That's a minor point. Just answer this one and I'll be going:

 

Let's say Bioware reintroduces gear with expertise. Why do you think that this new gear would be sold for cheap and only had 2 tiers, like the old one?

Do you understand the differences between pvp and pve "progression"?

PvE is different. PvE is about getting gear to make pve dps/tank/healing checks less punishing to progress further and further into new boss and dungeon content. It's suppose to be a way to gate players to not rush into raids and quickly clear content. It's a progression based system like it is in every mmo.

Expertise is here to separate the gear between these two areas so they can keep pvp gear cheap and easy to acquire. This is because in pvp, the gear itself is secondary, it really is only there for a sparkle of the mmo goodness that the kiddies all enjoy but the real goal is accessibility. The fact is they can make it accessible because it wouldnt force pvers to have to pvp for faster gear because before 5.0 gear between PvP and PvE was different tiers (PvE gear was 1 tier higher). This resulted in, PvP gear was BiS in PvP because of this but NOT in PvE and PvE gear to be BiS in PvE but not in PvP.

Don't get me wrong the idea to homogenized was an interesting one but the reality is these two areas are completely different. PvP gear isn't suppose to be gating players, its suppose to be secondary, because the end content is for skill vs skill combat. For PvE is about gating and slowing down the pace of completing content. That's why in 4.0 pvp gearing was easy, simple and fast. PvE gearing was slower and more painful, it had you grinding out bosses. Forcing pvpers into this way of gearing makes no sense because it's not about gating players, its about getting them into the action and producing fair fights. Is this clicking now?

Apples to oranges.

Do you understand the differences between pvp and pve "progression"?

What you describe is your vision about how things should be in PvE and PvP, not how things are nor how they have to be. Now, before you think I'm a supporter of this gearing system, I would like all gear, both in PvE and PvP to be abolished. Putting artificial (numerical) checks before harder content to keep people playing and paying longer is a stupid, though financially understandable practice.

You say PvP should be skill vs. skill, and while I agree, Bioware does not, and they have explicitly said so. So what we agree on here is out of the question, as the need for "progression" in PvP will stay, not because I defend it, but because Bioware does. You can dream about skill vs. skill PvP, but any system they introduce will have progression, again, simply because they said they want it.

The fact that PvP progression was easy in the past is not a guarantee that it will be in the future. And since the release of content is kinda lacking on Bioware's part, it's understandable (from their point) they want to drag gearing out as long as possible, to replace content. Once again, just because you think the reintroduction of PvP gear would be done to give PvP'ers skill vs. skill matches, it's not impossible Bioware will simply use this opportunity not to help abolish gear differences, but introduce another tiresome grind, and while you personally might not be interested in also farming a set of PvE gear, those that are, because they want to both raid and PvP, will have an even longer grind ahead.

The thing about augments is that with the introduction of the new tier the difference between those and the purple ones will grow, and with the increase in mat requirements, it is expected they will be even more expensive than the current tier ones. Which becomes even worse if it means having to augment two sets of gear, except those 1-2 pieces you have different between PvE and PvP now.

The current system is not good, but I can easily imagine worse, especially since we're talking about Bioware here. If I get a say in this, I'd rather not offer them another opportunity to screw us over. That's all.

What you describe is your vision about how things should be in PvE and PvP, not how things are nor how they have to be. Now, before you think I'm a supporter of this gearing system, I would like all gear, both in PvE and PvP to be abolished. Putting artificial (numerical) checks before harder content to keep people playing and paying longer is a stupid, though financially understandable practice.

 

You say PvP should be skill vs. skill, and while I agree, Bioware does not, and they have explicitly said so. So what we agree on here is out of the question, as the need for "progression" in PvP will stay, not because I defend it, but because Bioware does. You can dream about skill vs. skill PvP, but any system they introduce will have progression, again, simply because they said they want it.

