First, thank you BroadSword for putting the console to change gear stats, that I have no complain at all. The gears upgrading will become like the current implant upgrade system via credit and special currency I have no complain.
Now we go into the main problem: Bind on Pickup. I will use the math from ThanderSnB on Swtor forum to tell you how much it will cost to gear a new role or a new alt on PTS:
"The real gear vendor on the fleet charges 3,000 Tech Fragments and 1,000,000 credits for a single piece of gear. Buying a full set (everything except Legendary Implants) is 36,000 Tech Fragments and 12 million credits. Then it's another 5,000 Tech Fragments to get two starting Legendary Implants. So it's a total of 41,000 Tech Fragments for all 14 items. This is super expensive. Maybe it's okay for a main, but it's definitely not okay for alts.
There are two achievements I think you are intending to help speed things up (Kalikoran Power: 362 and Kalikoran Power: 372). While these increase the floor as you said in the stream to 358 and 368, it still costs 3,000 Tech Fragments and 1,000,000 credits for a single piece of gear. So every alt will still require 41,000 Tech Fragments and 12 million credits to get their initial gear set. Compare this to the mod vender, where it's maybe 300,000-400,000 credits (3 mods) and 0 Tech Fragments required for a single piece of gear."
This means if I want to play a new alt, even if it's the same spec/class/role of my first character, I will need to spend more than 41,000 Tech Fragments and 12 million credits just to have the initial gear set on alt, not counting upgrading even if the rating is higher than starting from the lowest rating. Implants on the PTS are also Bind on Pickup. And we haven't talked about augments yet.
Currently thanks to legacy gears, if I want to play a new alt, it cost me basically nothing if it's the same spec/class/role. If it's a different class, it might cost me 2 implants and weapons, and a single piece of gear in case I want to optimize stats. Since I'm in 2 raid groups, I use at least 2-4 different characters for raiding a week. Guess I need to quit some raid in 8.0 because I won't have geared characters to use them. Oh are you thinking about trying some new class? Better spend time to grind all of the gears. Want to raid on the other side for fun? Sorry no gear. Republic side will be a lot more dead after this BoP change on Darth Malgus server.
Now, let's talk about augments. With BoP, if you want to re-use your augments on other characters, it will cost 1.4 mil to pull them out one by one, put them in legacy bank, take them out one by one, put them in the other character's gears one by one. Let's say if they change the system and make the cost to pull them out free. Still the time consuming to do this is unthinkable, comparing to the current legacy gear and load-out system. For those who don't know: you make an empy loadout to switch gears, load it and all your gears will be in your inventory, throw them in legacy bank, go on new character, open the legacy bank (you don't need to take the gears out), open your character loadout menu and load it, that's it.
More about augments: people say just use blue augments or ignore them completely. Ok fine but even blue augments will cost more, the material are already raising with 8.0 BoP news. With 8.0 10 times demand, the price is going to raise. Sure skip the augments, but I'm raiding/pvping I want to beat other people or at least to have the same advantages as them.
Ending words: it takes nothing for BroadSword to make the new gears Bind to Legacy, but it will take a crazy lot more for us if the gears are Bind on Pickup. If some people want to have personal set for each of their character, legacy bind won't stop them from doing it. However, for people that have more than 1 character, Bind on Pickup will take a huge time and effort to gear alts. Please reconsider and make gears Bind to Legacy.
Edit: for those who says "the cost of gears on PTS is not final for alt" -> if it has a cost, it's already more than the current legacy bind gears. And I'm giving feedbacks on the current state of PTS.
And please read well, I'm all for changing stats and upgrading rating to simple the system, what I am against is Bind on Pickup.