Actually, it's worse than you put it..... By Bioware's own estimate, you'll get about 1 crate per hour; and since you only get a crate when you gain a new CXP level, that means that after the "6-hour KOTET story" you'll only have Command Level 6..... After another 6-hours, you'll still only be Command Level 12..... I agree with you about the grindfest-nightmare-RNG-BS. The worst part about this system is that when people start hating it.....I mean REALLY hating it.....they can't just remove it from the game and replace it, you're stuck with this stupid system. And we KNOW a majority of people will end up hating it.....we've already had both parts of this system in the game at one point, both the RNG and the horrific gear-grind style of gameplay, and Bioware ended up removing both. They seem to be the only ones that don't remember that part of the game's life.

It's no exaggeration. And it's a little over-the-top to accuse people of that if you haven't been to one of those servers. In reality, it's even worse than he says; he's just lucky he didn't waste more than 3 hours in the queue to find out. As it is on Pot5, my server, we only get warzone queue pops on Tuesday nights. And that's only because we've had to organize it server-wide between both pubs and imps because it got THAT bad. It's still THAT bad, and it's only getting worse as more time passes. The sad part is how easy it was to organize because our population is so small that getting word-of-mouth around didn't take long. You can't accuse people of exaggerating if you haven't gone to the server to see for yourself, otherwise you end up just sounding like you-know-who to everyone else who has actually been there. Is that who you want to sound like? Especially accusing the OP of "putting on a show", when you yourself have no idea one way or the other. Classy. The guy is clearly new, and has no post history aside from the last 2 weeks of asking new-person questions about things. You actually have a new person in the game, who likes it enough to ask questions on the forums, and you're going to go ahead and insult him right off the bat.....good job. I also love the double-standard. "I've never experienced something like that, so it's not true". Why is your experience gospel, and his is just wrong?

Not really. Even on mirror pub/imp toons (jugg/guardian) only half of your gear is transferrable in legacy gear. Your earpiece, relics, and implants have to be earned through CXP, which means that even your pub/imp mirror needs to do the 100-hour grindfest to get the appropriate pieces. This is ultimately why I've cancelled my sub. Not only do I have to 100-hour-RNG-grindfest for 1 toon, but even to play an alt in ranked I'll have to complete the 100-hour grind just to START playing ranked with it. I like all my toons, and hesitate to call any of them an "alt" because I play them all regularly. I have fun switching out, and it also helps us not only organize for the solo ranked queue so that we can actually get a pop by matching roles, but it helps balance for regs. For example, I start queuing regs and find our faction has 4 other healers queueing, I can switch off my healer, which makes things more fun for everyone. The other option is to suck it up and start playing ops and other pve content to gear up faster, but then we get into the whole "forced to play content that I don't want to" debate. Of course the additional issue is the gear discrepancy that is coming back into PvP with the removal of expertise. That's not fun for anyone, and it's going to really throw a huge wet-blanket on ranked, and really suck in regs when a team loses just because it was out-geared by the other team. I'm also on Pot5, so this is a much bigger deal for us with our smaller population. In fact, it's a game-breaking deal for me, which is why I cancelled my sub. Playing like that is just not something I'm interested in.

They did actually say that if you exclusively play warzones that your gearing process will take "a very long time". It was in that livestream. I think the perspective you're missing is that of that population of people that do, in fact, exclusively play warzones. Just from a logic point of view, if all I play is warzones, does it make sense that I'm less geared for warzones than someone who has spent the same exact time playing, but played everything else except warzones? And don't get me wrong, I don't WANT to be more geared than someone in PvP. Gear differences in PvP are bad. It's not fun to win because of gear, and it's even less fun to lose because of gear. In the current system, someone can get a full set of 204 expertise gear in just a handful of matches, and be on a level playing field with people who have played 10,000 matches. To us, gearing for ranked while doing ranked is backwards. We don't want a gear difference in ranked either. It violates the very spirit of what ranked pvp is; a contest of skills. Besides, how can you rank people when they are all incomparable in the first place (because of their gear differences)? Also, it was just about a year ago now that we had the "companion fiasco" of people queueing for warzones and sitting afk in the corner. That actually happened, and it'd be foolish to think it won't happen to ranked now that it's a lucrative source of CXP.

