Jump to content

Raising the Stronghold cap limit


xmarcusprimex

Recommended Posts

Was all excited to go and get the Alderaan stronghold today, but first the first time ever ran into the stronghold cap limit. I have one duplicate stronghold (Tattooine) from the server merge way back, but I have even with this one duplicate failed to bump into the stronghold limit before. Was the limit not going to be raised with the release of the new stronghold? I want it badly and I am willing to pay money for it, however I am not deactivating one just to get it. (pretty attached to what I have). Any word on this?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It would seem such a logical thing for Bioware to think of in their preplanning stage, but alas, Bioware aren’t known for logical planning.

If it wasn’t mentioned on the pts by a player, they probably didn’t even consider that some people may have maxed out their strong holds with duplicates.

I really hope they can fix this for you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know the limit is at least nine(1), but I thought they said it had been raised all the way to ten (which suggests you have at least two duplicates - how many on the third page if you open your stronghold list?).

 

(1) I have nine open strongholds including Alderaan, which is one of each.

 

He did say he had a duplicate from the merge.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a total of 9. 8 original, and one extra Tattooine. However when I go to purchase Alderaan it says I have to deactivate one to purchase a new one. So I am assuming they forgot to raise the limit. Was it missing from patch notes?

 

It was not missing from patch notes, I'm sorry to say. They simply haven't done it. (Edited: Happy to say my assumption on this was partly wrong, based on a different dev note that that they hadn't changed the cap for guilds. See the post below from Eric for an update.)

 

And it has absolutely been mentioned in the past. I mentioned it vociferously during the PTS feedback for Alderaan, but more importantly I've mentioned it many times outside of even the PTS. I'm not the only one who has, but as someone who has been capped out of any new Strongholds since the merge, and who feels very passionately about this, I've mentioned it a lot. Here are just three threads going back to May of 2018 where I banged this drum (linking them in an effort to remind the devs here that this has hardly been a "new" concern"):

 

From May of 2018

From August of 2018

From May of 2019

 

And it's also mentioned in other threads many times in just regular posts. I bolded it in angry underlined RED in all my posts during the PTS feedback (for both Rishi and Alderaan).

 

Although I still strongly believe that the best option is giving us the ability to purchase additional stronghold unlock slots via the CM and purchase duplicates of specific strongholds we like (for those who didn't get that from the merge but who might want additional stages to play with), at the very least some answer needs to be found for people who are already capped out even without that option.

 

In one of those older threads I suggested just raising the cap to 36, which isn't really a joke suggestion; provided we are still unable to buy duplicates, that means the only people who would be affected by a cap raise to 36 would be people who have inherited strongholds from the merge. The most SHs someone could have from the merge is 35. Raising it to 36 (or 37 now, since I made that suggestion from back before Alderaan) would therefore only affect people already at cap and would as such mean minimal load add to the client/server/game because the most those people could buy (in absence of a more robust system where we can purchase duplicates/unlocks) would be ONE Rishi and ONE Alderaan.

 

As I have stated ad nauseum in all of my earlier posts arguing for a cap raise, the server merge proved the game can absolutely support a single player having up to 35 strongholds. I accept that a hard cap for performance or logistics issues must exist at some point, but the game is already proving that cap is NOT 10.

 

By choosing to not revisit this issue and invest some time in even the simplest of number-changing solutions, the studio is simply locking out a segment of stronghold enthusiasts that is only going to grow in size. I predicted you'd see more people with this problem with the release of Alderaan than you did with the release of Rishi, and this post is an example of that. In the meantime, I myself still don't have Rishi, won't have Alderaan, and unless this changes I'm frankly done with Strongholds altogether.

 

When they server merged, they let people keep their strongholds because they knew that no one would want to lose the decorating work they'd invested in since it can't be easily duplicated and it can't be layout-saved (and because people may have paid for some of that stuff with real money across servers). And yet, they haven't revisited the question of the stronghold cap since BEFORE the merge; it was raised to 10 with Umbara and hasn't been addressed since. It NEEDS to be addressed.

