Wow can you be more biased? You say a lawyer can spend his time acquiring the same gear as college student only at a much slower pace. To which I say, A college student can purchase the same gear as a lawyer only at a much slower pace. How do you not see that not having enough resources rather it is time or money is exactly the same is beyond me...

You can not tell me what should I do or not do. None of you QQers out there who are against F2P/P2W, can come up with one logical explanation as to why, in your eyes, it is unfair that I can get the same gear as you paying money rather then spending time in the game yet it is totally fair to you that you can spend 12 hours a day playing and have an unfair advantage over others that can only play 2 hours a day. You have no argument whatsoever. If I get Augmented WH gear today by paying $100, it will only encourage me to play more not less because now I don't have to wait 2+ months to compete against people who have way too much free time on their hands. All I hear from people who are oppose to this change is "QQ now I don't have any advantage over others by dedicating my life to a video game because now, those guys I roflstomped in my Augmented WH gear can get the same gear as I can" It is almost comical to me to see some poeple's reaction to this change. It is almost like they are going to get a taste of what people with little time to play had to deal with since the beginning of the genre and you can't deal it. So I say bring on the F2P/P2W/whatever you want to call it. If I can spend 50 bucks to skip all the hours of none sense grinding to get the gear I need to be on the same playing field with people who spend crazy amount playing, I am all for it.

I disagree strongly. I good F2P model should also include the ability to acquire gear via money. You spend 12 hours to get gear A I work 12 hours and then spend money I earned working to get gear A everybody wins.

I love how you are against any kind of unfair advantage gained through using "money" but yet, I hear no complaints from people like you when this same argument can be made for people who have more "time" then "money". So let me get it straight. It is ok for someone to play the game 12 hours a day and have augmented WH gear which then they compete against someone who can only play for 2 hours a day in Battlemaster gear. Yet, what you are saying is that, it is not ok for the guy who can only play for 2 hours to use "money" instead of "time" to acquire augmented WH gear? I love the P2W or F2P or whatever you want to call it. Finally, the whole genre is switching from angry teenagers/ jobless adults having an "unfair" advantage over people with jobs, families, kids, etc. due to having an over abundance of time. To me, this all seems like "QQ we can't have an unfair advantage over other people now because they can acquire the same gear as us and not have to play 12 hours a day"... to which I say QQ moar!

Just to play the Devil's Advocate here, why do you all care so much about winning a non-ranked WZ? I can understand that winning equals more medals thus getting gear faster. However, if gear is truely what drives you to win, then what happens when you get the gear? If what drives you is "winning" (as Charlie puts it) then I can also understand that. However, how many times must you win the same 3 rotation WZs before it gets mind numbingly boring? Contrary to the popular belief, some people just play the game to have "fun". Honestly, I don't care much if we win or lose a WZ. some games, I play to win, do objectives, defend, help capture etc. Some games I just play to do as much dmg as possible, or chase that one guy the whole WZ because moments ago he just ruined my perfect play, etc. It is not always about winning-losing.

Noone is arguing against poeple who have put in time to be rewarded. We are all arguing against people who have put in time to gain extreme advantage over people who do not have obscene amount of time to devote to a video game. You can have your Gladiator's Drake (WoW reference) for all I care. I am againt an unfair advantage based on the time committed.

Well duh... 2.9M is for the first 13, then when you have new gear it is 100k for Augmentation Kit and to purchase the Augment slot so that is another 1.3M on top of your 2.9M initial investment.

why does it matter? You still have to buy the first 13 lol...

So an Augmentation Kit Mk-6 goes for about 70k and Power/STR augments are 150k a pop. There are 13 slots if I am not mistaken and that is roughly 2.9M Credits...

I think legitimacy of numbers are up to one's way of optimizing their Gear. I opted to Optimize for Power, as you can clearly see between your optimized set and mine there is more than 400+ power difference. However, I am not arguing how to best optimize a gear. What I am arguing that people with crazy amount of time in their hand can optimize their gear to faceroll status and this is a huge gap between casual players.

It would be more, however the Mods and Enc are optimized for secondary stats i.e Power, Crit, Surge and Accuracy. The Crit gain from Str is negligable compared to Power gain from strictly aiming for Power.