My other huge problem with this is that I like to play all my toons. I don't like calling any of them my "main", or an "alt" because they're all my mains. I played ranked with 8 different toons this past season. I could do that because of how easy it is to gear them all up. I play on Pot5. Our server has had a pitiful population for awhile now. In order for us to play ranked on that server, we'd need to stand in the fleet and shout for 2 hours just to get the 8 people we need to get a pop. But it's not just that simple. We need to coordinate roles so that we have 2 even teams. If we had 7 dps and only 1 healer, I could switch to my healer. If we had 5 dps, 2 healers, and a tank, I could switch to my tank, and we could get the queue popping. With this new system, that's not going to be possible since it's going to take a 100-hour grind just to gear up in order to THEN queue for ranked. This is going to be the end of ranked on Pot5. And don't forget about regs. 5 healers in the queue? Too bad, I can't switch off my healer because he's the one I'm gearing up, and the rest of my toons will get romped by everyone already grinding. And since this is a time-based thing, I'll never actually catch up since I've started after them on the timeline. We don't want gear to be the deciding factor in matches. As the system is now, it's so easy to get the 204 expertise set that it's easy to have balanced matches in this regard. This whole thing is going to suck all the fun out of the game for me. I can't play all my toons. Regs are going to be a mish-mosh of people all in different gear, with matches decided by which team has the better gear. Ranked is going to be the same; gear being the deciding factor. And don't forget all the PvEers who are going to queue just because it's a quick way to CXP without giving a fling about winning (anyone remember the companion fiasco?). I've already removed my payment info. I'm just not in a place where I'm willing to play a game set up like this. It just doesn't make sense to me to go back in time to a place the devs already knew wasn't a good way to have PvP set up.

This is a huge problem. Ever since Ranked was introduced into the game, consistent step-wise measures have been taken to narrow and eliminate a gear-gap in ranked matches. These included removing ranked commendations, lowering the cost of PvP gear in general, allowing legacy transfer of comms, and ultimately an expertise requirement to queue. These steps not only made it easier to gear-up for and play ranked, but placed everyone on a level playing field where there were no gear discrepancies. Bioware clearly recognized that their ranked pvpers do not want gear levels to be a determining factor in ranked matches. We want skill to determine the winner, not gear. Even outside of ranked, regular warzones are negatively effected by people in varying gear levels. A full set of expertise gear takes just a handful of warzones (with the daily and weekly quests) to achieve, putting new players on a level playing field very quickly, mitigating the time they spend at a disadvantage. No one wants to play a competitive game-type at a disadvantage; it's just plain not fun. The opposite is also true: it's not fun to win a match simply because the other team is not geared well. The changes they are making are rewinding time to a place they KNEW wasn't optimal. It just doesn't make sense. Maybe these changes are great for the PvEers, or the more casual players, but are nothing but detrimental to their PvP population. If I were to give one piece of advice to BW about this, it would be that this system is not conducive to PvP. They should leave the PvP gear, expertise, and the PvP gearing system alone, and leave the GC in place for PvE gear. I wouldn't mind if they still gave CXP for warzones so that the PvEers still got gear and what-not out of warzones in addition to warzone comms. That would actually be the best-case scenario; a good incentive for PvEers to play warzones that would help them with CXP, and give them warzone gear at the same time. This way, we could also keep the expertise requirement on ranked so that any of those PvEers who wanted to do ranked for CXP would still have the gear to keep everyone on a level field.

That's because "gear progression" goes against the very spirit of PvP. Bioware learned this early on, and through the years has completely mitigated the grind for expertise gear because of it. Right now, you can get a full set of expertise gear in 20-30 warzones, putting you on a level playing field with everyone else. Come 5.0, PvP is going to be a mess of people in a smattering of different gear. There is absolutely no role that a gear difference can serve in a positive way in PvP. By its very nature PvP is a skill-based contest. As soon as you have gear differences in there, it's not just about skill anymore. Ranked PvP is going to be a disaster. Who wants to play in a ranked setting when everyone has different gear levels? That's the complete opposite of the point of Ranked PvP. We already have to deal with the horrific class balancing, adding gear differences on top of that is like a huge, overwhelming, steaming clump of icing dumped right on top of the cake.

