Is This A Joke? A Bug? Intentional?

[Ceinwyn]

Glad I found this thread before buying the stronghold. No point for me in getting another stronghold if it doesn't help with Conquest. Playing the same FP over and over while

my favourite character betrays me

didn't sound like fun anyway.

[Nmyownworld]

It is intended that we did not raise the Stronghold cap, due to its impact on Conquests.

This really needed to have been made clear before 5.4 dropped. SH decorators like decorating their Strongholds. Conquest participants like getting the SH bonus. Not mentioning the limit on Strongholds remaining 6, not being upped to 7, is exacerbated by players not finding this out until after doing the new FP how ever many times, and a weekly reset.

 

BW lesson still not learned: announce things ahead of time.

The idea of "place chairs in every hook" for your bonus is not a great experience. We would like to allow you to have the Strongholds you want and decorate them the way you want, without negative impact on Conquests. Right now those things are integrally tied together.

As someone far more interested in decorating Strongholds than the Conquest aspect, please stop trying to hide behind my skirt. Not allowing a 7th Stronghold for Conquest has nothing to do with the wants of Stronghold decorators.

 

Non-CM decoration drops were stealth nerfed a while ago, and new Cartel Packs have very, very few decorations dropping from them. The Gatekeeper pack (a good source of decorations) was released last week and removed this week. Saying this situation is at all related to SH decorating concerns comes across to me as being disingenuous.

 

Restricting the availability and variety of decorations made acquiring Strongholds far more appealing to Conquests (basic chair and mailbox that SH to the max!) than to decorators. It was clear since Conquest bonuses were tied to Strongholds that filling it up with basic chairs and mailboxes is all that's needed for the Conquest bonus. Meanwhile, Stronghold decorators saw decoration availability stagnate, stealth nerfed, and in some cases disappear.

 

You want to make Conquest-focused players happy -- remove decorations from the Stronghold Conquest bonus equation. Tie it to having a Stronghold fully unlocked, not how many mailboxes are in the SH. You want to make Stronghold decorators happy, address the decoration availability issue. Not being able to have seven active Strongholds is about some technical whatever, not decorating.

Edited August 30, 2017 by Nmyownworld

[Ylliarus]

I don't particularly care much about the Umbara SH but I will say one thing... this should have been announced way earlier before the patch was released. Players should have been notified of this a while ago and it's sad they weren't made aware of it. I pray Bioware isn't returning to the same old same old. I really want to keep believing Keith is working on better communication between the Devs and the players... but things like this won't solidify the thin layer of trust that's been developed right now.

 

Be open, be transparent, Bioware. We have a right to know things such as this.

Edited August 30, 2017 by Ylliarus

[casirabit]

Hey folks!

 

It is intended that we did not raise the Stronghold cap, due to its impact on Conquests. The idea of "place chairs in every hook" for your bonus is not a great experience. We would like to allow you to have the Strongholds you want and decorate them the way you want, without negative impact on Conquests. Right now those things are integrally tied together.

 

We may increase the Stronghold cap in the future, but first we want to address some of the issues related to Conquests.

 

-eric

 

Eric, what about a cap at 100% on the Conquest and strongholds after that don't count for the conquest. That way you have the conquest with the strongholds but you don't keep adding to it with each stronghold. As it is right now I am going to take my time on getting this one as I have no intention of abandoning my other ones.

 

As far as decorating, you need to do some with the decorations for people to be able to decorate their strongholds correctly. The reason some do this is because of the limited decorations. I refuse to decorate a stronghold with chairs all over the place, I will decorate only when I have something that works but that is getting limited due to the way decorations are handled. Stop putting them in with the armor, put them in their own packs.

Edited August 29, 2017 by casirabit

[casirabit]

Yes they do - they drop in the easy mode versions - did a few yesterday for the weekly for quickness and got loads of decorations drop. I normally do hard mode - decorations don't drop in those.

