Changes to Expertise System Soon

[RoninaThorstone]

What was the point you were trying to get at originally? I don't even remember now...

People don't deserve a statistical advantage unrelated to their skill in a player verse player game / game mode. And yes. I agree. It is very funny.

edit: unfortunately, I have to go for a few hours. So hopefully this stays open so I can continue to batter back and forth about this :P

[Kelimbror]

What was the point you were trying to get at originally? I don't even remember now...

Organized sports = Real World PvP

To that end, you can compare how this form of competition is made a level playing field in a way that can be related metaphorically to gear in PvP. Sports are fair by default and thus PvP should be as well.

Therefore PvP should follow the same strategies as regulating sports and have a level playing field for the participants. While their methods of preparing themselves individually may differ, as would their access to various forms of knowledge and training capabilities, once they are on the field they have no gear based advantages over their competitors.

PvP should mirror this to be true competition.

[RohanV]

PvP should mirror this to be true competition.

Why? What makes "being true competition" the desired goal? As the experience of RIFT with normalized battlegrounds shows, most people in MMOs want some character progression, even if weakens the idea of true competition.

[Kelimbror]

Why? What makes "being true competition" the desired goal? As the experience of RIFT with normalized battlegrounds shows, most people in MMOs want some character progression, even if weakens the idea of true competition.

I never claimed it was the desired goal by me. But if you read back to where the statements from the company came, they have obviously been given feedback that gear is a problem. In fact the reason these changes are being made is to close the gap towards what we are discussing. Also, you can read several very, very long threads on WoW forums for the same thing. So while I'm not claiming it is, because I love getting gear, I can step outside of my box and admit that people who want real PvP have the right to it.

I would wager thousands of PvPers have expressed that it should be the desired goal. I would also point to MOBAs and other games that were mentioned earlier, with their vastly larger playerbase than MMOs have, as to how many people view PvP differently. Right now PvE players have had their cake and eaten it too.

[WarpedAcorn]

You guys.... There is something hilarious in this discussion, put I can't quite put my finger on it

What was the point you were trying to get at originally? I don't even remember now...

Gear-based MMORPG's provide the player an incentive and path to improve their character in a tangible way, something alternative to the intangible skill level attained through practice and experience. When the gear is placed in game without restrictions (I.E. Arena Rating), it allows all players who invest time to attain a similar gear level. The veteran player will maintain an experience a gear advantage over a newcommer, and it will be up to the newcommer to overcome both aspects and challenge or dethrone the veteran.

Specifically in SWTOR, EWH gear is a very very minor advantage over WH gear. WH gear is significantly better than Recruit gear. Recruit gear is given immediately upon hitting 50, and WH takes a few days to a week to become fully suited. I personally like that I can continue to "improve" my character by going after super expensive EWH pieces, even though they provide such a tiny improvement.

[Psychlon]

The bolster system looks at a player's level and makes an assumption of the stats a player at that level would have and increases them to a target level defined by the designers. Bolster totally ignores what the player ACTUALLY has for stats, it doesn't matter if you are naked or fully geared out, it will give you the same bonuses either way.

Am I wrong or..... because that's not true for 10-49 pvp.... otherwise people wouldn't have 16k life while others having 11k/12k. Ergo bolster has to work based on your stats/ items.

In general I couldn't care less if pure PvE player have it easier in PvP because pure PvP player have to do the same treadmill as PvE player. You can go into pvp with dread master gear though your lack of expertise will be visible... same is for pvp. Your lack in stats is visible as is your damage/heal output.

I think they should rather focus on competitive pvp/ league than making it even easier for pve player to get into pvp. If, then you do the same for PvP player wanting to play PvE.

I've already stated I like a treadmill, but I also don't really like PvP. I do it to get more gear. I'm not someone who should be influencing PvP designs, because I'm not in it for the competition.

The magnitude is never over exaggerated because the differences are always there. As many people as like to claim you can walk in a WZ with your quest greens and planet gear and have a fair shot is either a PvP god or are just lying to themselves and everyone. How can you weigh the negative worth of that experience as overexagerrated? It's forcing the player to take part in a non enjoyable activity that they don't have enough control over to be satisfied, simply because they started later than someone else did.

It would be one thing if all queues were instant and you got one piece of gear per match until maxed out, but that's not how it works. If literally only an hour of your time was wasted, yes I can agree that harping on it would be ridiculous but it is still bad design.

