It is time to do another split, expertise gap.

[hjortmark]

I think its time for a matchmaking restriction in regards of expertise. It is atm pretty awful to do warzones when you have 900 expertise versus people with complete WH gear and it is just simply unfair to be matched against an opponent that you cannot touch meanwhile he (or she) completely trashes you.

 

So I'm suggesting that just as with 1-49 have a separate warzone group fitting lower expertise players in one group and full BM and up in another or some other way that separates the newcomers from the veterans.

[Vespassian]

/sign

Need polishing to the idea though.

[kweassa]

When meeting someone with superior stats and being defeated by him, a good PvPer thinks:

 

"Someday, I'll be on par with him in gear. Then its payback time !! I'll have to run more matches, grrrr...!!!!"

 

 

Only a terrible player thinks,

 

"Man.. he's so powerful than me.. this is BS..!! It's no fair!! I have to endure long grinding! I want to be on the same level as him right now!! Abolish all gear..!!!"

 

 

Fair? You make thing fair with your own hands -- that's PvP, every genre, every game.

 

If you are not prepared for that, and constantly wait and complain for someone else to make things better for you, then you're just better off just quitting. I'm sorry, but that's the true meaning of "competition" in PvP.

[Senatorial]

When meeting someone with superior stats and being defeated by him, a good PvPer thinks:

 

"Someday, I'll be on par with him in gear. Then its payback time !! I'll have to run more matches, grrrr...!!!!"

 

 

Would you be saying the same thing if said person with superior stats could pull off a 10k hit on you and kill you before you could down 10% of his health?

 

That isn't possible with current gear, of course. Recruit/partial BM is enough to stay competitive, assuming your class, skill and ability to avoid being noticed is up to par. But what if gear was like that? Would you react the same way? Is there any point at which a "good PvPer" would say "Hmm, maybe this gear thing is a load of crap"?

[Larishet]

Easy fix. Split matches like:

 

Tier 1: Max recruit gear. 1x comms

Tier 2: BM gear. 2x comms

Tier 3: Anything over full BM gear. 3x comms

 

Just 1 expertise over full recruit gear will put you into Tier 2 and same for BM with the next tier. That allows you to build up BM/WH gear but still play in a lower tier. The extra comms keeps players moving up instead of opting to stay low.

 

Of course, this is only possible with a higher number of pvp players which means...cross-server pvp.

Edited August 15, 2012 by Larishet

[CrixusBoR]

I think its time for a matchmaking restriction in regards of expertise. It is atm pretty awful to do warzones when you have 900 expertise versus people with complete WH gear and it is just simply unfair to be matched against an opponent that you cannot touch meanwhile he (or she) completely trashes you.

 

So I'm suggesting that just as with 1-49 have a separate warzone group fitting lower expertise players in one group and full BM and up in another or some other way that separates the newcomers from the veterans.

 

I would like to add that Expertise isn't the only issue for fresh 50's.

 

- My (what I consider) fully optimised Gunslinger has > 2000 Cunning and >1900 HP buffed (as well as 1170ish expertise).

 

- My new Battle Master/ Recruit Sniper has just over 1400 Cunning and 1500 HP buffed (as well as 950 expertise).

 

My poor sniper would have absolutely no chance against my main unless the situation was considerably stacked in her favour.

 

This sums it up quite well:

 

When meeting someone with superior stats and being defeated by him, a good PvPer thinks:

 

"Someday, I'll be on par with him in gear. Then its payback time !! I'll have to run more matches, grrrr...!!!!"

 

To mitigate a lot of the pain I'm actually going to use the legacy gear to farm war hero armour on my Gunslinger and gift it to my Sniper. With the new world event and bowcaster being bound to legacy I can now do the same with the main hand too.

Edited August 15, 2012 by CrixusBoR

[Rahak]

I miss being a level 10 and fighting people in full battlemaster.

[paul_preib]

Admittedly 100% recruit gear can be rough, but at the absolute minimum you should already have a bm weapon the second you hit 50, if not a war hero one. Keep in mind also you can do things like use the bm mod and enhancement out of the weapon you should be trading in for a WH one and drop it into an orange piece of armor with a daily com admiring, tiny expertise drop but huge stat boost over recruit. Also means you have two augmentable pieces right away for more helpful stats.

 

That is assuming you have no established 50 to do the legacy armor mod-mailing thing. Can do likewise with orange belt/bracer with a bm mod and daily comm armoring from your first two war hero upgrades, again not only sacrificing a small amount of expertise for a huge stat boost, but making it easier to drop augments on right away.

 

Having started the process on my fresh 50 sage about a week ago I can tell you that with a bit of forethought you can be plenty competitive after just a handful of level 50 matches.

[Jayshames]

When meeting someone with superior stats and being defeated by him, a good PvPer thinks:

 

"Someday, I'll be on par with him in gear. Then its payback time !! I'll have to run more matches, grrrr...!!!!"

 

 

Only a terrible player thinks,

 

"Man.. he's so powerful than me.. this is BS..!! It's no fair!! I have to endure long grinding! I want to be on the same level as him right now!! Abolish all gear..!!!"

