Patch 1.2 We will be able to buy champion gear for credits.

[richardya]

This is fine, you should have 4-5 level 50s by now, this will make gearing all of them much easier, its how the game was meant to be played.

 

No progression is how it was meant to be played? Gary Gygax would disagree.

[Izini]

How else do you progress? The whole genre is based on trying to get the next level, next ability, next peice of gear and building a character. They put a level cap in b/c it is easier to control gear progression. If after 4 months at 50 the gap was too big then they start making the lower gear easier. If they add 20 levels it is harder to catch up the lower level people and the beginer sees a huge hurdle in front of him.

 

If they give champ away but add a tier after Battlemaster it will be fine. But taking away progression is not smart. As I said many times, make the gap smaller but leave the progression. Make War Hero gear and make it 2% better.

 

Also, if someone has no life and puts in 10 hours a day I am fine giving them an advantage, I can deal with that. There are not that many who can do that and if a few people are superduper, well, so what.

 

There are plenty other creative ideas to progression besides better gear. Like the PvP ranking system and the legacy system, there can be much more. To some players its all about leveling and getting all the loot but to others its about having fun with friends. So, its just your opinion that progression is everything. Some people just want good enough gear and then go out having fun doing pve or pvp and don't care about getting stuff. oh and no way should someone who plays 10 hours a day have an advantage over others who can't, just like you said very few people can do that so why give them an advantage.

[RefugeASSASSIN]

Im kinda on the fence about this. On one hand I do think you should have to put in some work to improve your stats, but on the other I do agree that fresh 50's need some sort of boost.

 

IMO they shouldnt make the Champion tier gear purchasable, but rather the Centurion. To me this is the best of both worlds. I dont get punched in the mouth because I put my time in and you can gear up to a level that can still compete against champion geared playes (and to some extent, crappy Battlemasters)

 

This will save you a week's worth of grinding and not cheat the rest of the people who put in countless hours trying to grind up their gear.

[Tiaa]

Game is getting a little "too" casual for me ...

[goulet]

something that costs credits =handout?

[jonklon]

Yeah congrats everyone!!! Free items with no effort!! It should be like this in real life so that homeless people can have free Masters degrees!! That'll show those stupid hard working individuals!! See how stupid that sounds?

 

they might have a "free masters degree" but they wouldnt know how to use it, so the still cant get the job done....

 

i really dont see why people worry....

[TetraCleric]

Centurion gear should have been purchasable with credits from the start.

 

Champion gear being purchased with credits is a logical movement.

 

War Hero gear will be significantly better than Battlemaster, and thus Champion as well as Centurion.

 

Limiting new 50's to grinding out Centurion gear while people are wearing full BM or WH is going to hurt PvP much more than people getting easy starting gear.

 

But, whatever. People are going to ***** ayways, and people are going to quit regardless. Most of the people that complain won't get past 2200 anyways.

[adamastor]

I'm pretty sure that Bioware hae seen the numbers that ppl are leaving this game and the only way to save the pvp front is to give away free pvp armor, to new comer so they don't leave when they reach 50 the problem is that this game is lacking players. Best solution imo would have been cross server pvp

 

 

Clap, clap, clap

[Belbullab]

guys, if you actually read the link, here are the details...

 

-champ armor will not be for sale for credits.

 

-a new pvp armor, similar to champ but crap for pve will be for sale for credits.

 

-a new pvp armor that is better than battlemaster for pvp but is crap for pve will be available only through ranked warzone comendations and it will have no valor restriction.

[AngryBuddhist]

Yeah congrats everyone!!! Free items with no effort!! It should be like this in real life so that homeless people can have free Masters degrees!! That'll show those stupid hard working individuals!! See how stupid that sounds?

 

Funny how one man's "hard working individuals" are another man's "no-life no job losers".

[CKNairb]

Bad people without PvP gear will still be bad at PvP with PvP gear, not going to make somebody turn awesome.

[Spanglish]

Yeah congrats everyone!!! Free items with no effort!! It should be like this in real life so that homeless people can have free Masters degrees!! That'll show those stupid hard working individuals!! See how stupid that sounds?

 

lol i just lawled, cuase hard working can mean a poor child growing up getting a degree, getting the masters, and getting no job, because he/she doesn't know the right person.

[Nadrojjj]

I see this thread and I can't help myself but to laugh at most of the people in it.

 

On one side you have the casual weekend warrior.

 

This guy logs in and plays maybe five to ten hours a week. Enters warzones in his orange gear and gets his facerolled. Doesn't have the sense to buy one champ bag and then stack 1000/1000 coms before he hits 50 so he can at least level right into some centurion gear. Whine, complain, threaten to leave because warzones are unfair.

 

This game has been out since December 20th, if you don't have champ gear by now then having it handed to you for free is going to do nothing but make you look like the rest of us who completed our dailies and got our gear. I can only imagine once the playing field is "leveled" and you still get curbstomped what your next complaint will be.