PvP was designed to be the spirit of competition, but has turned into 'who has the bigger gun'. While the industry got by with this mentality for years based purely on adolescent xbox live pirate training, it's not going to last for much longer. If anyone was ever on the short end of the Golden Gun matches, where your buddy/brother/whoever got it before you, that infuriating rage you felt for the next 30 minutes of dying time after time is what PvP has evolved to be 95% of the time.

I think we are going to see a PvP revolution over the next few years, especially with the amount of MMOFPS games and MMOs coming out.

So can I finally walk with my greens into Asation Nightmare and get buffed to max so that my "skill" is going to determine if I can beat this encounter with my buddies and NOT the time I invested to be at this point?

In my perfect MMO, I wouldn't have any visible stats to begin with, just skills and something like an achivement tree with several setups and you could switch in between, probably even switch to a different class etc. . What is xp actually for? Wasting our time just to hit a lvl cap which is getting increased over and over again, forcing us to waste our time to grind stupid xp just to be "on par" again.

However, SWTOR and a lot of other MMO's are not like this. You have to grind gear for PvE as you have for PvP with the only difference that you probably can grind PvP much faster than PvE and you don't even need anyone else to do it (in SWTOR). No true PvP'ler would even care for the first 30 hours or so to hang in there and get your gear to be competitive because 30 hours is nothing if you plan on staying in this game for a longer period. You don't even have to be good at it to get your equipment, just to round this up.

What are we really talking about here then actually? If you don't like pvp... don't do it because even if they would hand out the same gear or "maxed" gear the people complaining about gear differences would still be terrible at it because they still didn't realise that gear is a minor factor if you win or lose a warzone (except if anyone is actually that stupid and taking min/max comparisons which we don't have in reality). What matters it that people are actually interested in winning a warzone and not leave/ camp after 30 seconds just because their butts aren't being dragged to an easy win.

If we look at a pure shooter like CoD or Battlefield, there is no even playing field. The guys which played longer have an advantage over others. Isn't it a bit far stretched to expect an "equal" chance in an MMO if not even a shooter which was only designed for it isn't holding up to it? I think PvP in SWTOR is much more on par than either of these two games.

I honestly can't remember the last time a rogue stunlocked me to death, it was loooooong ago at least. I might be wrong but I always got the feeling rogues were horribly underpowered throughout late Wrath and Cataclysm.
In MoP I was stunned to death by Warriors, but that was due to insane damage and lack of resilience, not due to the length of the stuns


Maybe I should make it more clear what I mean. On WoW the duration of stuns are reduced the more times you get stunned, until eventually you become immune. That's the system I'd like for SWTOR. Getting hit by 3x 4sec stuns in a row just isn't fun. Even with a dedicated healer it's difficult to survive for 12 seconds without being able to do anything.

Not always, it seems. The Resolve system seems random to me, sometimes it doesn't fill up at all, and sometimes it goes from 0 to white in a single stun (normal 4 sec, not an 8sec). Maybe I'm just having bad luck with bugs, who knows. Either way I prefer the WoW sytem, but that doesn't mean I'm saying it's better either. They both have pro's and cons.

Also didn't mean to derail the thread with WoW-talk and resolve issues, that's probably better fitting for another thread! So, uhm... as you were?

I tend to think the same but really... that is based on no evidence. The resolve system is in fact preventing you to be stunned longer than 12 seconds?!, the problem is that you mostly don't live 12 seconds to realize it and as resolve is emptying itself rather quickly, there is none left at the time you rejoin the fight. That is where I think is the problem. If they would make you stun immun after the first stun for a time, people wouldn't throw stuns around like crazy and you actually couldn't be stunlocked to not have any chance to do something about it.

Also.. you can't be hit by 3-4 stuns, however I don't need to stun people to make them literally helpless.

No organized/regulated sports allow for equipment outside of what is allowed. This means that no team can have an advantage by having better equipment as all their equipment is either constructed or approved by a governing body. This is why the competition is fair. It's actually a good argument for why gear shouldn't be present in PvP. Thank you for proving me right.

Care to try Formula One? You can't regulate everything down to a fly, smart people will always find a way to use something to their benefit to be better than others. Just like to remember "PvP'ler" using carbonite chamber and similar stuff to get an edge over others.

Yes, that's one example.

Also, better gear in this scenario is something that would enable you to accomplish the activities goal more effectively just from the gear alone. This would be shoes with better grips, some sort of arm attachment that helps you throw a ball faster/longer, etc. There's honestly nothing comparable.

