True, group space warfare is slightly more fun, because more/stronger enemies are spawned ;)

Hmm, not sure I'm ready for another MMO yet... and I'm not a Trekkie... not at all. But indeed the game looks fun.
For now, I think I'll just wait for TOR.

This game has potential. But what really destroys the whole atmosphere of a great multiplayer experience are the obvious transmissions between the instances:
You are in the spaceport and walk into the admirals office... *loadingscreen*, you walk out of the office... *loadingscreen*, you beam on your ship... *loadingscreen", you leave the system... *loadingscreen*, and so on.
Im not a coder but i think there have to be better ways to accomplish a seamless transmission between the insances (or maps). Maybe a warpsequence in ingame graphics that's showing while the new instance is loading in the background.

okay.. i am assuming that's because of beta and full version will have "pilot and shoot stuff with your avatar sitting on a captain's chair"
otherwise it is just SO wrong :(
anyway. i kinda like what you guys say: especially you Gil. the point 3 especially (yeah. imma a trek fan) going to get full game. shame i missed the beta.

That would lengthen load times and put more strain on the system. Also, the reason WoW gets away with minimal load times is the underpowered engine they use. Have you seen other MMOs like Guild Wars? They have load times like this, too!

I got my code for beta today, will have to check it out quickly before the beta is done. The only thing with MMOS is that they tend to have a lot to work on when they are first launched.

The point is that immersion is completely destroyed the way things are now. Obviously they have already blown it with an old-school design that would need a complete re-haul to up the immersion factor, and I feel pretty confident that there isn't any money flowing in that direction.

Who knows? If enough people want new loading processes, I'm sure they'll make a change somewhere down the line.

Loading screens? Geez did none of you have a C64 or amiga? These things take like 10 seconds (well except that one time where there was some problem and it took 5 minutes) whereas on the 64 you had to manually queue the tape to a certain point on the counter, press play and then go make yourself a sandwich because you were going to be there a while
Yeah its a bit of a disruption and I would have preferred them cloaked behind a visual sequence but then they'd just be bitching about mass effect length elevator rides

The loading screens are annoying though. MXO actually managed to get away with almost zero loading screens (you only ever saw a loading screen when going from one main region to another (such as from International to Downtown) but going from area to area, had zero loading screens -- even when mission areas were instanced for your team only, if you were in the right district already, there were zero loading times.
While I can understand the need for loading screens in STO when transitioning from away team areas to space area, it would have been nice to not have needed any loading when transitioning to sub areas within either of those two distinct areas. I doubt the need to load each area in STO will change, but it'd be nice if it did in the future.

After suffering half hour loading times in Bards Tale 1 on the CPC, just to move two spaces to get to stairs between dungeon levels (and then another half hour load time for the next floor), I think I've suffered loading times enough for one lifetime =)

But you see, I want to ride Star Trek elevators.

They're nothing special, trust me I've seen every episode and all that ever happens is a boring ride or an accident and you're trappen in them with someone annoying

At first i have to apologize.. in my previous post i talked about transmissions, but instead i meant the word transition. But i think you got the point. ;-)
The loading screens are not a game breaker for me, but imho they are used inflationary throughout the game. I mean there even are instances for a single room (admirals office). And then the system where a space station is located are kind of useless. When you jump in such a system you probably want to go directly to the station. There's not much sense in this other than that it's looking nice. I played the beta about 30 hours and it gets boring after a while when you just want to sell some things or stuff like that and every time i want to do that i have to go through several loading screens
I played other mmos like Guild Wars, WoW and Eve. But except with Guild Wars i didn't stick long with one of them. I'm normally no friend of monthly subscriptions. But for me the difference to Guild Wars is that it is free to play (except that you have to pay once for the game/expansions), so i accepted the heavily instanced world. But sto takes the instances to a whole new level and it's charging a lot of money.
But despite my concerns i still have fun with the game and i even pre ordered the digital collectors edition. It's only that i am a bit disappointed about the underlaying game mechanics. And i doubt that they will change that in the future.

Well, the instances... and loading screens. Lets see...
1. Loading screens. Yes, lots of. Yes, they are annoying and do not even look good, and why the admirals office takes 10 seconds to load on a bleeding edge high-end box is out of my understanding. But hey, i also grew up with C64s and even older machines, so i should be used to it ;) But this is not a C64 game and thus, the loading times still suck. Compared to most MMOs the loading times are a few hundred percent higher :(
2. Instancing. What the hell, the "world" is ripped apart into so many shards that its really annoying. Check on the map and click "chose instance", and scroll down the list .. there is hundreds of shards just for sol system.
If you want to play with a friend, or some friends, all have first to meet in sector space, then agree on what will be the main world instance, and everyone has to MANUALLY join that instance (Sol System Instance #98 - 1 Friend, is what is says, for example). Then you have to make sure you can see now all your friends ships around you so you're in the same instance, and then you might go ahead and start playing.
This is incredibly stupid :(
Also, release is soon, and yesterday the game was barely playable, specially in groups. People were left behind because of missing "beam buttons" and stuff alike. Server performance was bad. Login didnt work for a while.
I hope they get all that sorted in the next 10 days, or it will be a very sad launch day with a lot of pissed-off customers that did not get used to this in the beta.
But the game has something on it that makes me play it every evening :)
- G

They actually said on their site or in a post on their forums that the loading screens and several other things are placeholders.
I'm getting the impression from a few things I've read that this beta isn't the product that being released next month but rather a cut down version that has all the important things they want to test and pretty much nothing else