Orbital Bases, Traveling, and Load Times

the ship/map option would be a good solution.

I disagree.
Some bases are cramped together as it is.
I'd RATHER have just 1 shuttle, instead of 4 giant doorways to our ships, if it makes it look a little less cluttered.

but you could have me load the planet and be outside the shuttle. seriously.

But I don't want to click the shuttle and be on the ship.
My ship isn't a shuttle.
I want to see my ship when I board my ship!

Might just be me though.
Could the loading screens be less? Probably. Just black out like an elevator.
But I wouldn't change the system they have now.
Just change the Orbital Stations so its just a different "level", rather than the way it is now w/ loading screens.

I agree those extra run from air lock to elevator then from elevator to shuttle are not needed. Its a huge waste of time. I really makes me not want to go anywhere and just sit on the fleet and do my space missions and thats . Maybe some Flash points.

Can't you use your imagination to go oh hey there was a space dock up there and i took a shuttle?

You want to add realism into a game? Why do my space ship blasters make a pew pew noise? Why are there explosion sounds in space? Why cant my lightsaber just cut through everything like in the movies? Why cant I control EXACTLY how my spaceship flies?

Trying to say that adding in the spaceports and all that crap add in realism to the game is stupid.

I would make it so if you want to skip all that stuff IE the space ports and time sinks of the pointless running and travel. The ability to choose if you want to skip it or not. Like an one more click button saying you want to go straight to the planet.

This way those people who wanna waste time on the airlocks and orbital stations can while everyone else just skips that.

I agree that Orbital stations need to be BYPASSED if there isn't a quest stop in them...

From a space port where my ship is, or from the Fleet...
I get on my ship...
Travel to said planet...
I get off my ship - on the planet - by the shuttle.


From a planet with no space port, only a shuttle..
I board the shuttle...
... I get off the shuttle onto my ship..

Orbilal stations and airlocks just need to be bypassed... always... unless as stated there is a quest reason.

The #1 complaint I here from people at work, and they are people who have played multiple MMOs, is how tedious traveling is. One example is a coworker finished the Sith mage's Chapter 1 (or was it legacy?) and when he was done he was so tired of the pointless back and forth and long traveling time for no reason, that he unsubscribed.

This. Ever been to an Army post? I've been to several both in the U.S. and abroad. Amazing how they all look pretty much alike. You come up with a good functional design, you use it over and over again. I could easily accept that tendency with building spaceports. Still, it would be nice for them to throw in a little more variety as far as more NPC's, voice acting (overheard conversations), ambient noise, NPC movement, more droids running around, etc..

As for travel, I don't do it all that much, so it doesn't really bother me. I WOULD like the ability to punch C2N2 in the mouth whenever I board my ship. I would pay a million credits for that ability.

I'm glad you liked the starmap when you access your ship's door idea. But what you are essentially arguing here is also that you don't like the ground based spaceports either. The orbital station is taking its place, but (other than the useless corridor before the elevator that needs to go away), it takes the same amount of time to run from the instance to the exit for both (the exit either being the shuttle for the orbital station or the door to the ground based spaceport).

So are you arguing that we should not have any stations OR spaceports because they waste your time?

I counter that I want some level of realism here, but we can definitely find ways to streamline (my 2 ideas above, and certainly others) without getting rid of the whole thing and making travel less immersive.

My guild had 29 people in it, mostly people from my WoW guild who gave the game a shot after a few of us told them we liked the game. There are now 6 people left that regularly log in and thats it. At least 5 of the quitters told me the traveling was the reason they unsubbed while others mentioned it was one of the reasons they didn't want to play (along with pvp or something else).