Then it feels like a grind fest to me, the objective based system is still a grind, it's just more (as you said) complex and adds some depth to the team aspect of the pvp games. I would rather be rewarded and see progress based off of how well I am doing my particular role whether it's dps/heals/tanking than by just showing up for a game. As it stands right now you get rewarded for just being there, i.e. afk'rs.

I even posted a rough sketch plus link to this thread in another person's complaint thread on people leaving the pvp match because their team is losing. The majority of the responses from people who are quitting are "I don't have the time to waste on scrubs, I need my three wins as fast as possible since I have limited play time." That all boils down to the current loot system being broken for pvp. If you had a quest line to complete with such silly items as: ~heal for X amount ~cast shield on X amount of players ~capture X amount of points ~heal for X amount over multiple War Zones ~save X number of players who are at or under 30% health You know, the stuff you need to do to be successful as a TEAM in pvp.... (that was just a healers perspective, mileage may vary depending on driving habits and whether freeway or city miles) The possibility exists that alot of the people who are quitting do to *needing their wins as fast as possible* would stick it out since they would still be making progress on improving their gear. Unfortunately I don't think a single person on that thread even read the suggestion since most of them were raging about people quitting or raging about people raging about people quitting

Here is a simple solution, it will actually solve two problems at once http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=204881 for those of you who can't be bothered to read another link I'll do a quick summary for you. Basically the OP on that thread had an idea to make the pvp rewards system objective based instead of totally random, he's not saying to completely remove the RNG bags, but to put in class based objectives that you have to complete during WZ's to finish off your daily/weekly ect. Not just, "Go win one for the Gipper and we'll give you a bag that you won't get a drop out of!". Under his system it would promote players to *gasp* actually learn to play their class, you would get medals based off of utilizing your class skills! (Plus of course actually capturing/holding objectives ect) Since even during a losing match you would be working towards a goal of getting your class based/objective based medals to complete a quest, there would be less people quitting, it would facilitate people learning to play their class.... It's a long thread but has numerous good ideas in it that would help put a breath of fresh air into pvp. Edit: The idea was also put forth to limit the number of medals you can gain in any one given match just to prevent things like the above post, i.e. holding the huttball to farm more medals... ect. Maybe, just maybe... it would even help to keep people from coming onto the forums and adding nothing constructive to the conversation aside from throwing insults around

I find it amusing to see all the people screaming "Nerf this QQ" Maybe it's just my server, but I rarely get to go into a WZ and demolish the other team when I am DPS spec. Normally I get off a couple skills and suddenly I am the target of 3 or 4 people. I have watched marauders drop their current target to run across the map to target me.... I usually end up around 250k dmg. I have gotten upwards of 380k damage, but the other team left me alone, let me sit back and just aoe/stun/DoT/fruity pebble throw/aoe to my hearts content. IF, I time my stun *singular* well, and I manage to get off an interrupt, and the other player is just spamming their damage skill, I can solo BH/Marauders. BUT, if I screw up even on little bit, or the other player is good, 1v1, with same lvl gear, I am usually dead before they get to half health. I have NEVER hit for more than 3.3k on a crit for dmg. NEVER. If I am spec'd on heals? Yeah, forget about any 1v1. The best I can hope for is to heal through enough damage that one of my team mates can get there in time to assist me, if there is more than 1 person? Yeah forget about even healing through the dps, two people (I don't care what class's) will demolish a heal spec'd sage if they have a clue on how to play together.

This is essentially what the dev's have ignored for the pvp rewards system, and that Theory of Fun was actually a pretty interesting read. They are beginning to alienate their pvp player base who are getting tired of waiting on one or two items that they need to finish out a particular set and have no way to gauge how close they are. I have stopped doing pvp mostly except for my daily's as most of the people that I normally pvp with are fed up with the system. We have started to run PVE content because we know somebody will get an improvement to their gear. Point in case, I now have to two Columni chest pieces, I have only done the two runs that drop that piece one time each, and on both instances I received alot more than just that chest piece. (On a side note, it is handy to get that second piece for me since I just stripped it to improve my mainhand... BY GOD IF YOU WON'T GIVE A MAINHAND I'LL MAKE MY OWN!!! *end rant*) They really need to revisit the PVP reward vs. challenge/time aspect.

