@ Palledorous, your first post:
- You say that the PoE Stronghold was good because it was a money sink?
I have the feeling that money sink was the only purpose of the PoE stronghold, but that did not make it good in any way. In all big RPGs I ended up with tons of money at the end, if they had a dedicated money sink or not. Creating an obvious money sink just for the sake of having a money sink is junk. I still believe that the stronghold was the worst part of PoE. But I think that PoE is a good game in general and it had much improvements to the IE games. The biggest problem of PoE is bugsidian.
- Acording to your list, I am a hero/antihero. I build my chars to be effective in the game world and I exploit dump enemy AI or some game mechanics. But I do not use bugs, cheats, mods or console commands.
- I agree with what you say about making strongholds interesting. But it requires lots of time and money. There are only limited resources and the game must be finished at some point.
- About your second post:
I think that stronghold must be implemented well into the game world and your story.
Either you make an interesting and very interactive stronghold that is important to the main story and fits to your char (NWN2 is the best example I have) or you do not make a stronghold and put your resources into a bigger and more interesting world. Creating something that is hardly related to the main story, does not give a good reward and is only a money sink (like PoE) is exactly the reason why many people hate strongholds.
summary: Make it interesting and important or let it be.
PS: Palledorous you are better in creating walls of text than I am.
I need to practice more.
Prof. Dr. Dr. Mad S. Tist 
