STO: PvP review by a Non-PvPer

I'll preface this by saying that I don't PvP normally. As a casual player, I find it very difficult to 'break into' PvP in most MMO's. That includes CoX and Lord of the Rings. I've had a little bit of success in both of those games when I'm with the right team, but generally speaking I'm not able to get all of the gear, enhancements, uber builds that one needs to compete even marginally in PvP. Therefor, I normally don't PvP.

Well, the Klingon faction was staring me in the face last night when I logged on to STO.
Here's the run down of my experience:

Character creator is pretty much the same. Choose a known race (Klingon, Gorn, Nausican, Orion, a couple of others, and 'Unknown Alien' which allows you to customize the race). Customize the face and body, limited uniform customization, choose some traits, and get in game. I've been a Klingon fan since first seeing John Colicos and Christopher Lloyd portraying them. However, I find there's enough of them running around in game and I've always been a bit 'individual'. I chose Alien and went with customizations that resulted in a very Cardassian looking 'Unknown'. It's fun knowing that I stand out but that I'm still recognizably Star Trek. Of course there's been an animosity between Klingons and Cardies for about 60 years, so I get to say things like 'If you don't mind fighting alongside a Cardassian.' All more fun for me.

You start off lvl 6 with the appropriate skill points to bring you up to speed. Not much of a tutorial, where you've already made it to lvl 6 with a Fed character. First two missions gets you 3 bridge officers and a tour of the Great Hall on Quonos. You can actually step outside and walk around the building, which is modeled after the ones seen in TNG and DS9. Very thrilling for a fan.

Being a little cautious about PvP, I decided to pick up some gear and levels PvE. The PvE content amounts to the same as the 'Secure Sirius Block' combat missions on Fed side. However, I did get the best drops to sell or upgrade my ship that way. Leveling was on par with Fed side. and I got near lvl 8 grinding those.

Next I decided to check out 'PvP queues' not really knowing how it worked. I was expecting a PvP zone in the Neutral zone or something (which may be, I'm not sure). Instead this was very much like joining an online server on the old FPS games I used to play (MoH:Allied Assault, Etc.) It allowed you to queue yourself up to join battles based on type, scenario, number of players per side, map, etc., or to create your own instance. I tried a few of them to see if there was much difference.

The combination of choices include ground or space, Fed vs Klingon or KvK (House battles), number of players (5vs5 or more), map, and scenario.

I tried Ground combat both FvK and KvK, several times on several maps. I tried Space Combat, both Kills and Objective.

What surprised me the most, was that I wanted more. I enjoyed myself enough that a few bad experiences didn't matter. Because the queues I had access to were limitted to lvls 6-10, I didn't feel needlessly overwhelmed by over powered players. When there was a player who clearly had the best gear and seemed super tough, the answer was just to either avoid him or have the team concentrate on him. He still got a lot of kills, but it wasn't so overpowered that I felt it was futile. When that starts to happen in a game I want to go do something else. The only bad experiences I really had was when the PuG I was on didn't act like a team and the other side did.... but then that's the same in PvE.

I was surprised that I enjoyed the ground combat more than the Ship Combat, because I'm normally aiming for the ship missions on the Fed side. I guess I enjoyed running around an FPS style map but with MMO mechanics. There's no rooting (unless you're held) in this game so the key really is to keep moving, use terrain to hide and block, etc. It's more fast paced than trying to pilot around to the enemy's weakest shield and managing power. You get kills in a few seconds, instead of minutes. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy ship to ship combat, but that there was more action on the ground. To each his own, of course.

Engagements What helped was that XP and advancement in PvP are quite fast. Even when on the loosing side there were rewards at the end of the engagement. One of my missions, more of a secondary objective really, was to gain experience by dying 10 times! (Which believe it or not took at least a couple of engagements for me to complete).

Anyway, I'd love to try this on vent sometime if anyone's interested. There is a few minutes of waiting for queues but it was fun. Hopefully it doesn't loose that too much with the higher levels.