Winning is fun, losing is not.

Poor sportsmanship right there. Of course it's more fun to win but if you're not enjoying a good fight even when you lose, what's the point? Are you going to be all mad and bitter? Each person can only do their part. I've had plenty of HB matches where I use the exact same skill/tactics but others are not along for the win. I still have a good time and make the other side pay for their win.

The major difference with 10-49 WZ is the fact that there are variety of character levels. while on level 50 WZ's everyone have same level (50 of course) it means that each player have it's full list of abilities which means that there are lot more strategies and tactics to be used.

The fact that on level 50 gear plays an issue (and I had lot easier time once I've got BM set) it teaches you to use your skills and play sharp, more so after grinding 50 WZ's (valor 44) I've utilized some methods of playing which I'm using on pve content as well and which granted me the post of one of the top healers on my guild.

Now on 10-49 WZ's each player is on a different level so some players on level 10 have barely any abilities while other on level 40+ have large variety of abilities to use. What's matter here above all is skill and team play. I can say that with my expiriance I've ravaged the 1-49 WZ's with 80% wins.. each time I'm on top 3 of the table when counting medals\objectives\kills.

With level 11 Jedi Knight I had such an easy life I was amazed.. with level 14-18 powertech I kicked *** so hard it was ridiculous.

Today I've tried pvp first time with my IA (operative) on level 22 (now I'm doing balmorra)... 2 game \ 2 wins... lots of kills nearly didn't died at all. I used my expiriance and utilized my abilities (which I had by level 22) to complete the objectives of the warzones... It was so weird that I had such an easy life to win in 1 VS 1 nearly every class... more then that! while facing large number of enemies solo I've managed to hit them hard and fall back without getting killed until my team mates came to save the point, and all of this because I used my expiriance to put my character abilities to the best use.

So why 10-49 is such a fun? because of the variety... while on lvl 50 wzs the BIG spot is 4 classes each with wide range of abilities on 10-49 u have 4 classes X 39 levels to encounter... so you may encounter a certain class on one match using a tactic while on the other match he'll use something else entirely...

that was my 2 cents on the issue...

So my guild and I have been talking about this over the past few weeks. We used to be a big pvp guild before 1.3 but since the changes none of us really want to play anymore, we just watch as either hackers run rampant or we lose constantly. Yet we all have alts and absolutely love the pvp in level 10-49 and will spend hours running warzones on our alts to the point several have stopped doing quests once their alt gets into the 40s because they are trying to AVOID level 50 pvp. So we spent some time trying to figure out the difference.

 

The biggest one we found was that from 10-49 gear really doesn't play a major difference. When we looked at the past expertise bonus we also saw expertise was a straight % buff. 20% increase to damage, healing, and reduction to damage whereas now the difference is significantly skewed in favor of damage based classes. In essence if you have a lot of expertise you kill faster but don't get as much of a healer or damage reduction. I'd like to see us go back to the straight line increase over the tiered system, at least try it on the PTS, so we could see if it helped make the games more fun again. Any other thoughts or observations?

Stopped reading at "watching hackers run rampant" Lmfao! this is almost as good as the QQ about operatives stunlocking people for 10 seconds.

Theres no hacks for this game. It's called **** *** lag that bioware needs to fix.

But go on, keep thinking its the other players cheating/playing op classes thats stopping you from doing well in PvP

10-49 PvP is more fun because there is less BS screwing up the math.

Basically, regardless of your class or your lvl, Pre-50 PvP basically boils down to a difference in applicable Abilities. The higher level you are, the more Powers and Abilities you have at your disposal. That is your arsenal, and that is the only advantage you have over someone who is lower level than you.

Post 50 is all about Expertise. Nothing else even matters. Even if you have the most gimped class in the game - if you are wearing War Hero gear and you fight someone in Recruit - you're going to win. You will win because you have nearly twice as much HP and you do nearly twice as much damage. The person in Recuit gear simply doesn't have a chance... even with 7 buddies who are also wearing Recruit gear.

One player (of any number of classes) in War Hero gear can hold his own against at least half of an opposing team in Recruit. I've seen it happen. Some classes could take on the whole team if they were good.

The only problem with the 10-49 PvP, really, is that for some classes, they don't even really start to have interesting gameplay until around lvl 35 or 40, which doesn't give them much time to experience a lot of fun, before they are thrown into perhaps the most frustrating PvP experience they will ever endeavor.

10-49 PvP is more fun because there is less BS screwing up the math.

 

Basically, regardless of your class or your lvl, Pre-50 PvP basically boils down to a difference in applicable Abilities. The higher level you are, the more Powers and Abilities you have at your disposal. That is your arsenal, and that is the only advantage you have over someone who is lower level than you.

