Admiral Eris Ezri

It's been a while since I've written about Star Trek Online (I think so anyway).  Over the past few weeks the game has been running a recruitment drive to get more players to play the game.  To entice the new players the game is giving away both some tangible and intangible goodies. Anyone who creates a new characters between the start and the end of the recruitment event (and finishes the introductory mission) gets the title Delta Recruit and they have a nice little Δ next to their name and rank.  In addition the developers of the game have added some Delta Recruit specific elements into the story of the game (at least the arcs that take the player from the Klingon War through the Breen War) which provide you with some more information about the Iconians ramping up  to the release of Season 10 (the Iconian War).

Each week during the recruitment event there are different aspects of the game that contribute points to a global goal. The more new recruits complete those specific types of activities, the more points toward the blog goal, the more extra goodies you get.  Global goals have been reached each week, so this has allowed my new character, Eris Ezri, to reach level 55 (Admiral) by the time Season 10 started.  The leveling up from level 1 to  50 was actually surprisingly fast.  I made it to level 50 by the time I made it to the Cardassian Struggle.  On the one hand this was nice because I didn't have to slog through the missions at character lower levels. On the other hand I feel like I didn't really enjoy the ships I got at those lower levels enough because by the time I had played several missions with them it was time for a ship upgrade.  One of the reasons I went with a Federation character was so that I could fly a few more ships that I liked visually, but I didn't really spend a lot of time with them (all things considered). At the moment I have settled for an Intrepid Retrofit, one of the ships that can be a T5U ship. My ship progress in this character was as follows:

1. USS Mirmidon - NCC 93515 (Miranda Class)
2. USS Argo - NCC 93133 (Rhode Island Class)
3. USS Myrto - NCC 92994 (Olympic Class)
4. USS Afrosene - NCC 93033 (Galaxy Class)
5. USS Aglaia - NCC 92373 (Luna Class)
6. USS Thalia - NCC 9355 (Intrepid Refit)

One of the perks of leveling up and completing the delta recruit temporal missions (which I finished all of) is that you get reputation marks.  At the moment I am burning through my reputation marks to level up to level 5 reputation in all categories. Prior to the event I used up spare marks on my other characters to get sponsorship tokens (which cut down on the time to level up on the reputations).  I probably will not pursue getting reputation gear.  Having grinded through 3 characters to get them all the gear, space and ground, the prospect of doing so for another character is not appealing.  I think I will save up spare marks from winter and summer events (winter epohh raising and such) and get gear that way.  That said, I really wish I could transfer marks from one character to another.

From a game play perspective, there were some pretty interesting tightening-up of the story arc done in the game over the past couple of years. The last time I played through from the start on the Federation side of things was three years ago, under the old introduction, and the older story arcs.  Since then some things have been retired and others edited. The end result is actually pretty great and everything now ties in together!

Now, Season 10 - the Iconian war.  First, let me say that it is a bit odd to start off a new season while the recruitment event is still going on.  I was not able to get through New Romulus, the Dyson Sphere, and the Delta Quadrant on Eris Ezri (a liberated human borg, btw), before the Iconian War was released.  It seems to be that this would be useful information for a player.  I also don't know how many existing players started an alt(ernative) character, but I think that enough of us did.  The crossing over of these two events makes it difficult to really focus on one thing.  I've put Eris Ezri on the back burner for now - basically farming DOFF (duty officer) missions to level up with little work, while I focus on playing my main character, Tolya, for iconian marks.

The 10th season doesn't feel like a season, however. There are two missions and three queues for PvE games (which earn you marks).  That's fine, but I was expecting a bit more story spread out over a few episodes.  Maybe there are more coming, but I somehow doubt it.  The summer Risa event is probably the next thing on the docket for now.  Oh well.  I'll be waiting for a few weeks before I step in again and get my other alts some iconian marks. The lag seems like a lot sometimes, and some missions have failed - event though all objectives were met.  Those were a loss of 30 minutes that I could have been doing something better with.

That's all for STO for now.  Do you STO? What are your thoughts on Season 10 and the Δ recruitment event?