Apologies for the wall of text in advance – There is a TL/DR at the end.

 

 

I’m starting to come to the conclusion that PvP (Or more specifically, Warzones) would be far improved by stripping gear from the equation completely. Literally by entering a warzone your gear stats would be outright ignored.

PvP could still reward the player with Orange moddable gear with unique appearances (not just colour changes) as you gain valor. Specific colour crystals, speeders, outfits and titles all available as prestigious items. Requiring regular PvP to keep certain high-end titles or high ranks to make them all the more prestigious to keep, without making the player automatically face-roll their opponents due to a steep wall of gear-differential.

 

Quite simply, why should PvP gear make your character stronger? The idea of fighting another player is that you’re pitting your ability against theirs. If they play better than you, the fight will lean in their favour. If one has a ton of gear however, he will naturally have a large advantage over other player. This strips most of the skill out of the situation. Although not impossible to overcome in a 1v1 situation, when groups are involved this imbalance can greatly swing and in some cases are so great the battle is nigh impossible.

PvP gear puts those who have more experience and playtime logged on top of the barrel instantly, despite usually already being there due to organisation and skill gained through time spent playing.

This discourages new 50s who have to pass through the meat-grinder before getting the gear to be competitive. So less players PvPing, thus longer queues.

 

PvP is now simply another grind, systems put in place are constantly exploited because the benefits give players a serious advantage. No one wants to be the bottom of the barrel and they act on whatever they can in-game to get to the top. PvP is there for people who WANT to PvP, it shouldn’t be a grind to get gear to be competitive.

 

Adding more brackets seems to be a popular demand, but surely this just makes our already small PvP pools even smaller. Since the 50 bracket was implemented I've noticed 11-49 PvP to be far more enjoyable, yet the 50 pool still suffers if your team is gear deficient. I believe this more to be that bolster does of the job of basically making the gear of a majority of players completely inconsequential.

Level 50 Warzones will become a more challenging and interesting playing field for all if gear was simply a non-issue.

 

It also makes PvP-balancing far easier as you dont have to worry about the scaling of the spike-damage classes.

 

TL/DR – In my opinion, PvP gear does far more harm to a Warzones & PvP community than good.

 

Jasec Usoko, 50 Jedi Guardian on Bloodworthy

Currently as of posting, Valor Rank 43 and 3 pieces short of a full T2 PvP gear.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Malleki

I wouldnt mind normalized stats in pvp. Then idd skill becomes alot more important then the gear you get. The only problem is, why do you go and pvp your *** off then. People like to improve their character. Thats why the MMO genre is so addictive. There is almost always something better to be gotten. There should be some good incentives to keep the grind going.

I'd have thought PvP is part of the reward in itself.

 

People play shooters for hours on end (for example Battlefield or CoD). You could easily look at them as being 'Warzone' style play. Initially you may unlock a few weapons to improve your versatility, but in general all your gaining is a 'Rank' and simply enjoying the game.

 

Perhaps if the PvP was less gear based people would enjoy it more and play more because of it. Leagues and ranking stats keep people playing just as much as improved gear, and they damage the game far less.

 

If I play a game for 3 months, fully gear out and as a result new players simply dont stand a chance against me, why the hell would they keep sticking their head in a meat-grinder? My experience as a player is enough of an advantage over a new player. Some prestigious items or titles and a decent league/rank system I feel would be enough to keep people PvPing.

 

I have to say, it worked very well for the original Guild Wars, the more you play, the more versatility you get in PvP but you never become out-right stronger.

Let's spend a ton of time getting pvp gear only to have it's advantage removed, thank you OP you opened my eyes...

If you take out PvP gear, PvPers will just have the kit they get when they reached 50.

 

Meanwhile PvErs will gear up with raid gear and proced to destroy PvPers with ease.

 

To counter this, you need PvP gear as good as high end PvE gear.

 

Then most PvErs will find themselves that to do PvE is mandatory to get at least the starting epic PvP set - Tier 1 - or they will not get a raid spot.

