G_Hosa_Phat

May 1, 2020

I realize that this is an old, mostly defunct thread, but I still believe in the idea of adding new game modes to SWTOR. Now, however, with the release of 6.X, we're going to have to come up with a new name. Perhaps "Incursion" or "Swarm"...

February 24, 2017

As a supporter of the petition to Bring the Old Republic era of Star Wars to Netflix, a contributor to the #TORonNetflix campaign, and one of the admins of the "official" Facebook page for The Old Republic on Netflix, I wanted to take a minute to try to communicate a bit of perspective regarding the petition, and explain some of what drives those of us that continue to actively support it.

First of all, as a point of clarification, the petition is expressly directed at Disney & Lucasfilm. Netflix is just the proposed delivery vehicle for the series due to a number of factors, not the least of which being the fact that Disney already has an active relationship with them to release Marvel stories such as Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. I don't think any of us would be terribly upset if Disney chose to release an Old Republic-based series on another streaming provider like Amazon or Hulu, a premium network like HBO or Starz, or even a "regular" network like ABC (which they own anyway). The fact that Netflix is such a well-known brand at this point, however, is another major factor in the decision to name them in the petition explicitly.

The petition recently surpassed the 175,000 signature mark and is still gaining momentum. While we are excited that a fan started petition has garnered so much support and has even caught the eye of Star Wars Story Group Guru Pablo Hidalgo, we are not delusional enough to believe that Disney is going to produce a series just because we stomp our feet and cry. On the same token, we do not believe that this petition is going to "force" Disney and Lucasfilm to do anything that they aren't already interested in doing. Disney is a multi-billion dollar corporation, and, if an Old Republic series is produced, it will be because the powers that be have chosen it as a worthy project. We are well aware that we still need a lot more support behind us before The Mouse even bats an eye in our direction.

What those of us who are involved in the #TORonNetflix movement DO believe is that this petition is a sort of rallying point for Star Wars fans who are interested in The Old Republic era. If nothing else, it has served to bring groups of Star Wars fans together from literally all around the world. Petitions in and of themselves can never be an accurate gauge of interest on a topic, just by their very nature. There are fans out there that don't know about the petition, there are those that aren't interested, and there are those who refuse to "waste their time". Honestly, the latter are the only ones that I don't understand. In my opinion, if the idea of an Old Republic series on Netflix interests you at all, what's a few minutes of your time to add your name to the petition?

Regardless, those of us who are actively supporting the petition on social media do so because we are truly excited about the possibility that it represents. Whether Disney eventually gives us an Old Republic series or not is almost beside the point. We have a community of like-minded fans with whom we enjoy discussing all of the ways that such a series could come to be. From production style (animated or live-action) to potential storylines and characters, and even what people could/should be involved. If the idea behind the petition interests you at all, please join us and take a moment to add your name in support.

SIGN & SHARE THE PETITION (Change.org):

Bring the Old Republic era of Star Wars to Netflix

Short Link for Sharing (Case-Sensitive) - bit.ly/TORonNetflix

GET THE LATEST UPDATES (Facebook):

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JOIN THE DISCUSSION (Facebook):

TORonNetflix

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@TORonNetflix

EXPRESS YOUR OPINIONS (SurveyMonkey):

Star Wars: The Old Republic on Subscription Services

REVIEW THE SURVEY RESULTS (Diary of a Sith Chick):

TORonNetflix - Survey Results (With Editorial Commentary)

February 8, 2017

Just a update as to the viability of "onslaught":
-----
1). These would be quick, cheap, & easy to develop....which seems to be what Bioware is looking for. All you need to do is create arena maps for existing or new NPCS to spawn in. Heck, you could just recycle old game elements to make these...you know like they did with all the uprisings......

2). Uprisings proved that Bioware has the ability to spawn waves of NPCs.

3). Eternal Championship proved they can make wave bosses.

4). The "Temporary Ability Bar" can be used to for class abilities as mentioned earlier in this thread.

Regards,
~Lecto-Sama

PS: Please just rip-off "Gears of War" 3 or 4 horde mode already.........

