Cry me a river. Why would you go and dump your crafting profession just to level another on to 400 anyway? You could buy the crit crafted item from someone else you know? Furthermore, I'm really tired of people like you that are in the extreme minority of the player population thinking the game should revolve around you. Most people don't really care if they have the "best in slot" item in every slot. Does that surprise you to hear that? It shouldn't. Most people have jobs and responsibilities and don't have the time it would take to get them all anyway so 'pretty damn close' is usually good enough. Crafting should have a point in the game and right now, it doesn't. That's going to change and that is a good thing so deal with it. I'm sure there will not be anything in the patch notes saying: -Players will now have to grind up multiple crew skills to 400 so they can get the best items without stooping to paying one of their fellow players for said items. It won't say that because it isn't the case. Your whole argument is based on a horribly flawed premise.

Money is so easy to come by in this game, why do you care if it's expensive?

Your concern for their financial well being is duly noted. I'm sure they appreciate your brilliance even if it's completely lost on the rest of us plebeians.

That's not true, you get bonus commendations for getting medals and you also get them for getting MVP votes. Now I will admit the latter is completely random since most people vote for their buddies or whoever had the most healing but it's still there. There's a problem with giving too much reward for individual achievement when it's a team game with a team goal. As someone else said, I've seen guys get 350k damage in Huttball while their team loses 6-1. They are never anywhere near the ball, they are just seeking out the easiest marks they can find and going after them repeatedly. They aren't helping their team at all, in fact, they are hurting it by making one of the best damage dealers on their team (that would be themselves) irrelevant.

Look buddy, I know you think you are the smartest guy in the room here but you aren't the only player in this game. Just because you personally may have commendations coming out your ears, the vast majority of people that are still gearing up their characters do not. I know on my assassin I pretty much cashed all of them in whenever I hit the magic 200/200 mark. In a loss, you are going to gain roughly 60 warzone comms. With my suggestion, if you bail early, not only will you not get those 60 comms but you will have to forfeit 30 that you have already accrued. The only problem I see with this is what to do with the people that don't have 30 comms in the bank. I guess the only option then would be the dreaded timer penalty because everyone can pay that. Stop thinking you have all the answers and everyone else is too stupid to comprehend your brilliance. I assure you that none of that is true. edit: I read your answers to the two questions you posed. Those answers are your answers, they would not be mine. I care about winning or losing because I hate to lose...at anything. If I play you in a game of Chinese Checkers, I am going to do my best to beat your ***. My aging mother likes to play Words with Friends with me on Facebook. I try my best to beat her. I love my mom but my competitive nature drives me to try to win. So again, you are trying to project your viewpoints onto the playerbase as a whole and if anything is an invalid arguement, that is.

The idea of leaving a warzone costing credits isn't bad if you think about it. It wouldn't really effect a single person that isn't a habitual offender. I would rather see it cost commendations though as that's what you're there to get. Want to bail on a bad team so you can save time? Sure, but it's gonna cost you 30 warzone comms. There again, that would only effect people that do it often and repeatedly. I have no problem with leaving the occasional warzone when the team is hopeless. I would be a hypocrite to say I did have a problem with it because I've done it myself. The real problem is people bail all the time when the situation isn't hopeless because they only want to play in a game that is a sure win. On my server, it's a Sith trademark that half their team will bail when they fall behind in a WZ. That's why I re-rolled to Republic. They have quitters too but it's not nearly as epidemic as it is on the Sith side for whatever reason. Anyway, I digress. The problem of people leaving early has gotten bad enough that something needs to be done about it. I think a small 30 commendation penalty is enough to make people think twice about abandoning a situation that is still winnable. If it's really hopeless and your time is that important to you, you can still go but you don't have to wait 15+ minutes to queue again. I hate timer penalties just like you but there has to be some disincentive on leaving or the problem will continue to worsen. edit: The battlemaster title and the gear that goes with it are no indication of player skill. Just sayin'.

