am i the only one who thinks the double xp weekend was a bad idea?

People being lazy and not gearing up has NOTHING to do with leveling. You could instant ding from 1 to 55 and if you refuse to gear up, that's not the game's fault.

Truth be told...leveling is just a generic counter for gameplay purposes. You could, technically, do away with leveling and only be powered by your gear. (You'd have to remove the poultry stats from leveling but you get the point.)

And by the way, all the complaints about double XP are pretty much invalidated by that point. Level number could technically be removed.

But as it stands progression through this (and other) games is measured by "level". At level X a lot of people will feel encouraged to move on to the next zone or planet, or leave out quests or missions that are below their level.

In a situation where you're advancing faster than would otherwise be the case (and in terms of the game's layout should be the case) your arbitrary level number takes you to places that your character won't be ready for.

Yes, experienced players will realise this and gear appropriately but less experienced ones will put all their energy into levelling (as they always would). In normal circumstances the levelling process equips and guides players to a certain extent but if you're levelling "too fast" a lot of this is skipped.

You're right to say people can remain geared easily enough but realistically it's not going to be the case. You could remove level number, but they haven't. As long as that metric is in place, people advancing too quickly will result in people at higher levels than their gear is good for.

A "level 20" FP will be undertaken by players at level 20 (however meaningless that number may be). If they've reached level 20 by doing nothing more than level ~15 content (complete with only the gameplay experience, guidance and gear that provides) they're not going to be prepared for the content.

I'm not saying that without double XP that everyone would be perfectly geared all the time since that isn't the case, but clearly rushing people through this arbitrary level metric results in "lower quality" higher level characters. The obvious solution is to ensure everyone understands the value of gear over level and actual gameplay knowledge over experience points but clearly that's not going to happen. The concept of "levelling" is hardcoded into a lot of gamers' minds (cheers, Pokémon..) so as long as XP and levels are present in a game people are going to focus on them over everything else, regardless of how important they actually are.

Not an exaggeration. Literally had a Shadow try to tank Maelstrom Prison in unmodded Esseles parts. He didn't have mass taunt, he didn't have Resilience, he had level 19 relics (fine, could be alignment) and level 20 ears/implants. Happened during last pre-Makeb weekends. It was indeed the worst case, but there were a lot of others, not much better.

This weekend, I saw people in Athiss sporting some nice level 8-9 starter world greens.

You don't design a game around the brain-dead lowest common denominator. That makes a brain-dead game only FOR the lowest common denominator.

Not an exaggeration. Literally had a Shadow try to tank Maelstrom Prison in unmodded Esseles parts. He didn't have mass taunt, he didn't have Resilience, he had level 19 relics (fine, could be alignment) and level 20 ears/implants. Happened during last pre-Makeb weekends. It was indeed the worst case, but there were a lot of others, not much better.

This weekend, I saw people in Athiss sporting some nice level 8-9 starter world greens.

Maybe it's just me, but I was around level 23-24 on Balmorra without double xp.

Maybe it's just me, but I was around level 23-24 on Balmorra without double xp.

Thank you. I don't know why some people have such a hard time grasping that concept. If you don't want to use it, it's not like it hurts you at all, and the reasons why other people want it should be pretty clear.