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Orbital Stations Must Die!


Seabrook

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I'd prefer if travel was streamlined.

 

I'm not asking for insta travel everywhere or teleports to my ship or anything like that...just streamline the space travel a bit so there aren't so many unnecessary, repetitive steps.

 

The same airlock, the same orbital station, the same catwalk, the same spaceport, etc all coupled with loading screens are not immersive.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I was just thinking how much I hate orbital stations in this game and I thought I'd google it to see if anyone else felt the same way.

 

Looks like they do!

 

I really could care less if it makes sense for immersion or being true to the SW universe. Lots of things would make the game more true to the universe, but that doesn't mean they'd make the game more fun.

 

It's like the beginning of episode 4. Do you really think it took the droids ten minutes to walk through the desert before being captured by jawas? I'm sure it took a LONG time. However, I'm perfectly happy that they didn't show them shuffling through the sand for five hours before being captured. It'd be more real, but it sure wouldn't be a movie I'd want to see.

 

If it's not fun, it should be improved. Why else do I spend my money and free time on this game every month?

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This is not the first and last thread about is. And I absolutely agree with it.

Orbital Stations are the stupidest obstacle invented by Bioware to make travel more annoying. They need to go, period.

 

And another thing that makes me laugh is that mounts from Warcraft (flying mounts) are 4 times faster than our "speeders" which also fly above the ground (just not in 3d).

110%? I mean... really?

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I was just thinking how much I hate orbital stations in this game and I thought I'd google it to see if anyone else felt the same way.

 

Looks like they do!

 

I really could care less if it makes sense for immersion or being true to the SW universe. Lots of things would make the game more true to the universe, but that doesn't mean they'd make the game more fun.

 

It's like the beginning of episode 4. Do you really think it took the droids ten minutes to walk through the desert before being captured by jawas? I'm sure it took a LONG time. However, I'm perfectly happy that they didn't show them shuffling through the sand for five hours before being captured. It'd be more real, but it sure wouldn't be a movie I'd want to see.

 

If it's not fun, it should be improved. Why else do I spend my money and free time on this game every month?

 

That being said, it's all a minor issue. I don't want to give the impression that I'm hating the game because of this inconvenience.

 

Overall I'm having a fantastic time.

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Is anybody else put out by these orbital stations we have to go through on each planet? I mean really it's just an extra step that needs to go. I have a ship and I should be able to land on the planet.

 

I'm going to assume there was originally some sort of plan to use them -- like maybe you'd be able to land at multiple ports, or there'd be some sort of content which couldn't, for story/lore reasons, be planetside -- but right now, I have no idea what they're there for. I assume the starport hangers are there so that the game can load up planetary graphics while you run from your ship to the elevator, but that still doesn't require the extra step of orbital stations on some worlds. This is doubly the case when all of the facilities (vendors, etc) are planetside, so you can't even argue, "Well, the idea is that Hoth is an unsettled world so the main source of trade and commerce is orbital".

 

The orbital stations, and the hangers, both seem to be stubs for content that has not been created, or, more likely, were part of an initial design that was later abandoned. (You can see hints of this sort of thing in almost all games; in SWTOR, we also have the useless item modification tables, and I've seen some crafting recipes that state, on mouseover "Requires an armortech workbench" or the like, again an obvious reference to an abandoned design concept.)

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For me, the main problem is that it draws people away from the planets, and we wind up with fantastic locations like Coruscant, Nar Shada et al becoming ghost towns.

 

It really is terrible, terrible design, and that's coming from a guy that absolutely loves this game.

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Orbital stations would be cool if we could actually land our own ships. The loading screen sucks but I wouldn't mind the extra time it took if I could fly into the planet and dock my ship! That's just me, I doubt many others would actually want that much of a "time waster". Edited by Paxmendacium
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well. I'll /sign this thread before my subscription runs out. After awhile you start to really hate the airlock and orbital station don't you.

 

I'm the freaking bar'senthor (or however you spell that stupid title). Jedi master with an army at my back and sith bodies at my feet. If I want to land directly on the planet I'm going to land directly on the planet and whatever governor or customs officer or whatever that wants me to land at their stupid orbital station can have a lightsaber up the ***.

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Getting to a planet is like this:

 

Go into space station and take elevator to ship dock

 

Loading Screen

 

Enter Ship

 

Loading Screen

 

Pick Planet from galaxy map and hit travel, watch as your ship jumps into hyperspace and comes out infront of the planet (Pretty cool)

 

Click "Ship Exit"

 

Loading screen

 

Pop out at Planet space port, take elevator to surface

 

Loading Screen

 

PLANET SIDE! FINALLY!!

 

All total, can take up to 15 minutes because of slow loading screens.

 

Garbage is the word I'd use to describe it.

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Ive said it in every thread on this issue, the only reason I think they exist is that the Devs COULD NOT figure out how to get 2 people to zone onto the same ship otherwise.

 

The whole process should be click on ship exit zone onto planet outside of drop ship or elevator in starport.

 

Get rid of airlock, orbital stations and even the hangers on the ground. If we need these damned set pieces for the story then thats the ONLY time we should see them!

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Yes the stations are annoying, but they are there for a reason, I wont get into it being a good or bad reason.

 

Letting us use speeders would be a start.

 

This game has waaaay too much aimless traveling, the process of leveling and questing itself is so fast, everybody would be 50 in a month so they decided to stretch everything out through travel, what better way to slow down leveling that making you run/speeder crawl back and forth across a planet for no real reason, send you off to some distant corner of a low level planet for a filler quest just to slow you down a bit, make sure you cant use your speeder in those spaceports/stations just to slow you down a bit.

 

Thats all it is, a way to keep us from blowing through their content even faster since they forgot that a level grind based MMO that only takes a week to level all the way up in is bad for long term subs.

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Bouncing between stations isn't overly prolonging the leveling experience. If you want to level up, you go to a planet, clear it, and leave.

 

What its preventing though is the ability to go do FP's quickly. want to find an FP?

Have fun with 15m wait before and after going to the fleet. sure you can blow your pass (or use the 1hr one if you have the key) but you still have upwards for 15m to get back to your planet. Its just silly.

 

When you go to board your ship (from the planet) it should give you a drop down.

Orbital station. Ship. Planet listing of all previously visited planets.

 

You wanna go from Voss to Coruscant? Select Coruscant while at the Voss "orbital station" shuttle on the planet.

 

There is *no good reason* for them not to do this. I go to my ship alot anyway to do space missions.. making it take forever to go from planet to planet is just inane.

 

(and this is before getting into the issue of Coruscant space port being the largest, and only one not to be able to QT out of.. and you can't mount in it either. how stupid is that? needs to have a "instant transport' tram in it to zip you to the Senate.. especially for poor troopers who have to go back to the General 40 billion times)

 

Obviously there is going to be some time sink for traveling.. but this is more than accounted for in traveling across the planets themselves. Even with a level 50 speeder and using taxi's and such it still takes a hefty amount of time to coss planets. (check Alderaan. the planet is a circle yet the taxi's link in a semi-circle.. so you have to * go around the whole planet* to travel 200 yards.. assuming that I haven't missed a taxi somewhere).

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Is anybody else put out by these orbital stations we have to go through on each planet? I mean really it's just an extra step that needs to go. I have a ship and I should be able to land on the planet.

 

How do you get each planet. They are only at a very few planets.

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