I'm with TUXs, all this is doing is putting lipstick on a pig. I think any time you use the words "this can feel punishing" when describing a game, then you really need to rethink the whole concept.

It's not quite the "putting in the work" that's the problem. Full expertise gear right now is very easy to get. Bioware did this for a very important reason: Their gamers have proven that they want skill to be the main factor in PvP, not gear differences. When 2 people are in the easily obtainable 2018 expertise gear, they have comparable stats and both have a set bonus. That the 2 PvP tiers of gear are so similar in stats (single digit differences) serves to help keep a level playing field in PvP so that you're not destroyed by someone in better gear simply because they're in better gear, and vice versa. By moving to a system where gear drops are RNG, with no cheap expertise set to level anything out, you wind up in a situation where everyone in a warzone, or a ranked arena, are in varying stages of gear with varying advantages and disadvantages. It just ruins the spirit of PvP.

On the surface it appears viable, but in reality it's going to destroy parity. Sure you can gain CXP faster in ranked, but who wants to play ranked matches where all 8 people are in different stages of gearing themselves? At that point, what does ranking even mean? They implemented the expertise requirement just to stop gear differentials from happening, so they KNOW parity in ranked is essential. Even in regs, it's simply not fun to utterly destroy someone because I have better gear. And the opposite is true too; it's not fun to be destroyed simply because my gear is not as good. I'm in the same boat as the OP, this is unfortunately going to be it for my sub. I'm just not in a place where I want to play a game where I have to mindlessly and endlessly grind for RNG gear, only play PvP against a cluster-event of people all in various stages of gearing. Say what you want about expertise gear, but the sheer ease of obtaining 2018 expertise helped provide a level playing field where SKILL was the most important factor, not gear differences.

And I see it the opposite way. When I see someone using that 20-year old joke, I feel bad for that person. It's like watching that guy who never developed proper social skills; it just makes me cringe. I mean, what kind of person would think that repeating a 20 year old joke, in an attempt to mock someone for the simple joy of social humiliation of another person, is going to be looked at as funny or cute? It's just sad. I feel bad for you that something like that brings you joy. To be clear, it doesn't make me feel anger, or frustration, or anything like that. I just feel bad for you. Like I would walking by a homeless person on the street.

Also, 2 more things I didn't think of until just now: First, in order to get the highest tier armor, you have to grind through 100 levels of Command XP first, then, at those highest CXP levels, where it takes the most amount of CXP to gain a crate, that's where the fun starts in trying to get what you need. Also, I forgot that there are set-bonus, and non-set bonus versions of each armor. So let's go back to using examples, and let's take a chest piece on my tank. There is a 1 in 12 chance of getting a chest piece to begin with, then a 1 in 4 chance of getting the set-bonus version of the tank chest. That's a 1 in 48 chance of getting my desired chest piece with each crate. This is getting better and better, huh?

Whoa, hold the phone here a minute. 1 in 14 chance? That's not even close to being accurate. So, some math. If I'm a tank, there are 2 different possible armor sets I can get: dps or tank. For the modifiable armor pieces, that's 14 different pieces, plus 2 each of the MH and OH, so we're at 18 now just when considering modifiable pieces. Then there are the dps AND tank versions of the implants, earpieces, and relics. How many different stat combos are there on earpieces and implants? How many different relics are there? Let's take just implants as an example. And let's be generous and assume it decides which implant you get AFTER it decides that you get an implant. There are 10 different stat combinations? That's a 1 in 10 chance for the implant you want, multiplied by the 1 in 12 (remember, you have 2 implants and 2 relics) chance of getting an implant in the first place, which makes getting the implant you want a 1 in 120 chance whenever you open a crate. Let's take a simpler example, the Main Hand. If I'm a tank, there are 2 different mainhands I can get. Let's again say that it decides which of the 2 mainhands I get AFTER it decides that I get a mainhand. That's a 1 in 2 chance of the one I want multiplied by the 1 in 12 chance of getting a mainhand in the first place, which is a 1 in 24 chance of getting the mainhand I want whenever I open a crate. This is also assuming that the chances of getting any piece of gear is equal to any other (ie mainhands aren't more rare than bracers). And since statistics are just probabilities, there's a chance I can open up 100 crates and STILL not get the mainhand I need. Opening each successive crate doesn't increase the odds that the next crate will give me what I want. Now think about that in the context of a 1 in 120 chance at the desired implant. 1 in 14 isn't anywhere near the ballpark of accurate. And that's ignoring that it forgets that you have 2 implants and 2 relics so the number 14 doesn't even make sense. And saying that people will get 1 of every piece by their 30th crate shows a complete lack of understanding of statistics and probability. You wanted to defend this so bad you didn't stop to think about the numbers before just making up a statistic.

