Gear gap is out of hand.

[Koppster]

Free recruit set notwithstanding, what sort of impression of the game do you think new lvl 50's are getting when stepping into warzones for the first time after completing the levelling process and they get 3-4 shot by peeps with 20k hp and against whom they do very little damage?

 

Expertise scales far too well, sort your game out.

[iNeXxS]

SWTOR has gear progression, like most other MMO's. Everyone who has good gear now has had bad gear and has been owned by geared players. Full Battlemaster only takes a few days to get so quit your complaining and start grinding comms.

[Carbonated]

SWTOR has gear progression, like most other MMO's. Everyone who has good gear now has had bad gear and has been owned by geared players. Full Battlemaster only takes a few days to get so quit your complaining and start grinding comms.

 

Actually, When the tokens for the gear are based on certain things like dealing a 5k hit, doing a set number of damage and you get in and your in full recruit gear going against War hero and half your team leaves so you have no nodes for the protect objectives, what tends to happen is that you get 1-2 medals at most, so then every war zone gives bugger all comms for the new gear. Thus making it take forever.

 

On the old server People quit, 1 point regardless of warzone, half were gone. cycle continues with the new server and then you get against premades its even worse.

 

Sure Joining a premade might help, But some people dont like premades like myself as what tends to happen is most avoid the other premades so then you get a group that removes you because you want challenge. And those that dont get randomly put against pugs a lot it seems and then its just face roll because they are full of quitters.

 

But anyway. The point is, that the gear grind is alot longer then most peoples patience due to the fact that some medals are ruined by the fact that the pvp stat reduces the chances of getting them.

[Koppster]

My point is, gear progression is all well and good, but when you factor in the crappy balance this game has you are double-penalised for a) playing the wrong class (sorc/sage in my instance) and b) the lopsided travesty that the next tier of gear brings to fights. You have a recipe for suck and ragequit subscription.

 

By all means reward the effort gear progression takes, but not to the point all new players are your cannon fodder for the months it takes for them to catch up.

 

Everyone who has good gear now has had bad gear and has been owned by geared players

 

Erm, no. Most War Hero geared players have been playing since launch, or close to it. When they hit 50, it was a level playing field more or less, without classes like my own having been nerfed into uselessness and others like maras/sents one-shotting peeps with Ravage. Now they get to roflstomp noobs and pugs Yay them.

Edited July 5, 2012 by Koppster

[iNeXxS]

Actually, When the tokens for the gear are based on certain things like dealing a 5k hit, doing a set number of damage and you get in and your in full recruit gear going against War hero and half your team leaves so you have no nodes for the protect objectives, what tends to happen is that you get 1-2 medals at most, so then every war zone gives bugger all comms for the new gear. Thus making it take forever.

 

On the old server People quit, 1 point regardless of warzone, half were gone. cycle continues with the new server and then you get against premades its even worse.

 

Sure Joining a premade might help, But some people dont like premades like myself as what tends to happen is most avoid the other premades so then you get a group that removes you because you want challenge. And those that dont get randomly put against pugs a lot it seems and then its just face roll because they are full of quitters.

 

But anyway. The point is, that the gear grind is alot longer then most peoples patience due to the fact that some medals are ruined by the fact that the pvp stat reduces the chances of getting them.

Seems like your problem is that the players on your server are lame quitters and not necessarily the gear. You can still rack up a bunch of easy medals by sitting on a node in CIvil War doing nothing.

[Koppster]

Seems like your problem is that the players on your server are lame quitters

 

Some peeps don't particularly enjoy playing losing games with losers. A gamers game time is their own, if they choose not to waste it with kill farmers and scrubs then that's their privilege.

[fungihoujo]

Casuals aren't their playerbase.

 

When they lost 400k subs after 1.2, they didn't express concern- they shrugged it off and said 'it was just casuals' who left. BW doesn't care about the players who only play a little bit, they've done zero to encourage casuals to play again- look at RWZ, it's just best gear for premades.