EDIT: I wanted to make an edit and note that some people are saying that this is unfair as I put the stats for Fully Augmented WH vs. Non-Augmented BM and Recruit. The reason for doing this is because I wanted to demonstrate a person who have just hit 50 and gearing against people who have been playing hardcore and pretty much have best of everything. Also you can choose to optimize your gear for Str, Crit, etc. I have choosen to go to Power route and regardless of which way a person optimizes their gear, the point is, there is an extreme gap between optimized augmented gear vs. standard off teh shelf gear. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ With all the talk around gear being the single most important factor that impacts PvP, I wanted to see just how powerful gear really is between different tiers of PvP armor. I used my Marauder as an example and compared between 3 different sets; Recruit, Battlemaster , and War Hero. For the sake of trying to prove how powerful armor can be in the right hands and with some tinkering, I optimized the War Hero gear and fully Augmented it. This also demonstrates gear disparity even further. I also believe that most of the guilds that are serious about Ranked Warzones will have siilar gear. Stats_____Recruit__Battlemaster____War Hero Augmented Optimized Strength___1028____1259_________1250 Endurance_1016____1277_________1513 Power_____380_____491__________1096 Accuracy___252_____408__________159 Crit_______292_____379__________244 Surge_____168_____102__________371 Damage Pri_____577.0 - 719.0_______670.7 - 823.7_______826.1 - 988.1 Damage Sec_____85.2 - 127.8________91.8 - 137.7________97.2 - 145.8 Acc %____98.01%___101.86%______105.34% Crit %____22.98%___26.73%_______22.85% Surge %__69.35%___64.00%_______76.95% Expertise__896______1182________1288 PvP Dmg__18.20%___22.48%______23.91% PvP Red __15.40%___18.35%______19.30% PvP Heal__9.99%____12.42%______13.24% As you can clearly see, A fully Optimized and Augmented WH is so much more effective than the rest. We are not talking about a 5-10% gain in effectiveness and power. I would like to believe that if we could somehow quantify it, WH gear when optimized and augmented is aroun 60% better than Recruit and 30% better than BM. This is purely talking about stats and not taking into account any skill, buffs, etc. I don't want to go on a detailed post evaluating the causes and effects of this disparity but in a nutshell, as long as only a select few have access to this type of gear, there will never be enough people interested in doing any RWs. This also significantly impacts the casuals doing regular WZs as there is nothing stopping a person with this type of gear to wreck havoc in regular WZs. My simple suggestion is that either a) Significantly reduce the gap in terms of collective effectiveness and power of the gear or b) significantly reduce the time it takes to obtain such gear. Just as a note my marauder in half WH Gear. However, in order to be able to optimize my gear I need to purchase more than 10+ armor to be able to rip specific mods and stuff out, which is extremely annoying and time consuming.. THANKS to JaerunSaway Figuring 21k hits for fully aug'd wh vs. 18k hits for BM -- 16.67% increase then 22.48% bonus vs. 19.3% mitigation -- 1.15% mitigation advantage Totals a 18.03 mitigation advantage: (21/18)/(1.2248*.807) PvP Dmg__18.20%___22.48%______23.91% PvP Red __15.40%___18.35%______19.30% Using your numbers (which seem to be a little off since you can hit 1330+ exp) 670.7 - 823.7 (747.2 avg) vs 826.1 - 988.1 (avg 907.1) 21.40% increase Then factor in pvp bonus 1.2391*.8165 = 1.17 Damage advantage Total is a 22.82 damage advantage. Putting these together. Assuming 21k hits for wh and 18k hits for bm (which you did not list in your numbers) and following your definitions of battlemaster vs fully augmented warhero, the difference between the two gives the toon in fully augmented warhero roughly a 44.97% advantage over the battlemaster toon.

I have the exact same setup except, I bought a 680 GTX. When I pulled my Radeon 5850 out and put the 680 in, I didn't see any difference and was very much upset. What helped greatly was to format my PC and after doing that, I am geting constant 60+ fps in fleet with graphics set to Very High. I just figured I ll mention this and you might want to give it a try.

I am 100% sure that you will be here to complain about Ranked Warzone queue's taking hours to pop by next week. It is only by rewarding the losers comparably to winner you will get decent participation in RZs. Further more, why do you care if losers get same amount of coms as winners? Isn't it more important to you and the sole reason you wanted RZs for your teams performance vs other teams (a.k.a Rating)... oh right... we don't want everyone having equal gear that would beat the purpose of PvP

Eh, for the effort vs. benefit, I don't think trying to get WH Mods/Enhancements are worth it. I am in 3 piece augmented gear (not BM yet on this toon) and once I get WH Earpiece and Implants (Power/Surge and Power/Acc) I will be at 23% Crit, 700 Power, and 75% Surge. I found that optimized BM gear with BM Mods/Enhancements together with WH Earpiece/Implants is enough to be at around 90% as effective as full Optimized WH gear. Also, it takes about 1/10th of the time required. Just my 2 cents.

I think this is the key here, isn't it? By making gear the most important factor in PvP, Bioware is alienating the large casual population who would like to be able to take part in overall PvP effort and be on a level playing field with the rest of the overall PvP population. It is only when you can eliminate this gear gap that the hardcore PvPers will get the respect they deserve and have a larger PvP population to boost their skills, epeen, whatever you wanna call it. However, when there is already a huge grind to get the best PvP gear, you are limiting the overall PvP population to those who have the most time commitment hence reducing, significantly, overall PvP population. Instead, they should really focus on Scoreboard type of site where they should, on a daily basis, show statistics on who earned the most Valor ranks, who got the most kills, who had the highest kill/death ratio, which guild earned the most Valor Ranks per day, week, and month. Dark Age of Camelot had this nailed perfectly and these scoreboards actually meant something to people. Of course, DAOC had minimal entry to the highest end of the PvP scene as the best gear was easily obtained within weeks.

