People need to be paired based on gear level and skill, Valour doesn't prove either of those. The well geared players need an incentive to play together, if people actually started playing Ranked Warzones competitively, then they would start to get paired with other teams with similar ratings. Problem solved.

 

However that will never happen unless Bioware makes WH gear easier to obtain. People aren't going to put up with the grind, not that they face in Normal Warzones currently. Hell people have not put up with the grind and left already.

Surprisingly enough I have to agree with this...

Some of the worst players I've ever see were Conquerors in full War Hero.

A guy on my server has a Conqueror imp toon and an Elite Warlord pub toon and he's one of the worst healers I've ever seen. Great player. Horrible healer.

If I had time to do my daily's every day it would still take at least a couple of months, but I don't same as most other people with busy lives. For people like us gearing to full WH is a joke, we can also kiss wanting to gear another character goodbye.

 

I can assure you I'm not a bad player, but knowing there is no way I'll ever be able to gear more than one character is depressing and makes me not want to play at all. How can Bioware try and peg levelling multiple characters and the new Legacy feature whilst making it so prohibitive to actually gear more than one of those characters? It's just one more thing to add to Bioware's list of fail thus far.

 

I'm just trying to throw an idea out there that could have an incredibly positive impact on the game. Unfortunately it would seem all the self-entitled people who actually did grind out their WH gear want the game to fail as it's "not fair".

 

I can promise you now that this game will not recover unless they make PvP more accessible. And no Recruit gear is nowhere near enough to outweigh the grind to full WH, not by a long shot.

The gap from Recruit o WH has been reduced a bit; and BM is at least somewhat competitive to where I would argue, the new recruit gear does help a little; but just isn't the entire solution.

I would stay on point of encouraging WH or otherwise better equipped players to choose to play ranked as your general message. Hopefully what that would do is create a voluntary separation to where any gear gap differences there may be are mitigated.

Choice is key; as it doesn't force a perceived dumbed down game on some people or force a perceived imbalance on others.

Valor would be the stat to use, it's the only thing players can't abuse. Gear can be manipulated easily. Match making should be based on Valor, but not by some minimum hard cap. Say 70+'s are prioritized together, but not completely locked out of lower Valor games.. Wouldn't want queues to take forever either!

There is a loop holw here as well....A great deal of people reroll same class but opposing AC or faction and then use Legacy bound gear to send all their WH mods to the new character @ 50....Although you would run into them far less often you would still have almost full WH peeps running around at lower Valor rankings occassionally....

I think the gear score on your modding should be the deciding factor not valor rank. They would have to lock gear swapping in WZ's for this to work.

Currently losing a normal Warzone will net you anywhere between 40-100 commendations. I've been told losing a Ranked Warzone will get you 20-25 most of the time. What incentive is there to play a Ranked Warzone when you can get at least as much from losing a normal but actually have a chance at winning and not getting farmed?

 

1) That's actually the point in trying to steer everyone who wants to gear up past BM into Ranked, as it will make the match-ups fairer.

 

2) The under-geared teams may get steam-rolled a couple of times, but it shouldn't be an issue once the geared teams have rolled a few other teams as they will then start getting paired with other steam-rolling teams. Providing the ranking system is doing its job.

correct me if i'm wrong, but comms are awarded in rated WZs the same way the are awarded in reg WZs. the difference is that the comms are ranked comms. that's the premise I'm operating on. I've lost my share of ranked and never got so few as 20-something comms; that's for certain.

regarding the idea of filling rated wzs with under geared teams, I don't think there's a large enough pvp population left for that. unless all regs were secretly q'd for rated.

All gear has a rating, perhaps a char's average rating as a cutoff for brackets?

 

No swapping once it pops then. And assuming there are sufficient bodies to populate both queues.

The issue is not brackets, the issue is WH gear is not accessible enough. The PVP is actually great in this game, and people want to play and be competitive. The trouble is, at the moment they can't. It's probably the largest contributing factor as to why so many people have quit. The lengthy grind to WH whilst getting your butt handed to you over and over and over is just terrible. It's actually the worst grind for PvP gear I've ever experienced in an MMO, it really is no wonder why so many people have quit.

correct me if i'm wrong, but comms are awarded in rated WZs the same way the are awarded in reg WZs. the difference is that the comms are ranked comms. that's the premise I'm operating on. I've lost my share of ranked and never got so few as 20-something comms; that's for certain.