Weight rooms, etc in smaller colleges is nothing that is present on the field helping you literally be better just because you have it. You don't run faster or hit harder just because you have better weight rooms. You would hit harder if you had rockets in your shoes though.

We would certainly know if we were watching a sport where one team vastly outperformed another team from their equipment, because we wouldn't enjoy it at all. It's why there's such a hullabaloo on atheletes using 'enhancements' b/c we're still trying to enforce some form of level playing field.

How are you calling any game between the best and worst in their league? They don't use rockets though they are better naturally and because they got everything they need to get to the maximum. More comfort, a better doctor, better trainings, better psychological trainings... all that matters for any professional sport and it can be the difference between winning and losing. You will never have an even playing field in any human sport because human aren't the same to begin with. Each is individual and this is why we can't call it "even".

Organized sports = Real World PvP

To that end, you can compare how this form of competition is made a level playing field in a way that can be related metaphorically to gear in PvP. Sports are fair by default and thus PvP should be as well.

Therefore PvP should follow the same strategies as regulating sports and have a level playing field for the participants. While their methods of preparing themselves individually may differ, as would their access to various forms of knowledge and training capabilities, once they are on the field they have no gear based advantages over their competitors.

PvP should mirror this to be true competition.

Well consider the 30hours something you have to invest to get your pvp gear as "entry level" to filter all the guys which don't really care for it anyway and after passing this you can talk about an "even" playing field.

Can I just decide to be a basketball player, go to any team and play right away?... Hell no... and that is why your "true competition" is biased at its best to make it sound reasonable though it makes no sense at all.

[Golden]

Personally, I would love it if they did this:
1. Get rid of PvP specific gear.
2. Allow people to grind out raid gear from PvP'ing (at a slower rate than you can get it from raiding obviously).
3. Normalize all gear while PvP flagged to the same stats.

MMOs have a pretty simple formula. You go out into the world and kill stuff to improve your character. If you couldn't grind any gear from PvP'ing, it breaks the formula. Everyone would be forced to raid to improve their characters then. If you didn't want to raid, would you play a MMO where you couldn't improve your character anymore?

The funny thing is that raids could be normalized to one set of stats also if developers were crazy enough. I don't bring this up because I think it's a good idea. I bring it up to point out how some people think it's OK to be able to improve your character by raiding, but then don't think it's OK to improve your character by PvP'ing.

[RoninaThorstone]

Am I wrong or..... because that's not true for 10-49 pvp.... otherwise people wouldn't have 16k life while others having 11k/12k. Ergo bolster has to work based on your stats/ items.

It gives stats based off your gear compared to your level. So if you are level 24 with level 16 gear you will have shit stats compared to a level 16 with level 16 gear. Then they add in quality but that's not as important as ilv vs lv (the main reason epics are so good is because they allow you to equip high ilv at low lv).

It's not perfect but its a lot better than some other systems.

Complete normalization based off budget cap and distribution mirroring the players stats would be ideal.

[WarpedAcorn]

Personally, I would love it if they did this:
1. Get rid of PvP specific gear.
2. Allow people to grind out raid gear from PvP'ing (at a slower rate than you can get it from raiding obviously).
3. Normalize all gear while PvP flagged to the same stats.

MMOs have a pretty simple formula. You go out into the world and kill stuff to improve your character. If you couldn't grind any gear from PvP'ing, it breaks the formula. Everyone would be forced to raid to improve their characters then. If you didn't want to raid, would you play a MMO where you couldn't improve your character anymore?

The funny thing is that raids could be normalized to one set of stats also if developers were crazy enough. I don't bring this up because I think it's a good idea. I bring it up to point out how some people think it's OK to be able to improve your character by raiding, but then don't think it's OK to improve your character by PvP'ing.

The only reason I am a fan of them having a PvP stat on PvP armor that applies only to PvP is that I lived through Vanilla WoW. In fact, I was the guy on the other end with the bleeding edge raid content that had access to all the purple shinies. And I made life miserable for those that didn't in the BG's. My Rogue could 2-shot any cloth with an Ambush-Backstab combo, and that's no fun for either person. Even those that PvP'd and had the best gear they could get from there could not stand up to a group of raid geared players. It was an awkward time.

The flip side of this is to put a PvE stat on all items and let that scale off of new raid gear. This would keep gear in line with standard upgrades through Quests / Events / Warzones / Ect...but allow the Dev Team to pump up the PvE stat on new raid gear. Effectively its the same as a PvP stat though.