Thanks again, Lecto, for bringing this idea back to the top of the heap. I haven't been in-game much of late, but ideas like this and the other ones I've linked in my signature could potentially draw me back in. As I've stated many times, bringing in more diverse game styles like these could really help SWTOR appeal to a much wider player base. I really hope that these ideas haven't gone completely unnoticed.

...and according to Musco in this post, the Suggestion Box forum is more than just a sounding board for players to vent:

Fear not, they are just doing their part! We absolutely read the suggestion box forum so don't worry about ideas/feedback not being seen there.

-eric

Let's just hope that's true.

January 22, 2016

/signed

Sorry, didn't find this thread earlier when I searched for it. I've always heard the game mechanic called 'Attack Wave'.
Started my own suggestion thread on it a couple of weeks back.

Thanks for the vote of support, Vhaegrant! I've been following this thread for quite a while, and still hope to see an implementation of this make it into the game some day, no matter what they call it. I believe I found your thread Wave Attack Mechanic, and I think you'll find in my outline post that we have many of the same ideas surrounding the implementation.

While I tend to lean more towards the solo version of this, I believe many of the people in this thread are looking for a multi-player environment for implementation. Luckily, I believe that there are already several instances of "scaling" in-place throughout SWTOR that should make either scenario possible.

If it could be implemented it has a great potential for allowing solo players (or groups) to compare their ability by seeing what wave they can reach, rather than just saying 'Oh yeah I can beat that boss'.

It also allows for a comparison between class/advanced class/discipline choice. Do any have a significant advantage when playing solo content.

With a bit of ingenuity the solo version could be expanded to focus on role specific tasks, in a different thread I suggested a Healer focused wave mechanic.
There are a number of turrets that have been damaged by enemy artillery, engineers have to go and fix them and a healer needs to go out and make sure they stay alive long enough to get the task done.
The waves would be reflected by the rate, damage and AoE of the incoming damage to the engineers.

This is pretty much exactly the kind of thing I was envisioning myself. While it may make the idea a bit more complex than necessary, I think it would be awesome to tailor the encounters to the class/role make-up of the party currently playing.... No healer/tank/DPS on your team? Certain objective waves are excluded from the rotation.

Like I said, though, this could potentially add a few too many variables into the mix for what should be a relatively simple "survive until you die" mechanic.

It also goes a long way to bridging the t***** issue that many players feel content is too easy. This sort of mechanic is play to fail. It gets progressively harder until you hit a point you can't get past... either get better gear, more buffs or improve your skills.

Another benefit in this case is that players will actually want better gear in order to compete in this area. This can drive players to some of the other end-game content that seems to go languishing because so many players have already "been there, done that". Getting a group of players that are newly driven to improve their gear could very well re-invigorate the Flashpoints and Operations afresh.

January 20, 2016

Ahh, you're probably right. It's been so long since I've played either of the KotOR games I had totally forgotten about that element. It's definitely more reminiscent of that concept than this one. But, with the addition of something along those lines, there's always hope that other new game modes like this could be added.

January 20, 2016

Correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the descriptions I've heard so far, it sounds like the Eternal Championship is the Devs' take on how to implement this idea. I'd still like to see this idea implemented as something separate from the Eternal Championship, though. I think this is something that could appeal to both solo and group players of just about any caliber.

November 5, 2015

First time I have seen this thread and I think it most timely in light of the recent 4.0 patch. You have clearly put a lot of time and effort into your evaluation and suggested work over of the SWTOR crafting system. Thank you.

Not sure if that was directed at me, but I'm going to say "thank you" anyway, if for no other reason than to "bump" the thread.

As we all know, the result of the recent 4.0 patch by whoever it is that makes those decisions for SWTOR was the elimination the "old" companion system and implementation of a new one (unlike anything similar to your suggestion post) and the endorsement of the so-called Levelsync on planets. IMO, it has in effect eliminated the need for conscientious crafting and augmenting altogether, and I think has most probably undermined the basic economy of the Galactic Market. It's no longer necessary to level at all hence the demand for gear and mats will most probably diminish. All that is necessary is to complete your story line and associated missions, no crafting or purchases or augmenting necessary...when one joins the planet the character is advanced or diminished to the "proper" level. As one poster recently stated, this in effect dumbing down of the game.