 

Editing to add that this is where we stand on SH count:

 

1. Coruscant

2. Dromund Kaas

3. Nar Shaddaa

4. Tatooine

5. Yavin 4

6. Manaan

7. Umbara Train

8. Rishi

9. Alderaan

 

All it would take is for someone to have two duplicates to now be locked out.

 

If they intend to keep releasing strongholds, an answer is required for the next go around. If they just choose to ignore this and WAIT until next year (after already ignoring it for two years), then they are making the choice to simply kill off all the money and goodwill and player retention they could have cultivated in the meantime from stronghold enthusiasts who want to play with the shiny new while it's new and who would want to buy all those new deco bundles to fill their new SHs with. It's agonizingly short sighted.

Edited by JediBoadicea
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Dev Post

Hey all,

 

Although it wasn't captured in the patch notes, we did raise the Stronghold Cap in 6.1 to 15 so that we could account for not only the addition of Alderaan but also have some buffer for duplicates.

 

I will raise this to the team for investigation.

 

-eric

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey all,

 

Although it wasn't captured in the patch notes, we did raise the Stronghold Cap in 6.1 to 15 so that we could account for not only the addition of Alderaan but also have some buffer for duplicates.

 

I will raise this to the team for investigation.

 

-eric

 

This is encouraging, thank you so much for taking the time to dev post on this, I can't tell you what a difference it makes to get even a kernel and not feel like one is being ignored.

 

And I don't mean to sound at all ungrateful, but if you could raise it to 15, is there any reason you can't just raise it to 20?

 

As I mentioned above I'd say just raise it to 37, since in either case you're still only affecting the people who are currently at cap which means the most any of those people could add would be a 2 count (Rishi and Alderaan).

 

But if that's just simply not possible, then at least a 20 count would allow me to keep most of my already fully decorated strongholds. At a cap of 15, even discarding the SHs I use as on-demand craftable stages for RP purposes (although I'd be very sad to see those go, as an RP organizer), I'd have to still also delete about three-to-four fully/permanently decorated SHs. A cap of 15 doesn't do me much good. Whereas a cap of 20 would force me to thresh out the truly unneeded but let me keep most of what I've invested time and money into. :( I hope you'll consider it!

Edited by JediBoadicea
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey all,

 

Although it wasn't captured in the patch notes, we did raise the Stronghold Cap in 6.1 to 15 so that we could account for not only the addition of Alderaan but also have some buffer for duplicates.

 

I will raise this to the team for investigation.

 

-eric

 

When will you raise the guild stronghold limit? pretty please? I send the devs some homemade brownies if you can do this. (Yes a bribe lol)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey all,

 

Although it wasn't captured in the patch notes, we did raise the Stronghold Cap in 6.1 to 15 so that we could account for not only the addition of Alderaan but also have some buffer for duplicates.

 

I will raise this to the team for investigation.

 

-eric

 

 

Eric,

 

This issue has been an enormous source of frustration for me ever since Rishi was released and I discovered I could not unlock that stronghold without deleting several strongholds in order to meet the current cap limitations. I presently have 18 strongholds that were grandfathered in from the big server merge. Because the current stronghold cap is at a measly 10, that would mean I would have to delete 10 of those stronghold in order to make room for both Rishi and now Alderaan.

 

Some people out there don't understand why players would "need" multiple copies of strongholds and it is apparent to me that the Dev team seems to have a really hard time understanding why many players want this. If this is true, is it really that much of a mystery? Having an extra copy of a stronghold is like having an extra canvas for an artist to create a new painting. The server merge has PROVEN that it is possible for players to possess multiple copies of strongholds so why hasn't this been made a feature of the game? Many of us regard stronghold decorating as a fun and creative activity and would like multiple copies so we can decorate them in several ways. It's a simple concept to understand yet this issue has been ignored over and over again and it makes me incredibly angry and frustrated that we have not had ANY communication or dialogue of any kind about stronghold QoL despite PAGES AND PAGES of vital, constructive feedback from the community.