 

Post 50 is all about Expertise. Nothing else even matters. Even if you have the most gimped class in the game - if you are wearing War Hero gear and you fight someone in Recruit - you're going to win. You will win because you have nearly twice as much HP and you do nearly twice as much damage. The person in Recuit gear simply doesn't have a chance... even with 7 buddies who are also wearing Recruit gear.

 

One player (of any number of classes) in War Hero gear can hold his own against at least half of an opposing team in Recruit. I've seen it happen. Some classes could take on the whole team if they were good.

 

The only problem with the 10-49 PvP, really, is that for some classes, they don't even really start to have interesting gameplay until around lvl 35 or 40, which doesn't give them much time to experience a lot of fun, before they are thrown into perhaps the most frustrating PvP experience they will ever endeavor.

Spoken like someone who truly has no idea how the expertise math works. No, you don't do twice as much damage in WH over recruit. He does about 1.05% more damage based on expertise (yes, really).

He also doesn't have twice as much HP. He might have 40 - 60% more HP, depending on whether he is tank geared or not.

I've played plenty of other MMOs, but SWTOR is the only game I've played PvP. I REALLY enjoy PvP in this game. But level 50 PvP has taken a turn for the worse. I thought this would have been helped with ranked WZs pulling the hardcore players out, but it seems to have gotten worse. I'm close to valor 60 on two different toons (both factions) and yet I still lose... A LOT. I've been doing a lot of dailies the hard way (6 wzs). I find it hard to believe my ******ude is the cause of all of this.

I don't want a guaranteed win. I want a CHANCE to win. Typically within the first minute of the match you can figure out which team is going to win. The difference is no longer imperial/republic imbalance, it's not class imbalance it's organized/geared groups versus pickups. Now that we have ranked warzones for the ******, why can't all regular wzs be strictly pug? I enjoy being put with a random group of people, trying to figure out roles and who is good at what. I don't enjoy figuring this out while the well-oiled machine runs me over. On the other side of the coin: do those teams really enjoy rolling through team after team and having the team give up after a few minutes? I LOVE the matches where it comes down to the wire and you really don't know who's going to win. Those are the best victories and the easiest defeats. It's just not fun if you have no chance of winning. It just isn't. This really bothers me, as I said I really enjoy what BW has done with PvP so far. I want it to be fun again.

Wow. Lots of attitude in this thread. Touchy subject evidently. Probably because people feel strongly one way or the other. I happen to be in the "50 PVP isn't fun" camp myself and I have two 50s. Every argument, reason and justification under the sun has already been thrown out in this thread. I can't prove or disprove any of them. All I know is that for me, the 10-49 PVP is fun and the 50 PVP just isn't.

I've tried to put some thought into why and for me it comes down to two reasons: gear gaps and competitiveness. I had hoped that Ranked Warzones would help with the top-geared, super competitive, "pro" players all moving to those and leaving the Unranked Warzones for the rest of us, but that's clearly not the case. I think that if Unranked Warzones used a version of Bolster to somehow level the playing field, ignore expertise, cap stats, something, I might actually enjoy it. It would be for more casual, less competitive players. But I could see how even fully augmented WH types might like to see how they'd play against others when gear is taken out of the equation once in a while.

But Fun is a relative term for each person. And the 50 PVP is clearly NOT fun for many people or there wouldn't be so many people complaining about it. And you're probably right - we either aren't good enough to compete with you, don't have the time/desire to grind for the top gear or any number of other excuses. But somehow we felt good enough to enjoy and compete in the 10-49 bracket. I'd like to somehow still enjoy a part of the game that I really enjoyed from 10-49, even after I hit 50. I just don't see why there can't be both types of PVP at 50. A more casual, "leveled" 50 PVP bracket likely wouldn't be fun for the super-competitive types that didn't enjoy 10-49 PVP. And the current 50 PVP system isn't fun for many other people. Give both groups an outlet for PVP at 50 - Make it so that Ranked WZs use Expertise and Unranked WZs ignore expertise and possibly even caps stats so you don't have the 22K health pool problem; or even create a new 50 bracket if you have to that sets everyone to a baseline and ignores gear completely.

Wow. Lots of attitude in this thread. Touchy subject evidently. Probably because people feel strongly one way or the other. I happen to be in the "50 PVP isn't fun" camp myself and I have two 50s. Every argument, reason and justification under the sun has already been thrown out in this thread. I can't prove or disprove any of them. All I know is that for me, the 10-49 PVP is fun and the 50 PVP just isn't.