 

I hit 50 the day the warzones were broken out into the two brackets. This means I didn't get the time to run around and kill lvl 14's who had their stats scaled up to my level like a lot of people did. Every warzone the floor was mopped with my face. Was I mad? Yes. Did I quit? No.

 

You know what I did? I did some research, I formulated strategies, I played smart. I actually improved my skills by going against better players. That's what competition is about. Sharpening your skills and becoming better at what you are doing. I pvp'd enough that I learned how to play my job better, and was rewarded with some gear while I did it. It felt like I was grinding to accomplish something. I was proud of my full champion set because you know what I went from noob to seasoned over the course of time it took me to get it.

 

You guys who don't have champion gear yet will get it handed to you. Sure I'm a little salty that what I put in my time and effort for is just going to be handed out like candy on halloween, but whatever it's not going to make you play better. It just means you're going to be a little less squishy.

 

 

The second group is the players who feel like this is a downright outrage. I understand where you guys are coming from. A lot of us feel like we earned our gear. Time+effort=earned by a lot of people. I feel the same way, I feel like my time invested in warzones helped me earn my champ gear. What you need to realize, like I've said twice now already, this is going to do nothing but make them a little less squishy. The players who have been in warzones and put in their time honing their skills will still rip these noobs apart. Not a huge deal. Most of us who have been champs and are now battle masters working up to war heros will be in the ranked warzones anyways. I'm sure the weekend warriors will hang out unranked, so give them whatever gear they want, hell give them a bannana for a lightsaber who really cares.

 

 

Lastly, ( I know this is going on forever, TLDR for most people ) is the state of the game it's self. BW needs to really take a look at the game they are putting out and decide who they are trying to cater to. A lot of your "hardcore" players have left. They progressed through the levels in mere weeks, hit endgame, did your broken instances and decided to call it. While most of the weekend warriors still haven't hit 50 or are just coming into their 50th level most of us have a second maybe even a third 50. I know it's difficult to cater to two different audiences but by not doing so they risk losing one of them. The weekend warrior will leave because people have better gear/items/whatever than them because they don't have the time to put in the hours. The hardcore players will leave because lack of engaging content, lack of progression, lack of epeen items. I'm sorry but most of your hardcore players (I know this term hardcore is lame, but I'm talking the players who put in an additional 5-8 hours into the game after they put that much into their actual job) want a grind, they want a reward for putting their time into the game. They want something that will show the rest of the gaming community that they have no life and are proud of it. Wow had epics, Final Fantasy had Relics, most other mmo's have some kind of a cut above your general equip that kept players engaged. If we keep going at this rate most people are going to skip out and head for greener pastures (see Tera and GW2).

 

I really enjoy this game and I hope it succeeds, but going down the current path that BW is on I honestly don't give this game an entire year before servers merge and game is over. I mean seriously 1.2 patch 1 new op 1 new wz? Really guys? The rest of the stuff they are jamming in, like legacy stuff and custom armor should have been in the game at release. We need a lot more content to keep players here and engaged for the long run, there is only so many alts you can make before you decide it's no fun anymore.

[Carebear]

Yeah congrats everyone!!! Free items with no effort!! It should be like this in real life so that homeless people can have free Masters degrees!! That'll show those stupid hard working individuals!! See how stupid that sounds?

 

good thing playing a game is similar to getting a masters, br0.

[Tenthletter]

You're short-sighted. The more work you have to do to enter pvp, the less people will pvp, and the less pvp we all will have.

 

This is not pve. There are not unlimited pve mobs awaiting us. Anyone who gives up on pvp because it takes too long to get the gear while getting farmed by overgeared players is one less player for us.

 

If you don't want the gear gap closed you don't want pvp to last.

 

Somebody who actually gets it.

 

You sir have restored my faith in humanity. Thank you.

[Piquer]

I believe the basis of the argument centers on 2 points:

 

1. Players having already obtained pvp gear feel as if their effort in obtaining the gear is diminished if other newer players are allowed access to the same gear faster.

2. Players who are just starting who don’t stand a chance against a pvp geared player/group.

 

Having pvp statistics boosts performance against other players. The more geared a player with pvp gear will make them that much more effective against other players. This is very similar to combat outside of warzones, there is not much of a fight between a level 39 fighting a level 50 with similarly ‘skilled’ players. There is not a lot skill would bridge to overcome that fight.

 

I also understand that having raid gear in battlegrounds poses exactly the same problem without pvp statistics. I used to run around Alterac Valley with 8/8 Netherwind before pvp statistics. I know what it’s like.

 

Having pvp statistics (resilience, valor and in our case, expertise) protects against an unfair advantage from pve gear, especially raid or operations obtained gear which scales to provide the player against more and more difficult pve encounters.

