Orbital Bases, Traveling, and Load Times

You should be able to port back to your ship, any time, with no cooldown.

It isn't exploitable because its just back to your ship. All this would do is speed up having to run to the hangar and load to the orbital station and run through the orbital station.

You'd still have to travel to where you're going, so everything would "feel" right still, it'd just speed things up a lot.

Heck, I'd really like the ability to just pick a planet, from any planet, and teleport right to the other planet's hangar. Maybe you can only do it for planets that you've already been to, maybe you have to have a party member on that planet. But loading back to your ship EVERY time you change a zone is insane.


Why this is a problem:

If somebody in my guild asks for help, normally I'd be happy to. Run over there, help them with whatever quest they're working on.

However, in TOR, if somebody asks for help, I go "SURE... wait. What planet are you on?" And then when I find out they're on another planet and I realize I'll have to load 10 times to get to them and 10 times to get back to my own quests, "sorry pal".

This is going to kill the MMO aspect, the multiplayer which drives these kinds of games. The whole point is we're supposed to get online and everybody is there, in the same world. In WoW, players would only be a flight path or at most a portal away. I actually *like* that different zones are different planets in this game, it allows for more variety, and it gives you that starwars epic interplanetary feel. But it really disconnects the world.

Its practically a single-player game right now, with Warzones and Flashpoints as the multiplayer "mode".

I'm exaggerating, but still. This is a HUGE problem for sociability.

Something needs to be done. I honestly dread the whole process of going from the surface of one planet to a space station to my ship to another space station to a planet. I CAN live with it if it's just solo play but the real thorn in my side is group play. If I'm on one planet with an orbital station and my friend is on another planet with an orbital station.... ugh. It's not like you can click a flight master and say "in flight, afk". You have to do all the steps manually. I'm ok with that but the time in between is dreadful.

I say scrap orbital stations or keep them but make them an option (should anyone sadistic wish to board one)

Also, for group play here's a nice idea. Make an ability called rendezvous or something. When you use it, it essentially ports you to the planet of your choice, directly into the space port. Give it a 2 or so hour cooldown, heck even a 24 hour cooldown.

Just something that you can use as an ace to say "be there in a jiff!" as opposed to "I'll be there when I get there...."

Does it count when my companion returns from a mission while I am doing a space missions and they fly outside my ship like Superman?

Haha.
I wondered about that.

Every MMO I have played over the years including EQ1 via PoP has made great strides to make traveling quicker and more efficient.

This game seems like they ignored that trend and went back to making travel more tedious than it has to be.

Get rid of orbitals and let us fast travel directly to our ships would be two easy additions without really taking away any immersion.

Yeah I've learned to laugh about how bad travel is. A great example would the taxis on Drummond Kaas (sp?), do they really need to have 2 sets of them? Can't I get from where I am "outside" to my quest giving areas up top using only one? compounded by quests that make you run around for no real reason. Like the Sith mage's quest series after you kill robosith, why didn't you just leave the mentor in her room? Why move her to the cantina, only to have me go all the way back to where I just killed robosith, which was in the same area as where mentor twit was before now...

I know neither are game breaking, but stuff like this is littered all over the game. There are better time sinks if you want me to keep paying per month.

I don't understand why people are talking about Shuttles?

If I am on my Ship, stationed at the Fleet. I access my map and choose a planet. I go to my ship door, and it takes my ship down to the planet, and I get off in the planet hanger.

Cheers.

The planets w/ an orbital station.
You have to leave your ship, to a shuttle, and take shuttle to planet.

People were talking about boarding the shuttle, and going straight to ship, instead of the station to pick up your ship.

This.

they didn't ignore the trend. these are obstacles meant to take up your time and they are there for a reason; to slow you down because if travel was like any other game, you'd realize just how little stuff there actually is in this game.