STO: Starting out pretty well

I don’t have a lot imaginative to say about STO. I’m quite pleased with the game thus far, though — it feels more polished in many areas than CO did on launch.

Some items for improvement (of course):

1. It feels like there’s a vast array of both options / powers / skills and places and ways to display them.  That’s gotten me confused  so far more than once.  “Wait, hey — where was that power lurking? And why can’t i drag it within the tray?”  An example of that is the “hidden” Transwarp power.
2. Some of the peripheral mission content is still a bit wonky.  Contacts that don’t glow when you approach them.  Unreachable anomalies (ground and space).  Bits like that.  Still early days and all, but it’s a rough spot that needn’t be there. Plus, no explanation, to date, about what to do with all those samples being swept up.
3. While far, far better than CO, there are still plenty of places where it isn’t clear the distinction between different gadgets one picks up.  Is X better than Y?  If it’s just different, how is it different?  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of room to figure that out other than picking up X and seeing how it works.
4. It’s great that they’ve added sensors (V) to find anomalies.  It would be even greater if they could spot the nearest one and the one after that, so that our duo could clean things up better.
5. “Pick up items” is not always clear, persistent enough on screen, etc.  Indeed, a lot of those screen prompts tend to flit past too quickly.
6. Contacts sometimes come back, over and over again, to get you to listen to something.
7. They seriously need to do something about the spamming on the chat channnels.

On the other hand:

1. It is so nice that you don’t have to trot back to Starbase Earth all the time to do stuff. You can contact contacts (Hail Starfleet) immediately, you can level when you get the points while still in space, you can sell through the Replicator if your trays get full.  There are things that have to be done back at Earth, but it’s a lot less inconvenient.
2. The game remains very pretty and fun, with an array of ground and space combat scenarios.  I don’t know if it’s balance or if we’ve gotten a lot better, but the space combat seems a lot less lethal than it was in Beta.

We’re up to Lt. 4 with our duo.  I’ve also started a solo character just for those occasions when it makes more sense.  I’m pleased by the amount of individual detailing and configuration you can do with your lead toon and his/her crew; I’m wondering how much of that will translate into personal RPGing (in my head, if nothing else).  I’m also wondering whether the 2 slot limit (more slots available, doubtless, at the C-Store) will feel like a limitation at some point, or when/if we’ll want to see a respec sort of mechanic.

Overall, good stuff.