Having worked very hard and long on crafting and augmenting (time and $) my ten characters (most over level 55) I will miss the "old' crafting and companion system, and probably won't be spending any more money on this game, at least for a while to see how things shake out.

I hope those who have the power will have an ear to hear if enough of us speak up.

While I truly appreciate the effort the Devs put in to KotFE to really make the game more "story-centric", and while I'm ever a fan of pretty much anything Star Wars (Jar-Jar being the obvious exception) I have to admit that the game does feel very "dumbed-down" lately. There just doesn't seem to be much of a challenge or feel of real progression for my characters. I love the story lines that they've created and can't wait to see more, but it almost feels like more of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book where I am just watching the effects of my decisions, instead of challenging me to accomplish some "real" goals to get ahead and become the awe-inspiring character I'm supposed to be.

At this point, I'm sure that a crafting revamp isn't going to provide those players with similar feelings what it is they "need", but I'm a believer in the axiom: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Perhaps other areas of the game should be addressed first, but I firmly believe that crafting is something that needs to be given a thorough review as a part of any changes they have planned for the future.

October 25, 2015

I like this idea of yours.

Thank you, LordArtemis. I appreciate your support of the idea. I would love to see crafting become a much more meaningful part of this game, even adding something like what was suggested by Fevee in his Dungeoneering thread to give crafters a way to be "important".

October 22, 2015

Once again, I'm glad this thread has come back from the "trash heap" of forgotten topics. Just because a thread has lost momentum and slipped down the list absolutely does not mean that it's no longer relevant, and this thread is a prime example. The topic of conversation here is definitely relevant. With the release of 4.0 and all of the changes they've been making to companions and "core" game mechanics, crafting could certainly use another review. Once again, I refer back to my wall of "SWG fanboi" text for my personal opinions on the matter. They haven't really changed since I posted them, so I'll just leave it at that.

October 21, 2015

Nothing wrong with keeping the ideas fresh in their minds.

Absolutely, which is why I link to "dead" threads all over the place.

October 21, 2015

Not to be a forum nazi, but this is another one of those ideas that has been brought up over and over again due to the overabundance of different crafting materials and the limited amount of storage/stack size available in game. Check out my post (#3 with a follow-up in #7) in this thread for a design idea for how to implement a "workable" solution.

October 20, 2015

I definitely like the idea of making crafting really useful in SWTOR. In a "wall of text" rant I posted in another thread, I discussed my ideas for a total revamp of the entire crafting system a la SWG ("SWG fanboi" flames incoming). While I'd still like to see crafting get a complete overhaul, something like this suggestion that takes the crafting system out of the dull and lifeless void in which it is currently stuck would be tremendously welcome.

I will say, however, that I agree with those against the idea of starting the experience with no gear whatsoever. To take from another game, I imagine this something like the original Kael'Thas Sunstrider encounter in The Eye from World of Warcraft. You go in with all of your normal gear, but you need to acquire and equip the instance-specific weapons he summons in order to defeat him (if you're not grossly over-leveled).

Applying this concept to your idea, in order to defeat whatever creature is defending the super-secret relic (or whatever) you must craft a very specific set of armor and weaponry to defend yourself from and defeat the horror that awaits you. This new set of gear provides bonuses that offset some of the boss's unique abilities that, without the custom-crafted gear, would occur with too much frequency and/or intensity to be able to successfully complete the encounter.

Since this gear is crafted with materials from the tainted planet, they cannot be removed from the surface without the very real potential of rapidly spreading whatever horrible disease is affecting the entire planet across the galaxy in a pandemic with no cure.

In addition to making crafting somewhat relevant, I'm always up for adding content to this game that caters to different play-styles (as is evident by the links in my signature). As I've said in pretty much all of the game mode suggestion threads in which I've participated, the more options a player has regarding what they do (and how they do it) in-game, the more likely it is that they will find something that appeals to their play-style.

October 18, 2015

!

That's the best suggestion relating to storage and crafting mats I've seen so far. Your suggestion is definitely on the right track.

