One of the many changes that need to be made. Throw some mercenary commendations in the mix while you're at it, so there actually is a way to earn them in-game other than buying them at the 3:1 ratio from a merchant

For whatever reason (not the purpose of this thread), the Empire got off to an incredible head-start with getting pvp gear. Because of that, it's becoming increasingly difficult to compete in Warzones. And because the winner of the Warzone gets more heafty valor/commendation rewards, they continue to widen the gap with the gear. This morning I've played 8 Warzones and have won only one. So, for the republic player (me) trying to get myself geared so I don't get 3-shot by everything I'm a pathetic 1/3 on my daily, 1/9 on my weekly and have gotten a total of 500(ish) commendation. The Empire player on the flip side has already completed his daily, gotten a bag from that, and is 7/9 on the weekly with at least twice the commendation. And so the gap continues to widen. They're getting geared faster than we can and it's making it harder and harder to compete. It's got nothing to do with the enemy being more skilled, it's got everything to do with them being ahead of the power curve. No, I don't think that the winner and loser should earn the same rewards but something needs to be done to make the 50 Warzones more competive. When I play on lowbie alts in WZs I win at least half the time. I would love to see some faaction based numbers on the win/loss ratio for the lvl 50 Warzones compared to the 49 and under. Also, *** is with Mercenary commendations? Has this issue not been brought up? There's no way to earn Mercenary commendations yet so the only way to get them is to buy them at 3:1 ratio using WZ commendations. How about we change it to a 1:1 until you put a way in the game to actually earn the damn things?

I'm speaking specifically about the open-world PvP system, some of this applies to Warzones too, some doesn't. The PvP in this game is terrible. No, it doesn't "just need work" or a tweak here and there, the system needs a major over-haul. Here are some of my biggest issues: 1) PvP rewards for PvE questing - Go open 30 of these boxes and get your PvP rewards. Seriously? PvP rank and gear should be rewarded ONLY for PvP combat. Turn the rewards off for everything except killing enemy players. 2) Outside of completing Dailies/Weeklies, there is no incentive to PvP - Where is my valor and commendations for killing individual players? Where is the griefing system that was advertised months prior to launch? PvPing anywhere but Ilum yields zero benefit. I thought Outlaw's Den was supposed to be a hotspot for FFA type PvP, but instead it sits a barren wasteland. Until rewards are instituted for killing individual players, PvP servers are only a place you can get ganked while trying to PvE by the opposing faction. 3) No way for lower population faction to compete - As a DAoC vet, I'm accustomed to keeps/towers and other strongholds that provided a lower number of players specific advantages that allowed them to hold off a greater number of assailants. Not to mention abilities like AoE CC and SoS that allowed your group to escape zerglings. SWTOR provides no such answer. Instead, you show up to the hotspot and get over-run by 3-4 times your number and killed before you can get off your 2nd ability. 4) CC all-but pointless - My single-target Force Lift which delves for 60 seconds lasts all of about 9 seconds on an enemy player. That's assuming he/she doesn't purge the effect, which is an ability that every class gets and because it's on a rediculously short timer it makes CC even more worthless. CC should be a way to even the odds and provide more organized players a strategical advantage. 6) Valor exploiters - Like this one: make me sick. And because it's such a wide-spread, everyone is doing it kind of thing, I doubt this is going to get much attention from the community. I'm failing to see the point behind doing this type of stuff. Why do you even care about your PvP rewards if this is how you plan on PvPing? Surely this is not working as intended. For DAoC vets, can you imagine a multitude of players hitting RR12 in a matter of days? Jees. And the fact that nothing has been done or even said about such exploits is extremely discouraging. There are a ton of other issues, but these are just a few i wanted to throw out there. If some fixes don't come down the pipeline soon, I expect I'll just be one of a mass exodus from the pvp community of this game.

I agree, though I wouldn't say it's never happened. DAoC had a successful system (diminishing returns for killing same player over and over again, cross-realming and exploitation bans, balanced pvp objects (I think the kill 10 players reward netted you as much as killing 1 player), and ways to even the odds on outragoeusly outnumbered factions). No reason they shouldn't take a page from that book to try and fix things here.

The PvP in this game is a joke. Objective based PvP is a joke. PvP should be about Player versus Player, not about capturing nodes. The objectives should serve as an incentive to draw opposing factions to a specific point, to engage in player versus player combat and the dailies/weeklies as just a bonus for competing in PvP combat. Instead, the dailies/weeklies are the ONLY incentive for "competing" against the opposing faction. Where are the rewards for defeating other players? The fact that a vast majority of players are completing their weeklies and dailies in a matter of minutes is laughable. Some argue that the cross-faction chat is a part of lore, yet in the same breath they're abusing the chat to coordinate with the opposition to exploit their way through the pvp quests. Remove the quests altogether if you ask me and replace them with rewards for killing players. Or at the very least, make the rewards miniscule compared to the reward for killing players. Either way, the PvP system will remain busted until they institute rewards for ACTUAL PVP COMBAT. But, by the time that happens, all the exploiting assbags will have already capped out their pvp gear/valor rank.