Also, if you guys actually want the merge/transfers, this is the wrong thread. The Suggestion Box is where this should be, luckily, some of the guys on Gav Daragon were ************ about the same thing last night and have done exactly that. You want to make the change more likely? Get loud and overbearing in here.

I honestly don't care. The thing I like most about my apparently dead server is the community, and seeing that small group get absorbed and dispersed by a larger one isn't something I'd be happy about. But this is something that should be done because it's fair. Basically, either merge all 3 Asia/Pacific servers. If that's not an option, then open up free transfers. People with multiple 50's shouldn't have to reroll because of low population when other servers have already been given the free transfer option for exactly the same reason.

/sigh I repeat; my main is a DPS Sage on the Gav Daragon server, I'm geared in WH that's almost fully optimised and I really like it, I also like geared PvP, and the only reason I started this thread is because people on my server started organising Recruit v Recruit matches and not only did a lot of people like it, but a lot of people who'd given up on PvP months ago started PvPing again because of it. etc. etc. On top of that, I stated the following, which I believe is the exact opposite of what you're accusing me of; Might as well staple TL;DR to your forehead bro. Another repetition; Although in light of Oredith's post (page 13, post 131) and the ensuing argument, I have to admit there's little reason for Bioware to make any changes. Regardless, there's 0% chance of change if you say nothing, might have only raised the bar to 0.0000001%, but hey, at least it's out there. More repetition! Although Icestar's been doing this one for me; You can't possibly know someone's gear or skill level from a forum. Acting under the assumption that they're bad and want an easy way out is something that's going to happen, but openly insulting them by stating that they are as if it's fact is absolutely baseless, and turns an otherwise constructive topic into a bunch of people trying to prove they have a massive e-peen by slinging **** at each other. Back onto progressing the topic: It sounds like what people are getting at is that you don't get pissed off or demoralized by being rolled by someone who's outclassing you (be it gear or skill), you get pissed off at being completely ineffective, which should only be happening when you're completely outclassed by their gear AND their teamwork. So matchmaking is a bigger problem because an experienced WH premade is always going to destroy a pug group, not a problem - it happens- but when it's all that ever happens, yeah problem. This was touched on in the 'Remove Unranked Queues ' topic (hilarious, have a read), and what it comes down to is either you need to implement an 'invisible' individual rating so that people of (theoretically) equal skill get paired up, or you need to make it impossible to queue for normal warzones in groups. The former, not a bad idea, but when you queue as a group, individual ratings might as well be thrown to the wind, a good premade will always roll pugs (how dare they ;D) and on top of that people don't always queue in the same groups so even using a team rating wouldn't cover all your bases. And the latter, no matter who you are, you've got to hate that idea.

Couldn't you just assume that in this era, us Sages are so ****** that don't need our lightsabres? Yeah, they're cool and all, but imagine say, Episode 1. Qui-gon and Obi-wan strolling through Naboo, having to whip out their sabers to whoop every droid that come along. Now imagine instead, your Sage strolling through the same situation. Sure, he deflects a few blaster bolts with his sabre, but he doesn't need it to attack them, in fact most of the bolts he's just dodging. He just crushes them into the ground, pushes them into walls, generally messing up their world by looking/pointing at them. Doesn't that convey an ever greater aura of force mastery? xD I will grant however, that (as with Yoda) when you understand the force that much, you can fortify you own strength and speed, add in the precognition and reflexes that come with being in touch with your surroundings through the force, and that's why Consulars are as untouchable in lightsabre combat as Guardians. It would be freaking awesome to take out one of the current skill tree's for one that focuses on increasing your evasion and damage reduction while giving you force-based melee combat attacks to reflect the above. But no matter how much anyone complains, do you ever see it happening? As cool as it'd be, if you're that unhappy with it, best bet would be to reroll as Sentinel. EDIT: Anyone who doesn't get what I mean by "Consulars are just as untouchable in lightsabre combat as Guardians": Think back to Kotor 2. Towards the end of the story, you get Force Enlightenment. A Jedi Weaponmaster using Enlightenment, meh. No big difference. A Jedi Master using Enlightenment, turns into an invincible killing machine. Killing Darth Traya with a Master was infinitely easier than with a Weaponmaster because of this.

