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"Gear Gap" Fix Proposal


L-RANDLE

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Not sure if there has been any idea as such, but I would just like to throw it out there. There has been many, many threads/debates about the fictional(IMO) gap in gear between tiers. Most observations tend to boil down to misinformations and theorycrafting, but since there is a debate a problem must exist.

 

Gear in PvP

Typically gear in PvP does not produce wild outcomes as SWTOR PvP does. One camp says progression is not needed, the other says it most certainly is. Some people want their twinks, some don't but there is one problem. There is "no option" to be "competitive" @ 50 PvP without said twinks, causing butthurt and tears... New released gear continues to increase the gap between fresh/"busy people" and vet/hc/"no life".

 

Expertise

Similar debates as above, but muted because the gap in expertise between tiers is not profound. People want it to go away, other people understand why it has to stay, and some work for their advantage and want to keep it. Period. There needs to be some middle ground.

 

So here is what I propose:

 

1. Leave in recruit gear, as a free 50 starter set, Add MK6 Augments slots, Buff, YES BUFF, the EXP QTY on it to get it to 1700EXP, and maybe tweak down the main/end stats a bit: The purpose of this is to eliminate the HUGE difference in main stats, but giving enough EXP in order to survive in 50 PVP. The goal should be to get them 7%-10% below(output) EWH(at this stage). They will be replacing it with WH fairy fast anyway, but it will still lack the "moddable" part. It would not be optimal, but the free Augment slot would enable them to buy/craft top level augs and use them in the next tier without having to pay to augment again. This also would not "automatically" give a player an instant PvE set (to keep the "heros" happy). The main stat/end would be equivelent to lvl48ish blues. Of course you can tweak my numbers a bit, but you should get the idea.

 

2. As you release more PvE gear to handle new content, instead of adding more grinds, move the EXP contribution formula accordingly to stay in line: Yes, buff the expertise formula when a new PvE sets come out. This will give you 100% control on how much of an advantage PvP gear has on PvE gear, BUT keep all the PvP gear tiers in line. Even though you would buff if with each proceeding set of PvE gear, the three sets themselves will stay in line and keep the gap relatively small. TTK will remain close to the same, but raiders will not be able to come in and mop the floor with everyone (which was the case prior to 1.2, where RAK was "better" than BM). This will also eliminate the "dice rolling" that is removing mods from gear. The only time you should change stat allocation is on unmoddable gear(recruit). That's it....

 

3. Eliminate the trade-in requirements or add loose items like PvE has: This one of the biggest beefs from players from a time perspective. Put a premium comm price on loose pieces, just like CAMP Armorings. It will help people play the way "they" want to play, without being gimped for weeks at a time because of a trade-in requirement (which might change at the next patch:rolleyes:).

 

4. Allow players to trade in the Legacy PvP gear for comms or real amounts of credits/cartel coins: Another easy fix. You allow the trading in of legacy comms, why not legacy gear? This would appease a TON of Vets, that feel like they are being punished with the rule changes, and help eliminate some of the feelings that you are catering to casuals. Even a slight ROI on Champ/BM/Cent/Rec gear would help them get over the changes. It would smooth out the transition to a more balanced PvP.

 

 

I think these would put the gear debate to rest once and for all.

 

---Discuss

Edited by L-RANDLE
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You do realize that they're pretty much giving away WH in 1..6, right?

 

There are some that will still need the entry set... so the recruit stuff is still needed, hence my proposal on that, but I am just taking the next logical step in the balancing process, and trying to clean up the mess they(BW) created.

 

I'm a vet and I spent lots of comms on stuff that is now useless. AMIPISSED?, somewhat; yes. AMIPISSED they are giving out WH gear? Eh, somewhat, but...

 

"Why is my BM gear obsolete now?"

"Why does recruit gear suck so bad?"

"Why are they giving WH away, since it took me three months to get it?"

