What is the point of Guild Ships?

[Rizartha]

Beyond the abilities you get for purchasing it for 50 million.

 

Other that decorating is there any game mechanic benefit to unlocking the various decks? All the rooms on each deck?

 

Right now only the largest and most PvP and/or Raid focused guilds can feasibly unlock all the parts of their guild ship.... but even then, why?

 

It's driving my guild to rage, confusion and depression, Project Invicta isn't that big but we managed to get more than enough credits to buy the guild ship but when we learned the real cost... I don't think there were many that didn't flop back in their chairs and cry...

 

We are not big raiders, we are not big pvpers. We play to have fun and..... I think I speak for many in my guild when I say, learning about the costs of fully unlocking a guild ship, really hurt our enjoyment of the game.... we were looking forward to having one, decking it out, using it for an RP hub for both in guild and cross guild RP with out having to deal with the problems of getting everyone in the same instance of the Fleet...

 

Come on Bioware.... please... knowing that there is some kind of point to all this .... well it may not help... but at least it wouldn't hurt so much.

[mudmobile]

The point is what you make of it.

 

I'm sure you have seen that there are many opinions on the GS system. There are people who think its the greatest thing ever and then there are those that think it is the biggest waste of time that could have been put into new content. The only thing the haters like is the Legacy Bank which they are ticked they have to go through the GS to get at it.

 

With your problem, you now have this really cool big space to do with as you want. Put it near a quiet planet and have fun. You don't need to open the other decks right away or even ever at any rate, just do things as you and your guild feel is right for you all.

[Rizartha]

Sorry, but I can't help but feel that you may have missed my point.

 

We didn't want it for parking it over a planet and burning out conquest, we don't like to grind a lot normally.

 

What we wanted to do was deck it out, front to back, and RP in it.

 

But in order to do that we need to do an obscene amount of grinding, much of it that, (as a guild,) we do not enjoy, in order to unlock the sections.

 

We were pumped enough to grind to get the 50 million to buy it but now we feel like we got lured in by the promise of candy only to get punched out and curb stomped.

 

We wanted to have fun... not construct the pyramids of Egypt.

 

And all the work we put in before we fully realized what was going to be called for.... it just sits there now, collecting dust. There's no point in selling it on the GTN, we have the guild strong hold we want decked out just about exactly how we want it..

 

Actually I think this describes the general feeling we now have

 

"Hey kids! You're going to go to Disney Land!"

 

"WE'RE GOING TO DISNEY LAND! OMG! DISNEY LAND!"

 

Then when we get there we are handed and shovel and a hammer and a punch to the gut and told "But you have to build it from scratch first"

[Rizartha]

Eh, I guess I should better explain the question.

 

If there was a benefit beyond just the extra space, say like travel points, access to FPs, Ops, that sort of thing, maybe they could shift the bulk of the cost to that so that the guilds who just want to unlock the areas and deck them out can do so

[Kane_Ren]

I hear ya and understand your thinking. I think it is still early days yet as far as content for GS and SH are concerned. I haven't contributed a couple of mill to a guild yet, simply because I don't see the value for my credit input. Hopefully more stuff gets churned out at a high rate that uses this expansion, and doesn't fall apart like content for space missions and GSF.

I'd say be patient and wait, build up creds as a guild and see what happens. I stated in an earlier thread about early adopters needing everything asap. So keep crafting and selling as a guild - RP it as a 'biding your time' thing.

[Rizartha]

Yeah.... hopefully in 3 patches [the 1 every 3 weeks patches] we will see some changes to the strong holds.....

[Raansu]

There really isn't much point to them. Though my guild uses it as a decent dueling area with a pretty fast loading time. No more Tatooine or DK loading times lol.

[BounceZ]

I actually have to agree. I've started decorating my guild ship only to find that none of the items are interactive! I mean, what's the point? Decorating isn't that much fun to be honest as you're pretty restricted in what you can do and what can be placed where. The items are dissappointing...

 

You got a card table, can't use it! - why not allow players to play 1 vs 1 game?

You got seating area or bed, can't use it! - why not allow players to interact with the item?

Computer screens, can't use it! - use these to access holovids or events?

Ok we got a few resources items, but even then you can only use it minimal times. Whooppe f'ing do!

 

I'm wondering if I should even bother getting my guildies to unlock the other rooms?! Can anyone confirm if it's worth doing? If so, why?

 

In short, another thing that has fallen well short of expectation.

[Draqsko]

We didn't want it for parking it over a planet and burning out conquest, we don't like to grind a lot normally.

 

What we wanted to do was deck it out, front to back, and RP in it.

 

But in order to do that we need to do an obscene amount of grinding, much of it that, (as a guild,) we do not enjoy, in order to unlock the sections.

 

Kill one named commander per week, you'll get enough encryptions and frameworks to unlock a new deck or two rooms on a deck roughly every month on average. The credit cost is 5m per unlock which 5 people can do in one week just doing one oricon daily run per day. That's not much of a grind.