Currently playing on the Gav Daragon (PvE-RP Asia/Pacific), and a few months ago we had this problem too. Because 60% of the imperial side was in one giant guild and 30% were split up into others. We conquered it primarily by having a few guilds rep-side that actually took off. When the imps were around we endured the beating, someimes we got 2 4-mans of the guys with the best gear and skills to fight back and won some matches, and when they weren't around we did repvrep or rolled the imp pug groups that showed up. Eventually, instead of having a few people in WH there were enough to fill multiple ops groups. Secondly, eventually we actually communicated with them. You can have multiple alts, jump over impside, join one of these guilds, play with them for a while and talk to them. Get them to see your side of it and realise they're taking the fun out of PvP. It's a lot easier to enjoy tearing people apart when you don't know them. That was maybe 3 months ago. Now, we're on equal terms. If they field one of their best teams, they'll roll our pugs. In return, our best teams queue up and give them what for. And vice versa. Just because you're on opposing sides doesn't mean you have to be enemies. Especially with cross-server coming in. Of course, if they're just ***-hats, well, there's no cure for that. Persistence is key, but there are other servers.

Overall I do think we're given more good than bad in this update, but my complaints are less about the changes they made and more about the ones they didn't. Sorc/Sage is what, healing or DPS. You can be an awesome healer, but as far as DPS goes when you run the numbers we pretty much lose out in comparison to most other DPS classes. Madness/Balance is underpowered, and Lightning/Telekinetic fails against anyone who has a decent head on their shoulders and their interrupt hot-keyed. Not a fun fact, but considering all of our utility, you could say that's fair. But look at some of the other dps classes; Sentinels/Mara - Party-wide damage boost buff. Gunslingers/Sniper - Armour reduction debuff, doesn't effect the whole party, but anyone in the party can take advantage of it. Even Commando/Merc (which is another heals/dps class) gets the armour reduction debuff. Why is it that one of the best utility classes actually has no buff/debuff that the whole party can take advantage of? Aren;t we the kind of class that is most effective when supported by a good team? And yet unless you roll heals, you can't return the favour xD. Stack that with our 2nd rate max dps, and it's no wonder people on highly populated/competitive servers laugh Sorcs/Sages out of Ops groups. And yet the issue is once again left unaddressed. So I'm going to say negative. Solely because the devs have more important **** to fix.

No. Because of this: Cross-server could fix that issue, but even then you still run into the fact that right now, those who are prepared for a hardcore session of PvP get their **** together and queue for ranked. Those who just wanna kill some other characters or earn their battlemaster jump into normal queues.It is a clear way to keep people who are looking for 2 different experiences apart as to not ruin each others day. And as much as anyone wants to protest that it doesn't work out, fact is that as long as people see it that way it kinda does. Removing a clear definition between the 2 queues would result in the 8 man premades frequently coming across pug groups who would get absolutely slaughtered no matter what way you look at it. Pairing up alike ratings is a good idea to mitigate the issue, but not everyone sticks with the same teams (therefore your rating and your teams rating are going to be 2 different numbers), and as mentioned above, an 8-man of ranked 1000's vs a pug group of ranked 1000's, will still result in the pug group getting rolled xD The only way this could actually work out fairly is if you made it so that people either have to be in an 8-man to queue, or alternatively you cannot queue in groups for PvP at all. I see both ideas being extremely unpopular.

Any message you were trying to get across was swept under the proverbial rug at that point. If you're here just to piss people off, wouldn't 4chan or reddit be more fun? I don't understand if you people are constantly ignoring or merely not reading that this would be an additional option. Leaving the current system intact so that people can keep enjoying their gear that they - as you say - have invested time in. I conclude that either you're just afraid of change, or you're afraid it'd depreciate the value of investing time to earn better gear. Preventing the latter is what we're discussing.

Ahh, following what you said last time, I was under the impression it would actually increase the difference in rewards between Ranked and Normal. Which, as you implied, seems a little bit ridiculous as is. I'm all for evening it out, but the main motivation of people playing ranked should be the rating anyway, not the reward. One thing I would disagree with is making the 'standardised but customisable' equal-terms gear War Hero gear. Because people who have War Hero would just play normal PvP so that they aren't always going up against other people in War Hero. And people who don't have War Hero would avoid normal PvP because that's where the guys who legitimately have War Hero are heading to. It sort of removes the feeling of accomplishment from earning your War Hero, which'd break the geared pvp queue. For that reason, I'd propose having separate ranked queue's for gear-less and geared PvP. And the gear-less PvP would have to have be using an entirely different brand of armour, statistically of a lower level than War Hero. Easiest way to do it would be to standardise everyone to Battlemaster, and have them set up the armouring/mods etc.