 

As for "chairs in strongholds" seriously what? You're the ones who put rows and rows of small hooks then limit the amount of companions etc we can use - see Manaan. That leaves chairs or guards. In the Umbara stronghold there are rows and rows of small hooks high up which means lights, signs or trophies. If you gave us more flexibility to arrange the hooks how we want you wouldn't find chairholds/1creditmeatreeholds everywhere. I do the solo conquest objectives for a bit of variety (I only recently worked out what it was about). It's not like the rewards are awesome or anything thought the decoration rewards are handy.

 

Would be better without the hook system. Do the free decorating like we had on SWG and then they wouldn't have to keep messing up on the placement of hooks.

[aerockyul]

Well, looks like I'll spend the tokens on that new mount and forget the new stronghold. Spent too much time and money on the other 6 and I won't be deactivating any of them.

 

Communicating this two weeks ago would have been so simple, and again, you'd have seen far less outrage if you had created the expectation rather than allow yourselves to be buried by unintended expectations AFTER the fact.

[ChunkyGoodness]

Hey folks!

 

It is intended that we did not raise the Stronghold cap, due to its impact on Conquests. The idea of "place chairs in every hook" for your bonus is not a great experience. We would like to allow you to have the Strongholds you want and decorate them the way you want, without negative impact on Conquests. Right now those things are integrally tied together.

 

We may increase the Stronghold cap in the future, but first we want to address some of the issues related to Conquests.

 

-eric

 

So, basically, you waited 2 days, ruined a conquest week, released a bug filled pile of ****, and now are telling us that if we ground out this new ******** fp, we still can't have it without turning off a stronghold that we spent a ton on to get opened completely. Now, if you want to not have "every hook filled with a chair", then may I suggest a cranial rectal removal and tie the bonus to something other than filling all possible hooks? Perhaps make it opening all the areas of the stronghold, but then I guess you'd worry about the thousands of empty spaces.

[Xina_LA]

Yes they do - they drop in the easy mode versions - did a few yesterday for the weekly for quickness and got loads of decorations drop. I normally do hard mode - decorations don't drop in those.

They must have changed something. At first, decos dropped from group missions only, then they dropped from solo only. It's good news if you can get decos again outside of Story (solo) mode.

[DarthScruffy]

The original yellow post is this year's "How else would you progress?".

[DarkSaberMaster]

Haha! EAware strikes again.

[Skallgrimson]

I'd like to express my disappointment. One of the only reasons I've kept my subscription up (and kept buying packs) is because I really enjoy decorating and re-decorating strongholds. I was really looking forward to a new one... and a train! Especially after we just got Mannan. This was great...

 

Now to learn that I'd have to mothball one of the others I spent so much time and millions of credits not to mention hard cash on...

 

Check my payment history... you'll see the ridiculous amount of cartel purchases I make every month...

 

I know I'm not "owed" anything and everyone plays the game their own way etc...

 

still... very disappointing...

[Rankyn]

We may increase the Stronghold cap in the future, but first we want to address some of the issues related to Conquests.

If Conquest is your concern then you just need to put in a hard cap on it.

100% would have been fine but that ship may have already sailed.

 

Beyond that, you need to divorce the Conquest bonus from the number of hooks filled because that's just a silly mechanic to have in place.

If you *MUST* tie the bonus to strongholds, link it to number of rooms unlocked and number of strongholds acquired.

Anybody can fill hooks with garbage.

Don't penalize people who want nicely decorated houses by forcing them to fill them up with junk just to take advantage of a game mechanic.

 

I'm sure somebody in the meeting when all this was being planned out thought it would be a great idea to encourage players to seek out decorations and engage with strongholds.

But, like so many who have come before them, they failed to understand that players will always seek the path of least resistance and no matter how you may envision your glorious utopia of a well decorated galaxy, the truth is that most of them are gonna look like something out of Sanford and Son and be otherwise forgotten just to play the numbers game.

[Cripey]

whatever, canceled my sub, gfy.

[Exly]

Filling strongholds with chairs to get extra conquest points is a time honored tradition in this game.

 

I know that the dev team also has a long standing tradition of making bad decisions that anger subs and make them want to quit the game.

 

If I could choose which of those two traditions needs to go away I would choose their bad decisions, and I would leave it up to us to decide how many strongholds we want to own, and how to decorate them, without any petty interference on their part.