[iNeXxS]

My point is, gear progression is all well and good, but when you factor in the crappy balance this game has you are double-penalised for a) playing the wrong class (sorc/sage in my instance) and b) the lopsided travesty that the next tier of gear brings to fights. You have a recipe for suck and ragequit subscription.

 

By all means reward the effort gear progression takes, but not to the point all new players are your cannon fodder for the months it takes for them to catch up.

 

 

 

Erm, no. Most War Hero geared players have been playing since launch, or close to it. When they hit 50, it was a level playing field more or less, without classes like my own having been nerfed into uselessness and others like maras/sents one-shotting peeps with Ravage. Now they get to roflstomp noobs and pugs Yay them.

 

This game is actually pretty balanced if you have played for a while a know the ins and outs of every class. I have a 50 Sage alt (main a Vanguard) and when I played a Telekentics/Balance hybrid I didn't feel useless, even in Recruit gear. Sure, I'd get owned by a fully WH, auged, and Min/Maxed Pyro or Mara, but then again I wouldn't play against a full team of those players. Maybe once every 10 matches I'd go against a 4-man premade of them, but against the average player in regular BM gear I'd do perfectly fine. Within the first day I already had 4 peices of BM and I was even giving WH geared players a run for their money,

 

Way back when Champion gear meant you were a boss, and having more level 50's than the other team in a bracket of 10-50 meant whether you won or lost, there were still people with better gear owning. I remember on the 2nd day the game was fully released there were 50s smashing 10s and 20s in WZ's, I was one of those low levels. Maybe 5% of the population had all the crazy gear from the start and didn't have to deal with better geared players, but the other 95% of people with WH now still got owned when the game was still new.

[iNeXxS]

Some peeps don't particularly enjoy playing losing games with losers. A gamers game time is their own, if they choose not to waste it with kill farmers and scrubs then that's their privilege.

 

If they're so entitled why not just queue with a premade of other entitled people who don't want to waste their time with PuG's? Maybe you'll inspire those solo queued players because you have a 4-man premade, possibly with the same guild tag, maybe they'll actually play well because they have a chance to win?

[Sookster]

In rated WZ's I expect geared WH aug'd out players in there, but in pugs the WH aug'd players are also in there specifically targeting non WH players (a WH'd scoundrel running past a WH'd marauder just to kill a recruit/BM merc), I've been watching my teammates and other players in those type of gear throughout the week doing regular WZ's. I'm on Pot5 and the population seems to be higher than the Fatman yet there aren't enough people wanting to do RWZ's sometimes, is it because the competition is so lopsided or just not fun anymore? It's getting ridiculous. Edited July 5, 2012 by Sookster

[Sookster]

Casuals aren't their playerbase.

 

Are you being sarcastic? This game has casuals written all over it, the 400K lost are the hardcore players, I'm still playing because of my guild (and friends in it) right now and there aren't any other MMO's I'm interested in at the moment.

[DarthMaulUK]

I think the OP needs to re write the question.

 

As of today, we have 4 tiers of gear - 5 if you include Augumented stuff.

PvE

Recruit

Battlemaster

War Hero

War Hero(aug)

 

Now the question should be - HOW will Bioware attract new PvP players in when the grind they face is daunting? Must new players remain canon fodder for months? I think if Bioware look at their 'metrics' as they love doing, it will be interesting to see how many of these players quit because they keep getting killed within seconds and, have Expertise less than 500.

 

This week, I have seen players ranging from 100-700 expertise and some cant or wont buy recruit gear for whatever reason. Thus meaning everyone else suffers. Which in turn means that the pvp experience is spoiled for everyone.

 

Get a grip Bioware and reduce the amount of coms required to purchase WH stuff.

[fungihoujo]

Are you being sarcastic? This game has casuals written all over it, the 400K lost are the hardcore players, I'm still playing because of my guild (and friends in it) right now and there aren't any other MMO's I'm interested in at the moment.