Following that logic to it's conclusion, I'm calling BS. Because you couldn't seriously look me in the eye and tell me that you don't have at least one 50 on your server, who is in full War Hero, but isn't a complete joke when it comes to PvP. Seriously, we all have one xD I guess my point is experience doesn't equal skill. Yes, it's part of skill, but so is having a decent head on your shoulders, and natural talent. So no, gear does not equal skill. Regardless, even following your logic, the people who've been playing longest would still come out on top in equal-terms PvP because they're 'more skilled'. So, nothing wrong with it.

That is something I hadn't considered, under the assumption that most servers had a higher pop than mine. A solution could be that the 2 queue's can be in effect at the same time, so that regardless of whether it's a normal or equal-terms pop, if you want to be PvPing that bad you can jump in either. But even that is under the assumption that there'd be a decent amount of people willing to queue for both, which from this thread, doesn't seem dependable. People seem on one side of the fence or the other. Another solution could be Icestars previous suggestion about just having one queue for both, and people who want equal-terms flag themselves, hopefully encouraging everyone to turn it on, but once again, not a definite answer for it. I'd say having 2 queue's, but adding in a population count for how many are queued for which, so if your preference isn't popping but you want the comms, just switch to the higher population queue. I like the idea for making ranked equal-terms, breaks it down to who sets up their gear the best, who plays the best, and who has the best teamwork. Which is everything anyone should want to get out of it. I mean should it really be a 'ranked' game if people are on uneven footing. This also works because only people who are dedicated to PvP and willing to jump in TS/set up a good group, should really be queueing for ranked. And if you've got that kind of motivation and organisation then you probably have your War Hero already. It attracts the right crowd to the right place. But I gotta agree with Icestar about messing with the comm reward. Rewards for people playing equal terms should be equal to - or even better - lower than normal PvP. Making it easier to buy gear for people who are playing gear-less doesn't really make sense, because either; - They're a fan of gear-less, so they don't need the best gear anyway. - They're a fan of ranked, and the best ranked teams on each server are always going to be the people who've played together enough to already have that full set of customised War Hero. So they also don't need boosted comms. - They're playing equal-terms, less because they're a fan of it and more because they think it'll be easier to save up for gear playing that way, so that in a few weeks they can just switch back to normal PvP and kick ***. In which case, why reward people who're just looking for an easy way out.

Already pointed out that for most players it does not last a week, it can last for months. And I have seen people give up on PvP during that time because nobody likes getting rolled 9/10 games. I'm not saying that if you give every guy war hero, they're going to start winning, obviously the more experienced/skilled players will still come out on top. And more importantly I've already specifically stated DON'T give every guy War Hero, because that would break PvP. What I have been saying - what you must be too small-minded to understand unless you're deliberately disregarding it - is that gear based PvP is not everyone's piece of cake. And it would be easy to make another queue for warzones where gear isn't a factor, without changing anything already in place. It has a lot of upsides, and no downsides. Seriously, I feel like I'm repeating myself. Why bother posting in a topic if you're not going to read what's being said? What I've been getting at the entire time is that PEOPLE ENJOY BOTH SYSTEMS. If we can keep the one we have, and on top if it add in the other, everyone is happy. - Gear fans get to keep PvPing in their gear, yay! - Gear-less fans have a warzone where they can cue gear-less (and not have to moderate it themselves, because you know eventually someone is going to be a dick and break the rules for the lols), yay! - Bioware makes more money because new people are attracted, yay! - And everyone has something new and interesting to try, but if you don't like it then there is no downside to not doing it, yay! I repeat. All pro's, no con's. Seriously, I challenge someone, anyone, to point out how it would negatively effect the way you play SWtOR. Without bringing "Hurr durr go play GW2" or "Hurr durr, clearly you're someone in recruit who's never ever won a single fight because you're terribad" into it because they're not constructive nor relevant.

