Wait... you are complaining about the thing that reduces the number of ranged hits you take, and makes you totally immune to grapple, force leaps, knock backs (true? don't remember), and totally immune to cc for a limited time? Did I read that right? I do agree that being forced to be in cover a lot of the time limits your mobility, but please go play another class that is susceptible to force leaps, grapples, etc., then think about cover some more.

It is. It is the randomness of the bags that makes Ilum bags so important. And, I might add, from a design perspective, that's why the Ilum quests reward you with bags... Look, I'm very happy you've had good luck with the bags. My server is different from yours obviously.

This isn't about your opinion of the gear system. This is about the proposed changes to Ilum quests in 1.1 and why I think it will fail.

I couldn't agree more strongly.

strange. I solo'd a guy with no credit. I was on a rep owned flip point too.

So you get credit for every kill you make (e.g. kill 5 people, daily done?) Because I've killed imps who attacked me and gotten 0 credit, and then couldn't finish the daily...

They are expensive in terms of what you get out of them (3 cent tokens). I've been 50 for 3 weeks and still have some of my lvl 40 pvp gear on and the pvp weapon from the pvp vendor (I've had a lot of multiples of the same item). I've got a friend who has had 2 item drops -- both main hand weapons -- who's been 50 for over 2 weeks. That's expensive.

The reason you are getting flamed is the cooperative quest bit.

Who cares about WoW? WoW's PVP is worse than SWTOR This has nothing to do with the length of time the game's been out, it has to do with trying to fix Ilum with a flawed idea that does not address the actual causes of Ilum.

Thanks for the comments. 1.1 doesn't change the parts that require cooperation. It just adds on a part that is antithetical to cooperative quests. If it was totally a kill quest, it would make more sense, but requiring us to continue to flip these things, and kill off the people who are allowing us to flip them is just plain silly IMO.

This post is written for the Bioware team more than for the SWTOR player base. I welcome any and all discussion, however. For the ADD crowd, there is a TL;DR below. With all due respect to BW, 1.1 will only exacerbate the real problem with Ilum. People aren't trading caps because they don't want to kill one another in pvp. Ilum isn't a ghost land because people don't want to fight. Ilum is the way it is simply because BW created an avenue of getting geared that makes pvp on Ilum counter-productive. 1) the luck based gear bag system makes it seem very important to get as many bags as fast as you can. The risk/reward of the bags is vastly skewed away from 'reward' -- the bags are tremendously expensive from anything other than a quest, and the reward from the bags is a very small chance you will get something you need, plus a guaranteed chance of getting 1/5 of the cheapest, and least worthwhile piece of centurion gear. Each bag costs 800 wz commendations (200 commendations + 200 merc comms, which are 30 wz comms per 10, or 600 wz commendations) -- meaning the cheapest piece of cent gear costs 4000 wz commendations and the most expensive piece (blaster weapon) costs 32000 wz commendations. Excluding Ilum for the moment, you can get 10 champ bags from quest rewards for the wz daily and weekly quests. If you can guard someone, then you can average 75 commendations per wz win, which means in addition to the 10 bags from the quests, you've also won at least 1575 commendations (I know not everyone can guard, but the easiest way, non-exploit, to get extra commendations is to guard, so we are talking about the best average case here). So from the wz quests, you generate the equivalent of 9575 commendations. That means if you want the blaster weapon and are not lucky enough to get a token for it, you need an additional 22,425 wz commendations at 75 per win -- in other words, you need to win an additional 299 times. That is for a single piece of gear. Ok, so most of the armor costs 13600 wz commendations, fine let's use that instead -- you still need to win 54 times on top of the 21 wins required for the dailies. For another single piece of centurion. Of course players are looking for a faster way of getting geared. 2) The Ilum dailies provide that way -- with another 10 bags per week. Fine, there should be another avenue towards gearing, and this way is perfectly acceptable, except for one glaring flaw: the Ilum dailies require cooperation between the empire and republic forces to complete. Wait. Stop sputtering with indignation for a second and I'll explain. The Ilum dailes require you to recapture points that the enemy has captured, right? Even if you are alone in Ilum, completing your quest requires the cooperation of some earlier opposite faction player having captured all the points. Why? Because they have to be owned by the opposite faction before you can flip them. So yeah, empire players should be opposing 1.1 as well as rep players. If no rep players come to Ilum, you will not be able to complete your dailies any better than they will. In fact, you need to make sure the rep players feel safe and rewarded for going to Ilum solo, or the day will come when you will be able to get half the champ and bm gear bags you can get today. The only people who can afford kill people with impunity are republic players (only after they've completed their weeklies) and people in full battlemaster gear. It is counter-productive to kill anyone on Ilum prior to finishing your BM set, unless you don't believe BM gear makes a difference in pvp. 3) Population imbalance requires the sort of "flip this thing" method of alternate path to gearing. This system was a good idea from the perspective of population imbalance, and has worked in that regard. In 1.1, however, this system will become broken and will favor the side with the most population again (just like the wz quests). IT WILL NOT STOP QUEST REQUIREMENT SWAPPING in any way, shape or form. Either things will go one exactly as they are with both sides swapping points, or the low pop side will stop going to Ilum as they won't be able to complete their quests anyway. TL;DR: In other words, 1.1 will either: do nothing, or completely crush world pvp on Ilum, and the reason is, 1.1 does not actually address the real problems behind what Ilum has evloved into (gear is hard to get, especially on the under populated side; Ilum as is is a relief valve of sorts for the under populated realm to get some gear, population balance sucks in this game). My suggestion to BW: Create another avenue for players to get pvp gear that won't require them to be demoralized by constant pop imbalance (or leave ilum alone). Create another area for flat out killin' and put additional quests in that area based on killing, and reward the underpopulated side with more tokens and more valor for going there. For instance, allow the over populated realm a very small chance of getting gear tokens from killing players and provide the under populated realm with significantly higher chances of getting the tokens (and spread the rewards through the entire group so healers get some love too). Another alternative would be to greatly increase the number of lower tier commendations provided and greatly increase the gear token chance based on population numbers. 5:1 population imbalance? Low side gets 15 lower tier comms, or a 5x better probability of getting gear tokens. Thank you for your time.

