Why are people obsessed with speed now? Gotta do everything faster. I wanna stop and smell the roses.
The main issue people have is that STO used to be even more casual-friendly than it is now, and that was what they (well, really, we) liked about it. We liked that it didn't take quite so much effort to see everything in the game and max everything out, and if we wanted the sort of uphill challenge that other MMOs provided, we could always just play those other MMOs. Delta Rising changed that by bringing that kind of rough grind to 50-60 and to spec points, which fundamentally changes the feel of the game for a lot of us.
To be fair, quite a few players were asking for that kind of change five years ago when the game launched, but... well, that was five years ago. Most of the people who wanted the hardcore you-gotta-earn-it feel moved on long ago, and the folks that were left genuinely liked (or, at any rate, were used to) the game as it was. Hence all the backlash and NGE comparisons when Delta Rising hit.
(Also worth noting: part of the reason leveling was so fast was that the game was extremely content-light in its first couple of years, which meant there just wasn't a lot of stopping-and-rose-smelling to be done. This was especially true if you were KDF, where you had just a handful of episode missions (and none at launch, in fact), and you'd just have to grind PvP and Empire Defense the rest of the time. Part of the reason doffing gives as much XP as it does is because it used to suuuuuck to try to level a KDF, and the designer of the doff system wanted to address that [insert complaint about recent doff nerf here].)
If the changes I suggested aren't good for all people, it should at least be a character option to halve skill point gains (or turn it off altogether).
I could get on board with this! SWTOR does something similar with its 12x class mission XP event, where people who want to opt out of it can just pick up a free item that nerfs their class mission XP back to what it was. It seems to me like a really elegant solution that pleases everyone.
If hand holding means getting you through the levels then yes, it holds your hand. If hand holding means it tells you everything about the game and gives you tips in game to be the best then no, it does NOT hold your hand. As ive said most of the finer points of the game need to be discovered for yourself. Does the game teach you about chaining certain bridge officer abilities with duty officer powers? No, that needs to be figured out for yourself.
Keep playing. Before long you may appreciate how rapidly those levels seemed to go. With the story content remaining you will be lucky to reach the high 50s by the time you complete the Delta arc. I am certain that if you continue to play as you claim you have you will be level gated to grinding before you can play "Takedown".
The experience requirements in this game are scaled terribly. It may seem too easy now but you haven't even started the mountain climbing, wall hitting part yet. When you do finally hit 60, smile, there will be all sorts of grinding that apparently appeals to you. Not only will the post 60 levels take significantly longer when all you achieve is a spec point for your troubles you may even begin to wonder why you bothered and what the point of it all was. After 60 you can grind millions of experience and Admiral Quinn and Company won't send you so much as a post it note.
The hand holding is not to help you out. There is the next tier of ships to put before you in hopes you will purchase them. If you are crafting as you level you will have to earn or purchase some dilithium to get that gear to the next mark every ten levels and to encourage the former behavior that must happen fast. Male or female I think you are old enough to know better.
To a certain degree I can agree with OP - levelling in 1-50 is overly comfortable.
In my view, it is one of the key game-design problem of STO. It causes:
1) T1-T3 ships becoming a placeholder. You just do several missions and - puff - you pass to next ship. You just don't stay at the lower levels enough to really get to PLAY with this ships. Hell, with DOFFing and missions with extensive ground segments some ships can be passed literally with somewhat like several minutes of using them to get from point A to point B.
(For now, we would exclude from the picture such reasons of using low tier ships as providing additional challenge, liking the canon ships, liking the visuals of the ships, etc).
2) All gear lower Mk X at best is as transient as lower tier ships. Why would you need to buy, let say, MK V equipment when the levels, which it will be useful at, will be passed in several hours in the slowest possible scenario ? This in turns adds to the game's "vendor trash" problem. And renders vendor equipment stores useless even for the new players.
3) It makes content, designed for lower tier gameplay, mostly useless. The most glaring example were Deepspace Encounters before the current sector space revamp. Another is Nimbus ground zone. The players pass the levels, at which they can be challenging or useful, in a matter of hours.
4) It brings the players to the end-game without giving them neither time, nor incentive to make sense of game mechanics. And points 1 and 2 makes things even worse - because the speed of passing the lower tier ships and equipment means that through levels below 50 you don't get to properly outfitting the ship and actually don't need to do it. Any weird build will make do.