 

It takes about 800 matches to get full WH gear as a casual- if we were to assume you didn't have long wait times that's likely 3 matches an hour- so it'll take somewhere between 2-300 hours to get full WH if you always get 8 medals and win fifty percent of your matches.

 

Casuals might play 1-2 hours a day on average, and most won't play all that on a single character or spend it all doing just pvp grinding (and yes, at 300 hours to be equally geared in pvp it is indeed nothing more than a grind). We are talking 200 days or so of play, well over half a year- just to get gear that puts you on competitive, equal footing with players who can play 12 hours a day and have their full WH in under a month.

 

So no, this game doesn't appeal at all to casuals. This game doesn't appeal to hardcores either so I'll give you that- if you mean hardcore as in someone who is good and wants competitive play because this game has very little of that. If however you mean hardcore as in someone who has 4 hours+ per day, might be good but probably is just mediocre and has lots of time, the crowd who only thinks competitive means 'able to get massive stat, health and damage advantages over people who play less'- then I'd disagree, as currently in pvp that is the exact crowd they are pleasing and that'll be the only crowd who stays.

 

The casuals are going to be the ones who will spend a week or two working on getting two or three pieces of BM, realize they're still being 2 shot and still hitting like a wet noodle, and are going to realize that this game doesn't necessarily have the longest gear grind out of all the grind based mmos- but it sure has a very boring, reptitive, and punishing gear grind.

 

Casuals also tend to be the crowd that plays a game for enjoyment. Look at this pvp forum- how often do you see people- who aren't playing the current FOTM anyway- that are saying they're enjoying the game? How often do you see any sort of praise for the pvp situation or the gearing? You never see this game's pvp being talked of favourably out of the game either, or even considered as competitive or balanced. Nobody ever says the gear grind is fun- the people defending it always say the same thing 'we WORKED for it and it SUCKED for us, so you should work and it should suck for you', forgetting that games are what we do to escape work.

 

You also never see people showing off how to play their own class well, you don't see many pvp videos or good how to guides- you will only ever see people either slamming their own class, hating on other classes, or setting up guides for how to play a class that the OP will immediately admit is not a class they play/telling people who to beat their own class without having played one of the classes that is having trouble with that class.

 

The reasoning is simple- there's few to no good players left who are coordinated enough to write guides, people playing good classes don't need awareness of how certain classes play to beat them- so they write guides for those classes without being aware. People who are mediocre are experiencing success with classes that are quite powerful, so are assuming they are good and have the knowledge to post intelligent threads when they do not. There's little to no guides on group play because WZ are in general won by superior firepower over tactics.

 

The forum is packed with people who believe that the numbers at the end of a match are the most important thing- and more problematically, the dev team shares that mind and bases their decisions entirely on metrics.

 

There is one form of pvp supported, and only two match styles. There is huttball, and what generally falls to 'defend the point'- in Alderaan, first team with 2 nodes almost always wins. VS, one team is usually completed blocked while the other flies through. Novare is a little more fluid than Alderaan, but is the same match only not as bad. Overall though, there's so little difference in both what you do and what team comp you need- that generally you will make one team, and have one strategy that works, with few adjustments, for all 3... and in general most simple strategies work if you have more gear/better classes.

 

Overall problem is- they made a pvp game that had plenty of problems BUT looked like a good start, gave us a month or two of slow improvement.

 

Then spent several months making no innovation, and taking leaps and bounds backwards in almost all areas without a single positive on their 'coming soon' list.

[DarthMaulUK]

It takes about 800 matches to get full WH gear as a casual- if we were to assume you didn't have long wait times that's likely 3 matches an hour- so it'll take somewhere between 2-300 hours to get full WH if you always get 8 medals and win fifty percent of your matches.

 

Casuals might play 1-2 hours a day on average, and most won't play all that on a single character or spend it all doing just pvp grinding (and yes, at 300 hours to be equally geared in pvp it is indeed nothing more than a grind). We are talking 200 days or so of play, well over half a year- just to get gear that puts you on competitive, equal footing with players who can play 12 hours a day and have their full WH in under a month.

