Did some people miss the memo? Levels dont matter anymore, everything is level scaled, which makes them meaningless. Besides that, they really needed to get people out of the Miranda faster. Thats what kills retention in this game off when people are stuck with this crappy ship and it would take forever to get out of it.

I feel the same way. I don't usually enjoy the leveling process... though there are some exceptions. I'd much rather the developers spend time on end game, where everyone gets anyway, than middle game because it becomes irrelevant.

I would just like some freedom to do the quests I *should* have that I might actually get some leveling gear to help me along... nothing kills my motivation like getting a handful of EC for my efforts because the item is ranks below what I have looted in the quest. Level 30 says I have access to the Cardassian sector missions, yet I don't have access to them.

General reminder: If you're playing on the Tribble F2P test server, leveling is accelerated big time, you level much, much faster here than on the live server.

I do like that I was able to get to 41 in less than 10 days (almost 51 on my fed) and expect it's only due to being on test to test out the various levels of changes to missions and the addition of DOffs. This leveling from the DOff's away team missions is helping to lessen the grind as well.

One thing I don't like, it seems that you can only do 1 "episode" arc at a time, and since I leveled way past them, the rewards to them are moot (but the XP earned scales with levels).

Well there is a benefit to leveling and then there is too fast for leveling.

Yes, we will all get to end-game quicker and it may cut out missions Cryptic has to create but there are some downsides to it. As I stated in another thread, we still have a race to end-game and very little endgame developed. Everyone will be at the top with a handful of things to do. Now that exploration went to a daily, that took out one of my end game activities.

You don't really get enough time in any of your previous ships (I am lucky if I spent a day in each).
You end up fighting without level appropriate gear. I know I can go back to any ship I enjoyed playing, and that comes as some serious gimping, but for the costs of the ships in dilithium, I would expect to be in them for at least a week of 3-4 hr game sessions.

If you stop to obtain level appropriate gear it will only be good for 5 or so missions. With the pace leveling is at it becomes a constant gear chase. Now I thought I was taking my time and was going through each mission on up the chain, do one expo and one defend, do the story arcs, the patrols, a few Borg encounters, the doff system. But in two weeks of easy playing, I am at VA. Now that is with taking ~12 hours out to gther anomalies to max my crafting and gear my end game ship and Boffs with full rare crafted pieces.

If you hit RA or VA before getting the "clearance" to transwarp you do not have access to B'Tran which means you cannot get you allotment of daily exploration dilithium, nor can you get those anomalies to craft you end game gear. This is a realy problem as you are then "forced" to go through every mission before and fight level-scaled mobs for gear that is not scaled. Let me know if I am wrong, but last night right after obtaining VA I was going to do some anomaly hunting, I flew up to the gate and got no interaction option. So I must surmise access is granted in the questline when it should be granted with rank, just like you are told to meet with T'nae, etc...

So there are problems with the current pace.

I was using a connie till captain, and lvl IV and V gear leveling up. With the introduction of the Multi-phasic event, finding resources of ALL levels isn't that hard. Go to the area you're needing to level in that hour and just grind it out. I've spent maybe 2 hours grinding for the resources and can already craft lvl IX gear.

I think the levelling on Tribble is way too fast, and here's why:

I made Cdr, and then only did three more missions between then and VA, because of levelling via the DOff system. That took 3 days to get from Cdr to VA. In the meantime, I'm so far behind any of the missions, I don't even want to touch them, the task is so daunting. I like the Breen and Romulan Arcs, but I'm so far from them (okay, only 6 missions away from the Romulan arc...) that as a new player, I would be turned off from them completely. Either they need to adjust that seriously, or take each story arc off the required progression track with the others, because that will wind up with new players never seeing some of the better content the game has to offer.

I can too, and craft an Aegis set and some RAU gear. But the point is, if you have to wait for the multiphasic event to get that handful to maybe craft one or two more items, it is silly. Just open up the story Arcs based of off rank and provide access to B'tran via rank not mission like all the others. It makes no sense how they have it set now. I am fine with having to do the arcs in order but not fine with having to do all the missions in order and have the FE's just tossed in there because they "break" the flow of the story arc.

Agreed, I'm leveling far too quickly, I'm a Commander and haven't finished more than 1/4 of the Lt and LtCmd missions. I haven't had to do a single patrol or exploration. I'm going up a rank every single time I play the mirror fed mission - I've ranked up 3 times in an hour from that before + another 3 ranks just from DOFF stuff.

I don't know if ranking is accelerated for Tribble so we can try stuff, but if not then this is seriously bad for the game.

Keep in mind also, F2P brings with it the Borg Ground Invasion and revamped casual STFs that are designed to be repeated coupled with cross faction STF teaming. There's a lot more to do at endgame and a lotmore reason to do it more than once.