Are you satisfied with the gameplay or what is disappointing to you? Do you think you level too fast or too slow? And what about the rpg elements in this game? Too much or not enough? And what should a sequel -if there will be one- change?
I, for myself, can say that I like the game, but it lacks a little bit of real rpg feelling.

I have heard complaints about it being too repetitive. That's my only concern.

My opinions after playing for a little while (getting a couple ships to level 7 or so):

The unique good:

- Quests tend to mean something (and maybe they all mean something); they don't just exist to get you experience and loot; their completion or failure has an effect on the world. For that matter, any player action has an effect. I really like that. It gives a make-your-own-story feel to the game, and I wish there were more games like this.

The normal good:

- Traditional RPG elements seem satisfactory: leveling, loot, choices, etc. I haven't played long enough yet to have an opinion about grinding.

The odd:

- Having to choose between adding crew and installing kinetic armor plating (for instance) seems bizarre. I realize it's a game balance question, but I feel like crew should be a separate type from light equipment.
- Given the meaningful-world nature of the game, I wish I could see an in-game reason for the existence of the endless monster spawns: something the player could affect directly. (Now maybe there is, and I haven't played long enough yet, but right now it looks mostly like random spawns.)
- No chooseable hull upgrades (outside races) is interesting. Not sure about it yet. I kinda miss looking for hull upgrades, but having guaranteed upgrades available if I spend the points on command is kinda nice, too.

The bad:

- The game is too pushy. I'm looking at you, Drox Guild. The mandatory quests ruin the make-your-own-story feel, for me at least. Mostly I just want to belong to one race and help them grow as I see fit. I'm just not feeling any sympathetic attachment to the reputation of a mysterious guild.

For instance, I was helping Cortex out and having fun with that, and then I get a mandatory quest to pit Humans and Dryads at one another. Huh? I now had to leave Cortex high and dry to go find those races (not necessarily easy in a large sector, unless I'm completely missing something). That pretty much ruined the experience for me.

I tried another sector (same ship), got an early Drox quest to destroy the Humans. Hadn't found Humans yet, though, and I charged off to jump through as many gates and wormholes as I could. Never did find Human space. Durn it: let me play at my own pace, already!

Conclusion:

There's the makings of a really excellent game here, but I get the impression the gameplay needs some work. I would at least add the option to drop mandatory quests entirely, if not also to let the player just be part of one race. (Why wouldn't the races try to implement their own such guilds, but under their control?)

Give one over-arching goal (maybe a different one per race?), and let the player get there as they see fit.

EDIT: I did some checking, and it looks like setting guild involvement to "minimal" actually means no mandatory quests. Am trying that now. If so, that would pretty much solve the big issue I had with the game so far.

Yes, the mandatory quests suck! I once was allied with one race and at war with the other. What did the guild do? it gave me the mandatory quest to protect the race that I -and the guild too(!)- was at war with! What the feck? It`s like Obama tells his troops to protect Al Kaeda!
I changed the guild involvement to "minimal" and I didn`t have any mandatory quests yet again. So it seems as if this option turns of mandatory quests completely, which is good!
I first found the crew thing weird, too. But then imagine to be a NASA Engineer: Everything you have on your ship -weapons, thrusters, hull or crew- has a mass (weight). The more mass on a ship, the more fuel is needed to transport them. Crew members also need food, water and other things, which have mass, too. So it`s not that unlogical as it first looks!
The monster spawning is normal for Diablo like games. You need monsters to get xp, money and equipment. No such game does really explain how monsters can respawn. Maybe in this game monsters are hatched in outer dimensional pockets, who knows?
For the races there are spawning points. Planets which produce Spaceships. Destroy them and no ships will respawn!

I'm thinking monsters should have their own attackable spawn points (whatever they might be), and their own way of colonizing systems. That fits the dynamic-world style of the game even better. (And if the monsters are jumping in from other dimensions, it should be possible to chase them down eventually, like the Antarans in Master of Orion II! :) )

Anyhow, to be fair to the game, I should say that I started up a new sector with minimal Drox involvement, a large galaxy, six races, and only the home world settled per race, and now it feels like I'm helping a race play Master of Orion II. Very cool. :)

I bought it very late last night, and only got 15 minutes of time to play it. I flew around shooting stuff, and eventually got destroyed. I didn't know what was going on. I just accepted all quests and I wasn't quite sure where to go for quests. Overall, it looks good and fun.

Accepting all quests is a sure way to loose the game. Unlike in other games quests don`t wait for you untill your coffee break is over. If you don`t fulfill (I guess I wrote this wrong) your missions ASAP the ones who gave you the missions get angry and this is lowering your reputation. First you should check if you are even able to reach the system where your goal is. Often they want to give you missions which take place in systems of which you don`t of access yet!
Second, choose from whom you accept the missions. If you take missions from all you`ll have to make missions for races who are at war with each other, which is making them angry!

I'm liking it very much!

Note: The first time I ran up against one of the mandatory quests, I immediately did some searching and found that if you set there involvement to [Minimal] when creating a new sector then they won't do that. I've played all the way to level 10 so far and haven't been ordered to do anything by them so I'm pretty sure that Minimal = not at all. :D

Also wanted to point out that when talking with other races, always trade first. You can get a lot from another race sometimes if you bother to check. And I'm not talking trade as in shopping, I mean trade as in negotiation. They can give you access to portals, technology, and even contact with other races if the price is right. ;)

I didn`t find an option to turn off guild quests, but setting the guild involvement to minimal seems to turn off the quests, too!

Can Guild Involvement be set to minimal in the base game or do I need the Invasion of the Ancients expansion to set this option?

The involvement of the Drox Guild can be set anytime you start a new world. It is available both in the original game and the expansion either. However (and sadly) it can't be disabled, only set to very minimal.

The first post said about this, it is ruining the free-feel of the story, but actually doesn't really change anything gameplay-wise. If you're more into diplomacy it is wise to keep a relative good status with all the factions. Whenever a Drox quest shows up you can complete it no time if all the factions are balanced with you and with each other.

In the other hand these quest are extremely hard sometimes when you play a more aggressive way since most commonly you ends up as a bounty hunter of one of the factions... making it impossible to do anything with other factions except killing them.

But be honest, these quests makes the random story you take part of.