 

regarding the idea of filling rated wzs with under geared teams, I don't think there's a large enough pvp population left for that. unless all regs were secretly q'd for rated.

I agree with the coms statement. Only once did I get rolled in a ranked and get 30ish coms. Otherwise you normally get a little over 40 which makes it a better rate of return than doing normals if the queues always popped.

correct me if i'm wrong, but comms are awarded in rated WZs the same way the are awarded in reg WZs. the difference is that the comms are ranked comms. that's the premise I'm operating on. I've lost my share of ranked and never got so few as 20-something comms; that's for certain.

 

regarding the idea of filling rated wzs with under geared teams, I don't think there's a large enough pvp population left for that. unless all regs were secretly q'd for rated.

Well I'm just going on what guild members have told me. The few times they've managed to get into a Ranked they did get rolled and were left with about 25 commendations a peice.

It would be easy to fill rated if it was lucrative enough, which is the problem, at present it's not!

The issue is not brackets, the issue is WH gear is not accessible enough. The PVP is actually great in this game, and people want to play and be competitive. The trouble is, at the moment they can't. It's probably the largest contributing factor as to why so many people have quit. The lengthy grind to WH whilst getting your butt handed to you over and over and over is just terrible. It's actually the worst grind for PvP gear I've ever experienced in an MMO, it really is no wonder why so many people have quit.

I think the grind is on par if not better then Most MMO's I have played...I actually think having a PvP stat is a game buster TBH...But that said I dont think ToR is worse then any other game. Problem with ToR's system is the Trade up thing they have...They need to drop the link so you dont have to trade in a piece to get the next teir...Most games its tied to a rank, then is more costly to purchase..Same thing just done differently. Thing about ToR is you dont have to run Arena, or PvP in the game for months to qualify for the gear...You just have to buy each teir and trade up.....So it does benefit those with more time in the seat...But it doesnt offer more powerful gear to people that run Rateds etc...Which is a good thing.

Now with the new Recruit set its clear they are trying to limit the gap. Maybe not there yet...Honestly IMO they could lower the cost of PvP gear..No skin off my back I have toons with all levels of gear....Including a full Opt. WH geared Jugg.... Since I dont care for a PvP specific stat to begin with they could give WH away for all I care...I want PvP not a gear grind...If I want that Ill PvE.

I would like to throw in my 2 cents as a fully geared WH. I already have the elite mainhand and about 500 ranked coms short of the new offhand. On the same token I have focused on playing one toon since my early access during launch and should be considered a casual player.

I would love to do ranked wz's but have trouble finding 8 quality players to group with. Not well geared, but rather smart players. When I find a group, the ranked queues on my server might not pop but 1 game a hour some days. Even though a lot of use would rather do ranked, there isn't always enough peeps queueing to keep the well geared players out of normal WZ's. So we end up queueing regulars with our two 4 man group premades. Most of the time the games are not challenging unless we get 4 other players with 14k health. This should be considered in keeping well geared out of normal wz's. The bone needs to be bigger to make peeps queue ranked, or something needs to be changed so it doesn't require 8. I like the idea of 2 4 man groups. Maybe make 2 ranked pvp scores. One for 8 man, one for 4 man.

The gap from Recruit o WH has been reduced a bit; and BM is at least somewhat competitive to where I would argue, the new recruit gear does help a little; but just isn't the entire solution.

 

I would stay on point of encouraging WH or otherwise better equipped players to choose to play ranked as your general message. Hopefully what that would do is create a voluntary separation to where any gear gap differences there may be are mitigated.

 

Choice is key; as it doesn't force a perceived dumbed down game on some people or force a perceived imbalance on others.

Yes that is the general message I'm trying to get across, but I also feel that they need to make WH gear more accessible if they really want to get people back into the game. As of now the only people the game really caters for are the hardcore players who have the time to grind. Obviously they make up the vast minority of the original 1 million+ that first subscribed to the game. I'm genuinely surprised they haven't done more to get those players back already, I reckon a simple change like this would go a very very long way.

 

Valor is the only constant that can be used for creating more equal teams. Valor level requires a certain amount of WZs played and commendations earned, there is no way to cheat with this stat. If you are Valor 70+, you should have pretty decent gear and PVP experience.

