I read this article on Massively about chaotic starting areas (which linked to this blog post) and it really made me sit back and say "you know, you're right!" I don't really have much I can add to what he already said.

Something about the STO starting area really felt jarring, and I didn't realize what it was until now. Here I am, trying to read my skill tooltips and figure out what all of these buttons do, and there are red lights flashing and people commanding me to hurry to some other place so I can do something INCREDIBLY URGENT. The game is basically shouting "gogogogogo" at me, telling me to hurry up, shouting at me to GO FASTER DO IT NAO like some bad WoW pickup group.

And that's when the conscious part of my mind forcibly breaks the illusion, and reminds the rest of me that there isn't REALLY a time limit, there isn't REALLY any urgency, the enemies standing there will continue standing there making threatening gestures at me from a safe distance until I have taken the time to figure out what I'm doing. It destroys the whole point of plopping me in the middle of all that action in the first place. Consider immersion destroyed as I learn the controls at my own pace and sigh exasperatedly at the guy who tells me that I need to hurry.

When I had to return to my ship and they stood there and explained what the three bridge officer types did before they would let me beam back to my ship and save the day, I was confused. HURRY UP! FIGHT THESE BORG! Okay, now stop and click through these three sets of dialogue boxes where we tell you things you already know... (the bridge officer powers are quite intuitive since you just read the descriptions of the three classes when you made your own character five minutes ago) OKAY NOW FIGHT THESE SHIPS!!!

It's not just STO and Champions. I noticed the same thing in Allods. Here I am, trying to figure out what this spell does, trying to figure out how to use that wand I just got as a quest reward (I never did figure it out, I eventually just gave up), and they're like "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK! WE'VE GOTTA EVACUATE!!"

I miss the old days of the WoW starting area. I for one don't need to feel like I'm a hero when I'm level ONE. The whole concept is absurd. I'm level ONE. Level ONE people don't save the day. They beat up boars and hope to one day BECOME a legendary hero.