 

The fact that PvP progression was easy in the past is not a guarantee that it will be in the future. And since the release of content is kinda lacking on Bioware's part, it's understandable (from their point) they want to drag gearing out as long as possible, to replace content. Once again, just because you think the reintroduction of PvP gear would be done to give PvP'ers skill vs. skill matches, it's not impossible Bioware will simply use this opportunity not to help abolish gear differences, but introduce another tiresome grind, and while you personally might not be interested in also farming a set of PvE gear, those that are, because they want to both raid and PvP, will have an even longer grind ahead.

 

The thing about augments is that with the introduction of the new tier the difference between those and the purple ones will grow, and with the increase in mat requirements, it is expected they will be even more expensive than the current tier ones. Which becomes even worse if it means having to augment two sets of gear, except those 1-2 pieces you have different between PvE and PvP now.

 

The current system is not good, but I can easily imagine worse, especially since we're talking about Bioware here. If I get a say in this, I'd rather not offer them another opportunity to screw us over. That's all.

While I agree that reduced gear grind in PVP would be more enjoyable, I think these arguments are well taken in view of what BW has said/done in the past. I think the only reason Keith mentioned a return to expertise in the BFP interview is because it would help them balance PVP vs PVE, i.e., they knew they were going to get fallout over the tank nerfs. I don't see them doing anything to reduce grind.

The fact that PvP progression was easy in the past is not a guarantee that it will be in the future.

The only thing stopping them from making gearing less cancer is because they want to keep pver's grinding content longer. I guarantee you that is the only reason. That is why they recently increased the bolster tier level to try to make it so pvpers wouldn't suffer the month(s) grind for gear. But the fact of the matter is, it is only a bandaid, it still doesn't fix the problem that we still need to grind out to t4 to be fully min/maxed regardless of bolster or not.

If they separate the gear they have no reason to keep it the same amount of grindy bs that the pvers have to do. And they can easily adjust and it wouldn't interfere with pve progression. That is one of the massive benefits of gear separation you can have pvp gear simple and cheap as f (like it was before in 4.0). The idea of homogenized gearing for pve/pvp was a cool experiment but its time to revert back.

@ Schoock

It sounds like we agree on a few things. The current gearing is grindy and bad. BW said they want some sort of gear progression for pve and pvp.

I think where we differ is here:

If I get a say in this, I'd rather not offer them another opportunity to screw us over. That's all.

To me, that's a defeatist attitude. We're both coming from a place where we know this system blows. So let's not give them a chance to make it worse? I can't agree with that. I don't think that BW will ever completely do away with pvp or pve gear progression, but I believe they might be willing to make it faster than it is now.

Personally, I actually enjoy feeling like I am "leveling up" my character and getting a new gear piece, but only to a certain extent. I'd be content with something a little slower than what we had in 4.x, but not much. If it is too long of a gearing progression, I get demotivated and stop trying. I know it's a bit tricky for BW because gearing speed depends on how much a given player plays the game.

I agree with Hottie. PvE progression has to be slow because the ops are not as repeatable as PvP. Once you figure out how to beat a boss, you use the same tactics the next time. If players burn through ops too quickly and gear up too fast, there is little motivation to keep playing them. It's not illogical to connect the dots and conclude that the reason why we have such a slow gearing system for PvP now is due to the lack of separation of PvE vs PvP gear.

...

The current system is not good, but I can easily imagine worse, especially since we're talking about Bioware here. If I get a say in this, I'd rather not offer them another opportunity to screw us over. That's all.

Given the way 4.0 was introduced which level-synced all content so that everything could be regrinded, and the way 5.0 was introduced (e.g. wiping us out of our PvP comms and placing us on long gear grindfest), and given the changes in conquest heading into 6.0, which also emphasize grindage, I'd be VERY surprised if the studio suddenly found it in them to revert to PvP gearing system that actually reduced grind. They seem committed to milking the old content via grinding.

This grind is for the birds. I hate it. It's very al-unfriendly. But I have almost no optimism that something PvP-specific will actually be meaningfully less time-consuming or costly.

expertise is garbage the only positive thing was stun resistance other wise its just going to be like before people with high end gear farming those without gear like before smh least now despite the chainstunning it seems to be on a lot more equal terms

LoL, that’s not how expertise worked, it had nothing to do with stun resistance and if you didn’t have pvp gear, you could wear 190 pve gear and the system would bolster your stats AND give you full expertise.