I don't think this is "progressive" or "innovative". Remember, RNG has been done in this game, which makes this "regressive" if you want to assign an adjective to it. Regardless of how Battlemaster bags were implemented, the bottom line was that it was the RNG that was the problem. Not even the pace at which we gear ourselves will be under our control anymore. It's entirely possible that my tank will have a full set of dps gear before getting his tank gear. It's also possible that I'll be sitting on 5 duplicate sets of boots while I still need half of my set. How many different stat combinations are there for earpieces? I need a particular one, but even if I get lucky and an earpiece drops, it's still only got a 1 in 10 chance of being the one I need. Same with the implants. The complete and utter lack of control when it comes to RNG is the issue, regardless of their goals in doing it. Taking it one step further, I like to add some dps mods/enhancements to my tank gear for pvp. Now I have to wait and hope RNG drops me even more of what I need to be able to happily play. And isn't the "happily play" the important part of a game? If part of a game is making people frustrated or miserable, isn't it logical to change that part of the game? Once upon a time they realized this, and mitigated all the gear grinds in the game. I just don't understand why they're bringing it back knowing that people didn't like it in the first place. This system takes all the control out of our hands. I doesn't matter what I need to complete my set, all I can do is cross my fingers while I keep grinding away. I play the game because it's fun, not because there's gear to grind. Re-adding a gear grind takes away the fun.

I don't know, I see the whole "wait to get lucky" as the actual problem. Right now we have full control over how, when, and why we gear our toons. With this system, every bit of that control is taken away and we have to "wait to get lucky". With this new RNG system I could play 100 warzones on my tank and have 3 tank pieces, 4 dps pieces, and 5 duplicates of any of those, whereas right now any player that plays 100 warzones will be in a full set of gear with an appropriate set bonus, with comms left over to customize and optimize. That means more people that are able to play to full effect, which means more happy people.

The gear isn't the game though. That's the problem. You need the gear to play the game. Take pvp for instance. You can't play ranked until you've gotten the best gear and augmented it. You can't do NiM ops until you get better gear. With this system they're gating the game behind the grind. I can't play what I want to play without first grinding for it, and getting lucky with the RNG. We play the game because it's fun, not because there's gear to grind for. I've played the same warzones for years on end now because it's fun. Adding a ridiculous gear grind to it just makes it annoying, it doesn't lengthen anything. There's a reason they mitigated all the gear grinds once upon a time. It seems they've forgotten the reasons they made all those changes in the first place.

Personally, I do. I play ranked PvP with 9 different toons, and play regs with those plus 2 more. Just because you don't have fun playing with your alts doesn't mean that we don't. I'm a "PvPer". When I say that, I mean that I log into the game in order that I can play warzones and ranked. I find that fun. I don't have as much fun playing raids, or running through heroics, or dailies, or anything else. I also like the variety of being able to play a whole bunch of different classes. I can choose which one I want to play depending on my mood. Sometimes it's tanking, sometimes it's healing, sometimes it's ranged dps, and sometimes it's melee dps. I also like being able to help get solo ranked popping by being able to switch to whatever role we need to fill the queue and get a pop. If I'm playing regs, and our faction is queueing with 3 healers, I can switch off my own healer to a different role. If I'm queueing and there are no healers, I can switch to my healer and fill that role for us. Do I have to go on with the advantages of easily gearing multiple toons for PvP? It's not just as simple as "pick a toon, stick with it, and be happy about it ". Then there's the subject of how to do this on multiple servers. I have 2 toons on Harb, and the rest on Pot5. I'm going to have to go through the grind on multiple servers now too? The system wasn't broken, there was no need to fix it. In fact, they've made tremendous improvements to pvp gearing over the past few years that have been majorly beneficial to reducing the barrier to entry to pvp. (I also made a post in the pvp forums about expertise, and the role it plays in keeping a level playing field in regards to gear discrepancy if anyone is interested).