 

 

Fair? You make thing fair with your own hands -- that's PvP, every genre, every game.

 

If you are not prepared for that, and constantly wait and complain for someone else to make things better for you, then you're just better off just quitting. I'm sorry, but that's the true meaning of "competition" in PvP.

 

To be honest, that just seems like something someone would say who's got WH and enjoys killing the fresh 50s

There is too much of a gap, it's not even so much the expertise, it's the stat differences from recruit-WH, not to mention most WH users also have fully augmented.

Grinding for days upon days while you get annihilated in a split second isn't enjoyable at all.

[paul_preib]

To be honest, that just seems like something someone would say who's got WH and enjoys killing the fresh 50s

There is too much of a gap, it's not even so much the expertise, it's the stat differences from recruit-WH, not to mention most WH users also have fully augmented.

Grinding for days upon days while you get annihilated in a split second isn't enjoyable at all.

 

I'd argue most of the time when you are being insta-blown up it is multiple opponents popping you via good coordination. Sure you last a split second longer fully geared, but the end result is the same. Only the two absolute polar ends of the spectrum, 100% recruit vs 100% augmented war hero would yield the mass discrepancy you describe, and those encounters should be very short lived, as in 24 to 48 hours. Also rarely do you encounter a mostly augmented war hero group on the other side lest it involves a pervade where the coordination is likely what's neutralizing your team more'n the gear gap.

 

This comes from someone who has taken three separate 50s through after the first waves of fully geared players were around, the newest of which is only a week or so into 50 and considered the squishiest class in a warzone.

[upzie]

for my part you can all get full wh gear when you ding 50, 99% of you will still suck and QQ on the forums.

[ArchangelLBC]

Honestly I just wish recruit gear had columi level mods. It would lower the stats gap significantly and allow fresh 50s to be more competitive from a gear perspective while the full War Hero geared people would still have an edge.

[Fdzzaigl]

When meeting someone with superior stats and being defeated by him, a good PvPer thinks:

 

"Someday, I'll be on par with him in gear. Then its payback time !! I'll have to run more matches, grrrr...!!!!"

 

 

Only a terrible player thinks,

 

"Man.. he's so powerful than me.. this is BS..!! It's no fair!! I have to endure long grinding! I want to be on the same level as him right now!! Abolish all gear..!!!"

 

I think it's pretty sad that where people before launch were ecstatic about the prospect of a game without a grind, now the defenders of the system, like this guy, are left promoting the idea of how the grind is a good thing and how people who prefer to actually have fun in their time are terrible players.

 

GG

[hjortmark]

The reason why I actually made this post is because it is horrendously boring to play with players who has just dinged and gotten their recruits gear, I dont want to play with them and it is equally boring to get matched up against players with a complete set.

They shouldnt be matched together, at all, because it simply is a MASSIVE gap between the two.

 

There is absolutely no skill involved in farming this gear, so dont get that **** mixed up, the bottom line is that you shouldnt get completely smashed because (the single and only reason) is that the warzone matches stop being competitive.

[Ancaglon]

Honestly I just wish recruit gear had columi level mods. It would lower the stats gap significantly and allow fresh 50s to be more competitive from a gear perspective while the full War Hero geared people would still have an edge.

 

The problem is that it would invalidate the PVE gear grind if you can instantly get a set that's as good as anything you can get from Hard Mode Flashpoints and Story Mode Operations. The old Champion set had stats that were somewhere between Tionese and Columi -- the recruit set is not as good, statwise, even as Tionese.

 

The only possible way to fix that would be to increase the Expertise on the Recruit pieces to at least the level of the Battlemaster gear (BM gear is about as good as Columi for the stats other than Expertise). I think that would work, because BM gives all those extra stats and gives the set bonuses.

[Ancaglon]

the bottom line is that you shouldnt get completely smashed because (the single and only reason) is that the warzone matches stop being competitive.

I agree completely with your point, but without X-server warzones, the potential pool of players will be too small, even on the newly-merged servers.

 

However, the existing "match-making" code could still try to match up teams of people with similar levels of gear -- for example, don't put a premade 4-man WH+Aug team against a PUG that has 4 recruit-geared people -- but balancing that 4-man WH group by adding 4 recruits to that team might make for a more even WZ.

[kuey]

Doubt there are enough players for this to actually be implemented which is a shame. They could also do what many other games do and that is make gear count only in serious competitive matches (i.e. Ranked in swtor) and for normal PUG matches make it so gear doesn't count, but considering the epeen needs of our dps community I seriously doubt this would ever happen.

[LarryRow]

So I'm suggesting that just as with 1-49 have a separate warzone group fitting lower expertise players in one group and full BM and up in another or some other way that separates the newcomers from the veterans.

 

As with most problems with pvp right now, the solution is better matchmaking. The game should attempt to have the sum total of expertise on both team be relatively equal. We would need to disable changing clothes once a queue pops, or looking at the top 15 pieces in all your inventory and bank slots, however, or people would wear their pve set until the queue popped and then change into their war hero in the match.