 

I would really love to unlock Rishi and Alderaan, but why should I be forced to sacrifice my current stronghold collection in order to do so? If the server merge created some disparity in fairness and equality for all players because too many weren't savvy enough to capitalize on the benefits of the server merge then why don't you simply allow multiple SH copies to be made available for purchase on the Cartel Market so ALL players can have the choice of how many additional copies they need.

 

Something needs to be done. Everything I have stated in this post has been stated by several others and met with absolute silence from the Devs and it absolutely sucks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you for the increase!

 

Is there any chance we'll be able to purchase duplicate strongholds?

Many people benefited from the ability to own two strongholds on the same planet during the server merge.

Why not extend this benefit to everyone?

Edited by Xina_LA
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey all,

 

Although it wasn't captured in the patch notes, we did raise the Stronghold Cap in 6.1 to 15 so that we could account for not only the addition of Alderaan but also have some buffer for duplicates.

 

I will raise this to the team for investigation.

 

-eric

 

 

wish I had known that before i deleted a few duplicate strongholds but never mind. So if the new limit is 15 can we all speculate what the next one will be just to pass the time away.

 

Still would like a real movable one like a starship clearly not on the scale of guild ships but one we can move around planets. If that is just not feasible then hope the next one is on Odessen so we have a room in our own Alliance base. Having real lag issues on Dantoonie, Onderon and Mak-Sha so until that improves not there at least for now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is there any chance we'll be able to purchase duplicate strongholds?

Many people benefited from the ability to own two strongholds on the same planet during the server merge.

Why not extend this benefit to everyone?

 

Agreed one thousand percent.

 

Any update on the fix to the cap?

 

Also, if 15 was an arbitrarily chosen number, I implore you to "arbitrarily" just choose one that's higher. I've mentioned 37, but 30, 25, 20, any number that is just as high as you can make it.

 

Until/unless you give us the option to buy duplicates, you could currently set the cap at a theoretical 1000 and still the most anyone is going to be able to increase their SH count by is 1 (or 2, in the case of those of us who've been capped out since before Rishi).

 

It's preferable to concretely determine the actual hard cap and set it at that, and also to let us buy duplicates, but if right now we're just looking at something interim, what's the harm of 20 or 30 for a cap instead of 15?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey all,

 

Although it wasn't captured in the patch notes, we did raise the Stronghold Cap in 6.1 to 15 so that we could account for not only the addition of Alderaan but also have some buffer for duplicates.

 

I will raise this to the team for investigation.

 

-eric

Are those duplicates only for old inherited SHs, or should we be able to buy additional SHs, after already owning all of them once? Just tried it and it doesn't work. :cool:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Daniel and Natha! Has there been any movement on Eric's response about the cap? (See below.)

 

Hey all,

 

Although it wasn't captured in the patch notes, we did raise the Stronghold Cap in 6.1 to 15 so that we could account for not only the addition of Alderaan but also have some buffer for duplicates.

 

I will raise this to the team for investigation.

 

-eric

 

Also quoting myself now, because please please please convey this to the team when the update is made:

 

Also, if 15 was an arbitrarily chosen number, I implore you to "arbitrarily" just choose one that's higher. I've mentioned 37, but 30, 25, 20, any number that is just as high as you can make it.

 

Until/unless you give us the option to buy duplicates, you could currently set the cap at a theoretical 1000 and still the most anyone is going to be able to increase their SH count by is 1 (or 2, in the case of those of us who've been capped out since before Rishi).

