freeoftime Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 You have all that on the fleet and it is free.. Op, if you spent millions and surely tens of hours, I wont view it as a waste. But, as you said, it has little continuity. fleet also takes years to load and is laggy as heck, at least for me :/ hence why i bothered buying a ship gtn and mailbox back when i started using it extensively and why all my characters are now parked in one of my strongholds. not waiting ages for things to load, a bunch of convenient teleports, both kinds of storages, a mailbox and the gtn in close proximity? unless i need to interact with the vendors or trainers or use the mission terminals, i don't usually bother going to fleet and dealing with those loading times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Code_Airwolf Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 (edited) and on fleet with all that you have Trolls, Gold Sellers Advertising, jerks riding insanely over-sized mounts indoors either parking them on top of your character or what you're trying to interact with; blocking your view of others, especially annoying if you asked someone to meet you on fleet and you're trying to find them... since they'll never disallow mounts on fleet, Strongholds are an infinitely better choice than going to fleet for those same things and having to deal with all the jerks/trolls/RMTs that come with it... Why won't they restrict mounts on Fleet? That's the one thing that annoys me (personally) and I know not everyone will have that same opinion, but that's just mine, for some of the reasons you stated. We have Cantinas in this game around and about, but to me, the Fleet has the feel of an actual Cantina like in the movie, with an actual huge Cantina in the center of it, and I enjoy seeing so many characters and species of characters when I go to the Fleet. That's what makes the Fleet enjoyable to me, I can almost hear the famous Cantina music playing when I arrive at the Fleet. I don't like the mounts, whether zooming around or now huge godzilla sized mounts indoors in the Fleet, which typically wouldn't be allowed inside a place like that. For me personally, it ruins the atmosphere of it. But again that's just me, jmho....... (....sorry I don't mean to help take it off-topic but I wanted to ask in response to your comment in this thread because I've always wondered why that is........I honestly thought I was in the other thread discussing getting rid of the Fleet.....I'm lost, how do you pull up the MAP on the forums?) Edited October 2, 2014 by Code_Airwolf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mireleni Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 I should preface this by saying that I spent a huge amount of time collecting items and decorating my stronghold...in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Yes, a single-player game, where not a single other player or NPC ever set foot inside my stronghold. So while I sometimes wish I were popular enough that I had a bunch of friends who wanted to hang out in my strongholds all the time, I've enjoyed decorating just for me. That said, there are some things they could do to add more life to the strongholds. -Make the jukeboxes work more like the jukeboxes in cantinas: always play music, and when you click on them you can switch the song. When someone walks into that area of my stronghold to see the Twi'leks dancing, they should be greeted with the jukebox music. Otherwise it's Twi'leks dancing to nothing, which is just awkward. Having to click to get the party started just reminds you that there is no ongoing party -Have a "dance floor" decoration, which would be just like the party bomb disco ball with the sparkles on the floor, so anyone who walks onto that area will start dancing. I guess I wouldn't really know, but it seems like it would be easy to do because the party bomb toy already does this. Maybe have no music associated with it, though, so you could choose which jukebox to pair with it. -Non-holo companions would be really great. As holograms, they appear in their default "starter" outfits, anyway, so I don't know why they couldn't be made corporeal. -Increasing the NPC limit would be nice, but they put the limit in place for technical reasons and I think we'll just have to wait on them to decide it can be raised. -This would probably take more work than they would give it due to higher priority issues, but it would be cool if you could choose an action for a companion when placing them. Chair, sleep...maybe even the various dances, for the humanoid companions? At the very least, we know they already have companion animations for standing and working (i.e. what they do when you give them a crew task). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianDavion Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 if you want people to visit your stronghold try inviting them. you don't have random people walking into your house in real life do you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
branmakmuffin Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 if you want people to visit your stronghold try inviting them. you don't have random people walking into your house in real life do you? Well, I wish they would. I am a shameless exhibitionist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaylorNova Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 I share the frustration of pods and mounts in Fleet HQs. These alone probably account for 50% or more of the lag. On the other hand, running around a large station to various vendors and back up to the hangers takes time. Better idea is to ban speeders, and put TP pads outside each classes hanger doors. When Clicked, a menu could arise, with where you want to visit, trainer, commendations, GTM, or crew skills, or Catana. Theres nothing worse than using A GTM, with a an orgre on a great big pod hogging the panel!! Coruscant doesnt allow Mounts within its main building, so high time fleet HQ's were made same but with ways to get around vendors as mentioned above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluejayoo Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Waste of credits? For an unlimited free teleport filled with vendors,GTN, bank etc? Cant say I agree. I agree completely. I seldom ever use fleet anymore. And I like my amazingly awesome stronghold. The Water Garden I made on the patio alone was worth the effort. