I've been posting about this in the Strongholds forum, but I want to make sure every player is aware of the following:

 

The cross-faction setting is 100% broken.

 

The faction toggle for public listing literally does nothing. Only members of your faction can EVER visit a guild stronghold. In theory, for it to show up in the other faction's public listings, a guild member of the opposite faction would need to be online. Obviously the game does not allow this!

 

Invites/keys also don't work cross faction. With a personal stronghold, all you have to do is get on a cross-faction alt and share keys!

 

You can't share keys outside your guild at all. Even players of the same faction can never have offline access to a guild stronghold. Personal strongholds don't have any such restriction.

 

From Dulfy's developer livestream notes: "You cannot name your strongholds, but you can change the owner of the stronghold to one of your characters in your legacy. The exception is Guild Strongholds which you can name it as whatever you want." This feature of naming guild strongholds was repeatedly touted in their promotional videos, and not delivered.

 

Not only can guild strongholds NOT be renamed, they can't even take advantage of the "label" system that personal ones use. This is another feature you pay extra to lose.

 

On top of the broken/missing features, there are some "working as intended" mechanics that are pretty inconvenient.

 

By default, people won't see your guild stronghold in public listings. They need to use a hidden drop-down menu to search guilds instead of personal ones. There's no "both" option. Most people won't realize this, much less take the time to do it, so your chances of getting a visitor are low.

 

Obviously your guild doesn't get access to most of your personal decorations. Some you can "donate" for a big chunk of credits. Others are off-limits entirely, most notably companions. On top of the massively increased unlock prices, you have to pay a ton of credits just for limited access to the same pool of decorations. And if you get a really rare decoration worth a lot of prestige, you are in competition with your own guild for its use.

 

By contrast, setting up a personal stronghold as a shared space for your guild is cheap and easy. You can give keys to your guildmates and to your friends on both factions for free. They can "donate" decorations or funds by mailing/trading them to you. The only disadvantage is that they can't help you place the decorations.

 

If we were allowed to give "gold keys" for personal strongholds, there would be no possible need for guild ones to exist at all. As it stands, they are just an incredibly bad deal.

I've been posting about this in the Strongholds forum, but I want to make sure every player is aware of the following:

 

From Dulfy's developer livestream notes: "You cannot name your strongholds, but you can change the owner of the stronghold to one of your characters in your legacy. The exception is Guild Strongholds which you can name it as whatever you want." This feature of naming guild strongholds was repeatedly touted in their promotional videos, and not delivered.

 

 

This is incorrect. You can name a Guildship and you can also rename it via a CM/GTN purchase.

This is incorrect. You can name a Guildship and you can also rename it via a CM/GTN purchase.

 

Your reading skills are terrible. This is nothing new.

 

He's talking about Guild Strongholds. They're NOT the same.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Darth_Wicked

Your reading skills are terrible. This is nothing new.

 

He's talking about Guild Strongholds. They're NOT the same.

 

I stand corrected then.(something we'll never hear you say)

I was under the impression that these things where one and the same.

 

You're trying too hard...last I checked:rak_03:

Why would a guild stronghold want other guilds much less cross faction to come in and have any rights? Just doesn't make sense. Only the guild and guild members should have access.

Why would a guild stronghold want other guilds much less cross faction to come in and have any rights? Just doesn't make sense. Only the guild and guild members should have access.

 

This is exactly how it should be. why would the republic characters go hang around an imperial guild's stronghold.

It makes sense with flagships and capital worlds. They never said those could be cross-faction and I wouldn't expect them to be.

 

My guild was trying to set up an outlaw hideout on Tatooine for socializing / RP, and there's no reason NOT to let people on both factions hang out there, or even PvP there. It was always our intention for it to be a neutral space. Not least of all for our own alts, because we have guilds on both sides. That's certainly not unique to us.

 

They specifically added a faction toggle for the neutral worlds so you can decide who can visit, and it straight-up doesn't work.

It makes sense with flagships and capital worlds. They never said those could be cross-faction and I wouldn't expect them to be.

 

My guild was trying to set up an outlaw hideout on Tatooine for socializing / RP, and there's no reason NOT to let people on both factions hang out there, or even PvP there. It was always our intention for it to be a neutral space. Not least of all for our own alts, because we have guilds on both sides. That's certainly not unique to us.

 

They specifically added a faction toggle for the neutral worlds so you can decide who can visit, and it straight-up doesn't work.

 

Wouldn't that require cross-faction guilding itself (ie: 1 guild for both Sith and Republic instead of 1 for each)?

Wouldn't that require cross-faction guilding itself (ie: 1 guild for both Sith and Republic instead of 1 for each)?

 

Yeah, that's why it's not working. Personal strongholds don't have that issue because it's easy to gather people from both factions in there.

 

The way they promoted the public listing feature was super misleading because they made it sound like, by flagging it as a "neutral" base, it would show up in listings for both sides. With personal ones, it turns out that where it shows up depends on which character you're on. In the case of guild bases the toggle does nothing at all because, obviously, you can only ever log in characters from one faction.

 

Even if that somehow weren't the case, you can't share keys outside the guild, so there's basically two game mechanics preventing it.

 

It turns out that our plan to make a faction-neutral hangout would have worked fine with a personal stronghold, but because we sprang for the guild version, we completely lost that option.

Yeah, that's why it's not working. Personal strongholds don't have that issue because it's easy to gather people from both factions in there.

 

The way they promoted the public listing feature was super misleading because they made it sound like, by flagging it as a "neutral" base, it would show up in listings for both sides. With personal ones, it turns out that where it shows up depends on which character you're on. In the case of guild bases the toggle does nothing at all because, obviously, you can only ever log in characters from one faction.

 

Even if that somehow weren't the case, you can't share keys outside the guild, so there's basically two game mechanics preventing it.

 

It turns out that our plan to make a faction-neutral hangout would have worked fine with a personal stronghold, but because we sprang for the guild version, we completely lost that option.

 

So, it doesn't work for something that is not in the game yet? Perhaps the mechanic is an indication of intent to bring it into the game, but they haven't yet.

No, I don't think this is a hint that they're going to make cross-faction guilds. I think the cross-faction stronghold listing thing is an idea that didn't pan out because it clashed with other systems, and they just left the broken version in there and didn't bother to tell anyone it didn't work.

 

Maybe it never occurred to them that some people would see it as a huge selling point, and would only find out AFTER paying for it that the feature got removed.

I should add, to head off the argument that we should have known what we were getting into / done our research, that solid information about guild strongholds has been incredibly hard to find. All of the focus of the promotional materials has been on flagships, conquest, and the personal strongholds. I don't think there was ever a page with an official features list or anything. Even the vast font of knowledge that is Dulfy posted scant information about guild strongholds.

 

Official and unofficial sources alike have treated guild strongholds as an afterthought. (Oh, by the way, you can get this...)

 

Basically the only source we had to go on was Bioware's twitch livestreams, and it felt safe to assume that the statements they made there would be accurate. And at the very least, it seemed safe to assume that guild strongholds would offer the same features as personal ones. We got burned on both counts.

 

At least now that we've done some rigorous testing ourselves, we can share these details with the rest of you.

This is exactly how it should be. why would the republic characters go hang around an imperial guild's stronghold.

 

Because there is zero reason my smuggler wouldn't hang out with seedy characters on both sides of the war? Because not everyone is a role player? Because those imperial characters are played by the exact same people that play the republic characters I also hang out with?