Much appreciated, Falensawino. With all of the changes that are coming to crafting, I think now is the perfect time to try to implement this type of change.

October 17, 2015

What you propose is a cooperative survival mode. I agree that this would be a welcomed addition to the game. Excellent suggestion.

Thank you for your support, Calypso! I'm so glad this suggestion is getting some new life! I'd also like to hear any feedback you have on my Field Commander suggestion and Firelieutenant's Capture & Command idea, as well as my latest idea, Personal/Guild Armies. I'm still mulling over some other ideas, but these are the ones I'm most interested in right now.

Of course, the credit for this suggestion goes to the OP, DrewFromPhilly. I just added some structure and specificity.

October 17, 2015

I really like this idea, & I can also really get behind the temporary quick bar idea too now that we have it -- GG!! For me, I find conquest to be quite boring & time consuming now.....it would be nice if there were other options that felt fresh.

Right there with you, Lecto. By adding something like this to conquest objectives, it could make participating much more engaging and interesting. I don't do much PvP, and my guild is so tiny that most of the other options just aren't really viable.

October 17, 2015

I agree with making it opt-in, but at the same time I wonder... How is that even relevant or important? I mean, this isn't a PVP idea, right? So it's not like you're going to be needed to step in and fight back against an invader. It's not like there's going to be any permanent damage or loss, right? Not for the defender, anyway. Only for your own forces if you overestimate your army's strength and take on a listing with a higher defense rating than you can handle. (I'm guessing that there would have to be some sort of listing of target strongholds with some sort of rating system that tries to account for number and layout of defenses somehow.)

No, this isn't a PvP idea, per se. It's certainly not the "traditional" PvP that we're all used to in SWTOR, and doesn't require much intervention by the player.

Of course, it doesn't help that there's really nothing to go on if someone's not familiar with whatever this random thing is that you're using for inspiration on this idea.

I... haven't got a clue what I'm even looking at here. This page doesn't even begin to attempt to explain what they're trying to push, does it.

I probably should have actually looked for something more descriptive, but I just wanted to post something quick. For those of you who haven't ever played the game, here's a description from Wikipedia:

Game of War: Fire Age is a 2013 freemium mobile MMO strategy video game developed and published by Machine Zone, a privately held game company based in Palo Alto, California. The game has a high-profile advertising campaign and was one of the top-grossing apps in 2014.

GAMEPLAY
The game consists of both city building through mechanics likened to Age of Empires and the earliest games from the Warcraft series. Gathering resources is required to create buildings, produce troops, and research advancements. Similar to other mobile games, much of the gameplay consists of selecting an action and then either waiting a preset amount of time for completion or expediting the task by making a payment.

The title places an emphasis on players joining alliances. The game's chat system uses a Microsoft-based translator, as well as several others, including Google Translate. The translations allow players from all over the world to play together.

And, here's a site (Inside Game of War) with a bunch of tutorials and guides for how to play the game. It's a fun diversion, and free to download to your mobile device and play, but you can easily get sucked into spending a lot of time (and potentially money on their in-game market) researching, training, upgrading, etc. While I was playing, I chatted with several experienced players who actually maintained multiple accounts to help them maximize their production and armies (I didn't get quite that deep into the game, but I could imagine how that would all work).

Whatever that thing is, my interpretation / expansion of the idea, jumping off from what little you've said in the topic:

1) Strongholds gain a new element that allows for recruitment of troops and placement of defensive turrets, shields, etc. This would not be handled as decorations. This would be a brand new system with its own separate placement limits. And the units that you've purchased would be character-specific, not legacy-wide. Each hero must build their own army.

I keep flip-flopping back and forth on whether this should be a "guild vs. guild" type of thing, or an individual thing. I can certainly see benefits and pitfalls in both implementations. As an individual character game, you've pretty much nailed the gist of it.

2) Each character can build their own army and design their own defense. Their defensive arrangement can then be published to a listing. Each character can only have one listing published at a time. When you select to take your army to invade a stronghold you will select from the listing (presumably your own legacy's listings would be excluded) and load into an instance that copies the decorations and defenses that were placed in the stronghold at the time when its owner published the listing.