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirorx Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 This sounds like a neat idea. Some sort of detective storyline, finding clues in different houses. Me likes! Here is what really bothers me in GSH: no bathrooms. I don't know why this annoys me so much, but my strongholds are made like real houses. It's possible (with some fantasy) to make a kitchen and a dining room. But where do my chars go to the loo, where do they take a shower? Sauna? I know it's not part of the SW universe, but still. I would be fine with an unopenable door with a WC sign on it. I could then pretend that there is a proper bathroom behind with a tub and everything. Agreed. I always made a kitchen and bathroom in my SWG houses, it was cool and felt very home like Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirorx Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 7 things that would make Strongholds much better 1. Ability to give it a custom name and status - ie: I could give my Cantina style place a unique name and specify it is RP friendly 2. Optional NPC Hologram or non hologram 3. Allow for tilting of decorations rather than just two sliders, and be able to place NPC's on top of items (Twi'lek dancers on tables without worrying about them being half in the table when you come back next time) 4. Custom Message to be delivered to people as they arrive to visit your stronghold. ie: Welcome to <insert name> take all fights on to the balcony 5. Change color schemes of walls, floors, windows 6. Chairs you can sit in like on the ships, instead of having to walk up and position yourself using a /chair emote 7. Make things like Casino tables, Computer terminals, Science stations etc - interactive Those things alone would leave very little for me to complain about with them. Otherwise I quite enjoy designing and having people visit them. I like all those ideas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonNH Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 I shared the opinion of the thread title before strongholds came out. "All I want is a modification station on my starship", I said. Well, I was very, very wrong and Bioware exceeded my expectations with strongholds. If not for my training dummy on my starship, I would probably have forgotten what the inside of it looks like by now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirorx Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 I shared the opinion of the thread title before strongholds came out. "All I want is a modification station on my starship", I said. Well, I was very, very wrong and Bioware exceeded my expectations with strongholds. If not for my training dummy on my starship, I would probably have forgotten what the inside of it looks like by now. Would like it a lot if they added hooks to our ships now, but I doubt it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Costello Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Personally I haven't got any great game play experience from Strongholds. If a legacy bank had been added to the fleet I don't think I would have even really noticed. Conquest while adding a little more doesn't feel much like conquest. Get a buff get some points get a reward mid week which is basically some crafting mats and some decorations. No feel of armoured boots stepping on the corpses of the fallen. If you hid the UI I don't think you would be able to tell strongholds or conquest existed. I hope I'm the minority but as a major update I would be hard pressed to even notice it. Star Trek Online which most people probably wrote off as dead in the water seems to be far more capable of expansions and building a story, which some what horrifies me but shows what is possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Transcendent Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Waste of credits? For an unlimited free teleport filled with vendors,GTN, bank etc? Cant say I agree. This, and it'll be even better during the rakghoul event No more standing at the gtn listening to someone about to implode Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atma Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 I love my stronghold, even if it is just one room geared up with all the essentials (cargo bay, GTN, mailbox.. all that stuff) but I'll hook it up eventually. It's more a personal thing than anything else, like Animal Crossing or whatever. I'm sure only a handful of other people will ever see mine but I don't care. It's purely for myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZETA_SCORPII Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 I didn't care for Strongholds.......until I started decorating! I hope they add new places to call home! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heat-Wave Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 Strongholds are pretty lifeless, sadly. They are effectivley museums / galleries. There's no interaction wth the furniture or decor (apart from the GTN, mailbox and cargo bays). There's no interaction with companions, alts or NPCs. And there's no minigames or fun features. I said from day one that they were done on the cheap, that no real serious development money went into them. I think people now see that, even if I got a lot of flak at the time for it. Yes, the utility aspect of having a GTN, storage, mailbox, and teleport is all very nice, but a single room does that, the rest is display fluff. What would really have made these nice would be to invite friends over for game night. Honestly, people really do come over in real life for poker night, to real houses... Why not have a Pazzak or Sabac table in your stronghold? Then you actually would get people to come over for a game. But they couldn't even do that much... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heat-Wave Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 Solution = Don't use them. I think Bentleys are pointless wastes of credits that only exist to show off what a w***** you are. So I wouldn't use one even if I had the money. Ahh, you say that now... Try driving one for a day or two... There is a reason they cost so much, and image is only part of it... They are REALLY nice cars... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heat-Wave Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 Waste of credits? Maybe in *your* opinion. I haven't had this much fun in a long time. I love the strongholds...so much so, I wish they'd add more floors to our apartments. We have elevators...it would be easy enough to add more floors, so that the joy of decorating can continue. Decorating actually makes me feel happy to grind money again. If you don't like it, you can always do other things, but I LOVE strongholds. *LOVE* If you like decorating that much, there really are much better games than this for that... Everything from Second Life to The Sims does it much better... Heck, even SWG did it better, 10 years ago... GSH, frankly, sucks from that point of view. It is a nice utility improvement, nothing more or less. The decoration is a minor shell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heat-Wave Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 However, I think that the convenience factor that Strongholds provided to the game easily trumps the disappointment with the design if folks are so inclined. Not only can you place almost all important kiosks and terminals in the game (daily terminals are notably absent