I jump back on every once in a while. Mechanics are very dated and the monetization is insanely expensive. But you can play the whole game without spending a dime and there’s almost 15 years of content to play through.

Ship to ship PvE is pretty fun, ground combat is tedious. PvP can be fun until you get in a super unbalanced match.

It’s ftp so the only thing you lose is time

There is enough content to merit playing through the storylines for free, but the endgame is pretty much daily grinds.

I have not played in awhile but I have serious cravings for cryptic mmos. very casual, especially sto. None of them are like first person shooters or complex hard to do reflex stuff. tab targeting. Like champions does the traditional tank, controller, healer, dps thing but sto your ship crew and characters can generally do it all to some degree. enough for whats needed. it tends to be a bit of a doka race but personally I like making super casual builds that combine heavy hitting with a lot of survivability over glass cannons kill everything before it can hit back which is popular. The games do require knowledge though for builds and because many content scenarios have a schtick. like one you kill particular ships which have a weapon that you have to take and deploy to a base and other folk need to keep the enemy off of you or clear out a base so its ready for bombing. builds are not that complicate though. Like in sto its mostly about minimizing cooldown which can be done just by having two copies of abilties like tactical team or beam fire at will.

Chiming in as well, even though I’m mainly just a lurker here these days:

I continue to play nearly daily, even if only jumping on for whatever event is happening and the endeavors. I enjoy having a place (STO) to go to immerse into the Star Trek universe. Sure, the game itself is dated with certain mechanics and visuals, but it’s still wonderful to play in spaces (heh) of the established lore.

Oddly enough, I find myself mostly enjoying the seasonal events. I used to roll my eyes at those, but now it’s what brings me and my friends back to the game simply so we can run around Risa, some haunted castle, and especially the Winter Wonderland.

I haven’t stayed current on my builds, so I’m still flying ships which have long been out done in their DPS, but it’s fun for me to have those old familiar builds which can still wipe any PVE content quickly (for the sake of endeavors).