 

It's preferable to concretely determine the actual hard cap and set it at that, and also to let us buy duplicates, but if right now we're just looking at something interim, what's the harm of 20 or 30 for a cap instead of 15?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Has there been any more communication from the Devs on this issue? I am in the same boat with the OP and it has been incredibly frustrating not being able to unlock Rishi or Alderaan because the server merge put me over the cap. I am incredibly frustrated we have not heard more from the Devs about this. The utter lack of any substantial communication regarding stronghold caps and other stronghold-related issues has became a major point of contention for me. I just want to know: what makes doing something like raising the SH cap so difficult? Would doing so present some kind of coding nightmare that would break the game? How about doubling the X and Y axes from 20 to 40 or even higher so we have more freedom to position decos where we want them? I remember when Strongholds first went live that the original X/Y axis maxed out at 10, which was awful and frustrating. Some point later the Devs quietly increased that limit from 10 to 20 in a later patch. It was never even mentioned in the patch notes. They just did it and it didn't seem to cause any problems, so why haven't they gone further to improve Stronghold QoL and allow players to purchase whatever Strongholds they want extra copies of or substantial increase the slider values of the X/Y axes?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
Hey all,

 

Although it wasn't captured in the patch notes, we did raise the Stronghold Cap in 6.1 to 15 so that we could account for not only the addition of Alderaan but also have some buffer for duplicates.

 

I will raise this to the team for investigation.

 

-eric

 

It's been over two months since this issue was acknowledged as a bug. Can we please have an update on resolution? Stronghold and Decorations bugs have now become especially notorious for never being addressed, no matter how much follow-up (and sometimes forewarning) is done or given. Some of us have been warning about the limitations of the stronghold cap for years now, please don't let this continue to linger totally unaddressed. I find less and less reason to be playing the game at all these days, and this totally needless cap on strongholds is a serious part of that.

 

Also quoting myself yet again, because it is actually very significant to players who are impacted by the cap:

 

Also, if 15 was an arbitrarily chosen number, I implore you to "arbitrarily" just choose one that's higher. I've mentioned 37, but 30, 25, 20, any number that is just as high as you can make it.

 

Until/unless you give us the option to buy duplicates, you could currently set the cap at a theoretical 1000 and still the most anyone is going to be able to increase their SH count by is 1 (or 2, in the case of those of us who've been capped out since before Rishi).

 

It's preferable to concretely determine the actual hard cap and set it at that, and also to let us buy duplicates, but if right now we're just looking at something interim, what's the harm of 20 or 30 for a cap instead of 15?

Edited by JediBoadicea
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

So is this just never going to be addressed then? :(

 

To any dev team member reading this, please look at my post right above this one, where I quote Eric's original response, and also add a plea about not limiting an arbitrarily chosen number to 15.

 

Strongholds still need absolutely fundamental attention, as described in this thread and countless others. At the very least it would be nice to not keep getting radio silence. I know working on a dev team isn't easy, but it's oversights like this which drive otherwise loyal players to frustration for no good reason. A little communication goes a long way.

 

We all know that cosmetics are where money is made in these games. We know that decos and decorating also make money, or they wouldn't keep releasing new decos. It is therefore incomprehensible to me why repeated suggestions for making more Strongholds available to people just go ignored - in this case specifically via just allowing people to buy duplicates (charge us slot unlocks just like we do for characters) and increasing the stronghold cap.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, whatever became of this "investigation" that Musco promised to bring to the Dev's attention? Ever since my strongholds were grandfathered together from the last big server merge I have been unable to unlock and enjoy ANY of the newer strongholds like Rishi and Alderaan without sacrificing a staggering and unreasonable number of my current SH copies in order to be under this abysmally lame 10-cap limit. I have invested hundreds of millions of in-game credits and a small fortune of real money purchasing CM deco packs over the years. I have poured countless hours of time and energy grinding the game to build up my deco collection.

 

What makes me incredibly disappointed and demoralized is how the Devs have totally IGNORED this issue for YEARS. We are long overdue for an explanation as to why the Devs have refused to acknowledge this issue and take steps to resolve it in a fair and timely manner.

