultly slider modifications for ground combat. However another solution would be to have TWO settings (one for away teams, one for space). This would allow players who don't like the ground gameplay to set it on 'normal' difficulty and breeze though it, yet still offer the challenge for the space combat.

Diplomatic Missions, probably the best hope for breaking the sense of 'grinding' in STO, a chance for Cyptic writers to shine. Yet still the few missions I've experienced are nice 'one off' self contained generic templates. No sense of a plotline here (only got to the first rank). Yet its the players who want to see more no-combat missions that also want to see (or actually bother to read) the text in the briefings etc. Still its new to STO and needs more time to evolve (a great chance for the first iteration of UGC here perhaps?).

Hopefully this post isn't too negative, and might raise some interesting discussion point (hope to see some feedback on if you feel my impressions are correct or not). STO has improved greatly since launch, yet still suffers in same ways from issues brought up in Beta.

As for me, Will I be playing more often? Well its still 50/50, I WANT to like the game, but after an hour or two I start to become irritated at some of the gameplay. Perhaps basically the game isn't for me...I dunno.

I like the idea of having 2 difficulty settings one for space missions and one for ground missions.