 

I've tried to put some thought into why and for me it comes down to two reasons: gear gaps and competitiveness. I had hoped that Ranked Warzones would help with the top-geared, super competitive, "pro" players all moving to those and leaving the Unranked Warzones for the rest of us, but that's clearly not the case. I think that if Unranked Warzones used a version of Bolster to somehow level the playing field, ignore expertise, cap stats, something, I might actually enjoy it. It would be for more casual, less competitive players. But I could see how even fully augmented WH types might like to see how they'd play against others when gear is taken out of the equation once in a while.

 

But Fun is a relative term for each person. And the 50 PVP is clearly NOT fun for many people or there wouldn't be so many people complaining about it. And you're probably right - we either aren't good enough to compete with you, don't have the time/desire to grind for the top gear or any number of other excuses. But I'd still like to somehow enjoy a part of the game that I really enjoyed from 10-49, even after I hit 50. I just don't see why there can't be both types of PVP at 50. A more casual, "leveled" 50 PVP bracket likely wouldn't be fun for the super-competitive types that didn't enjoy 10-49 PVP. And the current 50 PVP system isn't fun for many other people. Give both groups an outlet for PVP at 50 - Make it so that Ranked WZs use Expertise and Unranked WZs ignore expertise and possibly even caps stats so you don't have the 22K health pool problem; or even create a new 50 bracket if you have to that sets everyone to a baseline and ignores gear completely.

But why does the gear difference matter? The ultimate difference in effectiveness between fully augmented WH and the BM you can get in 2 weeks playing only a few days a week is honestly tiny. I've had enough 50s in Recruit, BM, and augmented WH to know.

If you're in BM and finding that WH players are making you ineffective and you're not having fun, the problem's honestly not gear. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm really not. It's just not a gear problem... I'm sorry to have to say it, but it's just the truth.

10-49 if fun cause most of them dont know what they are doing yet. When you hit 50 you are basically back to lvl 1 and you need to grind out that gear plus the people you are playing tend to know how the game works. Once you get the gear and have good team mates you will have lots of fun.

You need full BM and a WH weapon to stand a chance, and even then if you go against a Warlord be ready to loose.

Sure, and some specs don't get really cool abilities until level 50, like the tank ability to jump to protect your team member.

 

But so what? I don't mean that sarcastically. Game play is still more fun and strategic in the lowbie bracket, even from 10-20, in my opinion. Sure, you're not really fully competitive until about 20 to 32, but it's still more fun.

Well people really overestimate the effect of extra skills for high level do. For example say you put a full purple level 10 Arsenal Merc. You don't even have Tracer Missiles so you can only spam Power Shots, but those Power Shots will hurt A LOT and they will kill people. A level 10 Marauder with full purples will do like 3500 tooltip damage with Ravage and that's an insane amount of damage for the 10-49 bracket. As long as you didn't pick a late blossomer type of spec (for example, Tankasins literally have nothing until level 35 or so) you'll do fine even at a lowish level assuming your gear is adequate. Now if you're in quest green at level 10 you probably wouldn't do anything too useful, but a level 49 in quest green is also surprisingly weak too.

Both lvl 50 an and lvl 10-49 can be fun, or they can be either boring as hell or frustrating as ****. Unfortunately lvl 50s seem to get more of the latter 2 rather than the fun one.

It all comes down to gear and team co-ordination. In low lvl gear is irrelevant due to the bolster buff, meaning it is more down to the skill of the individual player rather than what armor he's wearing. Obviously lvl 40s will still have an advantage over a lvl 10 as they will have more skills unlocked and be more familiar with their character's strengths and weaknesses. However I have seen some brilliant players doing some amazing things with low lvl characters, any Jedi Shadow who properly uses their stealth and CCs is a danger no matter what level they are.

At lvl 50 gear becomes the single most important thing, if the 2 teams have similar gear lvls then it will be close fought and exciting match, however if one team heavily outgears the other, they are most likely going to steam roller them (unless they're really terrible) which I find incredibly boring (if I'm on the team doing the steam rolling) or frustrating (if my side is getting steam rollered). To make matters worse with random PUGs it doesn't matter how good your gear is, it only matters how good the overall level of the teams gear is, you could be striding out in the very best WH (perhaps with a bit of Campaign thrown in) but if the rest of the team is sporting Recruit plus a bit of BH you're going to get creamed (unless the opposition is similarly geared or just plain crap). How to solve this, that's a question I'm not sure anyone can answer, you could make gear easier to get so everyone gears up quicker (but then there's less incentive to play a WZ, once your full WH), you could put the bolster buff back on to bring all gear up to the same lvl (but then what's the point of PvP armor and the gear grind), or perhaps you could ditch PvP armor altogether (along with expertise) and have everyone playing in PvE armor, but you;d still have gear differences.

