Actually, yeah, pretty much, except for that. Does anyone here remember City of Heroes PvP? There's a god-awful mess of balance issues for you.

A goalie is less than useless because a goalie provides a target for a Knight/Warrior to leap to.

The problem is that apparently you don't want people to play the game by forcing an arbitrary block between to two major aspects. You're forcing them to choose half of the game that they won't be able to seriously participate in. You are taking the game away from people. I want to be able to play it. Edit: The distinction is that I'm not forcing anyone to play what I want them to, I'm letting them play, if they want. Expertise tells people: Pick one, and only one. Some people want only one, but what about those of us that want half of each?

I'm going to call bs on this one. Either the game is balanced, or it's not. The players are going to be split up into multiple shards anyways, so the number of players simply means you have more shards (there were I think 12-13 DAoC servers compared to 80+ TOR servers). Population density would be the primary driver for claiming that a 1M subscriber game balanced different than a 250K subscriber game, but because more shards are installed to handle the population, the effective population density is no different. The mechanisms of balancing the game do not change because you have 20 shards with 10k people on them instead of 5 shards with 2.5k people on them. You're really grasping at straws here, man.

And I don't want to force anyone to PvE in order to PvP. I wan't to make both aspects of the game available to all players, even if they got their gear via PvP exclusively or PvE exclusively. I want people to be able to enjoy the game. Its a game. I want people to enjoy every part of it as much as possible. This is apparently a bad idea for people to be able to play the whole game, rather than just specific parts.

Same gear available at PvP vendors as can be achieved through raiding. No gear gap, no issue, no expertise.

Would you mind if your PvP gear lost its expertise, but got all of its other stats buffed up to match the Raid gear?

I am actually exceptionally surprised at how balanced the game is in PvP, considering that it was designed as a primarily PvE game with a bolted on PvP feature.

Also not that most people who used to play and quit the game cite its transition into a treadmill as the beginning of the end.

Not if the same gear is available via PvP commendation vendor. Why is this such a difficult concept to grasp? That is flatout incorrect that a PvP stat is necessary. DAoC before they ****ed it up. No such thing as PvP stats, and the treadmill was unnecessary. No one *****ed about Relic gear being used in PvP because everyone was using the same gear anyways. People didn't ask for stronger gear to beat down more powerful monsters, the brought a bigger and/or better army. They had their gear that was the best they were gonna get, so they progressed as PLAYERS by means of skill and organization to defeat progressively more powerful opponents.

That's legal in New York, right?

Incorrect. Clearly the current generation of MMOs that emulate WoW are not for me. I enjoyed open world MMOs like DAoC and Planetside far more than what I have seen of the Instance of Warcraft. They didn't need the treadmill as much because they actually had fun, engaging gameplay. You leveled your character to max level because you wanted to play a particular part of the game without feeling like you were sub-par. Once you got your top end set of armor, you particpated in fights because they were fun and challenging, not because they granted you access to the next repetitive fight.

Actually, the reason huttball exists is because faction queue imballance means that you will have 4-5 teams worth of imps waiting for the lonely squad of reps to queue up. It reduces wait time for the overpopulated side by allowing them to fight each other since there aren't enough reps to go around. That said, report them.

And why is this a good thing? It's not a new challenge; it's the same thing you've done a dozen times before. I dislike that sort of repetition that has driven me, and numerous other people away from multiple MMOs. It's not progress, it's repetition of the same routine.

You are correct in stating that removal of expertise will not prevent older characters from out-gearing new character. The only purpose it serves is as an artificial barrier between PvE and PvP so that players have a harder time accessing the content of the game. That is the only thing it does, as a net. This is a point that I have repeated numerous times. All it does is cut off players from parts of the game they might otherwise enjoy. This is a bad thing if you want to keep people interested in the game over the long term.

It's a greater challenge than existing content so that players aren't bored with repetitious content that they can do in their sleep. Yes, and I've seen people run raids and other high-end content for nothing other than a tag under their name to prove that they did it. Gear is A form of character progression. It is by no means the ONLY form of character progression. Additionally, what are you progressing towards, if the only reason for PvE content is character progression? You're just running a treadmill if you're just going for the next set of gear that's needed for the next dungeon where any increases in HP and Damage are canceled out.