 

Being full recruit is really not that bad; you can still contribute and put up good numbers. Just as long as you're not one of four recruits on your team!

 

Only a terrible player thinks,

 

"Man.. he's so powerful than me.. this is BS..!! It's no fair!! I have to endure long grinding! I want to be on the same level as him right now!! Abolish all gear..!!!"

 

If you are not prepared for [grinding gear], and constantly wait and complain for someone else to make things better for you, then you're just better off just quitting. I'm sorry, but that's the true meaning of "competition" in PvP.

 

Only a wannabe who needs gear to be better thinks,

 

I live in my mom's basement and have all day and night to grind gear while my skin slowly becomes translucent, therefore other players should do the same if they want to be competitive, regardless of jobs, families and other real life restrictions.

 

To mitigate a lot of the pain I'm actually going to use the legacy gear to farm war hero armour on my Gunslinger and gift it to my Sniper. With the new world event and bowcaster being bound to legacy I can now do the same with the main hand too.

 

This right here is very telling, and I know a lot of players do this. Playing in recruit is so awful for some people that they would rather spend a fortune ripping and mailing mods than play a single match undergeared on an alt.

[islander]

I think the idea of splitting level 50's in half is a very good idea! Make the split at 1150.

 

Also, make it optional for people to choose if they are U1150 queueing or not.

Obviously make it normals only, too.

Edited August 15, 2012 by islander

[cycao]

I miss being a level 10 and fighting people in full battlemaster.

 

Lol good times mate good times.

[Hairyzac]

I think its time for a matchmaking restriction in regards of expertise. It is atm pretty awful to do warzones when you have 900 expertise versus people with complete WH gear and it is just simply unfair to be matched against an opponent that you cannot touch meanwhile he (or she) completely trashes you.

 

So I'm suggesting that just as with 1-49 have a separate warzone group fitting lower expertise players in one group and full BM and up in another or some other way that separates the newcomers from the veterans.

 

It takes a few days to a week to grind full BM depending on how casual you play. Some people just don''t bother. Whether they PvE and just put on their recruit set when they want to mess around in wzs, or whether they are a fresh 50, there will always be people in less adequate gear.

 

I will however say that a tweak to recruit gear couldn't hurt. I keep seeing this sniper in wzs and he has a full recruit set, with only around 12.5k health. This is just not right. I have 22420 health on my sorcerer in my fully optimized WH set. The fact that this kid is wearing an entire pvp set that is only two tiers removed, and he has half my health is really unacceptable. That sniper should have 14k health minimum so he has around 15k with buffs in a full recruit set. Buff the health on the recruit set BW and you will see a lot less forum QQ and more people thanking you for giving them a starter PvP set that isn't total garbage.

[UGLYMRJ]

Terrible idea... again, you can grind BM in a few days... augment it and can be more than competitive in regular WZ's.

 

Another split would create longer queue times and then people who like to complain (90% of the forums) would be complaining about the longer queue times. Seriously... why create another split for something that potentially takes LESS THAN A WEEK! It's pretty ridiculous. You may have been more credible if you suggested war zones for people who are full WH and up. A 1250/1300 expertise bracket or something. But then there's another problem. A lot of those people are min/maxed and only rocking about 1100-1200 expertise. So no matter how you look at it... terrible idea.

 

/1 only because /0 is not an option.

Edited August 15, 2012 by UGLYMRJ

[islander]

Terrible idea... again, you can grind BM in a few days... augment it and can be more than competitive in regular WZ's.

 

Another split would create longer queue times and then people who like to complain (90% of the forums) would be complaining about the longer queue times. Seriously... why create another split for something that potentially takes LESS THAN A WEEK! It's pretty ridiculous. You may have been more credible if you suggested war zones for people who are full WH and up. A 1250/1300 expertise bracket or something. But then there's another problem. A lot of those people are min/maxed and only rocking about 1100-1200 expertise. So no matter how you look at it... terrible idea.

 

/1 only because /0 is not an option.

 

Less then a week? What, if you log 40-50 hours in a week? Some of us work and have responsibilities - and 2-3 hours a night is what we have. It's two weeks for most of us, not 'days'. You also need to factor in winning and losing, and the fact people generally pug or short man group (less then 4).

 

Your better point is the whole concept that if we set it up to say 1150, all the elites will roll with optimal damage dealing at 1125-1149 expertise.

 

So I guess it's better not to mess with it at all.

 

edit: The more I think about it, why would the rated caliber players want to take advantage and abuse lowbies in recruit one way or the other? If they are legitimately rolling into rateds with mid 1100's expertise, they are still better served doing that.

 

Not to mention, let's face it, the gen pop is going to consider U1150 (or whatever) the 'kiddie pool' of pvp and as such, will end up being utilized solely by those who actually NEED it.

Edited August 15, 2012 by islander

[Tdain]

Another split would create longer queue times and then people who like to complain (90% of the forums) would be complaining about the longer queue times.

 

 

This ^^^

[islander]

This ^^^

 

Making it optional eliminates this argument. Just like rated is optional.