 

As far as decking it out and RPing in it, well guess you just have to RP the fact that the ship is in the fitting out phase of it's deployment. Be glad it isn't like the Queen Mary 2, and has its propulsion system installed prior to launch, and it won't wind up like the Shinano, and get sunk during its fitting out.

 

In short, another thing that has fallen well short of expectation.

 

Guild ships were exactly what Bioware advertised them to be, your expectations were unreasonable for a system that is still essentially in beta testing. If in a year from now, we still don't have any additional variety of NPCs, interactive items, special operations or flashpoints, then you can say they let this one get away on them. But saying that, in what is basically 3 weeks into beta testing, is premature and unreasonable.

[Kulyok]

I think your only chance to get a fully upgraded Guild ship (for RP only) is asking Bioware for it - here and in Suggestions forum. Get a lot of roleplayers together, keep asking, and I'm sure something can be done - a ship that won't be of any use in conquests with reasonable credit cost unlocks, maybe? Makes sense to me.

[BounceZ]

Guild ships were exactly what Bioware advertised them to be, your expectations were unreasonable for a system that is still essentially in beta testing. If in a year from now, we still don't have any additional variety of NPCs, interactive items, special operations or flashpoints, then you can say they let this one get away on them. But saying that, in what is basically 3 weeks into beta testing, is premature and unreasonable.

 

Guild ships have been on the BioWare wall of crazy since 2-3 years BEFORE launch of the game! You telling me, that 5 years later they can't do better than give us a empty ship you can do absolutely nothing with except plonk items down?! Nothing premature and unreasonable about it! It's crap!

[Rawbee]

I agree with the feeling of this post. I am in a small guild and we are collecting for our ship, but what does that mean exactly? More EX? More Credits found?

 

I like having my own Stronghold to pop into and upgrade my weapons in my garage. I can scour the Galactic sales of materials needed for crafting or weapon/armor mods, and have my mailbox next to me for easy access. This makes a great pace of game play where I am Class missoning and I am so loaded up in my back pack that sending my companion on a sale junk mission does not open a slot. So it's time to see if these new drops has a good mod to replace the ones I have. Poof I go to the Stronghold, into my garage and bam my companion and I have new gear and upgrades, I have sold all of my bind on equips in the market and I am now ready to start my Class missioning again.

 

Sounds good when you are a loner and have no friends on SWTOR, but what about my Guildies who I love to be with and meet up for a Heroic +4. Why can't we poof up to the Guild Ship, meet up buff up and equip up for the Heroic and then from the ship poof into the instance with the group. No more, hey I am way over here and I will be there in a minute.... then that minute turns into days... Our guildy that was invited into the +4 is now trying desperately to brave the wilds alone (since everyone else has travel points opened and are waiting patiently for them to show up). Oh no.. poor guy died again trying to get here... endless loop of fail...

 

It would be nice if this could all be cured by spending millions on a ship.

 

Just a thought..

[Cnids]

Honestly, I'm kind of bummed about guild ships. It seems like the most obvious point of them is for RPers to RP on, but Bioware has made it so upgrading ships is next to impossible for RP guilds. PvE guilds will have a way easier time than RP guilds in upgrading their ships, yet will barely use them.

 

My guild's been doing a lot of RP on our ship so far, but we don't have enough hooks to decorate it further, and it's going to be an incredibly long time before we're able to purchase even one upgrade.

[Pietrastor]

One of my biggest biggest complaints about guild ships is the price tags, especially on teleport. Even the officers in my guild are wary about using it cause it could quickly spiral out of control. Why the price tag? For a 50 million grind (not to mention 75 million + framweorks expansion grind) this function should be free so we could offer it to every guild member. 30 minutes cooldown is fine, I imagine it would be performance/server issue if there was no cooldown and everyone would just start travelling with teleports of their guild ships, but the price tag lol?

 

Price tag on travelling between the planets, taxi points and enabling orbital support is nonsense as well. What's the freaking point? To discourage us from actually using the ship? GOOD JOB! Our ship is basically sitting on the same planet for a week or longer.

 

The traveling/planet spawn points/teleport are the only actual functions of the guild ship and you put a prie tag on each every single time? After 50 million grind?

 

Edited September 7, 2014 by Pietrastor

[KennethChen]

Right now the point of having a guild ship is just it, to dump 50 mil or more in a credit sink, and say that our guild is rich as hell, farming conquest points, but that is gonna get old in couple month and transport guildies from anywhere they are at to where they need to be, which is pretty awsome.

 

Aside from that, thats all the guild ship is good for. It sucks balls for the smaller guilds because they cant afford it. Most of the players i know of have a hard time obtaining 1 mil credits throughout legacy, now having to invest 50 mil in a guildship that does only 1 good thing, alot of smaller guilds either grind out credits to do it over the course of 2 to 3 month or simply feels that its not worth the investment.

 

What they SHOULD HAVE for conquest events is allow Guildship vs Guildship battles, where the pub side fights the imp side that combines the space pvp and ground pvp. For example, one objective will be to have (player controlled) fighters escorts a drop ship (containing players) to infiltrate the other side's flagship. Once inside, more objective like sabatage the engineer deck or kill the commander in charge of the other factions guildship. Which is something the both big guilds and smaller guilds can do, and get rewards for it. The ideas are endless, but if there is anything i know about EA/Bioware, is that, they are like the army grunts, if there is something absolutely retarded and stupid they will go out of their way to do that rather than to use their head and do anything intellegent.

