The gear grind

[Zunayson]

Yep, another QQ thread.

 

"I need a reward or incentive to play pvp!"

 

"If you take out pvp gear, the raiders will have the best gear!"

There's a difference between progressing in PvE and in PvP. I will elaborate on that later. And we QQers are proposing taking away gear stats in PvP rather than just taking out expertise.

 

"Progression is a part of MMOs. You see it in PvE all the time!"

Yes, but in PvE, it's progression. In PvP, it's a slaughterhouse. I'll like to draw your attention to whats happening to people in recruit gear using a PvE metaphor: Take your LVL 10 greens and wipe at level 50 content until you get enough Sympathy Commendations to buy yourself some LVL 50 greens. Continue to do this until you're able to easily solo the content. This is not what happens in PvE. For those of you who don't know, in PvE, LVL 1s progress easily to LVL 2, and then to LVL 3, etc. They won't be constantly wiping, and it doesn't feel like a job. PvP can have progression so long as that's what it actually is. Brackets will take out the QQing. It's less about the grind, moreso about the disadvantages people get.

 

"But people who play IRL sports get rewarded when they play all the time! Most of them don't do it for fun!"

Yes, indeed. They play for a reward, but this is a horrible analogy, because the reward is a shiny new car, money, or something that doesn't affect their performance. In PvP, your reward is money (Commendations, it's a currency with monetary value, okay?), that can statistically increase your performance. You will be rewarded for PvP, but not in statistics and gear. In money, maybe, so long as you are unable to buy better gear with it. Another possible reward could be aesthetically pleasing looking cool stuffs. Or, just to do it for fun. Since this is a game, not a job. It feels like a job right now.

 

"But even some sports like the olympics is unfair! How is competing against different countries fair?"

You cannot state that there is an imbalance because one team is better. Competition should be like a science experiment. Many many many constants, and one variable. That variable is what's being measured. If two teams play basketball, and one is severely better, you cannot say that it's unfair. In PvP, skill makes a difference (Or strategy, whatever you want to call it), but so does gear. So the question is, what is PvP measuring? Skill, or gear (Time invested?). If it's the former, gear should become a constant. If it's the latter, then PvP isn't competitive. One of the parts of skill in an MMO - or any RPG for that matter - is gearing up, but making compromises in doing so. I will talk about these compromises later.

 

"But some countries in the olympics have better opportunity to play certain sports!"

Yes, and that's why baseball was removed; the U.S. And Japan one year were the only winners. There's a difference between preparation and ability to prepare. If an country doesn't prepare, it may have a higher chance of losing, yes, but there is no imbalance or unfairness. It is their choice whether or not they're going to practice.

 

However, some countries (Such as the low income ones that make of Africa) are unable to prepare for some sports like baseball; Baseball requires clay, fences (Or at least height and width boundaries), gloves, bats, and a ball. Do you think it's a coincidence that low income people can play soccer well? All you need is a field, some boundaries, a ball, and some goal boundaries. Nothing fancy.

 

In TOR, everyone has the ability to prepare - a computer, and access to queues. If we did server tournaments, lower population servers would be at a disadvantage, as their queues would pop less, and they couldn't practice as much. "Practice" brings me to my next point:

 

"You must practice to be competitive! This means playing and gearing up!"

What are we measuring? Gear or skill? What you practice is what you get; If PvP is a competitive measure of player skill, you practice to gain skill in a controlled environment that mimics the actual event. In layman's terms, If PvP measures skill, then your practice must also measure skill.

 

On the other hand, PvP could be noncompetitive, measuring gear, in which case practice is technically not needed, because this then becomes a stupid battle of math and statistics. Math never lies when done correctly. So yes, gear grind would be practice, if PvP measures gear and time invested. But by definition this cannot be, for PvP is player vs player, not gear vs gear?

 

"You said that gear is a part of skill when making compromises, but you said you want to remove gear?"

Remove gear tiers. You will need to determine how to weight your endurance and strength. Do I want x strength and y endurance, or y strength and x endurance? Both are useful, but for different situations. Choose wisely. The imbalance is made in tiers when the cumulative points of one tier is higher than the cumulative points of another; Having x strength and y endurance, OR x strength and y + 1 endurance. There is, statistically, NO logical reason to be low on endurance when you do not sacrifice strength for it. The gear is, on average, statistically better.

 

"You said that that the cumulative points of the different sets of gears should be equal, but having x endurance may not help defense as much as x strength will help offense?"

Then either one of two things should happen; The scaling for either strength or endurance should be changed such that x endurance will provide the same defense as x strength to provide the same offense. Or, let's say that given the same amount of strength and endurance, x, that the endurance helps defense twice as well as the way x strength will help offense. If this were to be the case, then let gear have 2x strength for x endurance.

