This has been proven wrong by the past. During 4.0, we could gear 10-20 toons in BiS for PVP in a matter of a month maybe less, I know I did at least. Guess what? PVP flourished during this time, because the gearing system was so seamless and fluid with the game.

 

They had vendors that sold all mods, all pieces of gears you could want with WZ comms and this made you want to PVP more because you could run so many different specs and gear the same specs differently if you wanted. It was fun.

 

I had multiple DPS sorcs then, for instance I had one in tons of alacrity mods and gear just for fun while another was all critical hit gears, just for fun. This isn't possible now. I also played countless toons and was non-stop PVPing back then, because I wasn't playing partially geared/gimpy toons and constantly focusing on grinding gears so I wasn't gimped.

 

This idea that gear grind encourages people to play more particularly PVPers is a fallacy. The only players that want a steep gear grind for PVP would be someone that wants to hold an advantage over other PVPers due to a gear gap, and contrary to what many like to say about PVPers the majority of PVPers enjoy a level playing field for both themselves and others.

 

In PVP, better gear means your PVP experience will be fulfilling and fun. Gear simply enables you to experience game content more fully. PVP is game content. The matches are a PVPers content. No one enjoys spending tons of time just trying to reach a point where their toons are not cannon fodder in a WZ.

Exactly this.

Pvp gearing was also at its pinnacle around 4.2 when they introduced tokens to buy and move around Comms instead of using legacy gear to move items. It was one of the best QOL changes pvpers had had in years.

You could gear to ranked as soon as you hit lvl 65 if you played lowbies as you lvld. You only needed to do your dailies and weeklies to get enough to get the gear.

If you didn’t pvp at all till lvl 65, you could still get a full set of 204 gear in a week and 208 ranked set in another week. Half a week after that you would have BiS with buying mods and enhancements.

If you were a prolific Alt player like me, you always had spare Comms and could gear every character instantly at lvl 65.

I don’t play to grind gear. I play pvp to have fun fighting other people and beating them fair and square. I don’t want to win because my gear is better and I certainly don’t want to lose because they have better gear. It’s is extremely frustrating knowing you would have won if you both had the same gear. That is not fun or enjoyable for me and I know it’s not for a vast majority of the pvpers who left over the changes to the pvp gearing,

This new system will be even worse. I’m only just getting close to gearing my first Alt to 248 after 2 years of this grinding crap. The last thing I want is more grind and an even bigger gear discrepancy in pvp.

I’m really at my last tether with this game, I give these guys so many chances and they continue to **** us at every turn.

They won’t fix the desync, that make stupid class changes and dumb mechanics at the last minute that aren’t tested on the pts. They don’t listen to evidence based or constructive feed back from the player base who know more than they do about playing the game and what’s fun and what’s not.

I’ve got my own problems just trying to get the damn game to work properly without ping spikes at the moment. Making the game more grindy for me or less fun will probable put the nail in the coffin.

From what I can tell, it will be the same for a big chunk of players. The swtor Devs need to wake up or they will have no players and no game to work on.

Anyone else see this thread in the pts section

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9659004#post9659004

I purchased Experimental Main Hand & Off Hand from the Vendor pulled the Mods ect from the item to put in Legacy Main Hand & Off Hand and noticed that the Mods, Barrell and Enhancements where tied to the original Item Slot. I.e I could not put the MH Mod in the OH Mod slot or move it to my legs it would only go into the Main Hand.

Please do not make the Mods and Enhancements bound to original Item Slot.

If this is intentional and not a bug, then the grind will be even longer than what we think.

That will be good bye game for me and I’m sure a large majority of players, especially those will lots of Alts.

Gear in MMOs is needed as a carrot. If you don't have that then you need something else and it needs to be significant. Without the carrot people will go from q'ing every day for hours to q'ing a couple times a week maybe. - mathematically that means far fewer people in Qs at any given time. GW2 has gearless PvP with x-server even and a larger population than this game but their PvP is not remotely in a good place compared to SWTOR. It's too late for cosmetic rewards or progressions here - those won't keep people playing. Maybe if people could PvP for cartel coins? Then BW loses revenue.

We've seen 2 solid examples of gear based carrots affecting PvP participation in this game:

1) Ranked PvP got off of life support in 5.0 because of galactic command - it was suddenly a good way to get gear (and later components for augments) and proof - qs started working again, even on dying servers. You can look at # of games played on the leader board stats - there was a huge bump in activity in 5.0. Even though the rest of the game took a hit eventually, 5.0 was good for ranked.

2) Lowbies and mids went from busy to dead when players lost the ability to stockpile PvP comms like they were cheerfully doing in 4.0. Even tho 4.0's gearing was easy and quick, even if you min-max, there were always alts to gear up. And the assumption for most of 4.0 was that we'd be able to use those comms to jump into 5.0 fully geared right out of the gate; that is how every other expansion worked (although the other ones had much lower comm caps and required tricks to get fully geared). The comms were something to grind for by a significant number of pvpers.