I seem to. I also seem to get them for killing the ball carrier.

Uh... Scoring is worth objective points which give you more valor, comm's, xp, and credits. You are already being awarded for scoring. Medals are for team play. Maybe there should be medals for assists, but not for scoring.

Sounds to me like you were not playing as part of your defensively oriented team.

No. The people who don't seem to get server community seem to have come from games without any server community. Those of us that get it, have seen better... We know to how to recognize good players on the opposite and look forward to fighting them again. We develop competition between guilds on BOTH sides, and we prefer it that way. If you like 100% anonymous pvp, fine, but we do not.

This.

Ok, if they also nerf lightning/project spamming and static shield... The toughest group in the game, with the best survivability is a group of sorcs (haven't seen any sages do this, but, uh, they are mirrors after all). Plus, commandos and mercs are not tanks, they are dps / heal hybrids. The tanks are powermechs and vanguards. Having said all this, rocket/grav round spamming IS very annoying, especially when you interrupt it only to have the spam begin again INSTANTLY.

That would work beautifully. If BW does implement community-killing, uh, I mean cross-sever queuing, I hope they read your idea and implement it.

Yes, but you are a sorc. That's just the game's way of balancing all that damn purple lightning Seriously, about the only thing I can think of worse than getting no armor is getting 7 of the same thing...

To the OP: what was your valor rank at the time? To the guy who went 8/13: what was your valor rank? I just wonder if the rand call is being modified by valor rank. The people I know with terrible luck are low (relatively speaking) valor ranks to the guys I know who are very lucky.

Dead.

NO. I like community, thanks, and that includes my opponents.

I used it once, followed by stockstrike on my vanguard. Let's just say, once was enough. (Stockstrike hit for 3x as much)

This is my build, except I took Kolto Rechaarge and the second Power armor over Frontline defense, and I run in ion cell. In Wz's I'm #1 or 2 on damage and kills, top 3 on medals (usually #1). I autorun and strafe 99% of the fight, circling the fight and running through players I've picked for the SS > gut > HIB hug. I do 250k damage and 60k guard on a commando, more on a sage or sentinel. I'm just gearing, and am thinking about wearing tank (supercommando) armor for more survivability with maybe a piece of eliminator and elim accessories.

Great news!