The other reason lvl 50s can seem difficult when your fighting in a random PUG is there are far more premades at lvl 50, oh I know you get some at the lower levels too but they are just more prevalent at lvl 50. Coming up against a premade (especially an organized guild with VOIP) can be very difficult. It can be a real struggle to try and fight off a well balanced team, with just the right mix of healers, DPS and tanks, who work well together, know each others strengths, have a decent strategy and don't have to rely on the chat window to co-ordinate, unless they are really awful, and yes I have a terrible premade once, Novare Coast, our PUG vs their guild premade and we captured all 3 positions, they were that bad, or very very under-geared, which is back to the first problem again.......it's all about gear

It's quite obvious.

Most people like: Skill > Gear

50 PvP is:

Gear > Skill.

Hence

10-49 PvP > 50 PvP

For most people.

/thread

I think you are on to something here, I also loved PvP up to the point 50. Now dont get me wrong Im far from horrible and my 50 is geared with 50% BH 50% WH fully augmented.

 

I still find doing WZ while levelling is much more fun.

I do too, but I think its just level playing field, and you get a lot more WZ noobies in there that are easy pickings. Everyone is equal in expertise. Plus at level 50 you have better players, even the poorly geared are better then your average shlub walking into a 10-49.

Higher level have more skills but it doesn't make lower level players worthless. A level 19 can take out a baddie level 40 with consistency.

So my guild and I have been talking about this over the past few weeks. We used to be a big pvp guild before 1.3 but since the changes none of us really want to play anymore, we just watch as either hackers run rampant or we lose constantly. Yet we all have alts and absolutely love the pvp in level 10-49 and will spend hours running warzones on our alts to the point several have stopped doing quests once their alt gets into the 40s because they are trying to AVOID level 50 pvp. So we spent some time trying to figure out the difference.

 

The biggest one we found was that from 10-49 gear really doesn't play a major difference. When we looked at the past expertise bonus we also saw expertise was a straight % buff. 20% increase to damage, healing, and reduction to damage whereas now the difference is significantly skewed in favor of damage based classes. In essence if you have a lot of expertise you kill faster but don't get as much of a healer or damage reduction. I'd like to see us go back to the straight line increase over the tiered system, at least try it on the PTS, so we could see if it helped make the games more fun again. Any other thoughts or observations?

I have a thought. Maybe you guys are bad at pvp? Obviously it isn't fun to lose all the time, and the level of play in the sub 50 warzones is way, way, way lower than it is in level 50 RWZs.

I do think it'd be fun to see what would happen if they took all expertise out of the game.

Granted, I completely understand why it's there - it's to keep PvErs from gearing more easily in PvP. I wish I had a better solution for that.

It's quite obvious.

 

Most people like: Skill > Gear

 

50 PvP is:

 

Gear > Skill.

 

Hence

 

10-49 PvP > 50 PvP

 

For most people.

 

/thread

A bit over simplified but yeah.

You can't take progression out of an MMO but you can balance the results of that progression better than it is. Also, progression does not have to manifest itself like this. Set bonuses, special abilities, long-cool down abilities, etc. are all ways to incent progression. Doesn't have to be WH pwns Recruit.

I agree with all these points:

Both lvl 50 an and lvl 10-49 can be fun, or they can be either boring as hell or frustrating as ****. Unfortunately lvl 50s seem to get more of the latter 2 rather than the fun one.

 

In low lvl gear is irrelevant due to the bolster buff, meaning it is more down to the skill of the individual player rather than what armor he's wearing. Obviously lvl 40s will still have an advantage over a lvl 10 as they will have more skills unlocked and be more familiar with their character's strengths and weaknesses. However I have seen some brilliant players doing some amazing things with low lvl characters.

 

At lvl 50 gear becomes the single most important thing, if the 2 teams have similar gear lvls then it will be close fought and exciting match, however if one team heavily outgears the other, they are most likely going to steam roller them (unless they're really terrible) which I find incredibly boring (if I'm on the team doing the steam rolling) or frustrating (if my side is getting steam rollered).

 

To make matters worse with random PUGs it doesn't matter how good your gear is, it only matters how good the overall level of the teams gear is, you could be striding out in the very best WH (perhaps with a bit of Campaign thrown in) but if the rest of the team is sporting Recruit plus a bit of BH you're going to get creamed (unless the opposition is similarly geared or just plain crap).