I suggested much the same thing (since I am almost valor 50 and do not have full champ gear do too RNG sucking) my idea was a bit different in implementation than yours, but the end goal was the same. Have a consistent reward system that shows progression instead of a completely broken random system that is unfair to the majority of players. I too really like the objective based quests and didn't even think about maybe making them a weekly, that would be an awesome solution, do your objective based weekly and get a guaranteed piece of champ gear instead of 3 centurion commendations, leave the centurion commendations as the daily rewards with a smaller chance of champ tokens dropping since the centurion gear is mostly horrible substitutes anyway. This would allow progression, it would reward playing well, so even if your team is substandard you can still progress, and if so desired could be used to limit how fast players are gearing up. +1 from me.

bumpity bump for truth. Random has got to go.

I said stim pack I don't bother crafting Adrenal's to sell either, or to hand out during raids/flash points. I do on the other hand make med-packs and stims to hand out. I am a healer, and everyone having the ability to pop a med-pack when needed can mean the difference between a wipe or successful fight. The blue's are fine tbh, I just like having that extra tier to use, it give's me something to strive for

I'd like to chime in here on this one I've been 50 for about 3 weeks now, I've been PVP'ing the entire time, amost everytime I am on. I'd say all in total I have close to 100 hours in pvp. Here is what gear I have Chamion Head Centurion gloves Champion legs Champion boots two implants an earpiece. I have run very little PVE content, all total I probably have maybe 10 hours in PVE. Here is a list of what I've run so far. Battle of Ilum (the last boss bugged and we couldn't loot the chest) Eternity vault, never made it past second boss False Emperor HM Eternity Vault, we're currently on the last boss. And now here is a list of gear that I have from PVE. I have Columni chest Columni hands a tionese belt Force master helmet, not great, but it's about on par with centurion gear. Plus a schematic and some crafting crystals that have dropped. Plus Every Single Run, multiple people get multiple pieces of gear/loot. I happen to agree that the RNG system needs to be revisited and revamped, but I can see a point from the PVE perspective "Hey we have to deal with random drops! Why shouldn't you?" I would be ok with the RNG system if there was other loot you could get that could assist in progressing your guild/character, schematics, maybe be able to purchase the crafting crystals through commendations. That's one point that I disagree with the OP on, for me PVP is not a solo deal, I'll pug it when I have too, but my guild usually has pre-mades going and we enjoy running together (and our win ratio goes to about 60% instead of 20% when pugging). We do well in a group and have more fun. If they have this pre-made system in place and are planning on doing larger scale pre-mades in the future, shouldn't PVP drops/loot be on the same ratio as PVE since it is a completely viable end game goal and many many guilds run PVP exclusively? But as it stands right now I have 1/10th the time in PVE as PVP and I have almost as much gear and more general loot. I myself prefer the objective/goal based progression model, but if it's not viable, then maybe they could look at making pvp have more group rewards. Your team gets 65 medals total, two crafting crystals drop Your team gets 75 medals total, two crafting crystals and a rare schematic drop Your team gets 85 medals total, two crafting crystals, a rare schematic and a champion token drop Of course thats an extremely rough idea and I'm sure it will be taken apart, but the underlying principle is solid (to me anyway ) and would put PVP on par with running HM flashpoints, cause let me tell ya, your team getting 75 medals is NOT easy, you have to be in a geared up group to get that many, kind of like you have to have a geared up group to do HM's.

So tell me, o great insulter of innovative ideas, how is it fair that you've been lvl cap for a month and I've been lvl cap for 3 days and I have more/better PVP gear than you do, hmm? Care to expound upon the rubbish statement? He isn't alone in disliking a completely random roll for gear, as is evidenced by the 13,000 views this thread has. Now if you had made your statement something like: "When you open a bag you get three centurion commendations, if they would remove the completely random aspect of getting awsome gear and make it a grind fest that would level the playing field, I see no reason to implement your idea." Then I would have politely disagreed with you, but so far this has stayed a mature thread with little to no trolling, lets please keep it that way. If you have a genuine idea on why you claim the idea is rubbish and the current system is fine and fair for everyone, then by all means please present it and we can have an adult conversation without resorting to insults.

