So on the whole, I really like season 9 so far. I thought the featured episode was great and gave a back story to the new ESD. That being said, it might have been cool to have had a period of a couple of months with a damaged or partially reconstructed ESD and then had the shiny new one in season 9.5. But that me being anal about the timescale within the story for them to have got it rebuilt! haha! Other than that,
I think the new ESD is far more Federation-esque. The old one always had a kind of DS9 feel to it for me. I'd like to see a proper club installed in there somewhere. The current one is basically a lounge rather than a club. Could even be accessed via one of the turbo lifts or from the mezzanine level? I've seen a few people comment on the lack of state room, but wouldn't it make more sense to have the state room on Earth somewhere? Maybe there'll be an Academy/Starfleet HQ revamp at some point?
In terms of the war with the klingons ending, I think it makes sense, and also makes sense that there are people on both sides that aren't happy about it. Surely that happens in real life, and gives scope for breakaway factions similar to the Cardassian True Way?
As for the rep system... I'm a little peeved about them getting rid of the Dyson commendations, purely because I'd stored up enough to reach tier 5 by the end of the week. Not throwing my toys out of the pram though. I like the traits system in principle, because I know there were a few of the rep traits I wanted to change, so now I can do. I can see how this would make for longer term viability of the game, because surely with more and more traits and abilities over time on the old system, some of the veteran players could get rather close to invulnerability? This keeps things as more of a challenge across the board. I'm sure within a week or so, someone will have posted up the best possible combination, and then everyone will run with that.
I only have a couple of beefs. One is kit modules. I love the new kit system and being able to customise kits to suit what I want, but the lack of modules (even just starter modules), is a bit annoying. I gather from a few posts that they were removed from the EC vendor for some reason. I'm yet to pick any up in any ground missions either. I'm guessing it will all sort itself out in the next patch or so. My other beef is that I can't enjoy the full visual glory of the game. I'm guessing that they didn't fully test it on a mac (why would they? 99% of users are probably on a PC), but even on a Quad Core Mac Pro with 12GB of RAM, I have to have the graphics settings on 'Low'. That kinda sucks.
Having said all that, I am still enjoying it. I don't fully understand all the irate people threatening with quitting the game etc, but then I haven't been playing it long enough. I'm clearly missing something there! Hahaha.