[Sul-Matuul]

So we've all had a change to peruse the latest offerings from STO with the 11th Anniversary update.

What are everyone's thought on this update? Anything you love? Anything you hate? Anything you wish we had but that wasn't included?

Here's my review of the update though:

I'd never really played as a Klingon before this update, so it was an opportunity to try something I'd not experienced and to do so with all the benefit of the newly polished missions and visual updates the Klingon storyline has received this last year.
The final inclusion of the Discovery era Klingon look as a separate species was a nice addition and gives some really nice visuals to create a unique character. The new hairstyles for Klingons and the improved outfits they have received this year make them one of the most visually appealing factions to create a character for now.
I made a DSC Klingon tactical officer, and jumped right in.

The new Klingon tutorial is a vast improvement on the old one. Tutorials always feel a bit silly in this game as once you've done one you've done them all. But at least the new polish this one was given makes it sit on the top spot now I think, alongside the Romulan opening storyline.
Overall playing the Klingon specific missions and later cross faction civil war ones feels meaningful and rewarding, and the visuals on many are absolutely stunning (Alpha has one of the best jungle maps I've seen in game, and the scenes in Grethor and Boreth later on are truly epic).
And nobody could ever get tired of having Martok with you to give you encouragement, or throw insults at the dishonourable cowards you are fighting!

First City got some minor visual overhauls to coincide with the update and this is mainly in the area you beam in to. There are some issues with the Klingon homeworld though. Firstly the shipyard in orbit has gone AWOL for some reason meaning you need to beam to the ground then back up; a minor annoyance. But overall, despite First City having a nice feel to it, compared to the likes of ESD it is a pain in the backside for new players and old; being vastly more spread out and needing to beam to the shipyard rather than just walk over to it. An update to rebuilt and consolidate it a bit more for player convenience must surely be on the minds of the dev team.

Recruit goodness..
The recruit side of things had something quite unique for me personally; it actually feels like something your recruit should be doing! The Gamma, Temporal and Delta recruit tasks were mostly just a random assortment of grinding with little link to the story of our character or the recruit background.
The Klingon task by comparison are things you will naturally be doing in the course of levelling and playing as a true warrior; they feel much more natural and not forced upon you just to waste some time. Sure getting to 2500 ambush of melee kills is a slog but at least you will naturally perform these as you play a Klingon character.
In fact thanks to the melee kill task my recruit is now fully melee based and so it his entire away team; it is simply so much faster to kill enemies and much more brutal for dealing with the masses of mobs and bosses you come up against. I'm firmly enjoying the melee combat way more than I'd ever expect; though it's not without its issues.....

Melee woes..
Melee combat needs an overhaul for this game. To the uninitiated it is a clunky mess and not very easy to master. Using a Bat'leth will lock you on the spot whilst you swing, enemies will step/run out of range very easily, locking on to enemies becomes a mess of button clicking.
There are way round the issues, using a weapon with lunge actions like Mek'leths means you always move towards and track your targets. And some melee weapons are so fast the enemy will not get a hit in before they are dead.
A simple auto-target system where you lock onto whatever you hit would be a massive boost for melee combat I feel.

The recruit reward ship....
The T6 Bird of Prey you get from killing marked targets is a surprisingly good ship for a freebie. It's not fully T6, more like T5.5 as it lacks the same number of console slots (9 instead of 10) but it really doesn't suffer from this. It comes with an enhanced battlecloak, a rarity in this game so you get to play with the full cloak experience right off the bat.
If terms of looks the evolution of the weirdo looking M'chla BoP from Discovery is a natural feeling design update; clearly leading to the classic BoP look we know from the films onwards.
The ship's trait Withering Barrage is excellent for any cannon user build and even the console, the Graviton Displacer, is massively fun and useful for even top end build I have found. Load up scatter volley, torp spread and a few other buffs and hit the console to suck everything into a swirling vortex to death in front of you as you tear them apart with cannon fire. It's also good for moving enemies away from defensive points.
For those wanting an upgrade to this ship the Fleet T6 M'chla BoP is a clear winner; getting 2 extra consoles, pilot boff seating and full pilot moves to give it a real edge in running rings round enemies.

Lockbox Goodies...
I've not really dabbled in the Zhat Vash lockbox as i'm not really a fan of the gambling aspect of the game.
One area that is worth a look for any space barbie fans is the space weapons. They have a nice zappy sound to them and the FX are smaller than many other disruptors; meaning they fit well on a smaller raider sized ship. The proc is nothing to write home about as it almost never goes off, but then building around a 2.5% chance effect for a build is never really a great idea anyway.

[Sorotia]

It's better....but in the end it's still a huge disappointment. After taking all this time and the Devs having done almost nothing but twiddle their thumbs for so long and I was expecting more.

I was expecting a Discovery Klingon mini faction, even if it was only just a basic tutorial like the Jem'Hadar, I was actually looking forward to the neon green effects...they took all this time just to basically do nothing. They could have just added the Discovery Klingon designs to base Klingons like they did with TOS...but no they made a big deal out of it and in the end all it was basically was a copy and paste then just put on the Discovery Klingon models.

Then the icing on the cake is this so called "legendary" pack...only 2 Klingon ships and so far the "legendary" Brel is worse in almost every way compared to the free anniversary raider.

[Stryker]

I'd say what we get now from an 11 year old game is a blessing. Lock boxes and zen items are I suppose a neccessary evil for which to keep the game on the type of life support it has these days. I just wish a new "season" was more than just two episodes at every big update. I miss the days where a whole storyline was released with 10 or more episodes, i.e. Delta or Dyson type commitments. But I'll take what I can get and enjoy the lore and thrill of what STO is... cannot imagine how much life is left in a game engine that is this old, comparatively speaking to the likes of CoD or Mass Effect series...