The only people who did not get expertise bolster on non pvp gear were those who thought their epic pve gear, that had much better stats than pvp gear, would give them an advanatage in pvp. Which it didn’t, it actually made it worse for them.

Considering you could buy all the 190 pve Mods, armor, enhancements and hilts/barrels from the armor vendor for less than 30k, there was no reason for anyone not to have full expertise in pvp.

The problem as I explained in my post earlier, was Bioware never explained how Bolster ie expertise worked. You needed to come to the forums and read a sticky thread that community members made through testing it. Those threads were really helpful and explained how to do it.

The other problem is people wouldn’t listen to us trying to help them in the game. We would see people in the game in epic pve gear and try and explain it, but they were so arogent or just dumb, that they wouldn’t listened and would often tell us to F-off

LoL, that’s not how expertise worked, it had nothing to do with stun resistance and if you didn’t have pvp gear, you could wear 190 pve gear and the system would bolster your stats AND give you full expertise.

The only people who did not get expertise bolster on non pvp gear were those who thought their epic pve gear, that had much better stats than pve gear, would give them an advanatage in pvp. Which it didn’t, it actually made it worse for them.

Considering you could buy all the 190 pve Mods, armor, enhancements and hilts/barrels from the armor vendor for less than 30k, there was no reason for anyone not to have full expertise in pvp.

The problem as I explained in my post earlier, was Bioware never explained how Bolster ie expertise worked. You needed to come to the forums and read a sticky thread that community members made through testing it. Those breads were really helpful and explained how to do it.

The other problem is people wouldn’t listen to us trying to help them in the game. We would see people in the game in epic pve gear and try and explain it, but they were so arogent or just dumb, that they wouldn’t listened and would often tell us to F-off

^^ +10. This ^^

Wanted to make a few small points here.

1) Expertise added 60% to base damage, 30% to base def.

Lets assume 1.0 is a 248 mara DR (30%) 30% of 30% is roughly (little less) 10%, for sake of example we'll use 10%.

Now lets assume our numbers are a 30% bonus damage. Applying 60% would raise it by 20% (roughly again)

so now we have 50% bonus damage and 40% DR.

That means 10% is unmitigated. Now I don't do the math personaly but from I hear the difference between 230 and 248 is roughly 10% damage output. For anyone whos rolled a new toon, who just started playing knows exactly how fast a good player in 248+augs can global a 230+augs. this was the old damage that we all loved. it was why hlrs werent broken, skanks were an annoyance, and mara/sniper didnt have broken survivablity, and pts were relevant.

there a lot to be said about how class balance got completely screwed in the span of 1 update (mercs retaining 30% crit bonus while everyone else was nerfed to 15% to name one) but one thing we all know is right off the bat, dcds and hps output had to be nerfed.

2) Pve'ers like to complain about expertise cause god forbid they had to actually pvp a little bit before they could adquatly do their daily/weekly, and now they have the upper hand. getting carried through hrdmode ops by their raid team and then going straight into their first pvp matchs in full 242. a 1-2 week grind was nothing for someone who enjoyed pvp, but for those who didnt? they complained so loudly that they had to go get killed just for gear that didnt save them anyway from being globald that bioware reformated the whole gear system. now at least in 248+augs they dont get globald in 5 seconds from a 230 doing 10% more damage than they can

and finally 3) this system is garbage because a simple underlying concept. PvP is about dieing. This is why it costs nothing to fix gear. Its about throwing yourself at someone 5 times hoping to kill them before they kill you. PvE is about surviving. This is why it costs credits to fix your gear. The goal is not to die, its to succeed without dieing. And bioware in its genius listened to the loud people who couldnt stand dieing and mixed the two gearing concepts creating you guessed it ... Parsing Warzones YAAAH!. We can now parse on each other for 15 minutes instead of killing one another (10% damage decrease... or 30% however you wish to look at it)