If people only play the PvE for the gear, then why do they need the gear? To do more PvE, which according to you, they don't even enjoy. According to this line of though, people play MMOs to do stuff that they don't want to do in order to get stuff that allows them to do more stuff that they don't want to do.

Make the additional FPs more difficult but don't grant new tiers of armor. Grant other rewards such as titles, social items, new customizable armor models, and other forms of gratification that don't necessarily result in a constant upward push of stat numbers.

EA is a publisher. They provided marketing and capital for the title. They were not, however, involved with the programming development of either BF3 or TOR. The programming and development of the games were carried out by the development studios. DICE made BF3, and BioWare made TOR. These are separate companies that simply both have a licencing contract with the publisher EA. To be quite frank, BioWare is largely a newcomer to the multi-player genre. Some of its previous games had multi-player options, but these were largely even more tacked on than the current PvP system in TOR, and were types of games where lag was an irritation at most, not a game breaker. DICE, on the other hand has a highly experienced team when it comes to high-stress multi-player games. They already know the tricks, gimmicks, and pitfalls associated with online gaming inside and out.

Thanks for the information. I think I understand how they managed it, but it still seems like a treadmill to me. I don't like treadmills. That's just my taste. This is where I severely disagree with you. I do not see PvP/PvE segregation as a good thing because it limits my access to content. I am also more of a fan of open world/RvR styles of PvP than arena style instanced PvP. Other people like different things than I do, obviously, and maybe bioware just didn't make a game with PvP that I'm going to enjoy. Unfortunately none of this changes my opinion that the PvP stat is intrinsically destructive to an MMO community by its segregationist nature. I happen to also play on a PvP server, so working toward battlemaster really isn't an option for me, as it is going to be necessary for my survival in the field. I'm pretty certain that they're not going to make leagues for expertise levels on Tatooine.

Alright, as a sniper, it's really irritating to see a healer out-heal the stream of dedicated DPS I have directed at him if there is a tank set on guard. But I understand that this is working as it should because it does require teamwork and coordination. As obnoxious as it might be to me at the moment, I also realize that it's because they're doing it right, and I commend them for not being zerglings. However, I think that I could use some tips on means of dropping a tank/healer duo, not necessarily on my own, but with one of those mythical competent teammates. First thought I had was: Cover-pulse or other PBAoE knockback to split the pair outside of the 15 M guard range, mezzing the tank, and proceeding to attempt to drop the healer Asap. Tough to set up to use a sniper's cover pulse, but an assassin's overload should do the trick as well as provide that extra DPS 'umph'. Second idea: Not really practical for a marksman sniper, but AoEing the pair. Hard stun the Healer, but AoE both as much as possible. Since the tank would be taking ~ half of the damage from delivered to the healer via guard, and has probably Taunted you to debuff your damage to anyone else anyways, the tank should be taking at least 120% damage from the AoEs (bonus for internal damage!), meaning that you're trying to kill the tank first by applying additional damage via the guarded Healer. Generally, I would expect the tank to try to remain within guard distance of the Healer, and hopefully the two will be within an AoE Diameter. Any other ideas on how a duo might break the synergy of a Guarded healer?

Did resilience actually fix the problem of gear and time investment skewing the ladders? I didn't play WoW, and I am genuinely asking for information, but the current system seems to reward time investment just as much as anything else I can imagine.

This.

Let me summarize the thread for real quick, because a lot of statements have been made regarding the reason for the stat existing. Problem: WoW raid gear far surpassed gear available to pure PvP players. Solution 1: Create a new stat that reduces damage only from players and add it to PvP gear so that Raid gear is no longer dominant in PvP, but prevents players from simultaneously gearing for PvP and PvE. Solution 2: Grant access to raid-equivalent gear to PvP only players. Either way, fresh 50s are still screwed in PvP. Blizzard and BioWare went with Solution 1. Is that about right?

I believe you here. The thing is, PvPers seem not to realize how expertise screws them over by allowing the devs to pass off second rate gear onto them, when they should just be asking for access, however limited (weekly/biweekly reward, maybe?) to gear that is on par with the top-end raid gear. If you don't like PvE enough to play through it for the top end gear because you can get it a little bit faster if you grind PvP, then you're not enjoying the game, you're just feeding an addiction.