 

"Giving out free gear would be welfare!"

Welfare is giving out free things because people are too lazy to work for them. Last time I checked, these equations are true:

SWTOR = GAME

JOBS = WORK

GAMES =/= JOBS

SWTOR =/= JOBS

SWTOR =/= WORK

 

Handing out free gear would not be welfare. It could be welfare if this game was a job. But alas, 'tis a contradiction.

 

I really don't see any flaws in my argument, but I'm sure many of you irrational people will. So please explain them to me.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Zunayson

[Totaltrash]

The flaw is simple:

This is an MMO - progression is king, both in PVE and PVP.

If you don't give people the opportunity to improve their toons, they'll stop playing after level 50.

 

Even in PVP games like LoL, where gear is a non-issue, there is a progression element build in (for LoL, that would be grinding for runes after you hit max level).

 

People enjoy building their toons, it's a big part of the fun!

On the other hand, people do not enjoy having their carefully built-up toons dimished by giving late-comers everything instantanously and for free. It negates the time and effort they have spent.

 

If you want pure skill-based PVP, play chess.

(not being sarcastic, I actually enjoy playing chess)

Edited August 8, 2012 by Totaltrash

[Nolenthar]

 

If you want pure skill-based PVP, play chess.

(not being sarcastic, I actually enjoy playing chess)

 

You actually need to learn to play, which can be seen as a work for some people, and you sure have been beaten to death by many chess players before you actually started beating them.

Your fun by then was progressing, trying to find a weakness in your ennemy, even though you knew the fight was gonna be close to impossible.

 

To OP.

 

I see where you come from. And yes, if anything, improving the match matching system so you meet an "equally geared" team could be a good idea, but we would need X-server WZ for that.

Edited August 8, 2012 by Nolenthar

[Fomore]

Well i am in mostly recruit gear, I have some battlemaster now to. But must say i dont get slaughterd that bad.

i am a jedi guardian vigilance pvp spec. and yea if i act like i am rambo i just get used as a doormat. but when using your brain and actualy play tactics i do pretty well. What i do i usualy check classes and health bars. Then just group up and play as a team. This differce from what warzone i am in example in Huttball my 50% slow is nice i might be low geared but sticking on the healer and still take damage from them trough taunts is valuable so yea it happens sometimes with to many recruit geared vs full war hero team ya get bit irritated but that happens.

[Morrolan]

Good post OP and right on the money.

 

The flaw is simple:

This is an MMO - progression is king, both in PVE and PVP.

If you don't give people the opportunity to improve their toons, they'll stop playing after level 50.

 

Even in PVP games like LoL, where gear is a non-issue, there is a progression element build in (for LoL, that would be grinding for runes after you hit max level).

Depends what the progression involves it can involve vanity items and a more horizontal progression. I actually wouldn't mind the WH progression if it wasn't such a long grind (I estimate 250-300 hours to go from BM to WH). WH should be a mid point after which you can jump into rwzs and have fun competitive games at a high level, the way it is many people will get sick of it before they get their full WH gear.

[UGLYMRJ]

Ahhhhh, the biggest fail of the PvP forums.

 

The good ol' I am right and you are wrong.

 

Only one problem with this... perspective.

 

Aside from that... options. No one is forcing you to play this damn game. If you don't like it? Find one that better suits your taste.

 

Personally, I would prefer a tougher grind on gear and levels. I feel like it's too easy. But that's my PERSPECTIVE. It does not make me right nor wrong.

[Khoraji]

MMORPG's are about gear/stat customization as much as skill. If you take away stats...your just playing a ****** FPS.

[Aehgo]

No gear progression?I would of quit months ago,I need something to play towards,it keeps the game fun and interesting having something to aim for..

[Brool]

thru all that, all I got is I dont want to put in the effort others have.

[Leiralei]

Gear progression could easily be replaced with fluff items that are brag-worthy such as custom gear, titles, and pets, even cartel coins - and people would still play pvp in this game and enjoy the progression.

 

If gear gap wasn't an issue then why did they remove the 50s to a separate bracket in the first place? They have the bolster mechanic and all they gotta do is adjust it so that skill is what's important, not gear.

[Majspuffen]

MMORPG's are about gear/stat customization as much as skill. If you take away stats...your just playing a ****** FPS.

 

SWTOR has moddable armors. There could still be gearing. What stats you choose would have to be a conscious choice.

 

Ever heard of something called "Power creep"? Vertical scaling is the cause for that. If the game scaled horizontally, the developers would probably have a much easier time to balance things.

