If they enjoy PvP and PvE, then they will play it regardless.

Why not? If progress, and not fun gameplay, is the only thing that keeps people playing PvP, then logically they would just play PvE so that they could progress through the gear. That is, unless they don't actually care about progressing their characters and they only care about having an unfair advantage over others.

Just because something can be overcome does not mean that it is inconsequential. What you're doing here is hand-waving an obvious flaw.

No, they just go grind PvE because that is where they 'progress'.

Then remove gear from players when they enter a WZ. You keep everyone in the same gear for the longest time possible that way: Forever.

The issue is that gear intrinsically introduces imbalance in an event that is meant to be a means for players to test their skills against one another in a reasonably fair manner. To be perfectly honest, allowing gear in PvP at all is like giving the Cowboys 8 points on every touch-down and the Texans only 6 because the Cowboys are an older franchise, and therefor deserve to win more than the new team.

Actually, If PvP can get the same gear that PvE gets, that would also balance them out. If gear didn't count in PvP, that would also balance them out in the place where balance matters.

I'm a fan of No Gear in PvP, honestly. However, if there is such a great instance on having gear in PvP, then let the PvPers get their gear faster than PvE. A PvP guild shifting over to PvE to run HM flashpoints doesn't interfere with the activities of any PvE players. Get that point? It does not interfere. Lets have a 3rd time. No PvEers were harmed in the production of this Raid. It doesn't need to be balanced because balanced only matter if they are competing against one another for something, and there is no competition for FPs because they're all instanced, meaning that the supply of FPs is a non-scarce resource.

I agree.

DAoC, Planetside, and CoH, actually.

Yes, very skilled players will stomp geared up bad players. What about when a geared up mediocre team goes up against a somewhat skilled group of players without the top-end PvP gear? It just isn't fair, and you're playing against the equipment, not the player, making it no longer PvP, but PvP+E Expertise is meaningless here except it segregates people that have been playing for a long time from players that have not, regardless of skill. It's an unnecesary, and intrinsically destructive stat. I play PvP in order to beat players. I don't play PvP in order to beat their equipment. That is what PvE is for. I don't NEED an incentive to PvP beyond WINNING because I ENJOY PvP for PvP. That's great that you've killed 50's with a 23, but that doesn't make the situation fair. That just means that your opponent is that bad or the classes are that imbalanced. People whine to no end about how classes are imbalanced, and they may have some valid points. However, expertise fundamentally introduces an imbalance.

I'm SandTrout, and I support this message.

Expertise doubles the grind time. You have to grind for PvP gear, and do a separate grind for PvE gear. If I do the grind for 1, why can't I play both? I've done the grind, I know my class, but you say I don't deserve to play the other half of the game until I've done my grind there, as well.

So, what you're saying here is that expertise and gear do nothing except segregate the population?

And you want to strip half of the game away from the entire population. You hate the idea of PvEers PvPing and PvPers PvEing.

The issues you're talking about are things like class balance, bugs, and whatnot. Yes, there is some forgiveness there, and I'm willing to give it time to see if they listen to reason before heading out. However, the Expertise system is fundamentally flawed and does nothing constructive for the game that could not be achieved by other, less destructive means. To be perfectly honest, and I try to avoid using this argument because it gets misused a lot, this is a PvE mindset. In PvE games you play against mechanics, and equipment is just another mechanic, just like MOBs are purely mechanics. PvP is player versus player, however, and the competition should be between players, not against mechanics. Saying that you need an advantage over someone based purely on time played is not PvP, it's PvP+E.

I'm admittedly more extreme in my view of gearing than Ashes, in that I wouldn't mind removing any sort of gear grind from affecting PvP and setting stats to a class-baseline. I'm posting this so that Ashes isn't bundled up with myself and my views, as they are apparently different, even if I support Ashes' ideas over the current system.

I quit around ToA's release because I got sick of trying to grind from 44-50 just so that I could participate meaningfully in RvR outside of battleground. Your tread-mill drives me, as a PvP player, away. The best argument that you can present would be to prove that the addiction factor is better for keeping players than the grind is at driving them away.

I actually do understand this. However, I am strongly against giving developers a pass on crappy game design. No effect from gear. It has been suggested numerous places that gear should be made to be purely cosmetic on PvP and all characters have their stats set to a baseline based on class. The Valor 1 is smarter/more well informed. Alternately, the Valor 50 is just really bad and simply invested a lot of time, rather than actually improving themselves and their understanding of their class and the opposing class. Why should someone get an automatic win against someone based on time played?

Planetside and DAoC had low equipment progression caps, and were still very popular for their time.

So, he's bad because he doesn't want an unfair advantage over other players?

And here I though games were supposed to be fun, so that I could play them and have fun. Nope, my bad, they're just addictive and can have no other means of maintaining their popularity. If you want a game that is dependent on Gear rather than skill, there's an entire PvE world that you can explore in this game. Because the Valor rank one is better? Yes, he should, and that is why a Valor rank 50 should win against a Valor rank 1. If a valor rank 50 gets killed by a valor rank 1, then he deserves it.

I don't normally do this, but... L2P. There's plenty of means to break LoS on all the maps. Yes, the actual objectives are exposed, but that is an intended design so that they are not easily taken. Every objective except the goal line of huttball has a means of breaking LoS within 15m.

Which is a bad thing because it denies the game from a large portion of the population. This problem is not solved because people are doing the same thing with battlemaster gear. No, never played WoW. I played games that actually had decent PvP, and had no need for a PvP stat. Timing, maneuvering, teamwork, and resource management are not skills? What you're really saying is that you want to curb stomp newbies without actually being any better at the game than they are. Your narrow concept of what constitutes 'skill' is laughable. Gear Treadmill is stale. Playing against people is never stale because they are unpredictable until the lack of variety in maps results in everyone doing the same thing. Gear progression does not fix this.

I'm a PvPer and I'm not interested, in the least, in grinding my gear. In fact, I loath it. Do you know why I play PvP? To test myself against other players. I don't do it so that I can get gear that puts me head and shoulders above all other players that havn't committed 2 weeks of playtime to getting better gear. I play PvP, because I want to play against other players, and not their gear. I find playing against other players to be fun. Winning the match is the only incentive I require because it's proof of my team's superiority over the enemy team, not my gear's superiority, which can be proven by a simple 'inspect'. When I want to test myself against mechanics, I have PvE. That's what PvE is, and is mean to be a means to test your skills against mechanics of the game. If you want to gear-grind there to make the mechanics easier to overcome, that's fine by me, and does not affect my experience in the least. WoW PvP =/= 'real' PvP. In fact, it's about the farthest thing from 'real' PvP that exists in an MMO. Planetside had real PvP. DAoC had real PvP. EvE has real PvP. That said, the games I cited were designed as PvP, while WoW and TOR were designed as PvE games, primarily. However, citing the need to copy WoW, which was by no means successful because of its PvP, as the only successful PvP game is simply wrong. If anything, from what I understand, WoW was successful in spite of its PvP because it got lucky on timing, had a popular mythos behind it, refined the PvE aspects of MMOs, and had great marketing.