The Pitfall of Being an EU STO Player

I've been singing the praises of STO so far, so I thought I'd better take a minute out to point out some of it's flaws. Just to even things up a bit.

The first real nag that I had came only after I'd actually bought the retail version of the game. Buying it was no problem, activating it was simple, and when it came to the subscription method Paypal was a nice option to see too. But the one thing that did bug me was the monthly subscription price... £10.34

Now, I can only see one reason for that price, and that's exchange rates. I believe the EU and US players all share the same server. I certainly haven't been presented with any options of switching to another server.
The upside to this is that there's usually plenty of people around, and we all like to be freindly with our continental cousins, as long as they're not 11 years old and playing Call of Duty, and shouting abuse over XBox Live. The downside is that to make it fair, everyone should pay the same rate of subscription.

The problem is that $14.99 might be £10.34 today, but tomrrow it will be £10.36, the day after it will be £10.32 and in a few months time it could easily be £8.27 or £11.45.
So while the subcription price is staying the same for the US players, over here it's fluctuating.
When this is in the range of a few pence, I don't mind. But I do prefer to know how much I'm paying for something.

I was slightly dissapointed that it was so high. With Blizz only charging me £8.99 for my WoW subscription, I'm now paying more to play a game with less content. The difference might be relatively small, but it doesn't take long to add up to a lot, especially when you multiply it by the number of EU subscribers the game will have.

I don't know for a fact that the prices will constantly fluctuate, but at that strange pricing level it seems to be the case.
To avoid the 'not knowing' issue, I'll be paying in 3 monthly blocks. The downside to that is, if the rate changes by a lot, I could end up paying more for that block than if I'd just paid for a month at a time.
Watch this space for more info on this. I'll do a bit of research.

The other nag I have is that the difficulty of things scales with the number of players in your party. This seems a stupid thing to say, but I've often found that it's easier to solo many missions than it is to end up in a team with a moron, or someone who just refuses to join in with the rest of you.

As an example: (Figures have been made up to demonstrate)
In Solo Mode an enemy fighter has 2000HP
In 2 Player it has 4000HP
In 3 Player it has 6000HP
In 4 Player it has 8000HP
In 5 Player it has 10000HP

In solo mode I can easily handle groups of enemy fighters. And with a bit of tactical play, murder them all effortlessly.
But if I'm grouped with 1 other who refuses to join in, or co-ordinate attacks, it's becomes twice as hard for me.

If you find yourself in a group with 5 players, and just 1 of them is a muppet, the rest of you have a much more difficult task, as all the enemy mobs will hit harder, and take more to kill.
Sure the muppet might constantly get his ass handed to him while he tries to solo everything, but that doesn't help the rest of us.

Also, in some missions re-inforcements are called in by the enemy as a sort of final-boss stage, and these are often summoned as 1 per player.
Again, solo they're not too bad. In a good group they have little chance against a co-ordinated assault. But the 1 moron who won't join-in properly makes life very difficult for all the others.

"So don't team up with them" I hear you cry. Well, if only it was that simple. When you enter a mission area, if someone else is on that same mission, at the same stage as you, you are automatically grouped with them.
The only way to get out of the situation is to abandon what you've done on that mission so far, come out of the instance, and back in again. Otherwise, if your mission is to 'Kill 10 Tribbles' every one that the other guy kills will not count to your tally, and there will only be 10 of them around.

This isn't a major problem, I've only experienced it once so far. And in that case I managed to survive against the overwhelming odds, and got a good feeling of achievement for having done so.
But it is an annoying situation to be put in.