I like the idea of a listing. Possibly something like the existing stronghold listing terminals. Game of War gives players a map of the "Kingdom" in which the player's city exists (I'm guessing this is their way of identifying servers/shards, although I don't know that for sure). From this map, the player can see all of the surrounding cities and resource nodes to which they can send their army. The map also shows the equivalent of NPC enemies that the player can send their army to attack for rewards.

My original vision was to possibly use a modified galaxy map like in your personal starship, but I absolutely like the idea of listings as well. I think I'd leave this part as a design choice for the developers to make.

3) Idea: Companions as generals in your army. Recruitment based on your generals. (The types of troops they can convince to join your cause would be based on who the companion is. And how quickly / how cheaply they can bring in new recruits could be based on affection / influence with that companion.) This could allow for some "class identity" in the armies that player's assemble.

Yes! I really like this idea. Additionally, the companion selected could have an influence on the army's morale.

4) Listings would secretly keep a record-book of who has tried to invade and whether or not they were capable of breaching the defenses. (If someone comes back and tries again they could update their loss to a win.) Then a scoring system could add points for each unique attacker that has failed. Theoretically this could help to highlight the tougher listings. Players would also see some sort of score that rates the strength of their army and this value should be directly comparable to the scores in the listings. These army ratings would be in the logs too and the difference between attacking army rating and defending army rating would scale how much the listing's score is skewed by that win or loss. Of course, ranking high in the listings is just epeen and doesn't actually reward the owner in any way. And so...

There would definitely need to be some sort of ranking system that factors in all of the stats for a particular character's army, including size and composition of that army (troops, vehicles, defenses, etc.), as well as historical logging of all battles a player has been involved in and their results.

5) The rewards in all of this are earned for invading a stronghold and coming out victorious. But the rewards would have to scale based on your army's rating compared to the listing's rating. If you go in too strong (making up some numbers: if you take a 10k rating offense against an 5k rating defense) there would have to be significant diminishing returns on that. The fight was too easy. You barely win anything for that. You want to pull in some big rewards, try going in with a rating equal to or lower than your target.

Similar to the diminishing amounts of XP you earn as you out-level an area, this is a great way to help fight the griefers. Sure there will still be some of them around that don't care about the rewards as much as they just want to go around breaking things, but we want to discourage players from ROFLSTOMPing players that are brand new to the system, while at the same time encouraging players to build bigger and better armies and continue to research and improve the army's capabilities.

6) When invading, you can choose how many of which of your troops to take in with you. It will show you the rating of this force and the rating of the enemy base so that you can weigh the risks. (And there would be risk. I'd assume that troops lost in an invasion are lost permanently. So if you go in weak hoping for a bigger reward and it proves to be too much for you, you've just burned up all the credits that had been invested in recruiting them.

You sure you haven't seen this game before?

This is pretty much how I would describe what happens in Game of War. When an opposing army comes to attack your city, or vice versa, your troops are injured/killed during the battle while your defenses are being damaged/destroyed. You can repair and heal up if you have time before another attacker swoops in, but anything that has been lost will need to be replaced.

7) Rewards for winning wouldn't just be xp, credits, and whatever comms / lockboxes / etc. they feel like putting in. We could also get troops that join up with us free of charge. (But as noted in the previous points, the gain would scale with how much you challenge yourself. You'd probably be hard pressed to actually gain troops that way. It'd probably just make up for some of your casualties.)

I'd like to see a bunch of new types of rewards for this. I like the idea of free troops/defenses as a potential reward for defeating your opponent. Perhaps this could even be an entry point for the more traditional PvP, so it actually rewards the character with PvP gear that they can use in the other modes.

Anyway, it's getting late and I gotta go to work in the morning. Thank you so much for the feedback! Maybe I can actually start working on a full-fledged outline for this mode, I can just imagine something like this as a great diversion to pass the time if you're bored with the existing content.

October 17, 2015

ME 3 has modes like this. It was a lot of fun,

I'm going to take that as a vote of support! Thanks Mahrdol!