Shortly after hitting 50, I kept noticing this hybrid tank/balance assassin killing me (I'm sage dps). No big deal right? On smallish servers you come across the same people often, so there is going to be a lot of killing/dying to the same people. But this guys stood out for some reason. I don't know if he would target me deliberately, don't know if I'd take that as a compliment or an insult, but it certainly felt like something different. I'd die to him a lot while chasing objectives, and often felt that when he fell to me, it was because of the same reason. We'd come across each other a lot in games, lots of deaths on both sides, but rarely in direct conflict. Until one day in Outlaws Den when 2 guilds ended up in conflict over a lowbie ganked xD They ended up hosting sort of an arena event, and I got collected in passing to support the rep guild. Fair games, 2v2, 4v4, 6v6. Reps lost every match. Hard. (After asking around for people's kill-counts, I maintain that they must have been using their stealth to sneak in extras mid-battle, BUT HEY, no proof). Then we got into 1v1's, I managed to cleanly beat every single person they threw at me, including a BM geared mara, EXCEPT THIS ASSASSIN. We had 3 bouts, all of them ridiculously close fights. After losing twice, I requested we take the duel somewhere more isolated so that I'd stop dropping my attacks on bystanders whenever he dropped into stealth (because I was derpy like that, yeah) and I managed to win that one, but once again it was so close. From the look of him, he was close to 50/50 battlemaster/warhero, but I had full BM with at least 1 piece of WH, so not a significant difference. After that, what might had been a rivalry became an obvious one. The thing is, there are people who focused me more often. There were people who killed me more easily. There were people who would constantly try and fail to kill me. But my clear rival, was this guy. I believe because we were that similar. Both consular/inquisitor classes. Both pretty good at PvP. Both progressed through the gear at around the same time and at the same speed. Even a similar spec (but yeah, pretty sure he was hybrid balance, not full balance). And when I finally did catch up to him, both of us wearing full WH, he goes off the radar completely. And this new Marauder starts showing up with a horribly familiar legacy name...

I'm not saying anything you said is a bad idea, I'm just looking out for not stepping on anyone's toes. Say, if you queued for a normal game, wanting a normal game, and the other team queued intending to switch on their hypothetical 'equal terms PvP' flags. One of the teams is going to end up feeling like they didn't get exactly what they wanted.

It has to be 50's because even if you did switch to an alt every time you hit 50, you'd eventually have to start deleting characters. It's not a long term solution for people who intend to invest a lot of time in this game. Giving up on something when it doesn't work for you isn't as satisfying as finding a way to make it work for you.

While it's a pretty good idea, it does start to encroach on the geared-PvPers territory. And that's exactly what I'd like to avoid. Having them as 2 completely separate queues means they don't bother each other, and nobody feels like what kind of game they're playing is out of their hands, everybody is playing with like-minded peers. As I mentioned, I do think gear-based PvP is a good thing. It gives you something to progress towards, keeps people interested, but more importantly it allows people to specialize. To clarify. Mixed matches are unfair. A full Recruit v Recruit match is fair. A full War Hero vs War Hero match is also fair. However War Hero is more customisable than Recruit. An example (using sage dps, because that's how I roll): - if you're a balance sage, you can switch out all the alacrity mods to get more power/crit/surge. - if you're telekinetic, you can boost up your alacrity to make yourself harder to interrupt. - if you want survivability over dps, you can switch out the Willpower > Endurance armouring for the Willpower < Endurance armouring. - and in reverse, if you're a healer who has a team of people you know you can rely on, you might want switch out your Willpower < Endurance armouring for Willpower > Endurance armouring to max out your heals. In Recruit v Recruit everyone is equal because everyone's stats are the same through restricted gear. In War Hero vs. War Hero everyone is equal because while everyone is wearing the same level of gear, everyone has access to whichever armouring/mod/enhancement/augment of that level they think is best. Despite being on the same level of gear, and therefore on equal footing, no 2 characters are exactly the same, and that is part of the fun of PvP. Yes, straight up battle skill is the most important part of PvP, but having the intelligence to successfully optimise your gear to make the most of your playstyle/spec is another kind of skill that I would hate to start seeing go unappreciated. Because the guy who has mastered both skills, is - in my mind at least - the guy who deserves to be on top. However, making a queue where everyone has access to full War Hero and the customisation for it would break PvP. Nobody would have reason to queue for normal warzones any more. I'd hate to see that.

Being discussed in a topic of the same name in the PvP section. I use 'discussed' in a very broad sense, but people who aren't just trolling start showing up after the first few pages.

This exactly. I like both gear-based and skill-based PvP. And I don't see why it's necessary to only have one or the other. It seems to me that whether you look at SWtOR as a game or a business, adding in an option to queue for warzones that take the gear factor out has lots of pro's and no con's. It is increasing the games content without compromising the content already there, and increasing the size of the market the game can cater to.

Well thank **** that's up to Bioware and not you. We're already planning all-recruit matches on my server, I just thought putting it forth as an idea would be a good thing, because like I said, even people who'd lost interest in PvP are keen to give it a try. Obviously, haters gonna hate. Good luck with that.