But as this ambiguous decision with the speed of levelling was made at the beginning of the game's existence and the playerbase already got used to it - nothing will be changed in this direction.
BUT - all that said - there is another game-design problem of STO, which leads to usefullness of rapid progression, - it is the Skills tree and the necessity of alts.
Looks like smarter people then I have already covered but yeah, 1-50 pretty much flies past you. The first real roadblock you hit is Carddie storyline and for me the real reason that is the case is because those missions are boring.
The main issue people have is that STO used to be even more casual-friendly than it is now, and that was what they (well, really, we) liked about it.
But it didn't used to be like that...that was a change that was made, that some people didn't like.
And for all the complaints of how the game has changed, how has it actually changed?
What content is locked away?
They introduce new episodes? They can be played at level 10 for weeks on end.
Advanced queues scale a person up to 60.
Elite shouldn't be considered casual-friendly in the first place.
R&D...Specialization...the complaints there aren't casual complaints. They're hardcore want it now can't have it now complaints. The casual player wouldn't care...they'd get there when they get there.
The game's always been and still is as casual as a player makes it. Yet, there have always been the complaints from those "causal" folks that need to have everything done now on 20 alts...lolwut?
Because people in this thread were calling her "he".
Why does it matter. MMORPG stands for Many Men Online RolePlaying as Girls or I could use this ancient internet saying. The internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents. Therefore, it makes more sense to assume that a forum poster is male unless you are certain. The beauty of the internet is that everyone is anonymous. So no one is judged on race, gender, or preference, but on the quality of their post.
The grind comes in with the reputation system to get the best gear. Running the same 2 or 3 missions over and over again getting a little bit faster each time except the odd one where it all goes to **** and you have the pleasure of seeing the lowers performing player insulting everyone with terrible English about they are a god and we are all bringing them down. Personally i can do without that sort of grind.
You do realize you have no idea what you are talking about right? The grind from 55 to 60 is probably the most hated aspect of the game by the entire community. (Lag and bugs excluded) You have not even reached 55 yet and judgeing by your join date you haven't leveled an alt. After you have leveled 10 alts to 60 come back and try saying this all again with a straight face. :rolleyes:
Edit: P.S. Rear Admiral is a rank in real trek. I should know I've been watching the show my whole life. In fact when Kirk is an Admiral in the motion picture era (Before demotion) he was a Rear Admiral. If you don't believe me just check Memory Alpha. As to the Upper and Lower half stuff, you would not know this being new but the game use to only go to level 40. In time new ranks were added with level cap increases. Admiral and Fleet Admiral were just added in October when Delta Rising was new. I will agree with you on one thing though... a miillion Fleet Admirals is stupid. Though the first lesson you will lern here if you stick around it that sometimes Cryptic makes something great and sometimes they make something stupid. Either way they will rarely change it post launch.
As Zephram Cochrane once said, "That'll do, pig. That'll do." - April 1st 2015.
How long did it take for a newcomer to max out all systems and TRIBBLE they added in the last few years? Yeah. I think it will take another few. Poor newcomers.
Even old vets decided to dump this game and never look back.
Why does it matter. MMORPG stands for Many Men Online RolePlaying as Girls or I could use this ancient internet saying. The internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents. Therefore, it makes more sense to assume that a forum poster is male unless you are certain. The beauty of the internet is that everyone is anonymous. So no one is judged on race, gender, or preference, but on the quality of their post.
Male pronouns are/were masculine and neuter. If you don't know the gender male pronouns are/were the default.
Female pronouns are/were not used for the neuter case (unless the unknown group in question is predominantly or likely to be female).
[Prescriptivist/Descriptivist]
With spec points not starting until 50-51, 1 - 50 is basically wasting spec points. Getting through them as fast as possible wastes less time getting to the endless spec grind.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
First, I'm female. Second, I'm actually completely serious and not baiting anything or anyone. I really am Level 52 and not even done with the Cardassian storyline (have one episode left in it).
First. Female here too, so what.
Second. You basically hit lvl 50 just before heading for DS9, and open up the Dysson sphere, and the rep system. This isn't unusual or unexpected. Have to be Level 50 to do rep for the 'best gear and traits' and to fly the best ships effectively, the ones you buy from the store or win with lottery boxes.
Progression through the story arcs, is designed to give a 'casual' player a couple or three weeks of casual "drive by the scenery" game play, before dumping them into the 50+ endgame grind-fest.