[Krazhez]

Hey folks!

 

It is intended that we did not raise the Stronghold cap, due to its impact on Conquests. The idea of "place chairs in every hook" for your bonus is not a great experience. We would like to allow you to have the Strongholds you want and decorate them the way you want, without negative impact on Conquests. Right now those things are integrally tied together.

 

We may increase the Stronghold cap in the future, but first we want to address some of the issues related to Conquests.

 

-eric

 

Because of conquest?? Conquest has been broken on harb for the longest time. Address the monopoly and the lack of objectives.

A bigger bonus would actually make me do conquest, instead, I don't do it at all. Too much time for small rewards. I can just buy them from other people playing into the system, for cheaper than the time it takes to do conquest most weeks.

 

You guys didn't communicate this to us, the same way you didn't communicate the cap. Why? The least you could have done was put a special vendor in that Stronghold room with something worth buying.

[Slurmez]

 

You guys didn't communicate this to us, the same way you didn't communicate the cap. Why? The least you could have done was put a special vendor in that Stronghold room with something worth buying.

 

Haha, they said the CE store would get things in it, everything goes to cartel coins, you know that, expect to see the stronghold cap increased for 4000 cartel coins soon.....

[IoNonSoEVero]

Not disclosing this particular point before the patch was released - and before people were running this flashpoint in some cases up to ten times to get enough currency for the stronghold - seems incredibly disingenuous, Keith. Especially since the trend with the last two SHs was to increase the cap.

 

Strongholds cost millions and millions of credits, and/or real-world money in Cartel coins, to unlock. They take hours to decorate and as others have mentioned, getting decorations is way more expensive and difficult than it should be. And the response is to simply tell people to deactivate something they've spent so much time, money and energy on?

 

I've seen posts before where they claim the devs don't care about the players at all. This makes me think they're right.

Edited August 30, 2017 by IoNonSoEVero

[DreadtechSavant]

So you people basically imagined that they would increase the SH limit, even though noone ever promised that, and now you are upset because something that was not promised isn't actually there?

Are you serious?

If they give new armor, are you upset you can't wear two armors at once?

If they give new haircut, do you expect having two haircuts merged on your head?

I can't have it all, I have to choose, oh the tragedy, oh how awful life is!

 

It is disappointing to me all the same. It not that you cannot have the seven strongholds. Its more to do with how BW released this. You are correct BW never said we can have all seven, but never said we could not either. First they put a cap on it so players could not have it the first week, which was never mentioned beforehand. Then after a week you find out you cannot have all seven, also not mentioned beforehand. Then BW use the excuse that the reason is conquest! Well if its conquests then why does BW thank that any player like myself who does do conquest would ever consider having this if reports are accurate that you lose the max bonus of 150% to 140%. I am sure some will still have it, I'm just not one of them. If players just want to put chairs in there stronghold, you really think I am going to care about that? I have a small guild and I am never going to get in the top 10 anyway, except on a few servers where theres not 10 guilds on the board anyway. I mean really BW gave us strongholds then ***** about how players decorate them? kind of pathetic.

 

I am not really all that fussed about this stronghold but do fully agree with the complaints about how BW brought this out., with there total lack of transparency. The fun part to me was it was a mobile stronghold, which turned out not to be in any case. A mobile stronghold would actually need to be mobile as in move from location to location. Not just appear to move but never actually move. I really hope BW does a ship of some sort next stronghold, one you can move from planet to planet. If they did, I would be willing to lose one of the strongholds I already have to get that. Which I am not willing to do for this.

Edited August 30, 2017 by DreadtechSavant

[DarthScruffy]

Because of conquest?? Conquest has been broken on harb for the longest time. Address the monopoly and the lack of objectives.

A bigger bonus would actually make me do conquest, instead, I don't do it at all. Too much time for small rewards. I can just buy them from other people playing into the system, for cheaper than the time it takes to do conquest most weeks.

 

You guys didn't communicate this to us, the same way you didn't communicate the cap. Why? The least you could have done was put a special vendor in that Stronghold room with something worth buying.