 

So let me get this straight:

 

Those of the opinion that the gear shouldn’t be just handed out just for queuing warzones are contending that they did something different? Isn’t it a matter of grinding online time? (if only to earn medals to reduce that time is the measure of skill?) Someone with enough time grinding out gear, could obviously create an anomaly where the character they have built is far outside the normal distribution and is nearly unbeatable in most cases.

 

Is the threat merely a more level playing field due to more players having easier access to gear over another with full pvp statistics so that the player is no longer nearly unbeatable? Could it be that such a player would feel slighted of a potential diminishing advantage and the prospect of more time to grind out that advantage again somehow? Isn’t that the real complaint?

 

Which is more more fun:

Facing a basically equal opponent on even ground and defeating them the rush of pvp? Or was grinding out the gear the rush? Be honest.

 

I would love to see a baseline wz. In this warzone your characters stats obtained through gear would be set at a fixed value the same for everyone else, trinkets wouldn’t work and the only thing you’d have is your spec. I’d queue up for that. This probably can be done in line with the current warzones.

 

P.S. Another perspective that helps me out: Your character and gear is nothing more than bits on some server you don’t own.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Piquer

[Defilade]

I hope some of you realize this is exactly how gear is handled in a system with gear tiers. Champion gear will be the new centurion gear and centurion gear will just flat out be obsolete. When they start season 1, BM gear will be the free gear and after that war hero gear.

[trakata]

I hope some of you realize this is exactly how gear is handled in a system with gear tiers. Champion gear will be the new centurion gear and centurion gear will just flat out be obsolete. When they start season 1, BM gear will be the free gear and after that war hero gear.

 

This.

 

The new tier of gear (which will look different from Champion for all of you "I want brownie points for grinding" QQers) will be the baseline for 50s entering the field. Battlemaster will be mid-tier, and War Hero will be the new teh awesome!!!111.

 

On top of that, expertise will be redone so you don't just need 500-600 of it. All the top players will still grind out better gear anyways, so what's the problem? I'm currently grinding out my champion gear and have no issue with this.

Edited March 9, 2012 by trakata

[Horndrid]

Yeah this is kind of a kick in the teeth to the people who spent time farming Champ gear. You may as well just stop PvPing until the patch if you don't have full Champ because all your effort is going to be wasted. They should make this vendor gear at least a few item levels below Champ so we don't feel like total chumps. Maybe use level 54 mods or something.

 

*** is wrong with you? why do you need a gear advantage? All of you so called hardcore people who need to have better gear why? And dont give me this bs about being rewarded for whatever.

 

Clearly you need an advantage over others. WHY? i dont get it.

[Yuwen]

Source: http://dulfy.net/2012/03/05/swtor-guild-summitlive-blogging/

 

PVP discussion

 

Medal system- not balanced across classes right now.

No specific queues for warzones in place but we are allowing same-faction warzones to reduce the number of Huttballs.

New Warzone in 1,2: Novare coast: majority control objective – 3 point objective. You need to control at least 2 out of 3 objectives to do damage to fortification.

Ranked PVP Pre-season coming with 1.2: Character ratings for both solo and group play based on the ELO system.

 

Warzone changes

 

New Warzone dailies with 1.2 – new dailies requiring winning certain number of medals rather than wins.

Something to mention about the medal system – you might have noticed that the objective capture and defend columns are not working right now. This is because we didn’t finish off all the medals we want to have in there.

18 new medals introduced for objectives, participation and performance (i.e. the first to get the datacore, planting a bomb, catching a ball, and scoring in huttball ) – very positive audience reaction.

Warzone rewards will be based on earning medals but we also want to discourage farming (i.e. not finishing a match in Huttball when you are 5-0): 1. we are also capping the amount of medals you can get 2, you get more medals for winning a warzone fast.

The new cap for the medals is still to be determined – maybe around 8 because we are essentially doubling the amount of medals that are available right now.

If you win a warzone fast, you will get a medal for say finishing a warzone in 5 minutes, 6 minutes, 7 mintues, etc. if you win it in 5 minutes you get all the subsequent medals as well. This also encourage the losing team to continue participate in objectives and get more rewards.

In patch 1.1.5 we are doing the first step of this by capping it at 4 medals (not introducing the new medals yet) and increasing the amount of rewards per medal.

Vote to kick: coming up with patch 1.2. Players can vote inactive players out of the warzone to be replaced by someone else in the queue – we are aware of the potential abuses of the system and working on measures to prevent that.

Efforts to combat AFK – needs minimal player contribution to get medals – if you just sit around you not going to get much. Medals will add a modifier to your overall rewards in the warzone.

 

New tier of PVP gear – War Hero.