I am Not using centurion gear if there is any other viable alternative. I've put on as absolutely much as I could without seriously gimping myself, even the few pieces That I have put on have only truly granted me a little bit of expertise, otherwise they were usually a stat drop or a lateral movement, as soon as I hit 50 I went and purchased all purples off the GTM, the base level purples that were on there are as good as or better than the T1 gear. My main hand is cobbled together from the lvl 40 pvp lightsaber, I have put all level 50 mods into it, that's it, just purple level 50 mods. I lose 30 endurance, 15 will and a bit off of my secondary stats. The ONLY bonus to getting that saber would be the base damage and expertise, since I don't smack things (I throw fruity pebbles instead ) getting that saber for the expertise would be the silliest thing I've done to date in game. You don't make me grind for over a month to get T1 gear that's worse than any gear I've cobbled together off the GTM when you can get columni gear off of FP's, that's just silly and hateful. Supporting the OP's original idea, lets see something interesting incorporated into PvP again!!

/signed I have first hand experience with "unwanted" pvp. Don't get me wrong, I pvp, but there are times when I want to turn my flag off and concentrate on PVE. Here is my first hand experience. I was in a pvp zone, went to join some guild mates to get the magenta crystal. I unflagged, but we didn't wait the flag out. We were attacking the lvl 50 champion that spawns the crystals when a stealthy sith pops into the middle of us and proceeds to annihilate our healer (me) and them moves onto the rest of the group. Ok, my fault, I was still flagged, no big deal. Here is where it started getting to me. We all unflag, wait it out, go back to the lvl 50 champion and proceed to start the fight again, suddenly our tank is flagged, then because I am healing him, I am flagged. Wha??? what just happened???? Oh, here's mister stealthy sith stealthed just inside of our tanks aoe range.... perfect. We all die again and when the champ turns to the sith he stealths out of combat. (we were fresh 50's and that champ hits like a truck). So we were of course irritated, but hey whatever we'll just do it again. NO AOE ANYONE, I don't care that it's your best skill!! I'll just have to heal through any aggro I get! We go on to the fight again, and sure enough, that damn stealthy is in and out of our fight constantly, running in circles through the battle, attacking the Mob every now and then, jumping up and down in front of me... Luckily the third time was the charm and we managed to kill the boss anyway, and low and behold the stealthy is nowhere to be seen, he disappeared once the boss got to about 10k health. Make the PVP flag turn on when you enter a pvp zone, and if your not in a zone the only way to turn it on is to manually flag yourself. Get rid of involuntary PVP on PVE servers. If I wanted PVP all the time I would have rolled that way

Agreed. Luck should only play a minor role in a game. Is that hit a crit? luck, fine. Is this mob going to drop vendor trash or a purple? luck, again fine because I don't go around killing random trash mobs expecting them to *progress* my characters gear. "I just hit end game content, is my 1st bag going to drop a MH saber that the rank 60 valor guy over there is still waiting for???" Trash. "I've been at lvl cap for a week and ZOMG I have all champ gear!!! What's that? You've been at cap for over a month and have 3 pieces?" "Sucks to be you." Trash again. The system is broken. I don't care if you make it so that you can only get one piece of champ gear every other week, but show me a progression. I'm slowly starting to lean away from PVP and more towards PVE now that there are getting to be enough players to form ops groups. This is one of the first games besides DAoC that I've really enjoyed the PVP, but the broken loot system with no ranked arena's is killing me. Bioware here is my challenge to you. Take a group of your developers, give them random lvl 50's and put them into a pre-made with say... 3 pieces of PVP gear. Now match them up against a pre-made group consisting of a bunch of geared out champs/battlemasters. See how fun your PVP experience is. That will explain why so many people are calling for a different system to get gear and ranked arena's. It doesn't matter how well you play when the opposition takes no damage and drops you in 5 seconds.