That's actually how I found this thread, lol. I no longer have much time for running operations with my guildies, and I think this would be a great alternative, especially if some of the higher tier rewards include operation gear. Keep up the good work! I can't wait to here some more of your great ideas.

P.S. I love the idea of a Galactic Battlegrounds style mini game.

I could certainly see Flashpoint and Operations gear being a possible reward of this game mode. Of course, it would probably be limited to games played with a team, and that team must make it through more than just a couple of waves. Perhaps this could be an alternative method for characters to gear up for Flashpoints and Operations.

If you like the Galactic Battlegrounds (RTS) mini-game idea, I'd love for you to post your thoughts on my Field Commander suggestion. The outline I put together is really based on HALO Wars because I wanted to "simplify" the concept to make it easier to both implement and play, but Galactic Battlegrounds was my initial inspiration.

October 16, 2015

/signed

Thanks for your support, JacenK! I can't express strongly enough how much it warms my heart to see this thread resurrected.

Of course, I readily admit that this was kinda one of my goals for posting my latest suggestion (Personal/Guild Armies - New Game Mode/Content Suggestion)

Oh yeah, this thread. Seeing this again, with other topics that have come up lately it occurs to me that this idea would be a nice infinitely repeatable PVE objective to slot into conquests alongside the PVP options. (Survive a round = 500 points? Survive a wave = 100 points? Something like that. And then extra objectives can be thought up for whichever weeks could be designated as a focus for onslaught mode.)

It's something for the PVE-oriented players that could be farmed instead of running into use limits like we have with anything tied to a daily/weekly or like anything that uses that horrible "once per legacy" conquest objective limit.

Although I do still think that the correct fix for flashpoints would have been to change the objective to a repeatable "kill any boss in this flashpoint, kills count x2 in hard mode - 0/1 - worth x points" instead of pulling that stupid "once per legacy" nonsense. (They'd set x to something that would add up to about 1000 after running the whole flashpoint in story mode. For example, Battle of Ilum has 5 bosses (6 if you count the bonus boss) so maybe x = 200 points. (On the other hand, I could see that being set to only 100 points if we also had something like onslaught added.))

Thanks for the suggestion, Muljo_Stpho! I think it would be great to add this to the available options for those PvE-centric players that don't do much in the way of Flashpoints and Operations, but would still like to participate in the Conquest system (like myself).

October 16, 2015

You're absolutely right. I guess I kinda assumed that this would be inherent in the idea, but it should definitely be an "opt-in" type of thing. I imagine a terminal in your stronghold/flagship that could be used to toggle your participation on or off. Of course, it would have to have some restrictions that wouldn't allow you to just disable it every time you log off (or whatever). Perhaps there's a 24-hour timer on a status change, with a grace period of something like 10 minutes in case you accidentally toggled yourself on/off and wanted to toggle it back.

October 16, 2015

Okay, so I accidentally posted this whole description over in the Galactic Strongholds section instead of here in the Suggestion Box. I don't like cross-posting, but here's a link to the original post:

Personal Armies - Another New Game Mode Suggestion (sort of)

And, here's the actual content of the post (in a spoiler block):

I haven't been as active playing SWTOR lately due to a number of RL situations and such, but I still really enjoy jumping in-game periodically to check on the state of the galaxy. I'm truly excited by the upcoming changes for KotFE, and can't wait to play my "Outlander". However, as I've posted in a few other threads (see the links in my signature), one thing I still feel could make a substantial impact on the overall "playability" (and player retention) of this game is the addition of new game modes. I've put together some rough but detailed outlines for two such game modes (Onslaught Arenas and Field Commander). The third one (Capture & Command) could probably use some fleshing out, but is another good example of an interesting new game mode I would be excited to see added.

All that being said, I've come up with yet another suggestion to throw on the pile. This one (which I'm calling "Personal Armies" for now) stems from my brief engagement with the mobile game, Game of War: Fire Age. Perhaps it's not as much a "new game mode" as it is an upgrade to some of the existing framework used for Galactic Strongholds and such, but I can envision this as being tremendously engaging for players of just about any skill level.