I could write many hundreds of paragraphs on this subject - I could spell out clues from almost every expac and cite other games and experiments in other games. I am very (90+%) sure that PvP dies if it becomes gearless now in this particular game. This is not a moba, it isn't an FPS, it is not a 3rd gen mmo. There are plenty of things BW can and should fix with its PvP system, but removing gear is not worth the risk for too little reward.

Gear in MMOs is needed as a carrot.

248 has been at the top of the gear tree for a year and a half now without any new "carrots".

People have been playing regardless.

Gear as a carrot isn't needed.

248 has been at the top of the gear tree for a year and a half now without any new "carrots".

 

People have been playing regardless.

 

Gear as a carrot isn't needed.

And to add, there is no new content that requires said gear, so why add new gear every few minor expansions in a futless attempt to keep people that ends up pissing off a good chunk og the playerbase?

Just don't fix something that's not broken.

Just don't fix something that's not broken.

THIS ! BW listen the voice of reason.

THIS ! BW listen the voice of reason.

Exactly..it's a HUGE mistake...we just don't have the players to lose to stupid choices.

If PvP'ers have their gear automagically bumped up to the highest level then this problem is solved. At that point it becomes class vs class and player vs player within those classes.

I also keep reading from people who are obviously on the "I'm elite so die casuals" bandwagon when they say casuals don't need the highest level gear because they don't play content that requires it. While this seems to make sense at first, if even thought about for a sec or two, it becomes apparently clear this is logic at it's worst.

The purpose of games like this is advance your char and that is done with gear. Even if you don'tr enter a single NIM that doesn't mean a person doesn't want to advance their char. When your char can't advance through their method of play, the game is over and another sub lost. SWTOR can't afford to lose many more.

With this in mind it's important that if casuals are going to get the same gear as people who push the edges of the game, that they have to put in the time for it. I think most casuals wouldn't mind if it takes longer to get the gear but being shutout completely is a bad way to push the game forward.

The issue I have with the whole gearing issue is as it stands at this point right now. BW Devs have already proven, that it is possible to make legacy bound implants, earpiece, relics, and offhands.

Why are they so shy of just facilitating legacy bound end game gear, if they want gear to be a step up in either difficulty OR longevity, but want to avoid people gearing up multiple alts as a result of mad stacking currency?

Not only thing, but BW Devs have also expressed how they wanted to avoid people holding multiple armor sets on a single char (one of the reasons they used to justify removing expertise gear)

That said, tanks and healers that wish to multi-role still have this issue. Yet there is still NO progress whatsoever on remedying this issue. So was this just arbitrary declaration to fit convenience of the fact of the matter? Or are they still proposing solutions that deviate from this? Who knows.

My guess is as good as anybody else's.

Nice to know they're making diff gearing routes, WITHOUT addressing any of the problems they claimed they had, nor could they fix in the past. That's a good foundation of progress for sure

Sure seems like a dumb idea to add new gear with inflated stats (beyond the already overpowered gear available relative to the content) at the tail end of an expansion's life cycle.

Arguments about which group is penalized or advantaged or how much grinding will be required are all beside the point, this gear serves little purpose besides being a needless filler grind.

Also letting players become significantly overpowered relative to content is rather short-sighted - doubly so given most repeatable content in the next expansion will most likely be rescaled old content.

Exactly..it's a HUGE mistake...we just don't have the players to lose to stupid choices.

This is exactly right!

Exactly..it's a HUGE mistake...we just don't have the players to lose to stupid choices.

Tux and Kendra, check out my post in the other thread on how many hours it takes to even get enough UCs to buy crystals. I couldn’t believe it when I was calculating it.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=955056&page=8

248 has been at the top of the gear tree for a year and a half now without any new "carrots".

 

People have been playing regardless.

 

Gear as a carrot isn't needed.

Augments have not been at that level. Swtor has lost players, not gained them during that time. I am not opposed to swtor keeping the max gear level at 248 but I am opposed to BW removing gear from PVP (or setting everyone's bolster to the max gear level). That is the argument my post was addressing. That would be BW "fixing" something that isn't broken. When gear levels go up I can almost guarantee player activity will improve dramatically as well.

Tux and Kendra, check out my post in the other thread on how many hours it takes to even get enough UCs to buy crystals. I couldn’t believe it when I was calculating it.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=955056&page=8

if i´d do wrong calculations based on worse case scenarios and missing factors, i would be shocked as well.

Not a big deal for me I got several stacks of 9999 UC's all ready to go so I have enough to gear up my 2 main characters as soon as I hit hero rep.

You do know that each purchase of 1 Crystal costs more than the first and you need 4 crystals per piece.

Ie

500/1000/1500/2000

Or it could be

500/1000/2000/4000

We exactly don’t know yet. All we do know is there will be an increase each time.