[Lexanderion]

The only ones asking or wanting Guild ships and strongholds were RP guilds. PVEers wanted more PVE content, PVPers wanted more PVP content. Roleplayers wanted cool new places to RP and decorate on. Fair enough. RPers have been asking for a guild hang out for many years and this was supposed to be it. While PVEers and PVPers will barely spend any time standing around on a ship since they'd probably be out there actually PVE-ing and PVP-ing.

 

Except actually unlocking extra rooms in the guild ship is a extreme grind only the very large grindy PVE/PVP guilds will be achieving anytime soon. Large PVE/PVP guilds however have really very little use for extra rooms as it is. For smaller PVE/PVP guilds and RP guilds of all sizes it would be very hard to place top 10 in conquest leaderboards or take down a commander, so the solution in that case would be? According to Bioware, to craft or buy flagship encryptions on the GTN...

 

...Except crafting is fundamentally flawed and also doesn't work because it requires extremely expensive materials! In my server a Dark Project MK-1 is going for 450k+ credits on the GTN, while encryptions are being sold on the GTN for about 200k. So there is no way anyone in their right minds would trade a Dark project for a encryption on the vendor if they can trade one DP for TWO using the GTN. And keep in mind this content just released, I believe soon a Dark project will be worth the cost of 3 encryptions on the GTN.

 

Conclusion? The ONLY way smaller guilds or RP-focused communities will ever be unlocking extra rooms will be by purchasing encryptions off the GTN from the big guilds that dominate conquests. Which means this is all but a mechanism being currently used by large rich guilds to become larger and richer, taking credits away from smaller guilds that will have to pay over 100 million credits for every room unlock...

 

Things Bioware could do to improve this:

 

1. Change the Dark Project crafting requirements or change the number of encryptions you gain from a single Dark project by trading it on the vendor. Make it so crafting and trading it on the vendor is worthy it. Example: every DP MK-1 should give 3-5 encryptions. This way smaller guilds can farm EV and other lv. 50 ops knowing every 3 runs will be giving them around 5 encryptions. This would empower crafters, because the item they are able to craft would be more valuable, therefore more expensive.

 

2. More Conquest planets. Every Conquest week should have between 3 and 7 planets up for grabs at least. This means more guilds getting the guild reward, and more encryptions on the market. So buying them off the GTN wouldn't be so expensive. With the way conquests currently are I believe the highest amount of conquest-able planets will be 5. If you have one week once every month or so with lets say 7-8 planets, even smaller guilds would have a chance (a big one at that) to place on the leaderboards, at least on that one particular week. This means throwing a few encryptions every once in a while towards smaller guilds so they won't have to empty their pockets on the GTN every monday. Other weeks could have 3-5 planets normally to raise competition.

 

3- Add a few "final" extra rooms that cost many encriptions and a lot of credits and that give extra benefits for PVE/PVP for very large guilds to work towards (example: a smal buff in SM OPs or in unranked PVP, or a small stat boost (+20 every stat or so) ), while giving a good/reasonable unlock price for the first rooms of the ship so that even smaller guilds are able to have 3-4 rooms unlocked within a few months of gameplay time. This way RP guilds will have more rooms to enjoy (at least the first few basic unlocks), while larger guilds have a long term goal objective to works towards and that gives them what they ACTUALLY want: Pve/Pvp benefits. In short make the unlocks be progressive like they are in the strongholds. First few rooms should be really cheap and easy to get, as we progress the last ones should be harder and take a long time so just "the best" (read largest) guilds get to that point.

 

4- If you're worried people won't play Conquest so much if everyone already has a few rooms unlocked, you should realize people also won't play Conquest if they know they got no winning chance. So the way it is right now I know many guilds simply laughed this out and declared to have no interest in competing. Regardless, you could always increase the other benefits for Guild Rewards. Example: raise the credits reward to 100k, give better and more expensive decorations, etc. Encryptions don't have and shouldn't have to be the only reason why people should play conquests.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Lexanderion

[dscount]

Sorry it's a credit sink everyone and content filler while the new content is till TBD. I'm hearing March 2015 in the rumor mill.

 

I find it absolutely funny that we can't even get an "OPS" Group setup on our guild ship. LOL - wait.. can't convert to an OPS group.. quick everyone off the ship to fleet so I can convert the group. Get out of your strongholds and off your personal ships as well.

 

Sorry.. just seems a tad silly that feature doesn't work on our "GUILD SHIP".

[Nydus]

I dunno, I thought the Guildship was going to be useless but I'm there pretty much every time I log in.

 

The powers that be have arranged the bridge so that everything I need is right there (all cargo bays, mail, a GTN, fabricators, etc.). Theoretically that could be done in my stronghold but the ship is at least the bare minimum of sociable. It is a MMO after all .

 

- Arcada