I don't think Valor is really a good way of matchmaking. While it seems good, you must also recall that Valor has made substantially easier to obstain post-1.2, and also that there was extensive farming of Valor on Ilum before it was removed from the game (see update 1.1 for more details). True, the number of people who are guilty of this are probably a small fraction compared to the rest, but it's still worth mentioning that Valor can and has been inflated by people exploiting the system.

But really, it doesn't solve the problem. Assuming you PvP regularly, everyone will eventually graduate into the Valor 70+ pool against all the veteran players. Also, you'll have veteran players on alts who will decimate the lower pool until they themselves graduate up. A bigger problem is this: with legacy gear, would be possible to twink a character and have full WH + augments (minus ear/relics/implants) while still having no Valor. This is completely possible for anyone who has the credits to spend and the time to grind on their main or other alt (it's why my Mercenary was a Day 1 War Hero healer).

A better solution would be matchmaking based on Expertise, because Expertise is a more accurate estimate of your effective level (not skill) and you realistically should only be queued against people at that same effective level. The reason being is this: if you playing people of roughly the same Expertise, it should remove gear from the equation and the match will be decided by skill and teamwork, not by which team had better gear. The great thing about this is, should a veteran player want to hop down to the lower tiers, they will have to do it by dropping down to a lower gear level (which again, removes gear from the equation).

I quit a few months back because I wasn’t enjoying myself in PvP, quit simply because I only had full BM gear and didn’t have the time to grind out WH gear to be truly competitive. I’ve now come back and am beginning to realise why I quit in the first place, the grind for WH gear is joke, and that’s when I already have full BM. I wanted to start working on my Scoundrel too, but having to grind out not only BM gear, but then WH gear on top of that just in order to be competitive is really putting a bad taste in my mouth. PvP is not fun when you are going up against WH premade over and over, it’s as simple as that.

 

The biggest issue is that losing a Normal Warzone will actually net you more Ranked Warzone commendations than losing a Ranked Warzone... Which is ridiculous, it’s no wonder all the premade WH groups are playing normal WZ’s... Not only do they get more Ranked Warzone commendations if they actually do lose, but the chances of them going up against a rookie pug and stomping them is greatly increased, giving them even more Ranked Warzone commendations for little effort. Since when is designing PVP to cater to this kind of behaviour good game design?

 

The fix is so simple I really am surprised it’s not been done already. If you make losing a Ranked Warzone more lucrative and actually viable for gearing up to WH, it would fix PvP entirely. Recruit players would be left to fight other recruit players in Normal Warzones whilst trying to get their BM gear, and the rest of us in our BM gear and up would be left playing in Ranked Warzones trying to get full WH gear.

 

Then there is another bonus, what we will start seeing once everyone starts gearing up to the same level in Ranked Warzones, is games becoming more competitive and based on skill, which is what Ranked Warzones are all about in the first place! All the idiots who just want to steamroll the lesser geared players will still have their Normal Warzones and the rest of us will finally be able to start playing competitively and actually having some real fun.

 

It’s a win/win, and I think a little change like this could not only fix PvP, but save SWTOR in its entirety as the majority of people who have left, have done so because of PvP.

 

Isn’t it about time to lessen the gear grind for WH gear and actually make gearing up through Ranked Warzones viable?

Losing a normal warzone does not net you more comms than a ranked game - not even close.

Why would I listen to a quitter, anyway?

Losing a normal warzone does not net you more comms than a ranked game - not even close.

 

Why would I listen to a quitter, anyway?

Yeah you get what 60 ranked comms on the low end for a loss which you can get 100ish normal comms for a win in non ranked...I suck at math but I would say even getting plowed in ranked you still gear up faster.

A better solution would be matchmaking based on Expertise, because Expertise is a more accurate estimate of your effective level (not skill) and you realistically should only be queued against people at that same effective level. The reason being is this: if you playing people of roughly the same Expertise, it should remove gear from the equation and the match will be decided by skill and teamwork, not by which team had better gear. The great thing about this is, should a veteran player want to hop down to the lower tiers, they will have to do it by dropping down to a lower gear level (which again, removes gear from the equation).

Seems like there is no system currently in place that can be used to properly match players. Something new must be done.