 

This gear will have a greater stat difference from PVE gear to minimize the cross-over with PVE gear. We don’t want you to use PVP gear to do hardmode flashpoints/operations etc but we don’t want to have the barrier of entry for PVE people to go into PVP to be too high.

New gear will more lean on expertise and stats that are more PVP focused.

New lightsaber colors

New PVP crafting – adding expertise crystals.

We are also adding a new entry level PVP gear to people that they can purchase with credits to bridge the barrier from when you hit level 50 and having to combat against Centurion/Champion geared players. This gap between fresh 50s and Centurion/Champion geared players is wider than we intended.

War hero gear from ranked warzone commendations. Regular warzone commendations will give you battlemaster gear and entry level PVP gear is going to be champion type level with more focus on expertise so it is not as viable in PVE.

The bag system for PVP gear will be removed with 1.2

Less randomness from rewards for PvP progression – we had a challenge at launch to be able to tier gear like we did with PVE. In PVE you have different tiers of progression content but in PVP its all flat, ranked warzones will allow us to tier PVP content and therefore tier our rewards.

 

Future of warzones

 

Existing warzones will allow for same faction vs faction – training mode scenarios. Schedule for patch 1.2-1.3.

Cross server ranked warzone queuing –this is important for competition but at the same time we will still have incentives that lean towards grouping people of the same server. This will leads to more level bracketing with the future possibility of bracketed tournaments. It will also have the ability to choose a specific warzone.

Bracketed tournament system – join instantly, once it matches enough teams you can just fight each other and get qualification points for 1st, 2nd, 3rd places etc.

We will allow you to queue a full of 8 people together for those ranked warzones and in the future we want to formalize that a bit more with teams. Timeline is TBD.

Persisting groups across warzones so you don’t have to reform them between warzones – something we want to add in the future as well.

 

Open world PVP

 

We know they are less popular than warzones. 3x more level 50 warzone players than ilum players – Ilum has some problems!

Going back to the drawing board for Ilum – more details later this year.

We got a bit too ambitious with ilum – we had some technical difficulties that got in the way of what we wanted to accomplish. Ilum will still be there but just not as incentivzed as much.

Redesign Ilum to be more fun and engaging – if it is the right time and right place it is going to be fun – we want to make timed objectives, balancing measures between factions.

Removing Ilum PVP quests – rewards being moved to warzones for now.

Minor changes to Outlaw den – we want players to get there quick. we will be introducing some quick travel, leaving it as a PvP sandbox.

 

Additional PVP concerns we are addressing

 

Mirrored classes imbalances – with animation etc.

Speed hacking/exploiting – we want to control them before we get to season 1 of ranked warzones.We got multiple teams working in detection and control and also increasing the size of these teams. Patch 1.2 being a pre-season will give us time to catch them.

 

 

 

 

[Paerin]

I like how people who get beaten horribly in PVP think they are suddenly going to start winning because they have equal gear. Thats like the people who spend all their time AFKing warfronts or kill trading in Illum thought they were suddenly going to be competitive once they reached Battlemaster.

 

News flash. Winners win. If you aren't used to winning its not going to suddenly start happening for you because you have the same gear as someone else.

[Gonewild]

I like how people who get beaten horribly in PVP think they are suddenly going to start winning because they have equal gear. Thats like the people who spend all their time AFKing warfronts or kill trading in Illum thought they were suddenly going to be competitive once they reached Battlemaster.

 

News flash. Winners win. If you aren't used to winning its not going to suddenly start happening for you because you have the same gear as someone else.

 

I think you are referring to those individuals that want to stack pvp gear then go mollest poor lowbies on Tat and Taris.

[RobNightfall]

Yeah congrats everyone!!! Free items with no effort!! It should be like this in real life so that homeless people can have free Masters degrees!! That'll show those stupid hard working individuals!! See how stupid that sounds?

 

What sounds stupid about it is that you are comparing a video game to real life...

[bicuspid]

I like how people who get beaten horribly in PVP think they are suddenly going to start winning because they have equal gear. Thats like the people who spend all their time AFKing warfronts or kill trading in Illum thought they were suddenly going to be competitive once they reached Battlemaster.

 

News flash. Winners win. If you aren't used to winning its not going to suddenly start happening for you because you have the same gear as someone else.

 

^

 

5/5 champ -> 5/5 BM = 6 more primary damage for me

 

 

80% win before, 80% win after.

[islander]

Congratulations everybody.

 

Now we will show those premades what pure skill and real pvp is. I bet they will all rage quit when we bet them so easy.

 

Nope.

 

Coordination > PvP Skill > Gear

 

Most pugs are bad because they don't work together nor do they know what each of them can do.

 

When I start a 4 man guild premade, I have a specific formula I tend to use: 1 healer (me), 2 DPS, 1 tank (preferred) or a 3rd DPS.

Thats 4 people who know exactly what role they can do. Improves coordination.

Edited March 9, 2012 by islander