"Working As Intended"
I'm old school. I was born in 1980. I grew up playing Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, and Ultima. D&D0, no hand holding in games at all, and true challenges.
Congratulations, I celebrated your toddler birthdays by playing "Elite".
And?
Now the challenge is easy to get in this game by turning difficulty to Elite, but I still feel like I'm not EARNING anything. I gain skill points too fast and don't get to savor a new rank for as long as I'd like to. Level 60 doesn't feel like an accomplishment now because 1-50 was SO SO SO fast. For the first 20 levels, I gained one after every single mission. It just seems out of whack.
Trust me, if you maintain the same number of hours per week of play time, odds are 50-60 will take as long as 1-50. Welcome to the End-Game "pre-patch" where you start to grind for levels, grind for dilithium, grind for EC, grind for Rep Marks, grind for Spec Tree points, grind for your Fleet, grind for DPS, and grind for the Joy of Grind.
Why are people obsessed with speed now? Gotta do everything faster. I wanna stop and smell the roses. If the changes I suggested aren't good for all people, it should at least be a character option to halve skill point gains (or turn it off altogether). Even if the skill points don't change, I absolutely believe the ranks should. The current ranks make zero sense. Rear Admiral Lower Half is stupid and goes against canon, and Fleet Admiral at 60 just makes me think "too many cooks in the kitchen". Or maybe Advanced will be like now, with Elite giving 25% more.
Honestly, if I go deeper into my suggestion, I would halve skill gains on Normal mode, down 25% in Advanced, and current amounts on Elite since Elite currently doesn't really reward you extra at all (I ran the same mission on both Normal and Elite and there was almost no difference in the loot).
Translated into plain English:
1.You think the whole game is too easy for you, so you want to shaft it for everyone less 'leet" than you feel your self to be.
2. You want to play the Canon-Bigot, well removing non-canon material from this game would remove, what, 50% of the game? More?
3. The meat of your post... You want Elite Difficulty to have the current XP, AND better loot, and for "lesser" players" than your self to get 50%-75% of what YOU get as a "Leet" player...
You whine about the game being too fast and too easy, but at the same time slip in an "Entitlement" claim.
/thread
<center><font size="+5"><b>Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day... Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
The grind from 55 to 60 is probably the most hated aspect of the game by the entire community
It became such, because the previous ambiguous decision of F1 speed progression through levels 1-50. It is actually not that slow as it is depicted - it just FEELS as slow compared to levelling through 1-50. An excellent example of cognitive distortion human mind so frequently provides
It takes several weeks in the worst case scenario if you're playing that character more or less regularly, which is actually not a big deal for an MMO.
Sorry about the necro in the old thread, I've made a new one.
The speed is WAY (and I mean WAY WAY WAY) too fast. I only used my Doffs and did the story missions, and I'm Level 52 without even being done with the Cardassian storyline.
I think everything is too fast, truth be told. I feel like I only get to be a Lieutenant and other ranks for a couple of days real time before my next promotion. I feel cheated and cheap and I get to be a Fleet Admiral, the highest rank in Starfleet, at Level 60. Star Trek is not like [other] MMORPGs and shouldn't be thought of as one. I would personally suggest the following changes:
First, halve he amount of XP given by EVERYTHING. Mobs, missions, Doffs, everything. Halve it. Then you change the ranks a bit. For one, Rear Admiral Lower Half IS NOT A REAL RANK in STAR TREK, get rid of it and change it to what it's supposed to be according to the shows: Commodore. Then divide them as such:
In addition, there should be actual challenging quests for the promotions from Commodore onward. Keep the level limit at 60 for now, but the ranks above Level 60 can be used for further expansions in the future
Your opinion has little weight considering you haven't gotten to level 60 and has even less weight considering you haven't maxed out your spec trees. Come back in 2-3 months when your done with your spec trees and reached 60 and then we can laugh together about how long it actually takes to level in this game.
The spec points argument kind of realy makes me want to do a Piccard style facepalm. What do spec points have to do with gameplay below lv 60 ?
Though the fact that people treat gameplay below lv 55 (when the slowing of level progression starts to feel) as if it is non-existent is one of the best argument in favour of the overly rapid levelling below that point.
The spec points argument kind of realy makes me want to do a Piccard style facepalm. What do spec points have to do with gameplay below lv 60 ?
Though the fact that people treat gameplay below lv 55 (when the slowing of level progression starts to feel) as if it is non-existent is one of the best argument in favour of the overly rapid levelling below that point.
