That may worked in WoW for the past 8ish years now, but is this what people really want the MMORPG genre to become from now until forever? I don't know if that gear progression = grind = subscription money is actually true or not, but a fun, balanced, lag-free, bug-free game would get my subscription money.

You're right, I was just being cheeky. In all seriousness tough, mmorpgs are a more social and complete environment. I think this and being much more vested into your toon is what makes an MMO different from an FPS/RTS/Diablo. Can an FPS become an MMO? I certainly think so. Diablo is borderline mmorpg, as it is going to be an MMO game and it does have RPG elements in it. However, it won't be a pay to play.

Quote 1, please meet Quote 2.

Pvpers also play roles. When I'm pvping on my sith sorc, I'm still healing. People still play a role when they carry the ball in Huttball. ~_~; Without stats, toon abilities can be more easily balanced and it would not be just like the next character because they may or may not have the same ability as you. However, skill would come more into play, as you'd have to make the decision of when to do what and couldn't rely on your gear's stats to carry you when you made a mistake. Not everyone in the world runs around in D&D with a +5 Vorpal sword. Stats increases in D&D is supposed to be pretty rare.

Again, I'm not begrudging people gear, what I'm saying is that stats on the gear is actually kinda pointless and redundant since they try to balance each encounter thereafter to make the content difficult, even with the "improved" gear. Also, different gear sets could still have different set bonuses, such as the sorc shield's cd being reduced to 8 seconds on the pvp gear for sorcs. RPGS, in fact, ANY GAME IN GENERAL should make the point of entertaining the player and being fun to play, not just sheer number crunching.

This would be fine if Bioware at least debugged the game sufficiently as to not make SWTOR feel like a pay to play beta test of SWTOR. I think people were much more willing to give Bioware a chance at an mmo than some other no name developer due to Baldur's gate, Kotor, and all those other amazing games they've created in the past. They have pedigree. However, they just lost a ton of cache with a lot of people due to their poorly timed SWTOR release. Game bugs, especially really LARGE ones, that were known pre-launch should not require the community to "just take a breath" while the devs work it out.

U MAD? Ok jk, didn't mean to troll in my own thread. I think you're kinda looking it in the wrong way. What I'm saying is, it's easier for artists to come up with new armor concepts than it is for programmers to number crunch how much stats to add to gear and then see how that affects abilities and then find the corrolation between that and pve/pvp content. K thx.

I play a female sith sorc and for the love of me, I dunno why the chest piece is cut off midway down. The male version of the chest looks sooo much nicer. Relatively ofc, since sorc gear ALSO looks like it was found in a trash can. /sigh

You're wrong. Without factoring in stats, you think it would take a long time for a graphic artist to whip up a couple different sets of armor? Or even like in swtor right now, the same set of armor with different variations? With enough time, your character will be uniquely yours, as more and more armor sets keep coming out. When vanilla wow first launched, I was one of the first people on my server with a level 60 white saber mount without the armor. Over time, more and more people bought the same mount. However, when the armored mounts came out, most people turned their old mounts in for the new one, and then those old ones became ultra rare. Eventually people began to envy my old mount because it was no longer available and it was rarely seen. People love getting unique, super rare mount drops because while they have absolutely no effect in the game other than to take you from a to b, just like any other mount, they can show them off to people. This would be the same concept applied to armor. If I thought an armor looked cool but it would be even cooler in black instead of red, artists could easily render that and devs could put it into the game.

Exactly, people love to show off. You think most people who buy exotic sports cars are driving enthusiasts? Most just buy big, expensive, shiny stuff to show others they have big, expensive, shiny stuff.

There would be new gear, only it wouldn't be stat boosting. People get bored because the game gets boring. If the game is fun, people keep playing. Without the stats boosts, it would be easier to develop new instances/warzones/ops, etc and it would make skill be more of a factor.

Exactly. Right now you kill bosses to get gear to... kill more bosses to get more gear... /rinse&repeat. At least during vanilla wow, pre-resil, you raided and got gear to own people in the face with the best gear and to stand around IF in your full tier set and look like a bad/\$$ when everyone else were peasants in their blues/greens. What I'm saying is, remove the number crunching and bring back the "stand around and look like a bad/\$$ to all the peasants" part which most people enjoy. edit: wow, censorship on this forum is redic.