Valor: Legacy gear transfers nullifes Valor.

Gear rating: People can switch gear to get into lower brackets. Can be restricted to not change gear once inside, image the QQ about this feature hehe

Expertize: Same as above, but with a twist. Many Min/Maxers mod their gear for 1000-1200 exp and adds Power, making them hit even harder than if they had 1300+ expertize.

So what's left? Give people a set amount of Expertize in WZs and make gear only a way to customize your looks?

Some people actually have real life to attend to and can't afford to spend 40+ hours a week running Warzones to get fully geared in a couple of months, if not more - yes it actually takes that long at present.

If it takes you months, then you are seriously doing something wrong. You can get 1k normal and WH commendations each week just from the dailies and the one weekly. Average in 75 commendations a match for three games a games (daily only requires 2 wins or 4 games played) gives you another 1575 commendations. So you are looking at around 2800 normal and 1k WH commendation from just doing the PvP quests.

That is about 3 BW in two weeks and 1 WH. Hardly "a couple of months, if not more" "playing 40+ hours a week"...

Seems like there is no system currently in place that can be used to properly match players. Something new must be done.

 

Valor: Legacy gear transfers nullifes Valor.

 

Gear rating: People can switch gear to get into lower brackets. Can be restricted to not change gear once inside, image the QQ about this feature hehe

 

Expertize: Same as above, but with a twist. Many Min/Maxers mod their gear for 1000-1200 exp and adds Power, making them hit even harder than if they had 1300+ expertize.

 

So what's left? Give people a set amount of Expertize in WZs and make gear only a way to customize your looks?

Well the one matchmaking that makes sense to me is expertise. Two brackets sub 1k expertise and +1k expertise, and to keep people from switching out gear would be make it impossible to equip/unequip gear once the queue pops which I am positive they would not be able to do that.

Yeah you get what 60 ranked comms on the low end for a loss which you can get 100ish normal comms for a win in non ranked...I suck at math but I would say even getting plowed in ranked you still gear up faster.

Not if you get steam-rolled. People in my guild have told me 25 Ranked comms whereas a guy above said he got 30 when he got steam-rolled. Why do you think nobody wants to do Ranked? Because they get steam-rolled... Not to mention I can easily get 90+ comms for a loss in Normal Warzones if I run with my guild.

The biggest issue is that nobody wants to do Ranked Warzones as there is no real incentive. Yes you may get Ranked comms slightly faster, but nobody wants to just get steam-rolled again and again and again. They'd prefer to just take the hit and do Normal with the chance of actually enjoying themselves.

Give people an incentive to play ranked by allowing them to gear much faster even if they lose, and you start segregating the playerbase which in turn means everyone starts having some clean competitive fun - providing Ranked Warzones match groups to their appropriate rank of course. It's a no-brainer.

Not if you get steam-rolled. People in my guild have told me 25 Ranked comms whereas a guy above said he got 30 when he got steam-rolled. Why do you think nobody wants to do Ranked? Because they get steam-rolled... Not to mention I can easily get 90+ comms for a loss in Normal Warzones if I run with my guild.

 

The biggest issue is that nobody wants to do Ranked Warzones as there is no real incentive. Yes you may get Ranked comms slightly faster, but nobody wants to just get steam-rolled again and again and again. They'd prefer to just take the hit and do Normal with the chance of actually enjoying themselves.

 

Give people an incentive to play ranked by allowing them to gear much faster even if they lose, and you start segregating the playerbase which in turn means everyone starts having some clean competitive fun - providing Ranked Warzones match groups to their appropriate rank of course. It's a no-brainer.

Eh give people warhero then, they will still suck.

my opinion :

the idea was have ranked and nonranked matches ...

but when they released it i rly didnt understand one thing

and thats : how is possible we can obtain ranked comms in nonranked WZs?

thats nonsense... ration 3:1 doesnt mean anything ...

it might be this way - play nonranked? ok you can obtain on normal wz comms and can get max. BM gear

do you want wh gear? go and play ranked and get ranked comms ...

with this system no1 will play nonranked with some wh pieces, because he doesnt need normal comms and cannot get there ranked comms

and every1 will start play ranked, to find pvp guild or friends or something like that ...

this is my solution ...