Now you're cherry picking so that your argument doesn't fall apart. Leveling may be fast up until 55 but after that it's painfully slow. So what you're advocating is that we make leveling from 1-55 painfully slow? Think through this very carefully. Should the devs adopt this approach, we would have 3 horrid and painfully slow grinds-leveling from 1 to 55 could potentially take a month; then, 55-60 would take another 2-3 weeks; after that, completing the specs trees could take another 2-3 months. Is this monstrosity of a level scheme what you're honestly advocating for?
Dudes, just slow yourselves down by doing foundry missions. Alting already has one foot in the grave; you're solution would be the final nail in it's coffin.
I'm not calling for grinding, actually. Right now, there is zero grinding.
I didn't notice this part when I posted before. In a weird way I now want to thank you for this thread. That was by far the funniest thing I have read here in ages. Bravo and extra bacon for you. Now, I'll just get back to "not" grinding for Iconian Marks on all my characters as I slowly make the "not" grinding 40 day journey on each to tier 5. (I really should have just done one then taken the rep discount on the others, but at this point I'm on a roll :rolleyes:). Also as this is probably your first summer, given your forum join date, I wanted to remind you to go to Risa when the festival starts and enjoy the totally "not" grindy 25 days of the "flying high" quest for the free ship.
P.S. Sorry for the sarcasm, its been a long day. In reality the grind dosen't bother me as much as it does other players. With that said though, be ready to duck because some people around here really really really hate the grind and claiming there isn't any is bound to draw them in. Just fair warning. Now I'm off to dinner, goodbye for now folks.
As Zephram Cochrane once said, "That'll do, pig. That'll do." - April 1st 2015.
I didn't notice this part when I posted before. In a weird way I now want to thank you for this thread. That was by far the funniest thing I have read here in ages. Bravo and extra bacon for you. Now, I'll just get back to "not" grinding for Iconian Marks on all my characters as I slowly make the "not" grinding 40 day journey on each to tier 5. (I really should have just done one then taken the rep discount on the others, but at this point I'm on a roll :rolleyes:). Also as this is probably your first summer I wanted to remind you to go to Risa when the festival starts and "not" grind 25 days for the free ship.
Agreed. I'm also laughing my behind off at how funny some of these posts are. "There is no grind" and "leveling is fast" have to be some of the silliest, nonsensical arguments I've seen on these forums.
Alting already has one foot in the grave; you're solution would be the final nail in it's coffin.
As I have written somewhere in this rapidly expanding thread, the necessity for alting itself is a serious game-design problem of STO. Mainly because of the flawed concept of a Skill tree, which basically locks you in several possible builds at best and a single build at worst, doesn't allow for equally effective speccing for ground and space and so on - with respec available only for Zen.
(Alting for roleplay reasons not included - but in case of RP, why would someone really care so much about spec points, etc anyway ?)
Yet, there have always been the complaints from those "causal" folks that need to have everything done now on 20 alts...lolwut?
Oh, I'm not saying that there hasn't been a crapload of entitlement in the forum complaints. And yeah, expecting to get everything without putting effort in is just silly. What has me and others concerned is just that DR appears to signal a shift away from the overall casual-friendly design philosophy of STO, and I'm kind of worried about anything that would further that shift (such as making 1-50 leveling harder -- but, like I said, I wouldn't mind if it was an option for folks who want a more "traditional" experience).
Comments
Grr and i was waiting for B-7 CURSE YOU!!! now its time for OLD MEN FIGHTING!!!
Get off my lawn!
Because people in this thread were calling her "he".
The main issue people have is that STO used to be even more casual-friendly than it is now, and that was what they (well, really, we) liked about it. We liked that it didn't take quite so much effort to see everything in the game and max everything out, and if we wanted the sort of uphill challenge that other MMOs provided, we could always just play those other MMOs. Delta Rising changed that by bringing that kind of rough grind to 50-60 and to spec points, which fundamentally changes the feel of the game for a lot of us.
To be fair, quite a few players were asking for that kind of change five years ago when the game launched, but... well, that was five years ago. Most of the people who wanted the hardcore you-gotta-earn-it feel moved on long ago, and the folks that were left genuinely liked (or, at any rate, were used to) the game as it was. Hence all the backlash and NGE comparisons when Delta Rising hit.