So by your example it is perfectly fine to get enough Rated commendations for HALF of a piece of the cheapest WH gear PER Week? You do realize that there are 11 pieces (excluding relics) so it is ok to get full WH gear in around 7 months or so? I don't think this kind of time commitment has any place in today's MMO market. This should be at max 7 weeks and not 7 months... Of course I fully realize that 7 months is a casuals time commitment taken into account that he/she will do daily everyday and complete weekly. I am sure fully WH gear can be completed within a month if you lpay hardcore, which is exactly the problem of time vs. gear.

I think you are the one that thinks about 1 vs 1. What happens when you have a 2 people in BM vs 2 people in WH in a Warzone? What happens when it is 3 vs 3, 4 vs 4, etc? 1 vs 1 is the smallest amount of difference possible but still a huge difference in terms of power and effectivesness. I am more concerned about the games I get into where there are more then 3 fully WH geared opponents. Believe me 2-3 fully WH geared players make a world of difference in WZs. Maybe your assessment as to what is competitive is a whole a lot different than mine. I don't believe a 20-30% difference makes for a competitive playing field. 5% is about the max difference there should be between a fully BM geared player and fully WH geared player taking into account of optimization.

I believe it is a matter of available resources vs return on investment. If it takes them 3 times as many resources and time to develop a robust system that will cover a broader population, they will more likely not go that route. To me, keeping rateds to premades and server only seems like the quick and dirty way of doing it. they are going for all the "quick" wins and not realizing this would potentially cause their demise.

Ugh, how do you not see the difference? First week everyone is playing Ranked WZs and no one really has an establish rating. After the first week, the system puts you and people similar to your rating into a team vs other people similar to your rating. So after the first week if I have 1200 rating, the system should put me in a WZ +/- 100 rating with other players who are solo Queueing. Solo queueing should and must be possible. If done right, I don't see the difference between you gathering 7 people with you to jion as a group or the system finding 7 others close to your rating and putting you into a WZ together...

I have an issue with your statements here. First of all, why wouldn't anything be available to Average Joe? Especially in a PvP environment? PvP should be about the way you play your character and not how you dress them. Secondly, you are downplaying the effectiveness of min/maxing to a great degree. Thirdly, why should min/maxing take time at all? The purpose of PvP is not to collect marks and achieve Maxed Gear. That is for PvE so that you can buildu p your character. The Purpose of PvP is to compete aginst one another in an even playing field. If what you are saying is that there shouldn't be an even playing field and Average Joe shouldn't be able to compete, I fully disagree with you.

I am sorry but you are comletely wrong. When you look on the surface there doesn't appear to me much difference. However, when you look at Assassin BM gear for example, there are no Power/Surge Mods/enhancements available in BM gear and it is available for WH gear. Also, the implant and earpiece for WH have much better optimized stats on them. The difference between a fully BM geared player vs. a fully WH geared player can be as much as 20-30%.

I would agree with you in terms of PvE. However, if you read my post carefully, I make no mention of PvE but rather PvP. I should maybe change the title to give more clarity.

I disagree. I played Dark Age of Camelot in which you can have the best gear to PvP in a matter of weeks. Same with Guild Wars 1. You can even have the best PvP gear in WoW in a matter of 4-6 weeks...

Hello All, I wanted to start off by saying that I like SWTOR very much and I have been playing since go-live. I have 3 level 50 toons of which my Assassin is by far my favorite. I have been playing, mostly PvP, to get my Battlemaster gear since my assassin was my latest 50. Now that I have him fully geared in BM, took about 2 weeks, I wanted to focus on getting my War Hero pieces. Unfortunately, this is where I realized that a piece of WH gear takes about 1-2 weeks to obtain, which means it would take me 6+ months to get full War Hero gear. I understand that people who play a lot more than I do, which I play on average 20 hours a week, should have some advantage in terms of time spent vs. value gained. However, there is a huge difference between Battlemaster Gear and a fully augmented War Hero gear in regards of effectiveness. I would even tolerate this grind if it wasn't for the fact that in order to get the best out of my character, I would have to buy many War Hero pieces in duplicate just so I can optimize my gear using the right Mods/Enhancements. This is also a whole another topic where we should be able to purchase individual Armoring, Mods, and Enhancements. Given the situation SWTOR is in, I just wanted to give my feedback as a paying customer, who happens to like SWTOR very much, and reflect on what could potentially make me lose interest and quit playing SWTOR.