One giant leap

I've been levelling at warp speed.

The first time I thought about adding Star Trek Online into my rotation I held off because there was a double xp event running at the time. I tend to avoid those, especially on a new character, because it can make the early levels an odd experience. I'd done it before in STO and was level 10 and picking up my second ship before I even left Qo'noS after the tutorial.

So I played Secret World Legends instead, and came to STO a couple of months later.

When I returned to the game this month there was another double xp event running. I didn't actually notice this until I completed a mission and went from level 20 to level 24. Most of this run has taken place during this event, and I'm finishing it up now at level 41.

(As with Fallen Earth I've sometimes went over my usual two hours a day of game time during this run, meaning I'm ahead of schedule and writing this over a week before it'll actually go up. Having a few posts banked like this should make it less likely that I'll fall behind again. Maybe.)

The speed of my levelling is less of an issue in Star Trek Online than it would be in some other MMOs. The mission arcs all have minimum level requirements - which I'm well ahead of - but they scale up well. So far as I'm aware there's not much in this game that I can actually out-level, which is reassuring.

The only thing that has come up is that because I've been levelling so fast there's also been a fair amount of downtime along the way, or perhaps character maintenance would be a better way of putting it. Usually in STO not much changes from one level to the next, but every 10 levels I go up in rank and get a new ship, and that's quite an involved process. It's almost a respec.

I start off by allocating a few new skill points to my captain - that's fairly quick - and then promote my bridge officers to increase their skills. Then I pick some new skills for them. Then I upgrade their gear, and my own if I have to, and assign them to stations on the new ship. Then I replace most of the default weapons, shields, consoles etc on the new ship with equipment I've ripped out of the old ship. Finally I rework my hotbars in line with the new loadout and any new skills that I or my bridge officers have acquired.

None of this is bad - I like complex character building and STO certainly delivers on that - but I have to admit it'll come as something of a relief when I get my final ship and no longer have to do all of this quite as often as I have been.

Of the games I've returned to (on the same character) over the past two years or so this has definitely been the toughest to get back into. A character in Star Trek Online is made up of a lot of moving parts and it took a while to get to grips with them all again. There's also a lot of new options to consider - skills, gear, tactics - that have opened up to me as I've continued to level up. I'm closing off this run with more or less double the number of active skills I had at the start, and unlike in some other MMOs there aren't many of those skills that I don't have a use for.

(There are a few, like the one that increases my threat generation. The Bird-of-Prey has to be among the least tanky ships in the game and the last thing I want to do is attract more incoming fire.)

So the character building remains involving, and the core gameplay is as good as ever. There are definitely times when STO's ambition exceeds its ability, and the integration of story and gameplay can be awkward. The balance is also all over the place in any mission that involves allies, and sometimes when the game tries to do something different it can get a bit glitchy.

But at least it's trying.

So I will return to Star Trek Online, and perhaps next time I'll do so before I forget how to play it.