I am a captain now. I am enjoying the game. I like the variety of missions. Yeah, it is still the same grind but I like to do exploring missions, deep space encounters, some pvp, and then story missions. But here is a problem for me. I feel like I am leveling too fast, actually faster for every rank I achieve. I play like 2 hours a day, sometimes more, sometimes less.
T1 - long as hell for someone, ok long for me (and yes I was in CB and OB and headstart with different characters).
T2 - for me it was actually longer then t1, I really enjoyed this rank. Lot of pvp matches, lot of story, everything.
T3 - like three days here? Playing escort, everything is super fast. All rewards are more then double compared to T2 while actual sp needed to lvl isnt that higher.
Now T4 - In three hours I gained 2 levels - two deepspace quests, some pvp, some exploration, one story mission
I am really sad now. Seems like I will be at the cap next week. I like playing it, I will make alts. I play all types of missions, I am no powerleveler, my /played is not that much big.
You know in most games, the leveling speed is getting slower and slower. In some games like Aion, you can make it to 30 in one 2 weeks, then every level takes more than 5 hours of playing and it gets slower and slower. I dont think STO should be this sadistic. But some better pacing would be good. Like 2 days to LtC., next week Commander, after another 2 weeks Captain, and then really long way to Admiral (even another month).
Now, to be honest, I dont see the way how to change it. The content is there, with some grinding (deep space, exploration) there is a room for some adjusting but really not big. Also game cant force people to do pvp or anything they dont like.
So in the end I am just sad. I will enjoy my Defiant while I can. But then........