With patch 1.2, Bioware increased the prices of items with existing Warzone commendation costs by approximately 100%, and introduced WZ comm costs on Battlemaster gear. However, prices on items are now too high. Here's why:

 

As I pointed out in a post in this thread, it takes a soul-crushingly long time to get full BM gear (using the same formulae and adjusting the numbers for a 25% win rate getting 0 commendations if you lose nets five months at two hours a day, every day to get full BM... by which time War Hero will be long available for comms). Clearly, this is a little overkill.

 

Let's take a look at WoW, because I know how the pvp reward system works there currently and because let's face it: 800-pound gorilla, etc and also because if Bioware is going to take elements that didn't work from certain MMO's, they might as well take an element that does work.

 

The Honor point cap in WoW (WZ comms, approximately) is 4000. Double TOR's cap. The highest cost item in TOR is 1975 (or very close to it) comms: mainhand weapon and offhand focus/shield/weapon.

 

Now, you get approximately 80 comms for winning a WZ, and something like 20-30 if you lose (assuming they revert the whole DERP NO COMMS BECAUSE YOUR TEAM'S SCORE WAS ZERO thing). This equates to twenty-five warzones to get a mainhand weapon with a 100% win rate.

 

In comparison, winning a battleground in WoW nets you about 400 Honor. As an aside, I should like to point out that WoW gives a little bit of honor and XP for killing players, but also quite a bit for completing objectives, such as breaking doors, capturing the flag, etc - TOR could learn from this. In any event, that is approximately 10% of the Honor cap for a win, vs 4% of the comm cap in TOR.

 

Now to the point about mainhand weapons. 1975/2000 is 98.75% of the cap. You need to literally hit the cap twice to outfit yourself with weapons in TOR. Comparatively, in WoW, MH weapons cost something like 2450 Honor and the offhand costs half that (1250 or so). Combined, that is less than the cap once, and with a 100% win rate, that is 10 wins to get weapons.

 

Now, My math is slightly off - values given in time spent are a little low - because I can't remember the exact total Honor value needed for a full set of current gear in WoW, but it's 16,000 and change, so I used 16,000 for calculations. A little over four times the cap, and approximately forty times the Honor rewards for a win. (TOR, by comparison, requires 155x the comm rewards for a win to get fully geared).

 

Assuming the TOR rate of 30 minutes for queue+BG, that equates to, at 2 hours a day PvPing (a reasonable timeframe for the casual player), 20 hours or 10 days with a 100% win rate. It's obviously a little longer in WoW because Holy **** WoW doesn't start a BG until the group is full!, and because matches last usually at most a half hour in WoW (double TOR) but you get the idea. At 100% win rate it takes a week and a half to fully gear yourself. At a 25% win rate (where the losing team gets about 200 Honor in WoW) it takes a month - 32 days to be precise - PvPing for two hours a night at TOR pvp times. 25% win rate is a fairly good estimate of PvP win/loss ratios pre-1.2 for solo queuers or people who aren't in full BM gear.

 

At one month, that's literally 1/4 the time it takes in TOR with the same rate. Now, you could argue HERP DERP WOW IS CAREBEAR, but that's just a little silly, when you realize that the four months it takes to get full BM gear in TOR with a win rate below 50% means that by the time you have full BM gear, War Hero gear is purchasable with comms (and all the pre-1.2 full BM people are now full War Hero) that the cycle of beatdown continues.

 

Long story short, with a cap that is half what WoW's is for Honor/comms, items in TOR should cost half as much. With a full BM set costing a theoretical 6200 commendations, at a 25% win rate (20 comms loss, 80 win), you're looking at 178 games played, or 89 hours: 45 days at two hours a day. A long time, and a long grind, but not unreasonable by any means, and well before BM gear becomes useless, allowing people to catch up and play competitively from then on. Their gear will be equal once they finish the BM set, and when 1.3 hits, they can buy War Hero with comms, or even have a full set of War Hero from rated WZ's before then.

 

TL;DR: Tweak numbers somewhere, so that pvp can be balanced in a reasonable timeframe gear-wise. Also, don't spout crap about it taking longer to get arena gear in WoW. The cap and costs are the same, and you can get Arena points from two sources and arena gear from a raid. It's about 10-15% longer than a full set of BG gear (also known as the previous season's arena gear).

Weren't people complaining about how it took to long before and was unfair and now that it's been cut down a bit because of WZ comms people still think it takes to long?

No, they were complaining it was taking forever because it was mad RNG. Now it takes the same amount of time (forever) but it's not RNG based.

This is easy to explain.

 

High end content, they simply do not have enough of it. There development cycle is slow and its going to take them months to be able to sort out the abomination they have just released.

 

Everyone enjoyed PVP pre 1.2 sure a few tweaks were needed hear and there but not to the level we just had.

 

More will unsub over the coming weeks when they realise grinding for that extra bit of PVP gear is really not worth it and have better things to do.

 

Aside from those that like the SWTOR universe the rest will have migrated to bigger and better things very soon. AKA - Terra, GW2, TSW, LOLPLANES and a few indie titles that pop up now and then.

Main Hand and Off Hand weapons are 1550 WZ coms I think, At least for Sorcs they are. That is easily achievable in about 3 days per weapon.

 

This is a helluva lot better rate than the previous system where i got a bad losing streak right out of the box and went 3 for 37 on my BM bags.

i believe that 1975 coms is for the damn crystal and 125k credits.. 1550 i believe was the price of the double bladed saber(BM)

The problem with your math is that you don't include the 396 comms from the dailies.

Wait are you serious? I got 3 pieces in just a day. Got my chest, helmet, and legs. If you have problems getting comms, it's a problem with you, not the system.

Wait are you serious? I got 3 pieces in just a day. Got my chest, helmet, and legs. If you have problems getting comms, it's a problem with you, not the system.

 

 

I agree. I have 3 pieces of my BM gear now with only about 9 wins total since update. (Though one piece was purchased with saved up commendations prior to patch. Which EVERYONE should have done but plenty did not.)

 

I will say that it really freaking sucks as a merc healer to go up against a team on vent who just crush/zerg you in huttball. I've gone several matches with 0 valor, 0 commendations and 0 credits because of this.

Edited April 14, 2012 by Ehlin

Your problem is your including 0 comms if you lose. I dunno about you but i can still manage to hold my own enough to get 7-8 medals even in a losing game.

 

Sure you get 0 if you get steamrolled and get no medals... or if you rage quit before the end of the match but you get what you deserve

OP+1. The new prices are a joke. Unless you can win every match and can exclusively PVP with a team of 4, it is a complete waste of time to PVP because of the cost of WZ gear now.

 

My guess is Bioware knew that everyone was using cent/champ gear for Ops and HM FPs. That was not what they intended so they removed those armor sets from the game and then jacked up the prices to keep everyone from doing the same with the BM gear.

 

Epic Fail.