Here is my issue with the geared players playing ranked. It is limited to a group of 8. I would put all my credits on the line to say that most full WH PvPers grinded their gear doing regulars either alone or with a select few friends. it is tough to find a full group of 8 outside of primtime (or sometimes during primetime) to queue up. Secondly, since there are limited groups that can scrape together 8 well geared players to be competitive, the queues are crazy long. Who wants to sit and wait when we can slowly have fun grinding out regular coms. I think the root of the problem is the fact that it is limited to a full premade 8 man team. My suggestion would be to not open it up to free solo queing (that would be a mess) but to allow 2 groups of 4 to be paired together. That would keep the integrity of the competition by forcing a 4 man team to queue and it would keep out the random solo recruit gear queuers. And just for reference I am a full WH sentinel with both Elite WH weapons at 76 valor.

Well After I figured out that out laws den gave coms throuh chest spawn It sped up quite fast for me They need more of this spread out through the planets and in the process BAM world pvp! Also gives insentive for more sand box designs by BW making it more of an easter egg hunt! And exploring will also ensue.

Well After I figured out that out laws den gave coms throuh chest spawn It sped up quite fast for me They need more of this spread out through the planets and in the process BAM world pvp! Also gives insentive for more sand box designs by BW making it more of an easter egg hunt! And exploring will also ensue.

I would also like to add Maybe city raids that are next to impossible to accomplish but in the processs awarding the raid groups coms for doing so.

Well the one matchmaking that makes sense to me is expertise. Two brackets sub 1k expertise and +1k expertise, and to keep people from switching out gear would be make it impossible to equip/unequip gear once the queue pops which I am positive they would not be able to do that.

Well they already have the ability to make it impossible to change gear once in combat (you can take gear off, you cannot put gear on), so I'm sure there could be some tweaking to make it occur. Or just make it lock your gear as long as you are queued for a warzone.

 

Expertize: Same as above, but with a twist. Many Min/Maxers mod their gear for 1000-1200 exp and adds Power, making them hit even harder than if they had 1300+ expertize.

When I mentioned effective level of gear, I think the mods in your gear should be taken into account. For Recruit it isn't moddable and thus only minimally possible to min/max (I guess you can pick the piece which best suits your stack priority, but people do that already), and I think min/maxing at a certain level is fair game if everyone can do it.

So what's left? Give people a set amount of Expertize in WZs and make gear only a way to customize your looks?

I'd have no problem with this. It would ultimately be the best way of matchmaking, since gear would never come into play. But it's an MMO. Progression! I'm indifferent to it, but I can imagine the complaints.

Yeah you get what 60 ranked comms on the low end for a loss which you can get 100ish normal comms for a win in non ranked...I suck at math but I would say even getting plowed in ranked you still gear up faster.

Yep, ranked warzones give much more ranked commendations, win or lose. In fact, losing a ranked game will earn you more comms than even winning a normal game.

If it takes you months, then you are seriously doing something wrong. You can get 1k normal and WH commendations each week just from the dailies and the one weekly. Average in 75 commendations a match for three games a games (daily only requires 2 wins or 4 games played) gives you another 1575 commendations. So you are looking at around 2800 normal and 1k WH commendation from just doing the PvP quests.

 

That is about 3 BW in two weeks and 1 WH. Hardly "a couple of months, if not more" "playing 40+ hours a week"...

If only everyone had the time to complete their daily "every day"...

The total cost for WH Gear is now about 26000 Ranked comms + 1000 Normal comms. That's not even including the cost of buying all the BM gear for a fresh 50. And again, not everyone has the time to do all the daily's - it will literally take these people months, me included to get full WH on a fresh 50. That's months of getting my butt handed to me because I have real-life commitments.

Do people seriously want this game to remain a failure? If Bioware want to entice people to come back, they MUST cater to these players. People enjoy the PvP in this game, it is enough to make them want to play. What they do not enjoy is a grind that is out of reach not only for them, but for the majority of people who originally purchased the game. These people do not have the time nor the patience - and who can blame them.

Bioware have catered to a niche crowd of hardcore players and look at where it has gotten them.

I agree with your intention but not your suggested solution based on gear. Like I tried to say, people can enter WZs in level 9 green gear and put on their augmented WH gear once inside and ruin the experience for the fresh 50s. It would work against it's intention.

Disable the option of changing gear once you've queued for a warzone. Problem solved.