You and Me in the Admirality

Yep, I'm an Admiral now, Grade 4 to be precise. I've entered the Gamma Orionis sector and my first set of missions there last night went pretty well. I now see that there's enough I haven't done in this sector to keep me busy for at least a while, but I'm interested to see how this all plays out over time.

I'm flying an Assault Cruiser now, and I'm having a pretty good time with it. I'm probably not the most lethal captain in the Federation, but I've become a pretty decent PvE warrior and I've got the hardware to back to it up. As far as PvP goes, I haven't seen much of that as yet, but I suspect I'll get good at that over time as I do more of it.

I find I have to keep reminding myself that this is still the very beginning, that STO has still been open to the general public for less than a month. That reality excites me and concerns me at the same time. On the one hand, I've had a great time with this game so far and I'm looking forward to a lot more. On the other hand, I'm concerned that if I'm able to burn through STO's early content so quickly that I'm already just a grade below max in just about three weeks of play, what's going to happen down the road? Will Cryptic keep up with those of us who are already entering the endgame less than a month in, or will we find ourselves waiting for Cryptic to catch up with us?

It's an interesting position for me to be in. With the single exception of Fallen Earth, I've never gotten seriously involved with any other MMO I've been in beta for. As with other MMO's, even in a new game like FE I found myself outclassed by a growing group of players who were already moving into endgame content early on while I was still far behind. In that case, while I enjoyed the game, it just didn't do it for me long term and I eventually left to re-enter EvE for a while, where I was similarly far behind a certain level of player. This time, I'm not only there at the very beginning, but I've set myself up with a collector's edition copy of the game and a lifetime subscription. Instead of feeling like I had to catch up to where others already were in the game, in this case I'm one of those out in front leading the way.

I know Cryptic has some pretty cool plans and so I'm not worried that suddenly there will be nothing for me to do in STO. For me, it's more about wondering if there'll be enough for me to do on an ongoing basis. My life goes through phases where I have more or less free time generally available for gaming, and so I tend to play a lot when I find myself with the time. Besides what I've written about in past posts, one of the big reasons I got a lifetime subscription to STO is that chances are it saves me money in the long run over paying on a continuous plan for a game that I may or may not play a lot at any given time of year. With the lifetime sub, I play whenever I have time and I don't have to worry about spending money on server time I don't use. Yes, I know the logic is a bit convoluted, but it works well enough for me.

What I think will be most interesting to see is how many STO players actually make it to Admiral and join the endgame play. Depending on the time you have to devote to it, getting there isn't really all that difficult. Still, the fact that I was able to put in a couple of eight-hour sessions toward achieving that goal didn't hurt either. I usually don't have the time to do anything like that even once, much less twice, but thanks to a quirk in scheduling I was able to pull it off.

I've barely scratched the surface of endgame play so far, but it's looking good, really good. There's still one question I can't help but ask, though: Why was it so easy for me to get there? And along those lines: Shouldn't it be at least a little tougher to rank up in STO just in general?

Risk vs reward, people. If you make the reward too easy to obtain, it doesn't carry the kind of value it should.

Just one captain's opinion.