What I would like to see is Purple quality stims/medpacks that are NOT reusable that we can sell. You have to crit the RE on blue to get the purple and then you have to crit the RE on the purple to get the reusable BOP schematic. It's probably too late for that, but if they would have implemented that before launch then nobody would have a leg to stand on for the *nerf biochem* protesters since the cost/time investment to get the BoP reusable would not be something your average player would do. Imagine if you could get a level 50 medpack, it costs you 20-30k to buy it, but it's a one time heal for like 6-8k. I'd buy that going into HM/Nightmare's. And I sure as heck wouldn't ever pop one in PVP at that price!! Yes some of the crafters would use them in PVP, but really what would anyone have to complain about? The person using them would be willing to spend the 10k or so in missions to get all the mats they need to craft it, plus the hours upon hours of waiting and crafting to pop it for what? A 15 minute match and it *might* make a difference in the outcome? Anyone willing to dedicate that much time and effort to use it in PVP be my guest!

The problem is that Valor takes so long to grind out and while your running around in your centurion gear 3 weeks from now some fresh lvl 50 will do his two weekly's and two daily's the day he hits 50 and suddenly have more/better gear than you. How is that at all fair? You've put in the hours and work to gear up and somebody wins the RNG lottery and is now more competitive than you are (at least gearwise and yes gear does make a Huge difference in WZ, who do you want healing you? The guy with 900 will +320 heals 19% crit chance +60% crit power? Or the guy with 1500 will +550 heals 38% crit chance with +100% crit power?) And just in case your curious, when I hit 50 I purchased all purple off the AH, there wasn't a single piece of centurion gear that was superior to what I was wearing, actually I had to take a compromise and lose 18 endurance 9 crit rating 8 or 9 surge rating to gain 3 will and the set bonus cool down for heals.

With a few minor tweaks I have to agree, there are some things that could be addressed, but nothing major, overall balance is one of the better "new releases" I've seen.

And why on earth is 160k protection more valuable than 300k in heals? I'm not denying that it was valuable, but thats a bit much I think. I do think that the guy should have gotten at least an mvp vote from the person being guarded. Why would you not EVER vote for sorc/sages? Just because you don't like the class doesn't mean that it doesn't bring alot to the table for your team. What server are you on and whats your toon name? I won't ever heal you again since you hate the class that much. Feel free to play without heals Never voting on damage is ok. Not my particular cup of tea, I vote to who I actually thought provided the most for the team, whether it was for healing, damage, objectives. There are players who keep the enemy locked down by roaming while the rest of the team guards, it's a valid playstyle and they get very little objective points but still provide value. To each their own I guess.

Maybe you misunderstood my intent on that one I meant to just add into the existing PVP vendor (where you trade for Merc Comms) the ability to trade: Centurion Comms for Champ Comms and Champ Comms for Battlemaster Comms I'm not fully convinced that it is a "bandaid" solution, is it ideal? No, but it is a progression reward system. This would reward players time spent in Warzones, the more time you've spent in WZ's, the more commendations you have to trade in and the closer you are getting to a new shiny bauble Still all in all I would prefer I complete rework of the rewards system for PVP, I'm just trying to stay realistic I would be happiest with your solution where you get rewarded based off of objectives/doing your job. As it stands right now alot of players are out for number one and only number one. Makes the entire experience somewhat tainted.

Bumping for points. Since last night I completed two daily's a weekly and purchased a bag... I got.... one more implant... I think I'm up to 5 or 6 implants now? While the system you have suggested may not be perfect, and def needs polishing, it is better than the pure *random* they have now and better than most idea's that have been put forward. Point in case I have a companion that is nearly as geared out as I am..... Y.A.Y. I am not all that high in the valor rank, I am only rank 39, but I have opened numerous bags (going on three weeks of 90% pvp for 4-5 hours a night) and don't have a main hand, chest or head piece, centurion boots/offhand/legs, but boy buddy I have a seletion of implants/earpieces!!!! The low tier pvp gear is a joke, I took the only two low level pvp pieces that were even a lateral improvement that I could, I lost 16 endurance and gained 3 will. Now for another suggestion that I think has merit that was mentioned. Put in a vendor to exchange your centurion or champ commendations for the next tier higher, they can even keep the same ratio as merc... 3 to 1 or whatever they feel is appropriate. At least then I would be able to make progression towards the gear that would help me to improve. It would still be a grind fest, people can keep their oh so happy joy joy random drop bags, but I would have a quantifiable progression towards my next piece of gear. And you had mentioned coding time.... This isn't even a day or an afternoon, this a couple of hours for a competent coder to add to an existing vendor. Just food for thought, I do think that class based objectives would assist in improving the game and players overall understanding of their class, but at this point I would settle for a means to have progression.