 

They don't realize that shaking down the "bare minimum" guy/gal isn't the way you fix conquest. Most of the moves they have done make Conquest too queue dependent for the casual goer. Lifting the mission limits, lifting the guild limit and tiering it by guild pop would be another way to break the monopoly. My preferred solution would be to include Harb on a server merge. Regardless of how it's done, any solution to conquest ills does not include making it harder to reach the minimum.

[Hudlar]

As a big fan of Strongholds who only rarely does much with Conquests, I really hope you can disentangle them and raise the Stronghold cap as soon as possible.

[JediTahiri]

Conquest is a joke anyway, especially on The Harbinger. Where Bioware continues to allow BBB to have multiple guilds and cheat and monopolize conquest. Must be staff members in that guild

[DieAlteHexe]

As a big fan of Strongholds who only rarely does much with Conquests, I really hope you can disentangle them and raise the Stronghold cap as soon as possible.

 

^^^^ In agreement.

[DreadtechSavant]

Conquest is a joke anyway, especially on The Harbinger. Where Bioware continues to allow BBB to have multiple guilds and cheat and monopolize conquest. Must be staff members in that guild

 

Which is why I don't and never will play on The Harbinger, well not any more. But really can you prove that cheating is going on? The larger player base the less likely you are to get on the league board. So even if BW remove those guilds there still no guarantee you get on the board. I don't always get on the board on my apparently dead server (according to some) which has far less guilds on.

Edited August 30, 2017 by DreadtechSavant

[dscount]

MONEY - it's all about money.

 

Stronghold Decoration sales must be down on the revenue like Tunings that drove the legacy change that pissed everyone off in 5.3 patch.

 

The slowly removed all the FREE decorations from content and continued to ADD DECO's to CM. Of course Eric is going to complain we just place meat tree's and chairs in every hook. I don't have to open my check book and buy Cartel Market crap with those cheap items.

 

Every patch since 5.0 has sucked. I'm sorry, but you guys are in maintenance mode and don't want to admit it. At least nobody is complaining about the NERFS anymore (Let's hose up the SH's and give them something else to complain about for once).

 

Communication is horrible now - Forums are a giant blow torch because of no communications and NERF's continue with no PVE changes to bosses to compensate for them.

 

Sorry.. SUB is up after CXP bonus week and I think I'm done again for a bit. You guys just can't get your crap together. Eric - Please feed that up the food chain. You got my PM's/Email with my RL contact info if you want direct feedback or consumer input on how to fix this cluster F game.

[Sorrai]

Thanks to everyone for giving their feedback. It's crucial for the Devs to understand our various points of view and how their poor communication and short-sided planning impacts players.

 

I enjoy strongholds and I put a tremendous amount of thought and careful consideration into my layouts. I regard stronghold decorating as an outlet for personal and creative expression within the game and I consider it a welcome addition to SWTOR. I want to see it expanded and further developed, but it is currently stymied by the Conquest system and I think Strongholds should be liberated from Conquest altogether or at the very least follow the recommendation to have its Conquest Bonus based off of number of rooms unlocked rather than number of decorations.

 

The fundamental problem from the very beginning was that the Devs made the mistake of fusing something that is purely tactical with something that is wholly creative. I think this was the wrong approach. Tactical-minded players with no interest in creative expression are the ones who are only interested in the numbers and will therefore fill their SHs with filler in order to reach that 100% as quickly as possible (why these people decide to list their garbage publicly I have no idea). Conversely, creative players who may have little to no interest in Conquest simply enjoy designing, arranging and adding purpose to their strongholds. This is especially true in the RP community, where it is very common for role-players to use their strongholds as customized scenes for their stories to unfold.

 

Let Conquest be Conquest. Let Strongholds be Strongholds, but don't let these two completely different entities continue to step on each other's toes. This is a marriage that should be annulled.

 

Please take appropriate measures to remedy this and please do better next time to maintain communication with your player base.

 

Remember: without us, you do not have a job. Learn from this experience and give us some assurance that you will make things right. I'm not in a major hurry to acquire my choo-choo train and I'm willing to be reasonably patient so long as the Dev team can give us reasonable satisfaction.

Edited August 30, 2017 by Sorrai