unfortunately) you also get Legacy Storage AND a very useful travel point IMO. I tend to agree, which is why I use mine extensively, it is a QoL improvement. The decorations and what is in all the rooms? Meh, couldn't care less, I don't go into any of them. The whole terminal thing is sad, I'm sure the devs wanted to give people a reason to be on fleet, but that isn't it. Exit to fleet, speeder around to the terminals, teleport back to stronghold. I don't even look at chat while on the fleet, it is a waste of loading screens and server time. Just give us terminals for PvP and FP/Ops and be done with it. I have no desire to return to fleet and trying to make me for that isn't going to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heat-Wave Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 And yeah, no matter how much I try, the stronghold will always look lifeless. I'd like to have some guards patrolling, my pets roaming their rooms freely and animated NPCs like personell working at computer terminals. Never mind that the NPC limit would make this all impossible anyway. All in all I wouldn't say it was a total waste of money as the QoL features alone are worth it IMO, but my enthusiasm for decorating has all but vanished now. ^ Good ideas, it would be nice if each alts companions could roam the halls, or perhaps you could assign rooms to each so they have a place to actually live. Imagine coming home to the SH and finding 3 of them on a couch watching a Huttball tournment on the holovid or something... just random stuff like that would be interesting... As it stands, I filled up my strongholds to 100% to get the conquest bonus, the first few rooms on Nar Shadda are actually done up nicely, everything else is filled with trophics, chairs, etc. All 4 are at 100%, it was expensive, but the weekly rewards of several alts hitting conquest is paying it back well. Will I adjust the decorations in the future? Unlikely, if I wanted to do that, I wouldn't play STAR WARS, I'd play The SIMS or something like it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edzew Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 (edited) - I would like to be able to add decorations past 100%. - Raise the NPC limit and add in some new ones. - Re-think holo companions. Holo companions are worse than no companions! - Up the 50 item limit for at least some basic items. (I like to use repetition and 50 junker lights is simply not enough for my Tatooine homestead!) - I'd like the ability to change wall & floor coloring & textures. Lighting too. The lack of visitors doesn't bother me. My memory of SWG housing is not a good one. The towns I visited were always completely empty. None of the houses were decorated. Just storage sheds with a vendor. i agree with your points and the bold ones are the ones that really annoy me the most!! though i really wish they would either get rid of the hooks on the ground and let us place thing wherever we want or give us more damn options!! and the stupid spots they want us to put down rugs bugs the hell out of me!! i want to put down more rugs!!!! and i dont want to put them where you want me to put them! i would also like to place a table in the center of my chairs but cant because there is no hook there B^( this is one of the most limiting MMOs i have ever played and it really drives me crazy as for the SWG comment, what server were you on?? that sounds horrible! or was it post NGE because i remember a lot of houses like that about a year after the NGE hit and every planet was a ghost town B^( but preNGE towns were busy with foot traffic and i never went into a house and it being used as storage, they were usually decorated up, some nice some not so nice he he but it looked like people put an effort into it, and guild halls!!! wow some of the amazing things people did in those were simply breathtaking!! and that was before they gave us all 3 axis rotation!! Edited October 4, 2014 by Edzew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feanar Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 I don't even know what's the point or purpose of strongholds. All I know that those decorations, or whatever they are called sell quite nicely on gtn. I think I purchased one on Corusant, went in there once, put some stuff into it, and never came back. I also visited our guild ship once. Other guildes told me it's nice. But there's GTN there and mailbox, which is kinda useful. So, what exacly do you get from Strongholds? In terms of character progression? Any chance for some extra stats, 180 gear or smtng in them? Or it's weird looking fluff? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edzew Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 Waste of credits? Maybe in *your* opinion. I haven't had this much fun in a long time. I love the strongholds...so much so, I wish they'd add more floors to our apartments. We have elevators...it would be easy enough to add more floors, so that the joy of decorating can continue. Decorating actually makes me feel happy to grind money again. If you don't like it, you can always do other things, but I LOVE strongholds. *LOVE* let me guess..... you work for bioware right??? you are one of the developers right?? people like this are what really scare me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theeko Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 (edited) I got to admit that in any online game decorating is very pointless but its another way to spend your time in game, I really liked it from Swg, I also like Starwars alot, so I like it in Swtor, here's some pics of my houses it can get fun decorating instead of grinding / Opsing all the time. Sure they could've done alot better with the layouts and UI but for now I like how they did it, but in time more improvements I'll wait for. http://imgur.com/a/5jovS#1 Edited October 4, 2014 by Theeko Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deewe Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 I got to admit that in any online game decorating is very pointless but its another way to spend your time in game, I really liked it from Swg, I also like Starwars alot, so I like it in Swtor, here's some pics of my houses it can get fun decorating instead of grinding / Opsing all the time. Sure they could've done alot better with the layouts and UI but for now I like how they did it, but in time more improvements I'll wait for. http://imgur.com/a/5jovS#1 To be fair SWTOR strongholds aren't that bad but only better than Lotro's. Mostly all others MMO do better: SWG, EQII, Rift, Wildstar and so on. UI is better, we have more possibilities, storage is more convenient and it's less of a ripoff, Now I personally find furnishing strongholds bit cumbersome and frustrating. Sad thing is all this could, or should I say, would have been easily fixed with a few tweaking before launch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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