Nice discussion, I would argue that Strongholds is a HUGE succes, and I have empirical evdidence that supports my claim. I can actually prove it. To do so, one needs to observe the GTN. - Decorations command high prices on the GTN. The most common of pack drops - a lowly Kolto Barrel - lists for 18000 credits. World drops even higher. Compare cosmetics for GSF listed at 1 credit. - The prices for purple materials that are needed for crafting prefabs have tripled. Not just for the Trade Emporium conquest, but overall. Alusteel now fetches 5000 credits. Promethium 18000. Madalorian Iron 15000. Per unit.* This wouldn't happen if people didn't want those materials to use. - The prices for crafting missions has doubled. The lowest of Underworld Trading missions now fetches 20000 credits. - Every other single item that came from a Gatekeeper's pack is listed at prices that are -relatively- far too low. My conclusion is that players are actively opening these pack en masse for the decoration roll and discard the rest. *All data for GTN prices sampled from Harbinger and Ebon Hawk servers

A stealth sniper. Shoot them with everything you've got at long range and when they finally come up to where you're at, you just vanish... I would also like to have Death from Above on all my characters, please.

Your GSF experience sounds familiar. But don't forget you are facing off against people who have fully upgraded their ships months ago. If you're being swatted like a fly, that's why. Yeah, that's a design error - new GSF players get put into teams with players whose craft are vastly superior. There's no solution that that but DIE an awful lot, get the requisition anyway, and upgrade yourself. As for Strongholds, you should definitely give that another chance. It's not meant to be unlocked and decorated all at once, nor should it be. Don't let yourself get blinded by players who have accumulated vast fortunes. Even I, sitting comforably at 75 million, won't open up all of Tatooine in one go because yes, it's bloody expensive, and I guard my credits like a Hutt. As for decorations, get your legacy together, and get all the crafting skills working in unison. Crafting REALLY pays off again, as there's a whole pool of decorations (and hopefully soon to expand) that can be bought with the crafted prefabs.

Looking forward to the update, but definitely looking forward to more (any?) info about 3.0 !!

If the last pack launched august 19th, isn't this a week early? I fully expect it next week.

I think it's monday on the whole planet now.

Ahahahaha. Galactic Strongholds/Galactic Conquest is not as much a 'pointless cash-grab' as it is a resounding success.

Ready for patch notes. Eagerly anticipating, in fact.

Consumable one-hour buffs for comms, reputation gain,double mount speed boost, hell even double credit drops would be an awesome addition and a good excuse to *finally* get rid of those ghastly class mission XP, exploration XP and flashpoint XP boosts filling up a cartel pack slot that everybody just deletes anyway.

This is true, but there's one other thing. The stronghold nodes can be gathered by toons not going anywhere. You can only play one toon at once - this is true. But with twenty alts, you CAN log in and set crew skill missions and check GTN auctions and while doing this, it's free mats with every log-in. AND you get to pick your favorite material to boot. When you can scan a single node three, four times in a row...it just ads up. That said, I will concede the pool will get stale, and rapidly so. Therefore I propose to keep the rewards fresh and interesting, Bioware should expand the rewards, as I'm sure they will at one point. I propose new nodes, that actually yield mission mats - underwold metals, cloth, investigation metals, dimplomacy mats, and so forth. No more than 2 to 4 per node, and different nodes for everything, every tier. This should keep the random drop box pool fresh.

I'm all for adding new things to old content. In fact, I'd love to see it done more. There's tons of opportunity to add, for instance, new maps to existing planets with completely randomized spawns. Have players actually look for treasure. Make us explore again.

Some observations: - It is my impression that a lockout will occur quicker if the toon doing the harvesting does NOT have the skill to gather. It's anecdotal at best of course, but as a rule I try to have my toons gather only what they have as a crew skill. - The top number of scans I could do before a lockout has been six in a row so far, all on the same node. - Nodes have an internal cooldown after being gathered of a very short time. This prevents one node being harvested by 22 alts in a row. Having multiples of a certain node is therefore not useless. - I have had slicing nodes yield green and blue lockboxes and I can finally confirm they DO in fact yield gathering missions, just like in the open worlds. My encrypted terminal coughed up a 450 slicing mission yesterday.

SWTOR just made a brilliant marketing strategy: They introduced player housing, and put (of course) some decorations into the now known cartel packs. But they did something new: They added an extra item roll on top of the ones present, AND lowered the price of the pack simultaneously from 360 to 210 CC. Trust me, they made hundreds of thousands of dollars from this pack alone. How do I know this? Aside from the packs themselves and the decorations on the GTN, everything else that dropped from those packs is dirt cheap.

I really need more junk. More crates, more engine parts, more canisters, barrels, droid parts, you name it.

They could easily implement two new classes but they'd have to be force based. The reason I say this is because then, and only then, they could participate in ALL planetary quests already in place without the need for additional dialogue. Jedi and Sith are adressed the same, whether it's the knight or the consular - therefore, let's say we add a 'pet'based class, Beast Master for republic, Beast Lord for empire. Your affinity with animals is force based anyway (already present in the lore, in fact) so everyone would adress you with 'master jedi' or 'my lord' anyhow. Just record the character's voice, make ALL the class companions animals or creatures, and you're set with two brand new classes.

We can basically do away with the whole need/greed system anyway, and simply implement roll/pass. Would save a ton of bickering.

So in summary, in practice, the guild which will: - put in the most time - takes strenuous effort to recruit the most members - is the best organized - develops the best strategy ...will win at conquests. I dunno. Sounds working as intended, to me.

That's...not true at all. I don't know where you got that. Which decorations that can be bought with prefabs overlap with the CM stuff? They're all different.

She's limited to four total but you can in fact place her four times each stronghold, so essentially you have sixteen of her.

I....really don't see the issue here?

Turning off bloom fixed my issues, thanks =)

There appears to have been a rollback. Some decorations I put down were gone and my Makeb storyline mission has been reset

A lot of players actually DO this, but they do it through the GTN. They get a feel for the market, buy some of the cartel items, and put them on the GTN or, alternatively, offer them for sale in game through trade chat. That's perfectly legal, allowed, and encouraged by Bioware. It's also a lot less hassle than what you propose where players place orders of sorts. But anything you work out in game with other players in terms of trade - items for credits - is allowed. It's not possible to actually buy and give cartel coins to someone, unless you do it through gift cards, anyway. And the 'unofficial' conversion rate for cartel coins to credits is 1 CC = 1000 credits.

Was playing with my friend (two computers, one house, same internet connection) and he got booted and placed in a queue for Harbinger while I was able to keep logged. Weird things are afoot.

...and I hate it. I have a specific theme in mind for my Tatooine stronghold (which, incidently, is totally worth unlocking) but because the light ambience of the stronghold is permanently set to 'dusk', it makes any crystals I put down glow. Not just glow. They glow very, very bright as if they're powered lamps. With every single other placable suffering from muted colours with the 'dusk' light, they stand out. Way too much for my tastes. I'd rather see the glow effect tuned down, because they certainly don't do it in Dromund Kaas, nor in Nar Shaddaa, not the most brightest places either.