 

So no, this game doesn't appeal at all to casuals. This game doesn't appeal to hardcores either so I'll give you that- if you mean hardcore as in someone who is good and wants competitive play because this game has very little of that. If however you mean hardcore as in someone who has 4 hours+ per day, might be good but probably is just mediocre and has lots of time, the crowd who only thinks competitive means 'able to get massive stat, health and damage advantages over people who play less'- then I'd disagree, as currently in pvp that is the exact crowd they are pleasing and that'll be the only crowd who stays.

 

The casuals are going to be the ones who will spend a week or two working on getting two or three pieces of BM, realize they're still being 2 shot and still hitting like a wet noodle, and are going to realize that this game doesn't necessarily have the longest gear grind out of all the grind based mmos- but it sure has a very boring, reptitive, and punishing gear grind.

 

Casuals also tend to be the crowd that plays a game for enjoyment. Look at this pvp forum- how often do you see people- who aren't playing the current FOTM anyway- that are saying they're enjoying the game? How often do you see any sort of praise for the pvp situation or the gearing? You never see this game's pvp being talked of favourably out of the game either, or even considered as competitive or balanced. Nobody ever says the gear grind is fun- the people defending it always say the same thing 'we WORKED for it and it SUCKED for us, so you should work and it should suck for you', forgetting that games are what we do to escape work.

 

You also never see people showing off how to play their own class well, you don't see many pvp videos or good how to guides- you will only ever see people either slamming their own class, hating on other classes, or setting up guides for how to play a class that the OP will immediately admit is not a class they play/telling people who to beat their own class without having played one of the classes that is having trouble with that class.

 

The reasoning is simple- there's few to no good players left who are coordinated enough to write guides, people playing good classes don't need awareness of how certain classes play to beat them- so they write guides for those classes without being aware. People who are mediocre are experiencing success with classes that are quite powerful, so are assuming they are good and have the knowledge to post intelligent threads when they do not. There's little to no guides on group play because WZ are in general won by superior firepower over tactics.

 

The forum is packed with people who believe that the numbers at the end of a match are the most important thing- and more problematically, the dev team shares that mind and bases their decisions entirely on metrics.

 

There is one form of pvp supported, and only two match styles. There is huttball, and what generally falls to 'defend the point'- in Alderaan, first team with 2 nodes almost always wins. VS, one team is usually completed blocked while the other flies through. Novare is a little more fluid than Alderaan, but is the same match only not as bad. Overall though, there's so little difference in both what you do and what team comp you need- that generally you will make one team, and have one strategy that works, with few adjustments, for all 3... and in general most simple strategies work if you have more gear/better classes.

 

Overall problem is- they made a pvp game that had plenty of problems BUT looked like a good start, gave us a month or two of slow improvement.

 

Then spent several months making no innovation, and taking leaps and bounds backwards in almost all areas without a single positive on their 'coming soon' list.

blimey - I will wait for this to come out on dvd

[Khoraji]

Actually, When the tokens for the gear are based on certain things like dealing a 5k hit, doing a set number of damage and you get in and your in full recruit gear going against War hero and half your team leaves so you have no nodes for the protect objectives, what tends to happen is that you get 1-2 medals at most, so then every war zone gives bugger all comms for the new gear. Thus making it take forever.

 

 

Your acting like everyone but you and whoever is on your team is full war hero, which isn't true. Normal WZ's there is always a mix of under geared players on both sides.

 

Also, even if you run around naked, you should be getting more than 1-2 medals, stop exaggerating.

 

It takes a week or two to get full BM, stop complainging. The people that ARE in full WH right now grinded out waaaayyy more comms and warzones than the fresh 50's have to.