You be better off taking a few weeks and save on the cost,

You do know that each purchase of 1 Crystal costs more than the first and you need 4 crystals per piece.

Ie

500/1000/1500/2000

Or it could be

500/1000/2000/4000

We exactly don’t know yet. All we do know is there will be an increase each time.

You be better off taking a few weeks and save on the cost,

just for the fun, let me try again:

UCs are legacy bound which means you can use ALL of your toons to buy crystals and equip your main.

that makes, suprisingly, exactly 500 UCs/crystal/toon/week. which sums up to 28k UCs to get BiS, nothing more, nothing less.

considering you aleady pay average 500 UCs for one 248 gear token, assuming you got the 242 shells (calculating in your favour here, would be much more if you buy up from Tier 0 to 4), thats an increase from 7000 to 28k for a full set, which seems reasonable to me for a 10 points gear rating increase.

just for the fun, let me try again:

 

UCs are legacy bound which means you can use ALL of your toons to buy crystals and equip your main.

that makes, suprisingly, exactly 500 UCs/crystal/toon/week. which sums up to 28k UCs to get BiS, nothing more, nothing less.

 

considering you aleady pay average 500 UCs for one 248 gear token, assuming you got the 242 shells (calculating in your favour here, would be much more if you buy up from Tier 0 to 4), thats an increase from 7000 to 28k for a full set, which seems reasonable to me for a 10 points gear rating increase.

How is that reasonable exactly? It costs more to go from 248 to 258 than it does to go from 230 to 248 even assuming you have to fully upgrade every single piece.

You do know that each purchase of 1 Crystal costs more than the first and you need 4 crystals per piece.

Ie

500/1000/1500/2000

Or it could be

500/1000/2000/4000

We exactly don’t know yet. All we do know is there will be an increase each time.

You be better off taking a few weeks and save on the cost,

And is there a reason you can't use your alts to help? I have geared 4 complete characters in 248 by using mirror alts and removing the mods and put them in legacy gear and putting in the legacy bank and then removing the mods into that gear. I am not working on my next 2 characters for 248 gear. Sure costs credits but you can do this as well. Sure you have to match the mods to the correct pieces but I already do that.

just for the fun, let me try again:

 

UCs are legacy bound which means you can use ALL of your toons to buy crystals and equip your main.

that makes, suprisingly, exactly 500 UCs/crystal/toon/week. which sums up to 28k UCs to get BiS, nothing more, nothing less.

 

considering you aleady pay average 500 UCs for one 248 gear token, assuming you got the 242 shells (calculating in your favour here, would be much more if you buy up from Tier 0 to 4), thats an increase from 7000 to 28k for a full set, which seems reasonable to me for a 10 points gear rating increase.

Have you considered that the crystals aren’t legacy bound, they are character bound. So you can’t buy and send them to other Alts.

And before you say it, yes, I know you can buy gear and swap them into legacy gear. But, if the current system Bioware have setup on the pts, this too will be limited because you can’t even swap mods or enhancements outside of the same gear type. You could of course buy a chest piece on one alt and transfer the piece via a legacy chest piece.

But here’s the thing. Before that Alt can buy the gear, they need to reach hero standing. They takes time to do each character, that takes away play time from pvp and also the ability to acquire more UCs.

The issue at hand isnt that you can’t buy gear on Alts, it’s the time it takes, which makes the grind terrible. That is why pvpers will be the most penalised by this system.

Pvpers still only want to play pvp, they don’t want to spend time farming pve dailies to get hero status. Also the more time they spend doing pve dailies, the less time they have to acquire UCs.

The whole process is drawn out and the grind is terrible. It all comes down to time played to have fun vs time played to work the mines. Most people play games to have fun, not have another job. This is why this system is so flawed and will drive people away. There is no balance here, the scale is completely tilted in favour to grinding at the expense of having fun.

People have lives outside of swtor. They have limited time they can play during the week and when they do, they want to maximise their entertainment. If they spend most of their time doing stuff they don’t want to do, then they end up not wanting to play.

At the end of the day, pvpers play the game to pvp. Not to farm gear.

How is that reasonable exactly? It costs more to go from 248 to 258 than it does to go from 230 to 248 even assuming you have to fully upgrade every single piece.

considering that the rating jumps from 248 to 258 instead of 6 points, and there are a lot of people out there with 50k+ UCs on stock, its totaly fine.

is it harder to get? yes. is it too hard to get? definitly not.

considering that the rating jumps from 248 to 258 instead of 6 points, and there are a lot of people out there with 50k+ UCs on stock, its totaly fine.

 

is it harder to get? yes. is it too hard to get? definitly not.

One thing I would like to know is how much pvp do you actually play?

One thing I would like to know is how much pvp do you actually play?

I'd like to know how much YOU pvp because you are literally clueless about how to play this game.

i'm going to repeat what I said in another tthread: Buy chestpoiece. Pull mods. Put in legacy chestpiece. Profit.