I'm curious how many people that responded in this thread in favor of punishing leavers play Sith? I started out as Sith and noticed it was a big problem. I have since made a Republic character on the same server and it's really not a problem at all but then again, Republic tends to win most of the games on our server where they go against Sith. Not coincidentally, there always seem to be more healers pvping on the Republic side.

I have run into this on every dps class I've played. You get some commendations saved up and go to buy some mods to upgrade your oranges and it's always the same old story. The highest level mods (ie: the ones any sane person would want) are always the ones with more endurance than <insert damage dealing attribute here>. I am a dps class, not a tank. I don't need tons of endurance. If I am getting hit there is a problem somewhere with how I'm doing pve. I'll give a perfect example to illustrate this. The character I'm currently working towards being my new main is a Gunslinger. I would like to upgrade his gun barrels. I'm looking at the Tatooine mod vendor right now and the options I have are: Patron Barrel 10: 14 endurance, 11 cunning, 66 rating Patron Barrel 11: 15 endurance, 12 cunning, 70 rating Skill Barrel 9: 9 endurance, 13 cunning, 62 rating So not only are there fewer choices with more cunning than endurance but the one choice I have happens to be the worst of the 3 rating-wise. Nobody that plays a dps class is going to want to stack endurance over their damage dealing stat. Even if I were a healing Scoundrel, I'd still want more cunning than endurance. It's the same with all the mods, not just barrels and it needs to be fixed.

When I said vanish and look for a better opening, what I had in mind is something like the sorc/sage sees you as you are finishing off another player and casts Force Lightning on you. At this point, the smartest thing to do is either break LOS and try to get off and get re-stealthed or vanish because by the time you reach the guy you are going to be down 1/3 to 1/2 of your health. I wasn't saying that anytime you see a sorc/sage you should vanish but you shouldn't fight them where they have the edge either. I don't know why I bother to try to help guys like you though. Folks like you always see imbalance as the reason you lose and never look in the mirror. I imagine that if you were to make a sorc/sage, you'd be sub-par at that as well.

This game has many places where allegedly there is gambling going on yet we as players cannot participate in it. I'm normally not an RP guy but some gambling minigames would be appreciated. Sometimes you don't want to go out and kill stuff and just want a little diversion from the grind. Gambling minigames would be great for that.

You must be a pretty poor assassin OP. I also play an assassin and while there are some sorcs/sages that can give me trouble and some that can beat me, that's not the case for the majority of them. Most of them go into panic mode as soon as their shield drops (and it only absorbs about 2500 points) and will either just run or else they try to tank you and get in a dps race with me that they cannot win. I'm not going to lie here in an attempt to fuel the smoldering nerf fire you've started. The ones that beat me usually have a gear advantage or else they just play it better than I did and deserve to win. I don't have a problem with that. You can't win them all. The most important thing in beating them is where the fight starts. If it starts at range, you are going to lose because the caster is holding all the cards there. Just break LOS or vanish and look for a better opening. You need to start in melee range so you can be doing damage right away. As far as sorcs damage goes, everyone points out how they get big numbers in warzones but those damage numbers on the scoreboard mean jack squat. Anybody that goes into a warzone and just AEs the whole game will put up big numbers but AEs don't kill people because they have no burst to them. Sorcs/sages are probably the least bursty dps class of all of them. They do good damage but they don't really have the big bombs that the other dps classes do. Learn how to fight against them instead of running to the forums. One last thing, if you are dying to a heal spec sorc/sage as an assassin, the problem is definitely you. You should be able to put enough pressure on that guy that he can't do anything but heal himself. It might take forever to kill him or you may need help to kill him but there is no way he should be able to kill you.