 

It has been well over a year since SWTOR reported a major upgrade and optimization of its game engine. It was touted for vastly improving the game's performance. If this is indeed true then Why do the Devs continue to ignore EVERYTHING that has to do with improving Stronghold Quality of Life?

 

Dev team, you must understand there is a major problem that many players like me have been mired in for an unreasonably long time now. The server merge gifted us with extra copies of strongholds. Many of us want to hold on to these because it gives us more versatility and freedom to decorate. However, the current stronghold cap makes it impossible for us to keep these extra copies or unlock any new strongholds all because of this crippling and arbitrarily low stronghold cap. Does calling it arbitrary sound unfair? Is there a technical explanation you can offer as to why this cap can not be raised substantially higher? Is there a technical reason that is keeping you from allowing players to purchase additional copies of their favorite strongholds so they can decorate them to their satisfaction? If so, then simply TELL US! Please give us an explanation why these requests from the SH community have been repeatedly ignored for years now. Not months. Years.

 

From a player's point of view it makes zero sense because the server merge proved that players can indeed own multiple copies of strongholds and not break the game. Being on the receiving end of this continued neglect has been an incredibly frustrating and demoralizing experience. Please make this issue a priority and bring this to a satisfactory resolution. It is long overdue. If you can not, then please have the decency and consideration to offer us an honest explanation.

 

 

1) Raise the stronghold cap to the highest level the game engine can possibly allow.

 

2) Allow players the QoL improvement of purchasing additional copies of however many strongholds they desire.

 

3) Allow guilds to unlock more than one stronghold.

 

4) Stop ignoring these issues and PLEASE communicate with us!

Edited by Sorrai
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Dev team!!!! By pure happenstance today I tried a vain hope check on a server where I had fewer Strongholds unlocked to see if by chance the cap had been raised... and it looks like it has been!!

 

First off, before questions and gripes - thank you!!!!

 

But guys, come on, where is your communication??? How are you going to alert people to take advantage of this if you don't tell anyone it's been done! I didn't see it in any patch notes, and no one even mentioned that it had finally been done here on the forums. Stealth changes are going to get you very poor return metrics, especially when they've been made so many months after the subject (in this case, the release of a new stronghold) has fallen out of focus and most people wouldn't be revisiting what they believed to still be a dead end. You've got to tell us about these things!!

 

And now my question - without communication, there's no way to know what you raised the cap to. I know it's more than 10 but less than 22, because on my alt server I was able to unlock one as a 12th SH but on my main one I'm capped at 21. So the real question is what this means for my main server and how many strongholds I would have to deactivate if I wanted a new one. There's no way I'm deactivating anything to take advantage of this until I know for sure the parameters I'm dealing with to determine if it's a worthwhile exchange.

 

While you're at it, it would be appreciated if someone could please let us know if this new cap has been determined to be the technical limitations hard cap such that we'll never get any higher, or if it might be revisited again in future. If it's the latter, I would urge you to revisit it right away, just make the number higher right now, even an increase to 20 over 15 (if it is 15 you raised it to) would be ample! We absolutely know for a fact after the merge that the game can handle us having up to 35; my personal 21 load with zero issues. No one likes losing stuff unnecessarily, and if I deactivate SHs I'm betting there's very little chance I'll ever be able to get them back again, so I'd rather not do that if it isn't absolutely necessary, and not because someone with the ability to type two new digits into the code is taking a "let's worry about that later" approach. :(

 

(Looks like we still can't buy duplicate copies of strongholds, alas. Please do keep that in mind, it's been asked for many times by many players.)

Edited by JediBoadicea
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does anyone else out there have any additional information to offer about this apparent stealth raising of the SH cap? Why the hell wasn't this even mentioned in any of the patch notes?! Who is the person in charge of communication that failed to relay this important information to us?!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...