 

Vertical scaling is such a f**king dumb concept my brain commits suicide when thinking about it. Player versus player should be about competition. I don't feel the competition if I go against a player in recruit gear on my character in full war hero gear.

 

Player versus environment should be about the challenge. The better you learn an encounter the smoother you can execute it. Gear just turns content into farm and when new content with new tiers are released, old content is trivialized. Eternity Vault? Yeah, that was a cool instance. You know. The first 5 months of the game. After that? Well, the future SWTOR players can always come back and enjoy steamrolling the content. Because steamrolling is fun.

[WickedImage]

I'm a big fan or gear grinds in PvE. Not in PvP though. In PvE, to me, it makes sense to have a gear grinding criteria....but in PvP it does not make sense to me. Frankly by the time I had my first set of WH gear ground out....I was basically bored with the character. It took about 3 times as long to get WH geared as it took to get to lvl 50..........maybe longer? What the @#$%?

No matter, I am taking the many forum goer's advice and I'm gonna move on to something different since I am unhappy with SWTOR currently. Maybe I'll stop back once it's free to play so I can finish some of the PvE class stories. I still enjoy PvE and want to start/finish one or two more once its gona F2P.

10 more days of QQ for me

[Khoraji]

SWTOR has moddable armors. There could still be gearing. What stats you choose would have to be a conscious choice.

 

 

Thats different than saying "get rid of stats in pvp". If your going to go the GW2 road I see no problem. But that is NOT what this game has chosen to do, and complaining about it is like playing Counter strike and complaining that there are no levels (like MW2 or similar titles).

[irishtim]

The vast majority of multiplayer games have a form of gear progression these days even FPS like COD where you grind out kills with base weapons to get access to better weapons and abilities, lots of games are taking this route nowadays

 

You can't just say we'll keep PVE gear progression because they deserve it for killing a few pre-programmed NPCs a couple of dozen times but the people that PVP have to all be on the same footing no matter how long they have played.

 

That's not how games work, people like to have things to show for their time spent no matter what area of the game they focus on and better gear allows them to have that

 

PVP end game is primarily about gearing your character so that they can beat the crap out of other people's characters more easily. So just for my own interest say they do remove gear progression what do you replace it with for endgame? it's all well and good QQing about something if you have a better idea but since i see no such idea in your post that just makes it look like your complaning for the sake of complaining or because you're too lazy to gear up

 

I personally like the progression i now have full BM on 2 of my 50s and i'm looking forward to putting them in WH. When i played recruit sure i had lower health but i could still do a decent amount of damage and aid my team constructively and in accordance with my abilities and i am now a better player for it

 

TL;DR You want 'fairer' PVP play 10-49, if you want to progress with the game play 50

[Zunayson]

Thats different than saying "get rid of stats in pvp". If your going to go the GW2 road I see no problem. But that is NOT what this game has chosen to do, and complaining about it is like playing Counter strike and complaining that there are no levels (like MW2 or similar titles).

 

Getting rid of stats makes it so everyone is identical. Getting rid of tiers makes people balanced.

 

Sorcs shouldn't have the same hp as tanks amirite? But if they don't, they'll be compensated with better damage.

[islander]

thru all that, all I got is I dont want to put in the effort others have.

 

True, but when most of those people unsub, then even you have a problem. It's part of why we're down to like 20% of our original server cluster after just 6 months.

 

My personal feeling? The war hero grind is so bad, I have no interest in alting anyone else to 50 just to go through it again. As such, I'll likely unsub faster then someone who could actually remotely consider leveling 4-5 characters and getting them to 1250 expertise or so in a reasonable spot of time.

 

They did fine with the BM side of things. They could even make BM slightly longer. The war hero grind is just tedious.

Edited August 9, 2012 by islander

[ChickenWangs]

Getting rid of stats makes it so everyone is identical. Getting rid of tiers makes people balanced.

 

Sorcs shouldn't have the same hp as tanks amirite? But if they don't, they'll be compensated with better damage.

 

I'll just hop into my campaign gear and utterly destroy anyone in my path. BUT WAIT! That man has expertise! Oh well I'll just kill him with my 2200 cunning and since I have a lot of hp I can out last him too.

 

 

Gear should not be removed. You break the MMO mold by doing that. Players who try (not work) and succeed more than others should be rewarded. However to my statement above, PvPers need more expertise and a large cap.

[wolfmith]

Gear progression could easily be replaced with fluff items that are brag-worthy such as custom gear, titles, and pets, even cartel coins - and people would still play pvp in this game and enjoy the progression.

 

If gear gap wasn't an issue then why did they remove the 50s to a separate bracket in the first place? They have the bolster mechanic and all they gotta do is adjust it so that skill is what's important, not gear.