 

At the same time, PvPrs would be able to jump over most PvE content and start to do high end operations inmediatly as their PvP gear is as good as high end raid one.

 

One way or the other, there will be a lot of frustration on PvPers seeing PvE mandatory or the other way around.

Edited January 24, 2012 by klathnagma

Let's spend a ton of time getting pvp gear only to have it's advantage removed

 

In all honesty...PvP gear in this game really isnt that hard to get. The problem is to get it you have to throw yourself up against a pool of fully-geared people which gets tiresome.

I suppose eventually most people would have it and things will level out...but all that does is push new players hitting 50 to be at an enourmous disadvantage.

If you like the game, surely you want more people to play it and for it to be healthy. More players is nothing but a + for everyone.

 

Do you really enjoy PvP against people massively undergeared compared to you? Where is the challenge or the fun in hitting your usual rotation to crush a few newbies who are not only new to warzones but are also significantly undergeared? There is some acheivement to out-smarting or out-playing your opponent, simple +StatX. 'Oh look, I've been playing for 3 months over your 6 so I win...' well there is no acheivement there at all.

 

I'd be far happier to see versatility in PvP improvement over power increases.

If you take out PvP gear, PvPers will just have the kit they get when they reached 50.

 

Meanwhile PvErs will gear up with raid gear and proced to destroy PvPers with ease.

 

To counter this, you need PvP gear as good as high end PvE gear.

 

Then most PvErs will find themselves that to do PvE is mandatory to get at least the starting epic PvP set - Tier 1 - or they will not get a raid spot.

 

At the same time, PvPrs would be able to jump over most PvE content and start to doing high end operations inmediatly as their PvP gear is as good as high end raid one.

 

One way or the other, there will be a lot of frustration on PvPers seeing PvE mandatory or the other way around.

 

I think you didn't read his post, just repeated the stuff people repeat when there is talk about pvp gear.

 

If ALL gear is standardized in pvp, NOONE has advantage.

If you take out PvP gear, PvPers will just have the kit they get when they reached 50.

 

I think your not quite understanding my point.

 

My suggestion is more that no gear AT ALL would have any effect in a Warzone. You want to raid? thats just fine. If you bring that gear into a PvP match, you will look fancy but will get no bonuses from it. So your skill, teamwork and ability to play is more important than what raid you've reached or how long you've been playing.

 

It also stops people skipping gear progression on raids by PvP gearing up first then skipping the earlier raids.

 

Open PvP doesn't neccesarily have to be effected either, but thats a different conversation altogether.

go play planetside. of course it's a bad idea to eliminate the effects of gear. the worst.

go play planetside. of course it's a bad idea to eliminate the effects of gear. the worst.

 

I am only speaking of Warzones. In my opinion an instanced battle-zone with set team numbers is far more interesting and enjoyable when balanced.

 

Open PvP is a far more flexible thing, if it's system was actually fixed to be enjoyable it could easily be the place for geared PvP combat, with Warzones becoming the more competative side of things.

 

Surely that makes better use of both sides of PvP and caters to both types of player?

The same arguement could be made about PvE content. Strip all the gear out of raids... aren't raids their own reward?

 

At least in PvE, once you know the mob, you can beat it... over and over and over and over again with minimum losses. Farming.

 

PvP is a different match each time... I've gone 5-0, I've gone 0-20... Your PvE raid can be a complete premade, everything planned out exactly. I get half my people planned out and the other team could have a better plan.

 

I'm sitting at 53 Valor currently and still don't have a full T2 set of PvP gear, I'm still 4 pieces short, and done well over a hundred warzones. Easy to get? No, apparently not. It's probably about on par with raid gear and should be just as viable and sure as heck not ignored/removed.

At least in PvE, once you know the mob, you can beat it... over and over and over and over again with minimum losses. Farming.

 

PvP is a different match each time... I've gone 5-0, I've gone 0-20... Your PvE raid can be a complete premade, everything planned out exactly. I get half my people planned out and the other team could have a better plan.