[kitsinni]

Free recruit set notwithstanding, what sort of impression of the game do you think new lvl 50's are getting when stepping into warzones for the first time after completing the levelling process and they get 3-4 shot by peeps with 20k hp and against whom they do very little damage?

 

Expertise scales far too well, sort your game out.

 

I'm in augmented War Hero heavy armor and I still get killed in a few seconds in 50 Warzones. Granted I do more damage against other people than a new fresh 50, but without healers no one is living long anymore.

 

I don't even think the gear gap is the real problem, it is just a matter of TTK is way low without healers and with them it can be near impossible to kill someone. The thing a fresh 50 has to worry about more than anything is going up against an organized team with healers. If you were in recruit gear and got put in to a good organized team with healers and tanks guarding the healers you would live longer and your lack of damage wouldn't be that noticeable.

[TheronFett]

Casuals aren't their playerbase.

 

When they lost 400k subs after 1.2, they didn't express concern- they shrugged it off and said 'it was just casuals' who left. BW doesn't care about the players who only play a little bit, they've done zero to encourage casuals to play again- look at RWZ, it's just best gear for premades.

 

Your post is full of fail.

 

Most of the 1.2 fallout was from the "hardcore" PvP crowd who ragequit because RWZ wasn't implemented as promised, compounded by the final death of Ilum. The casuals are still playing and enjoying the game.

[Varicite]

Your acting like everyone but you and whoever is on your team is full war hero, which isn't true. Normal WZ's there is always a mix of under geared players on both sides.

 

Also, even if you run around naked, you should be getting more than 1-2 medals, stop exaggerating.

 

It takes a week or two to get full BM, stop complainging. The people that ARE in full WH right now grinded out waaaayyy more comms and warzones than the fresh 50's have to.

 

I dinged 50 on Tuesday night (late night). I was half-BM by last night. Tonight, I will be full BM.

 

I work full-time. (Thank you America, for giving me the day off on your birthday)

 

It's really not that hard.

Edited July 5, 2012 by Varicite

[kweassa]

Free recruit set notwithstanding, what sort of impression of the game do you think new lvl 50's are getting when stepping into warzones for the first time after completing the levelling process and they get 3-4 shot by peeps with 20k hp and against whom they do very little damage?

 

The impression they should be getting is, "I need to work harder if I want to get that good gear."

 

if not, they don't got what it takes to PvP.

 

 

Expertise scales far too well, sort your game out.

 

No freebies, n00bs. Work for it.

[SajPl]

SWTOR has gear progression, like most other MMO's. Everyone who has good gear now has had bad gear and has been owned by geared players. Full Battlemaster only takes a few days to get so quit your complaining and start grinding comms.

 

Well on my first toon I wasn't going through that painfull process, actually it was like this :

that healer commando is solo guarding a door ... whole imp team goes to the other ... having full champion gear pre 50 bracket was fun ....

[LarryRow]

blimey - I will wait for this to come out on dvd

 

Thanks a lot, jerk. You made me nose my coffee.

[mangarrage]

I think the OP needs to re write the question.

 

As of today, we have 4 tiers of gear - 5 if you include Augumented stuff.

PvE

Recruit

Battlemaster

War Hero

War Hero(aug)

 

Now the question should be - HOW will Bioware attract new PvP players in when the grind they face is daunting? Must new players remain canon fodder for months? I think if Bioware look at their 'metrics' as they love doing, it will be interesting to see how many of these players quit because they keep getting killed within seconds and, have Expertise less than 500.

 

This week, I have seen players ranging from 100-700 expertise and some cant or wont buy recruit gear for whatever reason. Thus meaning everyone else suffers. Which in turn means that the pvp experience is spoiled for everyone.

 

Get a grip Bioware and reduce the amount of coms required to purchase WH stuff.