Who cares if it's easy to get? It's PvP gear we are talking about here not 'carrot on a stick' pve crap. PvPers shouldn't be playing with the primary goal of getting gear so they can stand around in the fleet wearing their precious gear. Their primary goal should be competing against other players. I think there should be some time involved in getting a PvP character geared up but it should be relatively short compared to pve. The main reason for that is once a pve player has all the BiS items for their character, they have nothing to do but stand around wearing their gear. If they attain that gear too quickly, they will quit out of boredom. PvP players always have other players to fight against. Whether they are new 50s or fully geared, they will play until they get bored of the PvP. It's a totally different mindset. I prefer to have all players on equal footing gearwise in pvp environments. That way fights come down to teamwork and player skill and not who has the best gear. To that end, a relatively quick gear grind is desirable unless you are one of those that likes the crutch a gear advantage provides (and I know there are plenty of them.)

No, the expertise difference alone doesn't make you lose. The expertise difference combined with the stat difference combined with the lack of set bonuses doesn't make you lose either but it sure puts you behind the 8 ball.

I understand perfectly. When I'm comparing a blue pve item to a purple pvp item, I shouldn't have to try to guess if it will make my character do more damage or not. The choice should be clear. Currently it is not so you are apparently the one that doesn't understand why that is an issue with Centurion gear.

Dimwit, this is comparing a level 50 BLUE item to a level 50 PURPLE item. The purple item should be a clear upgrade in all areas, not just expertise. It is not and that is why nobody gives a rat's *** about getting Centurion items. Chances are they already have something as good or better.

Centurion gear is not better than blues in many cases. Here is a case in point: Centurion Stalker's Implant 64 endurance 56 willpower 39 expertise 40 accuracy (why does all pvp gear have accuracy on it anyway?) 40 critical rating Entropic Awareness D-Motivator (level 50 blue item, was a quest reward I think) 58 endurance 72 willpower 34 accuracy 29 crit So if I take the Centurion implant, I lose 16 points of willpower that effects my melee damage and crit on my assassin as well as my force damage and crit. I gain 60 hit points, 39 expertise and 11 crit. So is that an upgrade? Without knowing all the forumlae behind the game, it's very hard to say. I certainly don't think so and if is, it is a very, very modest one. Ok, here's my other non-pvp item I haven't replaced. What I'm wearing now is a tank belt because that's how I leveled up but I'm now dps specced. In the interest of fairness, I'll compare it to the Cent tank belt: Primeval Exemplar's Waistwrap (level 50 blue, again a quest reward I believe) 237 armor 60 endurance 52 willpower 18 absorption rating Centurion Survivor's Waistwrap 257 armor 55 endurance 48 willpower 39 expertise 22 absorption Again, this is not a clear upgrade and you actually lose health by wearing the pvp item which is silly for pvp gear. Keep in mind, these are blue items I am comparing to EPIC items and they are roughly the same. I don't care what anyone says, a level 50 epic pvp item should be an obvious upgrade over a level 50 blue quest reward.

Let me ask you something then pve guy. Would you be a little irked if the tier 1 epic pve stuff wasn't any better, and in many cases was worse, than crafted blue stuff? Yeah, I thought so.

Well Mr. Internet Tough Guy, that's not what I was saying at all. What I WAS saying was that this change is going to make it harder for new 50s to get caught up to where many, many people already are. I have an assassin that has all Champ gear now except the belt and 1 implant so he's hardly effected by this change. However, I know what a difference that champ gear makes over non-pvp or the Centurion crap. It's substantial. Hell, you have a guy just a couple posts above yours saying that t2 pve gear is better than Centurion. I've got no problem going through a progression. What I have a problem with is the beginning of that progression is not as good as crafted pve blues when it's supposed to be epic quality. That makes it undesirable and having to grind through it is kind of pointless when you likely won't even want to wear any of it anyway.