 

Well thats it really isn't it? Once you know the mob you can beat it repeatedly, so an extra 'hook' is needed to keep people re-playing the content. Otherwise you wouldn't play it more than once or twice.

 

In PvP the more people you have in your pool of potential players (simply due to the variability of players) the more the games will natually differ.

So that extra power increase via gear isn't needed aslong as there is some other form of recognition. People like to acheive something, sure. I just don't think it should neccesarily give them flat out advantages over the competition. Visual alterations, customizations and ranks/leagues are all ways of keeping people interested and pointing out the better players without sticking them in blatantly superior gear.

Honestly, this whole PvP mess stems from developers trying to shoehorn in PvE ideals and mentality into PvP. For obvious reasons this doesn't mesh well.

Better not to stripp off the stats from the gear, but to match payers fight equally well equipped and skilled opponents. I've described my suggestions in another post (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=226217) but it seems players on our forum take more liking in flaming QQ threads than in discussing constructive solutions..

Riot games just released some crazy numbers about the amount of people that play League of Legends on a given day and the amount of users they have. That is a pvp game with no permanent gear progression that is wildly successful. Why people think you need to have gear progression to get people to pvp is beyond me. I don't want to have an advantage over someone else in pvp just because the RNG gods love me more than them with loot bags.

 

There's so much just pure fun in the 1-49 bracket right now. It makes me fall on the side of removing expertise very heavily.

In all honesty...PvP gear in this game really isnt that hard to get. The problem is to get it you have to throw yourself up against a pool of fully-geared people which gets tiresome.

I suppose eventually most people would have it and things will level out...but all that does is push new players hitting 50 to be at an enourmous disadvantage.

If you like the game, surely you want more people to play it and for it to be healthy. More players is nothing but a + for everyone.

 

Do you really enjoy PvP against people massively undergeared compared to you? Where is the challenge or the fun in hitting your usual rotation to crush a few newbies who are not only new to warzones but are also significantly undergeared? There is some acheivement to out-smarting or out-playing your opponent, simple +StatX. 'Oh look, I've been playing for 3 months over your 6 so I win...' well there is no acheivement there at all.

 

I'd be far happier to see versatility in PvP improvement over power increases.

 

+1 For example, I enjoyed leveling my first character via storyline and normal quests and haven't played PVP at all.. Once I hit lvl50 and tried PVPing I was completely destroyed by emps in WZ's, especially in 1v1.. and no, I'm not retarded and I do have an idea how to play my character, but most of the time I was either stunned or I couldn't even scratch the opponent.. In the meantime, I got 3 champion pieces and it's a bit better but I'm still struggling in WZs as most emps have almost full sets and thus even if I'm better than my opponent I can't kill him fast enough and other emps are able to come in time and literally destroy my ***..

Better not to stripp off the stats from the gear, but to match payers fight equally well equipped and skilled opponents. I've described my suggestions in another post (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=226217) but it seems players on our forum take more liking in flaming QQ threads than in discussing constructive solutions..

 

Not everyone on the forums is flaming/QQing. Discussions are what improve the game for the better.

 

I popped my opinions in your thread, in short I'd be mostly concerned about the queues. But surely going through the hassle of matching people gear-for-gear is much the same as simply not having it?

 

In an ideal situation your system matches up people with identical gear & skill....so the gear may as well not have an affect.

This is likely the easiest way for bioware to save whats left of pvp in this game. Normalize stats for each class and their opposing mirror. Doing this you could even retain expertise as an easy way to manage overall healing/damage/mitigation across the board. Simply assign x amount of expertise to every character.

 

Honestly, at this point you don't have anything to lose Bioware so why not step up and copy successful pvp games. You already have the bolster mechanic in place so we know you can normalize stats at least to some extent.*

 

The current system WILL fail. As you get a larger pool of people rolling in full battlemaster gear, new 50's will refuse to submit themselves to months of slaughter to even have a chance at winning.