Expertise DOES serve an important purpose in this game. A full set of expertise gear is seen by PvEers as simply a barrier to PvP, but that's not the important effect it has on gameplay. First, consider how many tiers of PvE gear there are currently, and compare that to the 2 tiers of PvP gear. The 2 tiers of PvP gear are very close in stats, with just single-digit differences. The purpose of these sets is to provide parity in warzones. If 2 people both have a full set of expertise gear, that means both are comparable in stats, and both have their set bonus. By removing expertise gear and replacing it with 100 levels of Command Ranks with multiple tiers of gear, some with a set bonus and some without, the parity of players within warzones is going to be destroyed. If we look back at the history of PvP gearing in this game, it starts with RNG Battlemaster bags. This system was scrapped within months of launch because of the drastic inequality created during matches. Later on in the life of this game, the prices of the gear was drastically reduced so that the gear was wholly accessible to everyone within just a handful of warzones, to narrow the gap even further. After that, warzone comms were given a means with which to legacy-transfer to your other toons. All of these changes were met with near-universal approval from the community. If history has taught us anything in this game, it's that we as players and gamers hate gear differences, and want SKILL to be the deciding factor in player vs. player contests. By moving to this new system and removing expertise, and dropping gear randomly in boxes, we're moving back in time, to a place in this game's history that has proven to be unpopular with your players due to it's gameplay effects. The only way around the negative effects of this system is to just give everyone flat spec-dependent stats when they enter a pvp zone. This, of course, creates its own negative effects as we can no longer customize our stats for our playstyle.

It's not as simple as you put it, especially for PvPers. Look at this from my point of view: I play on 2 different servers. I log in for the purpose of playing PvP, and don't really raid or run heroics, or anything like that. On 1 server, I have a Jugg and a Guardian tank, mirrors so that they can share gear, and a sage. On the other server, I have another jugg and guardian, and the pub/imp mirrors for the operative, PT, merc, and sorc. And I play them all. I run the daily with a couple of them when I log in, and this past ranked season I played at least the 10 required matches with all of those toons, because it's fun for me. I like playing all those different toons. Now, with this system, it's going to take me "a long time" to gear up just 1 toon, and even sharing gear is going to be a nightmare, because just to share gear with mirror classes is going to take more RNG-luck to get the earpieces/implants/relics that can't be sent. Then there's the multiple servers. Last ranked season I was able to log into my toons on the second server to find matches if the queue wasn't popping on my server. Now that it's going to take a huge grind just to get a single toon in shape to play ranked, how am I going to do this on 2 servers? In the Dev's own words from the livestream, if all I play is PvP regs it's going to take a "really long time" to gear up just 1 toon. Saying that ranked is the fastest way to level your command is a little backwards to me too, since you don't want to play ranked without the best gear, but you need to level command before getting the best gear..... I hate to say it, but if this system goes live, that may be it for me. I was around for 1.0 and the battlemaster bags, and I really don't want to go back to an RNG system that has already proven to have failed in this game.

The irony is that the only people who will be geared enough to queue for ranked will be the raiders, while the people like me who log in just so that I can play warzones and ranked arenas will take months to be able to move on to ranked.

Is it really a "head start" if they played the warzones, and spent the time doing the activity? Your own signature says "you want a thing, do the work", isn't that exactly what rewarding warzone comms for lowbie pvp is? I don't think it really "levels the playing field" either, seeing as it's the same number of warzones you have to play either way to get the comms. In the end, 2 people with full 208 gear played the same number of warzones. Full disclosure though, I thought the pvp gear from random boxes at the game's launch was the worst possible way to do that. Also, if you need the best gear just to start to playing ranked, why is playing ranked the fastest way to gain command levels in order to get the gear? It seems a little backwards. Unless they're planning on just giving everyone flat stats in warzones now, with no variation or ability to customize your stats....