(Also worth noting: part of the reason leveling was so fast was that the game was extremely content-light in its first couple of years, which meant there just wasn't a lot of stopping-and-rose-smelling to be done. This was especially true if you were KDF, where you had just a handful of episode missions (and none at launch, in fact), and you'd just have to grind PvP and Empire Defense the rest of the time. Part of the reason doffing gives as much XP as it does is because it used to suuuuuck to try to level a KDF, and the designer of the doff system wanted to address that [insert complaint about recent doff nerf here].)
I could get on board with this! SWTOR does something similar with its 12x class mission XP event, where people who want to opt out of it can just pick up a free item that nerfs their class mission XP back to what it was. It seems to me like a really elegant solution that pleases everyone.
The experience requirements in this game are scaled terribly. It may seem too easy now but you haven't even started the mountain climbing, wall hitting part yet. When you do finally hit 60, smile, there will be all sorts of grinding that apparently appeals to you. Not only will the post 60 levels take significantly longer when all you achieve is a spec point for your troubles you may even begin to wonder why you bothered and what the point of it all was. After 60 you can grind millions of experience and Admiral Quinn and Company won't send you so much as a post it note.
The hand holding is not to help you out. There is the next tier of ships to put before you in hopes you will purchase them. If you are crafting as you level you will have to earn or purchase some dilithium to get that gear to the next mark every ten levels and to encourage the former behavior that must happen fast. Male or female I think you are old enough to know better.
In my view, it is one of the key game-design problem of STO. It causes:
1) T1-T3 ships becoming a placeholder. You just do several missions and - puff - you pass to next ship. You just don't stay at the lower levels enough to really get to PLAY with this ships. Hell, with DOFFing and missions with extensive ground segments some ships can be passed literally with somewhat like several minutes of using them to get from point A to point B.
(For now, we would exclude from the picture such reasons of using low tier ships as providing additional challenge, liking the canon ships, liking the visuals of the ships, etc).
2) All gear lower Mk X at best is as transient as lower tier ships. Why would you need to buy, let say, MK V equipment when the levels, which it will be useful at, will be passed in several hours in the slowest possible scenario ? This in turns adds to the game's "vendor trash" problem. And renders vendor equipment stores useless even for the new players.
3) It makes content, designed for lower tier gameplay, mostly useless. The most glaring example were Deepspace Encounters before the current sector space revamp. Another is Nimbus ground zone. The players pass the levels, at which they can be challenging or useful, in a matter of hours.
4) It brings the players to the end-game without giving them neither time, nor incentive to make sense of game mechanics. And points 1 and 2 makes things even worse - because the speed of passing the lower tier ships and equipment means that through levels below 50 you don't get to properly outfitting the ship and actually don't need to do it. Any weird build will make do.
But as this ambiguous decision with the speed of levelling was made at the beginning of the game's existence and the playerbase already got used to it - nothing will be changed in this direction.
BUT - all that said - there is another game-design problem of STO, which leads to usefullness of rapid progression, - it is the Skills tree and the necessity of alts.
Leveling on a whole needs to be looked at
But it didn't used to be like that...that was a change that was made, that some people didn't like.
And for all the complaints of how the game has changed, how has it actually changed?
What content is locked away?
They introduce new episodes? They can be played at level 10 for weeks on end.
Advanced queues scale a person up to 60.
Elite shouldn't be considered casual-friendly in the first place.
R&D...Specialization...the complaints there aren't casual complaints. They're hardcore want it now can't have it now complaints. The casual player wouldn't care...they'd get there when they get there.
The game's always been and still is as casual as a player makes it. Yet, there have always been the complaints from those "causal" folks that need to have everything done now on 20 alts...lolwut?
Why does it matter. MMORPG stands for Many Men Online RolePlaying as Girls or I could use this ancient internet saying. The internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents. Therefore, it makes more sense to assume that a forum poster is male unless you are certain. The beauty of the internet is that everyone is anonymous. So no one is judged on race, gender, or preference, but on the quality of their post.
Edit: P.S. Rear Admiral is a rank in real trek. I should know I've been watching the show my whole life. In fact when Kirk is an Admiral in the motion picture era (Before demotion) he was a Rear Admiral. If you don't believe me just check Memory Alpha. As to the Upper and Lower half stuff, you would not know this being new but the game use to only go to level 40. In time new ranks were added with level cap increases. Admiral and Fleet Admiral were just added in October when Delta Rising was new. I will agree with you on one thing though... a miillion Fleet Admirals is stupid. Though the first lesson you will lern here if you stick around it that sometimes Cryptic makes something great and sometimes they make something stupid. Either way they will rarely change it post launch.