 

I would even add this to open pvp. Normalize gear in illum and smugglers den as well. Limit unbalanced gear based pvp to the pvp servers. Please, in this area you need to go in the opposite direction of WoW.

 

* I don't mean that to sound as if this is a simple task. I realize there may be massive problems to overcome some possibly insurmountable but it's worth the attempt.

I have no problem with stripping expertise away... I think it's a crap system anyway that rewards healers above anyone else.

 

That said... you best not take all my gear away as I like to dabble in PvE as well and use my PvP gear for that.

 

Both sides should be able to get gear their way without being gimped if they choose the other side of the coin from time to time.

You are correct.. normalised PvP would be a great idea.

 

Sadly MMO makers are not brave enought to do this, since zillions of "PvP" players want loot so they can gank others.

 

GW2 is normalized I believe? We will see how that turns out.

 

Ranked matches in SWTOR might also help (eta March).

 

And yeah LoL is a good example... something like that could work in MMO games. Why not let players "buy" some gear at start of match like in CS so they can tweak their characters a bit and then give them a small amount of extra cash for each medal? It would have been very bold of teh SWTOR team to do this, sadly they copied the broken WoW model. I still enjoy PvP quite a lot, but I long for something much better A missed chance?

Edited January 24, 2012 by BubblegumYeti

That said... you best not take all my gear away as I like to dabble in PvE as well and use my PvP gear for that.

 

Not talking about removing any gear. Simply code in a 'pvp' buff that normalizes all stats regardless of what gear you are wearing. Pvp gear would still be available but the stats on it would only be useful for pve and for random pvp on pvp servers. In warzones (and I would hope Illum and Smuggler's den) your gear wouldn't matter beyond appearance.*

 

 

* This has the added benefit of solving the problem where from lvl 10-49 I managed to look like a dark lord of the sith but upon hitting 50 I look like I have been dumpster diving in the garmet district. The pvp suits look atrocious as it is but it's even worse when you are in half champ gear/ half whatever gear you were using to level.

It would be nice if BW would get rid of the stat and make PVP based on skill alone. Unfortunately, this will not happen as there are too many people that will complain that they should be "rewarded" for their time investment. As it stands now, the more balanced matched can be found in the 10-49 bracket.

The better question is: why do we not have a choice of a Warzone concept which works for "casual" pvp players?

 

 

Geargrind in PVP in Warzones isn't exactly the kind of Warzone i would want to design if they should appeal the average gamer.

Unfortunately, this will not happen as there are too many people that will complain that they should be "rewarded" for their time investment.

 

Everyone keeps saying this but I have yet to meet anyone who actually supports it. most everyone I have spoken to or read thinks this gear system sucks. People want fun, fair, balanced pvp.

 

Above everything else pvp requires participation from lots of people. Removing the imbalance of gear removes the biggest entry barrier to pvp. Normalizing stats for all classes takes care of any potential imbalance with pvp vs. pve raiders.

I respectfully disagree. If they removed the ability to improve your gear through PvP I would only PvP once in a blue moon, about the same as I play FPS games. This is an MMO, not an FPS. Character improvement, including gear progression/specialization is part of what I like about MMOs, that and of course the social aspect. If you want to normalize all gear, then why not normalize everything including damage abilities, CC, etc. That way it is a completely balanced skill only game. Of course latency, computer hardware, etc. would still have an effect on play.

 

And no, I don't play 24/7 I'm a professional, work full time and have other hobbies so I don't even have a level 50 yet.

 

League of Legends is a FTP game and I would imagine that many people only play occasionally so it makes sense to normalize since many would not be willing to invest any significant amount of time in improving their character.

 

I would venture a guess, from talking to my son and some other avid PvP'ers (anecdotal evidence I know), that many of us, including myself, would simply quit playing if gear progression and specialization were taken out of the equation. I can buy a console game or FPS for my PC if that is what I'm looking for.