So what? Do you also go around RPing, which is also a staple of "Role Playing Games"? Some people do, some people don't. However, why be stuck on it? There's nothing wrong with thinking/going outside the box.

Here's my idea for an MMO. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2901966#post2901966

And Counterstrike is a fine game with the same rotation of weapons available to everyone. Which also could transfer over to mmos. Just pick your class, you have your abilities, and if you want rewards, do stuff and you can buy gear that cosmetically alters your toon and gives set bonuses. After all, isn't that one of the reasons people always want the best gear, to show everyone else you have the newest, shiniest, best gear? I think adding the stats only unbalances the game and if people were really genuinely interested in who is better than who and who is a better raider than who, this would be a much easier way to determine it.

I dunno where to post this so I thought I'd do it here. Here's an idea I just had. Do stats really matter for an MMO? Why not remove all stats and balance heals/damage/tanking abilities manually until there is a universal "balance" and that's it? Instead of worrying about balancing a boss encounter because increased stats from the last batch of gear, devs can instead focus on how those class skills will actually be used and use the extra time to develop the fight and make it more fun and interesting instead of making it a number crunching game. Same thing with pvp. x deals y damage. a does b healing. j prevents/reduces k damage. After setting the initial stats, this makes PvP more skill based. What's the point of playing like this and what sort of reward to expect? Well, you can still have gear, but it would be mostly a graphical thing. You wanna kill the newest bosses and gain the highest amount of valor to get the coolest, newest, nicest looking gear. Also, the gear can also have 2pc and 4pc set bonuses to slightly affect the outcome of different skills, etc. What do you guys think about this?

The game is "young" only after launch. However, the game had as much time as it wanted to be in a beta phase and fix all the annoying bugs in the game. Instead Bioware and EA launch an incomplete product and expects players to pay to play a beta. So please, quit trying to shove the "It's only been 2 months" B.S. down our throats. That only works for class balance and obscure bugs, as well as problems with new content. Extra people zoning into wz's, lag when there are 40-80 people pvping on ilum in one area, and a plethora of other bugs should have been taken care of long before the 2 months.

I started playing this game with 4 other RL friends and now I'm the only one that plays. This game has been out for 2 months and I just unsubbed myself. When the game is out of it's pay to play beta phase, I'll think about coming back.

Blame your Dr. for not giving you a refillable perscription.

What is the timetable for 1.2 to come out? Maybe I will keep my sub active and check out the changes, because at this point, I feel SWTOR is a pay to play game in BETA phase and my sub ends on the 19th and I don't feel like renewing.

The problem with your math is the sampling size. Opening 48 bags isn't a large sampling. Also, players may have gotten 0 in three weeks. However they may also have not gotten the maximum possible amount of bags, skewing your probability further. However, I do agree that people just need to quit QQing about gear and how they feel they are not being rewarded enough for their "efforts" and play the actual game more. Yes, it feels nice to get new gear, but is that really the end game? My main concern is whether I actually enjoy playing the game or not, more than wondering if I'm gaining enough loot.

While Ilum is a big worry, a bigger problem I see with this game is the lag experienced when a bunch of players are grouped up in one area. I built a new rig a week before this game went live and I have plenty of RAM (16 gigs, ikr?!), a 6 core AMD Phenom II 1100T Black Edition, and a Radeon HD 6870 w/ 2gigs of GDDR5. I also changed my graphics to have the lowest setting possible, and I *STILL* experienced some pretty bad lag. I think this needs to be looked at even before looking at changes to try to fix Ilum, if Bioware wants to give players a world-pvp experience.

I concur, as with Starcraft back in late 90's and early 2000's, Huttball is also in it's infancy stage with really basic strategies emerging thusfar. One day we may even see a SlayerS_`BoxeR` in Huttball who destroys everyone with his innovative play and awesome micro.

Well a different map would add a different demension to the game so there may be other ways to allow getting around easier, even without a movement utility. I dunno, it would depend on the map design I guess.

Oki, so I read your thread, now go read my idea! Tbh, I never really enjoyed the world objective pvp, I was always more of a xroads raid or SS/TM pvp kinda guy. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=283893