"Why do I have to buy a second WH set for EWH optimization?"

"Why is this player have EWH faster than me?"

etc; etc, QQ, QQ,

 

will all still be complained about gearing post 1.6.

Trying to appease all 4 sides of the aisle(PvE v PvP, Casual v Hardcore), that's all.

 

With those issues in mind, how would you rate this proposal?

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Not sure about how I feel about the rest of it... but the one thing that I definitely like the augment slots to recruit gear being included. Most aren't going to spend the money on augment kits for it. Especially considering how short of a time we're wearing it... but I think MOST would buy the augments to fill it and then just pull them accordingly as they grind.

 

I know I would... well... if it wasn't for legacy gear I would. ;)

Edited by UGLYMRJ
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Not sure about how I feel about the rest of it... but the one thing that I definitely like the augment slots to recruit gear being included. Most aren't going to spend the money on augment kits for it. Especially considering how short of a time we're wearing it... but I think MOST would buy the augments to fill it and then just pull them accordingly as they grind.

 

I know I would... well... if it wasn't for legacy gear I would. ;)

 

Augmenting gear should be the responsibility of the individuals wearing Recruit not the devs or the rest of the gaming community.

 

What next having EWH gear already with an augmented slot?

Edited by Ramtar
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Earn it like the rest of us. I work and go too school so no complaining. I just paced myself try it it's not bad.
Well some people have a problem with that. My stance is clear. I am not a carebear, but a change is needed to keep the game healthy. I am in no way saying you shouldn't earn your gear, but you shouldnt have to endure beatings because of gear either. It's a small fix until you get WH, that you do earn....

 

Augmenting gear should be the responsibility of the individuals wearing Recruit not the devs or the rest of the gaming community.

 

What next having EWH gear already with an augmented slot?

 

That isn't the point. The point of providing augment slot recruit gear is to maintain viability versus WH & EWH, without "taxing" their time/investment and giving the ability to supplement stats "missing" on recruit gear.

 

Since they insist on having tiered gear, but the entry set is only temporary, why not eliminate a barrier? You can get by with unaugmented WH, you can't with recruit and most won't spend the time to augment it. That then leads to geared people complaining about recruits in a WZ with them. I don't think any augment recruit gear, and it contributes to the "gear gap". I am eliminating another excuse...

 

 

Thanks for the input from you both. We need to keep constructive threads going....

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As for augmenting MK2; just make MK2 pretty much the equivalent to what BM gear is now. BM gear from my experience is not that bad even if un-augmented. You won't dominate, but you stand a chance in hell.

 

Agreed, but the whole "unmoddable part" makes me cringe.... That's why free aug slots should be added. You can't min/max with recruit as you can with BM currently. If you are going to "force persuade" (:D) people to wear recruit them at least give them a bone since they will pay 100% of augmenting in the next tier..

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As I sais before the whole proleM is in having gear for free....yes grind normal coms=free

 

We need rating requirements at least on the top tier set,so good players actually get rewarded for being good and nots for playing a lot ... Don't even understand how people justify no competitive rewards and only time based free gear

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Agreed, but the whole "unmoddable part" makes me cringe.... That's why free aug slots should be added. You can't min/max with recruit as you can with BM currently. If you are going to "force persuade" (:D) people to wear recruit them at least give them a bone since they will pay 100% of augmenting in the next tier..

 

You can give them that, but I don't think it would be wise for them to bother augmenting it unless they have creds they don't know what to do with. It will be so quick to get BM gear. Unless you mean, it comes with some generic augment already on it.

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As I sais before the whole proleM is in having gear for free....yes grind normal coms=free

 

We need rating requirements at least on the top tier set,so good players actually get rewarded for being good and nots for playing a lot ... Don't even understand how people justify no competitive rewards and only time based free gear

 

Fil,

I'll say it again for the 3rd time. You are starting at step 5 in the program when we are at step 1, in PvP rehab. Gear needs to be equalized first before we can introduce any ranked based, "competitve" gear rewards.