 

No offense but you have to be kidding there is not 5 levels, there is 3 recruit bm and wh

recruit is free and in 3 days you can easily have 6 pieces of BM with your pvp to 50 and your dailies

And there is no wh augmented level I do not think anyone with a wh piece to a set just doesnt augment their pieces, so there is just 3

As far as new 50s well some of us went in there with no expertise, we werent given 950 expertise when we started, I am currently running 2 players though the 50 with recruit and 3 more through 1-49 who will also do that

 

If you didnt pvp until 50 or didnt max your level in pvp or commodations while you level it is your own fault and I'm sorry but you shouldnt even be handed recruit gear imo, by not doing what you should have done while you levelled up you gave yourself the disadvantage and BW shouldn't award you for that

I don't know why some people just say this is what I have to do while others just say why can't you just give me everything

 

And to the person who said the WH geared people seek out not wh people youre just lost man. On my main I kill whatever is stopping me from an objective and whatever is trying to take an objective. Doesnt matter if they are recruit or WH. To think people just target between people to look for the lowest hp during a wz is just well dumb

 

And lastly the person who said its more about classes then gear is correct. The gear isnt an issue most of the time but 2 archtypes really need to be tuned down slightly sadly they are all over WZ now because they are op

Edited July 5, 2012 by mangarrage

[Varicite]

And to the person who said the WH geared people seek out not wh people youre just lost man. On my main I kill whatever is stopping me from an objective and whatever is trying to take an objective. Doesnt matter if they are recruit or WH. To think people just target between people to look for the lowest hp during a wz is just well dumb

 

I agree w/ everything else you said, but as someone running around in half-Recruit gear, I have literally watched enemies tab around the 3-4 DPS on them and single me out because of my low hp. It's not a fluke, I've seen it plenty of times.

 

I spent a Huttball match luring the enemy DPS around the corners of the map while my team scored over and over, because they wanted that "easy kill".

 

Just sayin', those people do exist. I think it's the whole "If I'm going to die, I'm taking someone w/ me" mentality, and let's be honest.. looking for Recruit gear or 14k hp is the easiest means to accomplish that.

[Khoraji]

I think the OP needs to re write the question.

 

As of today, we have 4 tiers of gear - 5 if you include Augumented stuff.

PvE

Recruit

Battlemaster

War Hero

War Hero(aug)

 

Now the question should be - HOW will Bioware attract new PvP players in when the grind they face is daunting? Must new players remain canon fodder for months? I think if Bioware look at their 'metrics' as they love doing, it will be interesting to see how many of these players quit because they keep getting killed within seconds and, have Expertise less than 500.

 

This week, I have seen players ranging from 100-700 expertise and some cant or wont buy recruit gear for whatever reason. Thus meaning everyone else suffers. Which in turn means that the pvp experience is spoiled for everyone.

 

Get a grip Bioware and reduce the amount of coms required to purchase WH stuff.

 

Recruit gear is free, there is no excuse for not having it

 

Also, you can augment BM gear as well you know.

[Targetboy]

Casuals aren't their playerbase.

 

When they lost 400k subs after 1.2, they didn't express concern- they shrugged it off and said 'it was just casuals' who left. BW doesn't care about the players who only play a little bit, they've done zero to encourage casuals to play again- look at RWZ, it's just best gear for premades.

 

That's the wrong attitude for you and bioware; 400k is equal to 72 million annually. Lets say they bring back 1/3 of that population, they now have an extra 23+ million annually. The average developer makes roughly 80k a year. They now have the steak sauce to build a new team, upgrade hardware and invest in new ventures; the left over golden nuggets can be spent on ******s and booze come Friday at 3:30pm.

 

The gear grind does suck. I just hit 50 on my alt yesterday, I've 4/5 bm, mh and the rest recruit already. The thought of leveling to WH again is painful. I get ***** in WZ's, unless I blow all my cd's and even then it's still a beating. The gear gap in this game needs adjusting.

 

My real wish is to level cap myself at 49. At least those wz's felt balanced. Epic games have and will be had at lower levels.

 

Edit: I leveled from 11-50 in wz's with maybe 3% running quest and/or flashpoints.

Edited July 5, 2012 by Targetboy