Full Impulse Ahead! Oh Wait, Scratch That
February 18, 2010I’ve learned that part of being a good spouse is to not go all out in Star Trek Online and end up out-leveling your better half by an entire rank. Work has kept him especially busy as of late, so understandably he has less time to play. While I want to be an Admiral as much as the next Starfleet officer, I also love being able to quest with my husband, so I don’t mind waiting for him to catch up at all. And in some ways, slowing down a little might be for the best.
Before I go on, I want to congratulate my fellow starship captain over at Fire Phasers! for reaching the rank of Admiral 5! He wrote an interesting article the other day regarding his experiences upon reaching max level, as well as some of his apprehensions about running out of content. Most opinions I’ve read also echo his concerns. There are a lot of other Admirals out there right now struggling to find things to do, mere weeks after the game’s release. These players didn’t even necessarily rush through all the content; many are casual gamers like him who’ve tackled the leveling process at a steady pace.
While I’m not max level yet, I can still understand where he’s coming from, and I too share his hopes when it comes to the future of the game. From the sounds of it, the endgame experience in STO is still a little sparse right now, which is why I’m not too concerned about the decision to rein in my leveling pace at this time. On one hand there’s the matter of waiting for my husband to catch up, and on the other is the fact that I don’t ever want to find myself running out of things to do. Ideally, I would like a reasonable amount of time between reaching Admiral 5 and the release of another major content update, because when it comes to online games, I need a healthy dose of content to keep me interested.
Taking some time to enjoy the scenery.
MMO Gamer Chick 
😀 Very kind of you, thank you. Hopefully next week we will see the release of the 1st raidisodes.
Take time to slow down and enjoy the game, enjoy the scenery and just check things out while your there or at it. The goal is still there to get to Admiral you and your hubby will get there soon enough.
Im at Cmd 8 at the moment. Sometimes i can move faster that other times i know in my play session. Sometimes its hard to focus and i don’t get much quests actually done though i wished i could have. Sometimes i’m just playing around enjoying doing something while playing. Sometimes its just exploring around though I had the goal to actually be leveling. Just not as focused at some times especially during or after a game crash happens i loose some focus a bit to move wish haste.
However i have noticed something as well. Most the time i spend doing quests they are like lvl 3-4 above my own level quests and for that reason it has taken me considerable more time to do especially for more than 95% the time i play solo. I often group whenever im in the specific zone to quest via auto group. But rest im soloing, so taking on a group of enemy birds in a group takes much longer with a person soloing and quests longer overall. On the flip side of that are exploration quests which can be done at almost 3x as fast as what it takes me to do a lvl +3-4 quest time wise and skill point wise i have noticed.
So funny enough for the last 2 ranks leveling up as a commander i’ve just been doing exploration quests for the most part and funny enough they are much much easier to do and blow through time wise and level faster. I do believe their is a difference in which set of quests you do that affects your leveling rate and thus push you ahead to the later levels faster. I can only base that on my own experience in doing the quests I was doing before that took longer to do and the ones I did while exploring to just anomolys or investigate energy sources stuff like that. Compared to destroy the enemy squadron when one squadron has like 3-5 ships and your facing Romulans which often do nasty stuff.
All of that does affect how fast you finish quests or the different kinds and how fast you can level. And I can only guess some players choose to do the much easier ones when they can and level faster as well. Why, just the nature of how we are.
I agree, exploration quests are a great way to level. I once clocked in at just under 15 minutes for completing a set of 3 exploration missions, and the experience I got from that was about 1/4 of the experience bar. You can certainly gain levels that way quick.
I was also reading some posts on the forums and I think the class you play can also make a difference in how fast you level. Some posters claim that flying an escort gets them through missions faster than if they were flying a science ship or a cruiser, but I personally have nothing else with which to compare my experience, so I don’t know.