>I have a max character but I'm still fairly new to STO.

My highest-level character (Cosmonaut) is a rear admiral (lower half), numeric level 41, I think. I often have this problem (if you want to call it a problem) with MMOs - partly because I get sick of the grind, partly because I can always be counted on to think of more character ideas than the game wants me to have characters, and partly because I just prefer the lower-level game.

The last is particularly true of Star Trek Online. At higher levels the mix-and-match-your-starship-parts thing (and starship combat itself) gets preposterously complicated, and I'm just not into that. I also don't like the relentless pressure to trade up and go bigger all the time. My characters get attached to their ships and resent being forced to switch to new ones every time they get promoted, but they have no choice - the missions keep scaling whether they do so or not, so they'll eventually just get creamed. Starfleet Command is apparently either unaware of or unconcerned about what kind of ships its captains are commanding, and will happily assign someone who's driving a Miranda-class frigate a job that can only be completed by the likes of an Excelsior-class battleship (not that Starfleet calls them battleships), evidently on the grounds that he should be driving an Excelsior by now and it's his own fault for not getting with the program if he isn't. This is... not really sound military doctrine, but don't go by me. :)

It's why Swede's career has sort of dead-ended at level 22; I don't like the 20-29 science vessel options, but she can't go back to using the ship she had in her teens or everybody will get killed to death. It's kind of a downer, is all I'm saying.

I was able to dodge that, kind of, with Cosmonaut, since there's a rear admiral-grade ship that can be made to look the same as a commander-grade one. Once I got him through his captaincy I was able to get one of those and pretend it was the same ship as the old one; but by then Problem 1 was so acute that I'd rather lost my appetite for playing him anyway.

Mind, I'm not saying the other problem (escalating complexity) constitutes bad game design - I'm sure a lot of people enjoy the crap out of all that mathy min-max stuff. I'm just not one of them. I'd rather pootle around taking on Connie-sized missions with a Connie-sized ship, and since one character can only do that kind of thing for a finite time, I find myself creating new ones so as to keep my gameplay experience in the sweet spot. It's like a self-imposed level cap. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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