Then let me ask you, is a fight between 2 toon's in Recruit gear more 'equal' than Recruit vs. War Hero? Answer is obvious. Following that conclusion; A fight between 2 teams all in Recruit, is therefore more equal than a fight between 2 teams with varying levels of gear. Also, that kind of match would be easily reproducible in game if the players were willing. And as I mentioned in the first post, people are willing. Therefore, an alternate type of war zone, that simply sets all of the participants stats to what they would be if they were wearing their preffered set of Recruit gear, would say, put everyone on equal footing. Creating the option, I repeat, option, for skill based warzones, without breaking the current system.

TL;DR? Dipper. I predict the next troll is going to say something along the lines of "Why would you suffer through fighting people on uneven footing if you don't have to? It would ruin the current system." Answer: Because people enjoy seeing how their gear stacks. Unless you're an idiot rolling with stock War Hero, most people aren't geared the same. If the proposed system was implemented, I wouldn't stop doing regular Warzones, I like my WH. But wouldn't it be nice to, as aforementioned, be able to faceroll someone and say "Well dude, equal footing no matter what way you look at it. Guess I'm better than you at this."

If you're a hardcore PvP fan. A lot of people y'know, follow the class story, kill things other than other characters. 1) This isn't a complaint, it's on observation. If you're that hung up on having a gear advantage, under this system, you'd still be able to have it by continuing to play the Warzones you're already doing. Unless your issue is with not getting the chance to walk all over the people who are suffering through that 'one week' any more. 2) Not everyone plays SWtOR that much. This is an appeal for everyone who plays, not just people on PvP servers, and not just people who have hours to spare every night. If you've just started on a server with multiple well established guilds who enjoy PvP, you can hit 50 with, lets say, the basic 2000 wz comms, buy 1 BM item, end up in pick-up-groups fighting teams all in team speak servers, get say 3-4 medals a game, and be rewarded with a marvellous 60 comms for 10-15 minutes of effort, so maybe 300 comms an hour. Considering some people have jobs, lives, other **** to do, it can be months before you get that War Hero and be on equal footing with everyone else. This gives those people a viable option, where if they have the skill they can earn their gear faster, and if they don't they'll still get rolled, because a lot of already established players will prefer being able to say "I owned you and gear had nothing to do with it" and therefore join in on this gametype. Regardless, the point is that only having gear-based PvP cuts down the pool of potentially interested players. Arguably, cuts out the real PvPers, who want to be overcoming other players skill, not their gear. I both agree and disagree with point of this. In warzones, stat-wise the difference between someone in Recruit and someone in War Hero is larger than between a lvl 11 and a lvl 49 in sub 50. But the difference in having those skills available does give you a massive advantage. It would be cool if that could be dealt with too, but this - I image - would be a much easier issue to address for the developers.

With GW2 coming out, servers are losing people. Some of them, Guild Wars fans. Some of them, just trying out the new flavour of the month. But on my main server, a lot of them are people who are sick of gear-based PvP. I'm not saying it's a horrible thing, or that it doesn't have it's virtues when it comes to keeping people interested. But in several guilds across a few servers I've seen topics posted about organising PvP matches where all the participants are wearing nothing but a set of recruit gear, and SO MANY people have immediately jumped on the idea, not only people who're currently PvPing, but also people who have already lost interest in it entirely. Would it really be that hard for Bioware to create a seperate PvP queue on top of the 2 we already have? Warzones, Ranked Warzones, and a separate gametype where everyone's gear is set to no stat gain, recruit level gear, or War Hero level gear, whatever. Still earn comms from it, so you're getting something out of it, maybe even have a ranked version of it too. But essentially something that puts everyone on equal footing, and brings it back to just your spec and your skill.

With GW2 coming out, servers are losing people. Some of them, Guild Wars fans. Some of them, just trying out the new flavour of the month. But on my main server, a lot of them are people who are sick of gear-based PvP. I'm not saying it's a horrible thing, or that it doesn't have it's virtues when it comes to keeping people interested. But in several guilds across a few servers I've seen topics posted about organising PvP matches where all the participants are wearing nothing but a set of recruit gear, and SO MANY people have immediately jumped on the idea, not only people who're currently PvPing, but also people who have already lost interest in it entirely. Would it really be that hard for Bioware to create a seperate PvP queue on top of the 2 we already have? Warzones, Ranked Warzones, and a separate gametype where everyone's gear is set to no stat gain, recruit level gear, or War Hero level gear, whatever. Still earn comms from it, so you're getting something out of it, maybe even have a ranked version of it too. But essentially something that puts everyone on equal footing, and brings it back to just your spec and your skill. As implied, it'd potentially bring back a lot of people who're leaving for GW2, grab the attention of people who're sick of getting face-rolled by groups in full War Hero, and do all that without ruining the PvP systems already in place.