By far one of the most constructive posts I've seen on the forums in a long time. Addressed an issue and provided a viable and GOOD solution. Bravo!!! I was actually coming onto the forum to make a post about the exact same thing, the broken bag system. I have a bit of gear off of it, but I've opened well into the 40 bag range, I have no chest piece, no main hand, no headpiece, the centurion gear that I've purchased with my comms is at the very best a lateral move for me, in most cases it would be a serious downgrade. My companion is looking good though... has almost as much expertise/stats as I do at this point...... because I have gotten the same pieces of gear over and over..... The bag system is broken. If player A spends 40 hours in WZ's and has 5 pieces of gear and player B spends 40 hours in WZ's and has 2 pieces of gear. That my friends is a broken system. This was a well thought out post with an answer to the broken system and I applaud your efforts!

What is this instant tick you speak of? Mind Crush has a cast time so thats out, my instant cast DoT Weaken Mind... I've never seen my instant dot tick as soon as applied, there is usually a 2-3 delay on my first tick, if they are about to cap a door I use fruity pebble throw as it's my most reliable skill. Now I do throw that instant DoT around every single chance I get since it might just give us that extra 10 seconds needed to get people over to the door to save it, but it def doesn't insta tick. Or if it does I've never seen it, I'll pay more attention tonight. And it's for 15 seconds unless your traited to have it tick longer. Still a good amount of time to piss people off, but def not 21 seconds.

Test again for the dueling part, You can see all friendly faction players in stealth, at least last night I could. (although we were grouped at the time... that may have been it, I will do some more testing) The mez is two seconds, it's on force lift, and it's only if the shield is broken on damage, you have to almost full balance spec to get that, kind of precludes being a good healer, good advice for a balance spec sage though, def worth keeping in mind as I like to swap it up every now and again edit: Ah, I just realized what proc you were talking about, not the break lift/whirlwind, but when they burst my bubble I'll take a look at what it takes to get that, that's in the telekinetics spec and I'm only in that tree far enough to get the +20% to shield absorb, maybe worth looking into! Thanks for the advice!

I would have a problem with that. I did WZ's for 5 hours last night and progressed from 34 1/2 to 36. Yeah sure you can get more valor from Ilum IF the conditions are met (i.e. your server is full of tards who feed the enemy) Welcome to video games where players on your side have an impact on how good the enemy you face is. They already stated that they were aware of people who had exploited the *cough* oversight, and were taking action. Let it ride, it was a mistake. Go do some daily's, or pvp, or whatever floats your boat. Someone took advantage of an exploit... it's happened before, it will happen again.

Let me first start off by saying this is not a rage fest, I am not QQ'ing about their damage. I think their damage is fine, they should have high counter caster damage. What I don't understand though, is how in bloody ell do I kill one??? Unless we get two or three people to focus one down they just don't die!!! Pop outta stealth, I'm dead (or the caster near me) usually can get me down to half health if they killed the other caster first, then they stealth out right as more than one person starts to focus them, sometimes I get lucky and find them with quake but usually they are gone, to be seen in another minute or two with full health again. Ok, thats a good player, that I can live with too. For a test we took one of our guildies, scoundrel, dps and started dueling. Now remember he has no stealth, it's same faction dueling, you can see friendlies. Stun, DoT, focus dps, stun again, he breaks stun, gets close with 1/2 health left, and wins. Sometimes not by much, but in dueling I think I saw him lose 1 in 10 matches, and this was head on. None of us are "pro" players, but we are all fairly decent so no L2P comments please, constructive criticism, I am here to L2P not get trolled. So my question is, how do you stop this class? I'm fine with their insane dps, every game needs one of these, but their not usually so hard to kill when you catch them out of stealth.

<--- Sage. I don't get owned by snipers. period. Why? because I refuse to stand still and let them shoot me!!!!! I will slap a DoT on them and run the hell away! Let the heavy armor guys deal with the heavy dps classes. Now an operative... I can understand if you were in here raging about someone coming out of stealth, knocking you down and then all you hear is the snick snick snick of a knife being stabbed into your eyeballs.... but a sniper??? come on man...