While I haven't worked through all of the details in my head yet, the general idea is this: Your character is already a "well-respected" member of their faction (or, at the very least, an infamous figure in the galaxy), and has considerable influence. Capitalizing on this influence, your character uses their Galactic Stronghold as a base of operations, and has started building a personal army to defend themselves/solidify their power base. They will recruit/train this military force to increase its size. Additionally, they will be researching new training methods and such to improve the army's effectiveness. On top of this, the character will also be researching and building defenses and fortifications for their Galactic Stronghold to withstand enemy attacks.

Periodically, the character can embark on quests that will provide additional resources to improve their army and/or stronghold. They may also choose to send their army on quests that give them an opportunity to gain combat experience, which may be beneficial in the event of an enemy army attacking.

In addition to quests, the character may choose to invade/attack another character's Galactic Stronghold. The attacking character would send a set number of troops from their army to the other character's stronghold, at which time, whatever army the latter character has encamped there (and whatever defenses the character has built) will attempt to repel the attack. This could happen at any time (including times when the player is offline), so each player/character would want to spend time and credits (and possibly CC) building and bolstering their army and defenses to withstand as much as possible.

One thing I would prefer not to translate from Game of War would be the "speed ups", unless they were severely restricted. There may be ways to reduce the amount of time it takes to accomplish certain tasks, but these would be in the form of "research" that your character can perform to enhance certain areas of production - i.e., you can research Cloning to reduce the amount of time it takes to train new units for the army, or you can research Improved Fabrication to produce defensive structures more quickly. Perhaps you could research Jedi/Sith Archives to improve your ability to research other such upgrades. These research options would be an overall improvement to the specific area of production, and would apply equally to everything produced in that area.

Another thing that doesn't need to come over would be the "hero" concept. My thought is that YOU are the hero of your army. There may be things from that element of the game that could be implemented (such as specific abilities/upgrades to be used by your character in this game mode only), but this idea just doesn't seem to be necessary in SWTOR.

Now, I can already hear some of the arguments against parts of my proposal - most specifically the part where your character's army can be attacked at any time, regardless of whether or not you're logged on. I know that Game of War provides push notifications to your phone, as well as in-game mail notifications to let you know when an attack is incoming. Since SWTOR doesn't currently have a smartphone app that can communicate with the game world, the former option is pretty much out the window unless EA/BW decides to invest time in developing something of that nature (which would be awesome - especially if it had additional features like Crew Skill management, character viewers and such). That leaves us strictly with in-game notifications of some sort. Like I said, I haven't thought through everything yet, but there's got to be a way to make this work.

Some alternate ideas for this "game mode" would be to make it more of a guild thing than a character-centered thing. Also, instead of tying it into the Galactic Strongholds system, there could be planets pretty much devoted to this, or even (in the case of it being a guild-based system) tie it to the guild flagships. In fact, perhaps making it a guild-based system with flagships as the base of operations would actually be a better way to go overall.

Regardless, I'd love to hear any feedback you may have on the idea. As I've stated so many times before, I firmly believe that the addition of new game modes such as this and the others in my signature (if decently executed) would be a tremendous way to reach out to a huge new player-base and get them interested and excited to join the SWTOR community.

For those of you who don't want to follow the link and/or read my wall of text, imagine a SWTOR version of Game of War: Fire Age.

I still have a lot to flesh out in the idea, and I'm processing possible implementation options even as I write this post, but I think this, like the other game mode suggestions linked in my signature, could provide yet another entry point for players who may not normally be interested in SWTOR (or even MMORPG's, for that matter) to become a part of this community (read: potentially increase the revenue stream generated by SWTOR through CC and subscriptions).

One of the ideas that I added at the very end of the above referenced post is something I'm beginning to think is a better implementation than my original concept. That is, make this more of a guild-based system instead of a single-player experience, as is more what I described in the main body of the post.

Regardless, I would appreciate any feedback on the idea. Please feel free to let me know in either this or the original thread.

October 16, 2015

Dangit, I meant to post this in the Suggestion Box forum, not Galactic Strongholds.

Guess I'll have to post a link to this topic over there now.

October 16, 2015