So, if all I do is PvP, and I log into the game in order to PvP, getting the best gear in which to PvP is going to take a "really long time"? I feel like this is punishing me as a PvPer for playing the part of the game I enjoy. How is this different from the random drop gear bags at launch? I just ask because that was, in my opinion, the single biggest barrier of the game when it launched.

Well, I wasn't exactly lobbing soft-balls at him. I suppose I didn't post my questions word-for-word, but each question I asked him was backed up with WHY I was asking him that question. For example read the question about the ranked rewards, or why I explained that pvp wasn't getting any support from BW. It wasn't rainbows and unicorns. and you can't force someone to answer a question in any particular way. As far as matchmaking and pugs v premades, we have our answer already; they're not going to take away the ability for people to play warzones with their friends, and any changes to the current system to try to alleviate the pug v premade will result in astronomically longer queue times for everyone. It's not going to change. Also, something I think that gets lost in the forums here is that Eric Musco is the Community Manager, not a developer. He's not sitting and writing code, he's not making the decisions for how to implement systems, and he's not the one in charge of the direction things go. He's involved in their decision making as far as relaying the community's opinions on things, but that's as far as it goes. He's a great source of information, but that's it. If you read my other post with Ben Irving, you can see how different the conversations I had with them were. With Ben, we talked about how things could change. With Eric, it was more question and answer. When we lobby for a thing with Eric, it's in the hope that he goes to Ben and lobbies for that thing to him. Eric is simply the voice, and supposedly the advocate for the community in their meetings, and they can either choose to ignore him, or change things based on that. Look at the example of the ranked rewards: Ben thought titles were just fine, while Eric already knew they stink. Obviously a situation where they ignored him, if he said anything about it to them in the first place. And if he didn't mention this to anyone, he's either a bad community manager, or we overestimate what his duties entail.