 

After gear stats have been equalized, then you need to better balance classes, and tweak resolve a bit.

 

If the gap between gear and classes are within a few percent of each other. THEN "ratings" would actually mean something, as it would be a better judge of a players' skill. Then you could introduce access to rewards like SLIGHTY better gear, free consumables, trophies, vanity items, etc..

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You can give them that, but I don't think it would be wise for them to bother augmenting it unless they have creds they don't know what to do with. It will be so quick to get BM gear. Unless you mean, it comes with some generic augment already on it.

 

Just a slot. Player would still have to buy an actual augment for the slot. Since it is at Lvl 50 the player can reuse the same augment at the next tier, but actuall purchase the augment slot as they do now.

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Not sure about how I feel about the rest of it... but the one thing that I definitely like the augment slots to recruit gear being included. Most aren't going to spend the money on augment kits for it. Especially considering how short of a time we're wearing it... but I think MOST would buy the augments to fill it and then just pull them accordingly as they grind.

 

I know I would... well... if it wasn't for legacy gear I would. ;)

 

*sigh*

 

As usual, the three of us are in agreement. The free augment slot would be helpful to those willing to get an augment, and save them 70k or so per piece on this set from getting the augment kit and installing it. Since the gear isn't moddable, they'll still have to augment their later sets, so no harm done.

 

As to increasing the importance of expertise, I'm not sure how it will work. Most people are still complaining about the increase of expertise's meaning from 1.2. At the same time, however, I played a few matches with my PVE gear on by total accident and didn't even notice until I went to change for a raid (Mix of dread guard and campaign with about 300 expertise from random WH parts). I'm not entirely sure BW wasn't actually trying to give people decent stats on recruit gear just to not piss off the overgeared people running FPs for comms.

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I disagree with the premise that, "Typically gear in PvP does not produce wild outcomes as SWTOR PvP does."

 

Well I guess I could re-word it to "random outcomes". I am referring to the fact that there is SO MANY more factors involved with SWTOR PvP than most other PvP environments, regardless of genre.. I am trying to eliminate some of the factors so that there is a clear starting point at lvl50 pvp and gear is "somewhat normalized".

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There's a gap? I've reached 50 on 4 characters and got 3 To war hero participate in rateds and never once stopped to think oh I lost because of a gear gap my last 50 has taken less than 3 weeks to get 9 peices of war hero

Gearing up isn't hard its fun

Edited by denpic
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There is definitely a gear gap in PvP. And while I would agree that there should be, and that there should be tiers to reward those that progress diligently, my problem with it is the AMOUNT of the gap.

 

I just replaced my new 50's recruit gear with BM. Had to, the recruit stuff SUCKS. My 47 level gear had in some cases HIGHER stats on it with exception to the expertise. Anyways...looking at the WH items, some of the stats on the WH items are nearly double that of the recruit item. I can see the stats increasing at about 25% per tier, but NOT 50% per tier. That's just too much!!!

 

Talking from experience, in other MMO's and this one....I can certainly see a bad situation happening if gear stat allocation is not CLOSELY and vigorously constrained. The problem I see happening is what is called stat bloat. The top level gear is so over loaded with stats that, if any new gear is released, for a higher tier, that new tier needs to be worthwhile as an upgrade, so those stats need to be at a level to make the old stuff obsolete, which in the case of WH vs BM vs Recruit, the increase is about 50% approximately. What happens is, as I have personally seen, that the bottom tier of gear is worthless. This makes recruit geared or "fresh 50's" cannon fodder for WH geared players. What you will end up with is one group of people frustrated by getting steamrolled by the better geared group, and then just giving up on PvP all together. And then you'll have the other group with the best gear saying there's nothing wrong with that. /eyeroll

 

What I'm saying is, be VERY careful about gear stat allocation. PvP should NOT be about who has the best gear, but rather about who plays the best. The gear should only improve your performance, not define it. And secondly, at the least, make recruit gear equal to actual level 50 gear. It's pretty pathetic when the "starter level 50 pvp set" has lower stats on it than PvE gear 3 levels lower, (with exception to the expertise that is not on the PvE gear.) The addition of the expertise does not make up for the lower stats it has.

