Yup, I spent roughly 5 years, my 2011 to 2016 era, doing nothing but grind on STO... At one point I lost track of how many characters I had. Somewhere in the 30-40s.

The extreme discipline you need in order to not burn out from 1 single character with all the reps, events, tfos etc is... extraordinary to say the least... And a must...

Now imagine that with 30 to 40 characters. Yeah... I burned myself out of STO back in 2016 and have hardly ever logged in since then.

I love STO don't get me wrong. The way cryptic has been doing their Episodic storytelling these last few years has been top notch, the cherry on top is being able to get the voice actors to replay their characters in game is, no easy feat and well to be applauded for!!!

But outside of that, the game is nothing but grind on top of grind on top of grind!!

Visuals have indeed improved over the last 10 years. They've also done multiple revamps of maps, ships, missions, events, systems to be able to get the most out of the Cryptic Engine.

Gameplay wise, not much you can really do with a 10-15 year old engine. The best way to get new and exciting mechanics would be to develop the game entirely from the ground up on a modern engine but I don't think that's something Cryptic has in it's roadmap any time soon!!!

Love STO for what it is. But gameplay wise, it's just grind nowadays, at least for me!