How long did it take for a newcomer to max out all systems and TRIBBLE they added in the last few years? Yeah. I think it will take another few. Poor newcomers.
Even old vets decided to dump this game and never look back.
GG
Male pronouns are/were masculine and neuter. If you don't know the gender male pronouns are/were the default.
Female pronouns are/were not used for the neuter case (unless the unknown group in question is predominantly or likely to be female).
[Prescriptivist/Descriptivist]
With spec points not starting until 50-51, 1 - 50 is basically wasting spec points. Getting through them as fast as possible wastes less time getting to the endless spec grind.
First. Female here too, so what.
Second. You basically hit lvl 50 just before heading for DS9, and open up the Dysson sphere, and the rep system. This isn't unusual or unexpected. Have to be Level 50 to do rep for the 'best gear and traits' and to fly the best ships effectively, the ones you buy from the store or win with lottery boxes.
Progression through the story arcs, is designed to give a 'casual' player a couple or three weeks of casual "drive by the scenery" game play, before dumping them into the 50+ endgame grind-fest.
"Working As Intended"
Congratulations, I celebrated your toddler birthdays by playing "Elite".
And?
Trust me, if you maintain the same number of hours per week of play time, odds are 50-60 will take as long as 1-50. Welcome to the End-Game "pre-patch" where you start to grind for levels, grind for dilithium, grind for EC, grind for Rep Marks, grind for Spec Tree points, grind for your Fleet, grind for DPS, and grind for the Joy of Grind.
Translated into plain English:
1.You think the whole game is too easy for you, so you want to shaft it for everyone less 'leet" than you feel your self to be.
2. You want to play the Canon-Bigot, well removing non-canon material from this game would remove, what, 50% of the game? More?
3. The meat of your post... You want Elite Difficulty to have the current XP, AND better loot, and for "lesser" players" than your self to get 50%-75% of what YOU get as a "Leet" player...
You whine about the game being too fast and too easy, but at the same time slip in an "Entitlement" claim.
/thread
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
It takes several weeks in the worst case scenario if you're playing that character more or less regularly, which is actually not a big deal for an MMO.
I look forward to hearing from you again when your level 60 with 45 spec points.
Your opinion has little weight considering you haven't gotten to level 60 and has even less weight considering you haven't maxed out your spec trees. Come back in 2-3 months when your done with your spec trees and reached 60 and then we can laugh together about how long it actually takes to level in this game.
Though the fact that people treat gameplay below lv 55 (when the slowing of level progression starts to feel) as if it is non-existent is one of the best argument in favour of the overly rapid levelling below that point.
Now you're cherry picking so that your argument doesn't fall apart. Leveling may be fast up until 55 but after that it's painfully slow. So what you're advocating is that we make leveling from 1-55 painfully slow? Think through this very carefully. Should the devs adopt this approach, we would have 3 horrid and painfully slow grinds-leveling from 1 to 55 could potentially take a month; then, 55-60 would take another 2-3 weeks; after that, completing the specs trees could take another 2-3 months. Is this monstrosity of a level scheme what you're honestly advocating for?
Dudes, just slow yourselves down by doing foundry missions. Alting already has one foot in the grave; you're solution would be the final nail in it's coffin.
I didn't notice this part when I posted before. In a weird way I now want to thank you for this thread. That was by far the funniest thing I have read here in ages.
P.S. Sorry for the sarcasm, its been a long day. In reality the grind dosen't bother me as much as it does other players. With that said though, be ready to duck because some people around here really really really hate the grind and claiming there isn't any is bound to draw them in. Just fair warning.
Agreed. I'm also laughing my behind off at how funny some of these posts are. "There is no grind" and "leveling is fast" have to be some of the silliest, nonsensical arguments I've seen on these forums.
(Alting for roleplay reasons not included - but in case of RP, why would someone really care so much about spec points, etc anyway ?)
Oh, I'm not saying that there hasn't been a crapload of entitlement in the forum complaints. And yeah, expecting to get everything without putting effort in is just silly. What has me and others concerned is just that DR appears to signal a shift away from the overall casual-friendly design philosophy of STO, and I'm kind of worried about anything that would further that shift (such as making 1-50 leveling harder -- but, like I said, I wouldn't mind if it was an option for folks who want a more "traditional" experience).