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There is definitely a gear gap in PvP. And while I would agree that there should be, and that there should be tiers to reward those that progress diligently, my problem with it is the AMOUNT of the gap.

 

I just replaced my new 50's recruit gear with BM. Had to, the recruit stuff SUCKS. My 47 level gear had in some cases HIGHER stats on it with exception to the expertise. Anyways...looking at the WH items, some of the stats on the WH items are nearly double that of the recruit item. I can see the stats increasing at about 25% per tier, but NOT 50% per tier. That's just too much!!!

 

Talking from experience, in other MMO's and this one....I can certainly see a bad situation happening if gear stat allocation is not CLOSELY and vigorously constrained. The problem I see happening is what is called stat bloat. The top level gear is so over loaded with stats that, if any new gear is released, for a higher tier, that new tier needs to be worthwhile as an upgrade, so those stats need to be at a level to make the old stuff obsolete, which in the case of WH vs BM vs Recruit, the increase is about 50% approximately. What happens is, as I have personally seen, that the bottom tier of gear is worthless. This makes recruit geared or "fresh 50's" cannon fodder for WH geared players. What you will end up with is one group of people frustrated by getting steamrolled by the better geared group, and then just giving up on PvP all together. And then you'll have the other group with the best gear saying there's nothing wrong with that. /eyeroll

 

What I'm saying is, be VERY careful about gear stat allocation. PvP should NOT be about who has the best gear, but rather about who plays the best. The gear should only improve your performance, not define it. And secondly, at the least, make recruit gear equal to actual level 50 gear. It's pretty pathetic when the "starter level 50 pvp set" has lower stats on it than PvE gear 3 levels lower, (with exception to the expertise that is not on the PvE gear.) The addition of the expertise does not make up for the lower stats it has.

 

While I generally agree stat based PvP is LOL.. You need to have it in order to prevent raiders from coming in and smokin fools... PvE is about gear... So there has to be some equalizer on the PvP side.... and its EXP points and the EXP formula. This is why EXP should be regulated in a different way. Instead of adding new PvP sets to "match" new sets being distributed in PvE, use EXP formula as a tool to prevent any wild swings between tiers, and if you don't want to release a new PvP set, add small quantities of EXP points, like 100 over an entire set.

 

 

The point of having low main/end stats on the starter PVP set is so you are not giving away a free 50 set for PvE players, but to stop starter players from getting blasted you give them a higher allocation of EXP points (they should move it to like 1700EXP) to compensate. That means the set would be somewhat useless outside of PvP, but not get train wrecked while in PvP.

Currently,

Recruit EXP= 1100

WH+= 1400+

 

This will be the case for *some starters after 1.6 drops, and even more people will be well-geared. This is no gouda....

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PvP gear has never been less expensive to get in my opinion. Compare getting gear now vs how it was at release when we had to buy bags for comms to obtain champ/centurian gear, and relying on random chance when opening bags to get Battlemaster gear. Not to mention the fact that you used to have to grind comms to get your starting set of PvP gear and now they hand a set to you at level 50. It may not be super awesome gear but it does have expertise on it that makes you less squishy. They've also raised the comm caps so that if you have pvped regularly as you level up, you'll have more comms to buy gear with once you hit 50. When 1.6 hits and all of the War Hero gear drops down in price and they remove the BM set, the playing field will be pretty even since the stats on the Elite War Hero isn't much better than the plain War Hero gear. Not sure what else you could ask for other than maybe getting slightly more comms for being on a losing wz team or something like that. :)
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