 

no it couldn't. I couldn't care less about those items, I honestly think they are for kids and girls. But I do care trying to get the best possible gear I can lay my hands on.

[KiranK]

The PvP gear grind system has never lead to a successful PvP MMO. Even WoW's PvP is failing and people hate the system. I don't know why some people are so hell bent on keep it around. It's unhealthy for game development and expansion. It drives away new players. You can't survive off a few hard core theory crafting stat cappers. If anything, the incoming F2P model proves that. I'm all for customizability and options that make PvP dynamic, but a gear progression system doesn't make PvP dynamic. It makes it stressful and boring. Most people don't like to be stressed or bored. You can make a customizeable gear system where we can change things up to tweak some stats up and others down, more crit/less hp, more str/less surge, and so on without forcing us to grind out WZ after WZ just to be able to be competitive. In fact, you can't force us do anything. We simply won't do it and we'll stop paying for your game and you'll be F2P within 9 months(oh wait...). You have to make us WANT to play the game. Gear grinds in PvP does not make us want to play. The sooner game developers get that through their greedy skulls, the sooner we can get a real competitive PvP MMO that will last for decades.

[Isislol]

But if you remove the grind gear and give everyone full WH all the cry babies will quit the game anyway. At least now they can blame gear when they lose, once everyone has the same gear what will they blame it on? Class balance, server lag or maybe weather?

There need to be gear progression in pvp to keep people playing. The solution would be to give people easier access to WH but also create new tier of gear with maybe 5% stat increase for players who do RWZs.

[Morrolan]

no it couldn't. .

The experience of other games says otherwise. You and others are only looking at it through the lens of mmos not the wider pvp gaming.

 

I couldn't care less about those items, I honestly think they are for kids and girls. But I do care trying to get the best possible gear I can lay my hands on.

I don't really see much difference in simply wanting more powerful gear, both are superficial.

[LenrocNewDawn]

You tackled the matter in a very rational way OP, kudos to you. You rational post has a flaw though, your premises. Your premises consider that human beings like or dislike something on strict rational basis. That's not the case for the individuals of this species (maybe if you lived on Vulcan ). I'll give you an example : I like smocking cigarettes. You can argue reason to me all day and I'd have to agree with you but still I'd like smocking. Yes they are bad for my health, finances etc still .......

I've posted a thread a while back http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=347154, which I thought to be an awesome idea (foolish me), but as you can see from the feed-back I was the only one thinking that my idea was good. Tried to figure out why the idea was so poorly received. And the only logical conclusion was that neither the guys that like gear progression nor those that want skill to drive PvP were interested in giving each other the kind of playing field they enjoy. Each party was only interested in having their way into the game and force the others play that way.

From the developer POV they already have a system implemented that pleases some and displeases others. The amount of effort to change that system will only be justified if the numbers of the displeased group greatly outnumbers the numbers of the pleased group. Just sayin' .

[islander]

But if you remove the grind gear and give everyone full WH all the cry babies will quit the game anyway. At least now they can blame gear when they lose, once everyone has the same gear what will they blame it on? Class balance, server lag or maybe weather?

There need to be gear progression in pvp to keep people playing. The solution would be to give people easier access to WH but also create new tier of gear with maybe 5% stat increase for players who do RWZs.

 

I'm not suggesting the gear grind be removed. I think it has value. I just honestly believe it's too extreme in its current state. War hero should take you 2 to 3 times as long as BM, not 4-5 like it is now.

[Majspuffen]

There need to be gear progression in pvp to keep people playing. The solution would be to give people easier access to WH but also create new tier of gear with maybe 5% stat increase for players who do RWZs.

 

Really? So why does people continue to play when they are in full war hero? Because they can now kill other people more easily, is that why? That's not why in my case.

 

There's three reasons I play PvP in this game;

 

1: No cross-server warzones. What that means is that you earn recognition by being active in pvp, and if you care about that recognition you'll always try to do your best.

 

2: The people I've gotten to know. If I had no one to play with I probably wouldn't be playing. I've gotten to know a lot of people through warzones. Community is the most important thing in an mmorpg, and if my friends leave, then I have little reason to stay myself, no matter what I think about the gameplay.

 

3: Huttball. This map is such pure brilliance it upsets me greatly whenever I get a warzone that is not huttball.

 

 

I couldn't care less about gear. Gear progression only causes power creeping, and bioware has already done an astoundingly bad job with gear progression in pvp I'd say. The damage we see right now is outright ridiculous. We even see twinks in lowlevel PvP, thanks to augments, their makeshift solution to cause some sort of player economy. Great job bioware.

[islander]

Ha, I love huttball and voidstar. Novare is okay. Alderaan is my least favorite. They need another huttball map though.

 

/semi-off topic