Hey guys, I was going to post this sooner, but got a little busy. Eric was also a lot of fun to talk with as well. He was incredibly friendly and willing to talk about anything and everything I brought up. For some reason, no one asked about the "better than cross-server", so towards the end of the night I mentioned it. He said that the bottom line when people ask for "cross server" is that they want to click the "queue" button and have it pop as quickly as possible. He explained that the whole "better than cross-server" was never just 1 "thing"; it was more like a package of "things" that were intended to be rolled out together, but are now being integrated into the game piecemeal as they are finished. He said that some of things included in that package have already been released, and they are still working on the others. He didn't get into specifics. I wanted to ask more about server merges and what-not, but the conversation went elsewhere. On the topic of 8v8 ranked, he said that when they look at the number of people who actually participated in it when it was available, the number is depressingly low. As in, there were more people at the Cantina event than there were people who actually played an 8v8 ranked match. Bringing back 8v8 isn't really in the cards at the moment. Someone asked him about an open pvp format like the old Ilum. Eric said that when people went to Ilum to pvp back at launch, they were playing a slide-show; it wasn't fun. Without saying it, he gave me the impression that they don't have confidence that the game could handle it at this point either. When asked about improving pvp, he gave a very similar answer to Ben, "We want to work on getting more people to participate in, and to have fun participating in pvp, and simply adding more warzones isn't necessarily the best way to do that." The striking similarity of his answer to Ben's answer, almost word-for-word, led me to believe that this is something that has been brought up in their meetings already. He didn't mention any specifics. I also asked Eric about this season's pvp rewards. I framed my question differently for him than I did for Ben. I mentioned to him that since the last season ended, 1 year ago, there have been 12 cartel packs with 50 (FIFTY) armor sets, 12 weapon sets, and the extra weapon set which went into the Eternal Championship. Looking at all that from a pvper's point of view is really depressing, especially since this season is over 3-times longer than any other season and all there are for rewards is a color crystal that's been in the cartel market for 3-years now, and a bunch of titles. Eric was incredibly sympathetic to this subject. He knows the rewards this season are disappointing. He understands why. He wishes it was better this season. But he can't do anything about it. I asked him to print out the official BW post "What do you want for ranked rewards" and pass it out to the team, because none of the posts say "less weapons/armor, and more titles". He knows. I couldn't keep harping on it with him since he appeared to be in complete agreement with me. I did ask about the EC weapons. I pointed out that they are reskins of the current pvp tier weapons with an effect on them, and asked if those were meant as ranked rewards. He said that when they make weapons/armor/rewards they don't make particular items for particular things. When it comes to implementing rewards, reputation vendor items, etc, they take everything they have available, and divide it up. I left it unsaid that it looked like they forgot about ranked and added the cartel market crystal as an "oops, we already used everything and have nothing else left". I meant to ask if they could just roll forward last season's weapon box, and kicked myself when I got home for not remembering to ask. He confirmed that there is, in fact, a "PvP Team", but that the teams overlap, so the members of "PvP Team" have responsibilities to other teams as well. I told him that my perception, as a pvper, was that over the past year we didn't get any support from Bioware to help pvp. Between the year-long season, no balance changes, lack of rewards, and no official posts in this forum, it's become harder and harder to draw new people to pvp in general, and especially to ranked pvp. I told him that I play on Pot5, and that we had a great little ranked community on the server when the season started (which has since died), but that most nights we'd only have a handful of people logged in and queueing, but not enough to get a pop. This meant standing on the fleet and shouting for people to queue for an hour or two just to get a few matches in that night. I told him that we really needed more support from BW to help us keep the community going, and to help the community grow. He was very sympathetic, and understood why I felt the lack of support. I got the impression that he really wants to do more to support us, but that he's not in a position that allows him to do anything but listen to us complain about it, and pass it along. They are making a lot of changes to the classes coming up in the expansion, and he knows the meta will be vastly different than it is now, but we'll have to wait and see how it all shakes out when it goes live. He's "excited" for the changes. Without saying it, he gave me the impression that one of the main reasons that they are not doing monthly chapters anymore is that it didn't leave them with any time or manpower to address any other portions of the game, and that this new format will let them focus on improving the current game moving forward. Just for Alec Fortescue I asked Ben Irving about Jedi Robes . It's completely absurd to me that THE most recognizable and maybe the most iconic outfit in all of Star Wars wasn't the first thing they designed for the game, let alone still not having one 5 years into the game's life. (Charles Boyd was actually dressed as a Jedi. When I brought this up to Ben, I literally pointed at Charles and said "that outfit" lol). He looked a little surprised that it's not something that's been done, and then said that they have a LOT of legal issues when it comes to that kind of stuff and the maybe that was the reason, but if he remembers to bring it up in a meeting, he will. I know I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff that I talked about with him. I'm sure I'll remember some of it as soon as I hit the "submit" button here. If any of you want me to go into more details about any of this, just ask, I'm happy to let you know everything.

Yeah, the line of questioning about unranked just didn't go very far because of the nature of his answer and the flow of the conversation. Basically, he said that the question of how to get more people participating in, and having fun in pvp (in the context of unranked pvp) is something that they are going to concentrate on after the expansion comes out. So he didn't really have any plans or anything really to talk about in that regard at this time. Although he didn't say it, I got the impression that the monthly chapter cadence over the past year was a huge feat for them to accomplish, and simply didn't have the extra time or manpower to devote to the other areas of the game, which is how we wound up with a year-long ranked season, why the rishi arena stayed bugged for a couple of months, why there were no balance changes, why they didn't have any assets to devote to ranked rewards, no new operations, etc. I think this is why they ultimately decided to ditch this plan; the rest of the game was suffering and they knew it, but they had no choice but to continue and ride it out until now. I think the bright spot in it all is that as soon as the expansion comes out, they don't have anything left to do for it and can devote 100% of their resources to future content and plans instead of the race to get the next chapter done on time. So while there's going to be a bit of lag time before we actually see any fruits from this, he seemed really positive about having the time and ability to get back to improving upon what we've got. I didn't have any real ideas/suggestions at the spur of the moment when this came up, so the conversation didn't really stay on this topic. He did say that simply adding new warzones or arenas wasn't necessarily the best way to get more people into pvp although it's definitely on the table for the next year, so their thought process is already onto the idea of using other ways to improve pvp.