Getting better with time.
This is one of those games that has some genius ideas, mostly involving space combat. Space combat is amazingly fun. It is well paced, and is kind of like a 3-dimensional version of the combat found in Pirates of the Burning Sea. The basic premise is use your phasers to take down an enemy's shields, then destroy the hull with torpedoes. Skill buffs provided by your bridge officers, can really help turn the tide of battle. Launching 3 torpedoes at once, courtesy of your tactical officer, can really blow a ship to pieces. A buff to your shields can really save your but if an enemy i hammering you. Its a great system that really keeps you on your toes. You are always trying to rotate your ship to a better firing position, all while keeping your shields boosted in the right places. Love it.
Ground combat is sadly a giant cluster%#$@. Your away team tends to run around like a bunch of idiots using buffs at inappropriate times and doing a good job of getting themselves killed. The fast pace of the combat, with button triggered attacks was ambitious but could have been so much more. This game SCREAMS for a cover system and that could go a long way to make it better. Until improvements come, it pretty much sucks for now.
The PVE mission structure is much better than most MMOs. The basic go-here-and-kill-baddies still applies, but there is usually some decent story attached to it. You might be sent to explore a base to see why communication has stopped. When you get there, you find a bunch of Klingons there after some weapon. After killing them and returning to your ship, you are suddenly attacked by cloaked ships before you can leave the system. This kind of story structure really helps break up the monotony of normal MMO combat missions.
PVP is one of my favorite aspects of the game, even if it does have some balancing issues. "Capture and Hold", where you capture nodes to wear down your enemy's counter, is insanely enjoyable. Its great to watch a battle unfold only to notice that some low-level guy has captured all the nodes, while the heavy hitters were busy killing his team. Arena (team deathmatch) doesn't go quite as well. It usually involves Klingons being cloaked for a few minutes, exposing themselves to kill a low-level player, and then cloaking again. Rinse, repeat. The ground based PVP is better than ground PVE, since there are no NPCs to mess up your day, but it still sucks compared to its space combat counterpart.
Overall this game is surprisingly fun. The content added since startup has made the game much better. The bugs from startup have mostly been fixed as well, giving you a much better gameplay experience. PVP is great even if it needs some tweaks. This is one of those games that can only get better with time, so it will be great to see that unfold.