Georg, you are right that we want the RNG element removed/lowered but the problem with what you're saying is that Champion bags give Centurion commendations not Champion commendations. So yes, we can get an item of our choice but not the Champion item of our choice. The Centurion gear is not even really an upgrade over crafted blues with the exception of a rather small amount of expertise it gives. In fact, I have forgone replacing my last two slots of non-pvp gear with Centurion items because the amount of willpower I would lose isn't worth 28 or 29 expertise. The big problem with the change you're suggesting is that there's lots of people that already have valor rank 60 and/or a lot of the Champion set. Now anybody starting the game new or starting level 50 pvp on a new character is going to be behind the power curve for a longer amount of time. If you make Champion bags give Champion commendations and Battlemaster bags give Battlemaster commendations then I am fine with this change and would even applaud it. That's not the case right now though. Of course, then you'd have to figure out a new way to give out Centurion tokens but that's a smaller issue because as I said, the Centurion gear is not desirable anyway.

Well you are pvping for the wrong reason then. I think most pvpers do it for the challenge of competition. If you're doing it to collect gear then you should probably look at PvE because there is more gear to obtain and there are several layers of randomness in that.

Level 10-49 pvp is a totally different animal than level 50 pvp. Hell, I did 6 or 7 warzones tonight on my level 20 gunslinger and I was top damage on my team in all of them but 2 I think. In other words, gear doesn't matter so much. At level 50 gear matters quite a bit because there is no Bolster buff to even things out. If you went against me in a level 50 warzone in your level 49 blues, I'm pretty sure you'd last less than 10 seconds. You'd have far fewer hit points and have no added damage resistance while I have about 6% added damage on top of having much higher stats (to deal damage) to begin with.

The difference between Battlemaster gear and Centurion is more than 7%. 7% to 10% is about the difference between Champion and Battlemaster. If they go through with this change, it will mean people will be stuck in Centurion/no PvP gear a lot longer than they are now and there are already plenty of valor 60 people running around. It will basically be creating a bigger barrier to entry for PvP than already exists and that's not a good thing. I would go so far as to say that if this change is implemented as is, anyone that is serious about pvping at level 50 should shun pve entirely when leveling a character because the only way you're not going to be a target dummy forever is if you're valor 60 or close to it when you hit character level 50. That would be a pretty dull way to play the game. This random crap is obviously the brainchild of someone high up the food chain because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that it's a piss poor idea. I'm relatively certain that if it wasn't someone high up's 'baby', they would have scrapped it already.

Totally agree. Aside from the minimal amount of expertise on the Centurion crap, you can easily get better gear just from crafted blues. I am lacking 3 pieces of Champion gear on my Assassin and I don't even bother buying the Centurion pieces for those slots because the crafted gear I have is better. The only way I would be cool with this change is if they put in a way for us to trade Centurion tokens for Champion tokens similar to the way you exchange warzone tokens for mercenary. Just so you know Bioware, the same 3:1 ratio WOULD NOT BE ACCEPTABLE. It's much harder to get those bags than it is to get the warzone tokens. I would say something in the area of 1.5:1 would be fair.

Please, please get rid of the damn random pvp bags! You guys managed to take me from someone that was not planning on playing this game to someone that loves it. What I don't love however, is spending 3+ hours in Ilum, putting up with crappy framerates and rather boring gameplay to get 150 kills for my weekly and daily Ilum pvp quests just to open those bags and receive nothing but useless commendations. Yes, I said useless. With the exception of the small amount of expertise it has, the Centurion gear is no better than crafted blues and is actually worse in some cases. I have been fortunate with the 'bag lottery' so far but last night after my luck ran out I logged off, disgusted with myself for having wasted that time out there. That's not the feeling you want players to take away from PvP. So again, I'm begging you, get rid of the random bags and let players buy the pieces they need. While you're at it, make the Centurion gear suck a little less. If that means you have to make the Champ and Battlemaster stuff a little better as well, so be it.

So after 1 fight you've drawn all the conclusions you need huh? Interesting. By the way, what full PVP gear are you wearing at level 49? That level 40 crap that is no better than any other level 40 blues? That's not really good armor for a level 49 ya know.