Basically, I'm just opposed to having raid gear be something you are encouraged to bring into a Warzone.

[RohanV]

The only reason I am a fan of them having a PvP stat on PvP armor that applies only to PvP is that I lived through Vanilla WoW. In fact, I was the guy on the other end with the bleeding edge raid content that had access to all the purple shinies. And I made life miserable for those that didn't in the BG's. My Rogue could 2-shot any cloth with an Ambush-Backstab combo, and that's no fun for either person. Even those that PvP'd and had the best gear they could get from there could not stand up to a group of raid geared players. It was an awkward time.

I think Golden was implying that gear would not make a difference in his PvP system. I.e. Someone with Dread Guard has the same stats as someone in Rakata in PvP. PvP is just another way to earn gear. That gear doesn't help you in PvP, but it helps you everywhere else in the game.

Golden's system is attempting to combine character progression with a level playing field in PvP. It's an interesting idea. The one big issue is that raiders might feel forced to do PvP to earn gear for raiding. This happened in the T5/T6 era in WoW, when Kael and Vashji were such blockers for many people. Many people went for S2/S3 (forget which) weapons to help them in raids.

[Psychlon]

Personally, I would love it if they did this:
1. Get rid of PvP specific gear.
2. Allow people to grind out raid gear from PvP'ing (at a slower rate than you can get it from raiding obviously).
3. Normalize all gear while PvP flagged to the same stats.

MMOs have a pretty simple formula. You go out into the world and kill stuff to improve your character. If you couldn't grind any gear from PvP'ing, it breaks the formula. Everyone would be forced to raid to improve their characters then. If you didn't want to raid, would you play a MMO where you couldn't improve your character anymore?

The funny thing is that raids could be normalized to one set of stats also if developers were crazy enough. I don't bring this up because I think it's a good idea. I bring it up to point out how some people think it's OK to be able to improve your character by raiding, but then don't think it's OK to improve your character by PvP'ing.

1. why pvp and not pve?
2. you can get raid gear faster than pvp gear
3. or just put anyone in a jabba costum with your class weapon

You can have PvP gear and start PvE content until very much to the top. You could go with Battlemaster and clear Hardmodes however you would replace your PvP gear in the process. I see this as a big "jupping" from PvE player which don't want to spend any time pvp'ing but if they feel like, still take whatever achievement they think they got in PvE also applying to PvP.

They could just make same lvl pve/pvp gear exchangeable for the other. So I can change in Dreadguard for Elite War-Hero or something.

It gives stats based off your gear compared to your level. So if you are level 24 with level 16 gear you will have shit stats compared to a level 16 with level 16 gear. Then they add in quality but that's not as important as ilv vs lv (the main reason epics are so good is because they allow you to equip high ilv at low lv).

It's not perfect but its a lot better than some other systems.

Complete normalization based off budget cap and distribution mirroring the players stats would be ideal.

Not really. Purple Mods seem to be favoured over blue even though they are lower level. In fact the stat on the blue mod can be better but still, purple is giving you a better buff. Furthermore... it does matter if I put augments on my gear which doesn't really change the item level. This is why I think, 1-49 is buffing you according to the stats you have at your current level and not what lvl item you actually wear.

[WarpedAcorn]

Golden's system is attempting to combine character progression with a level playing field in PvP. It's an interesting idea. The one big issue is that raiders might feel forced to do PvP to earn gear for raiding. This happened in the T5/T6 era in WoW, when Kael and Vashji were such blockers for many people. Many people went for S2/S3 (forget which) weapons to help them in raids.

I believe it was S2 that it was most prevalent. Getting the Arena weapons was the biggest boost and a lot of people went down that path.

[RoninaThorstone]

I believe it was S2 that it was most prevalent. Getting the Arena weapons was the biggest boost and a lot of people went down that path.

Yep. Rogues with merciless slicers and mongoose.

PvP gear can mess up your game in so many ways.

[Kelimbror]

PvP gear can mess up your game in so many ways.

Then you have to look how games use item levels to gate content. PvP can be participated in with no gear, but used to get higher ilvl gear. This then trickles down where PvE players can have negative experiences from undergeared players queueing for things they really 'shouldn't be in b/c they happen to have PvP gear.

It's a blessing and a curse. It's not as prevalent in SWTOR because gear is so easy to come by, but it's still bad in theory.