lol bolster

[Eillack]

The dev team for this game is full of complete idiots. They will go down in gaming history as the biggest group of clowns to ever grace some small **** hole office.

 

This is what they're leaning towards each day. Hell EA is now 900 less people even since the latest layoffs.

 

Maybe by next year we'll get a company that actually knows what they're doing to run this game.

[Hawkwalker]

This is what they're leaning towards each day. Hell EA is now 900 less people even since the latest layoffs.

 

Maybe by next year we'll get a company that actually knows what they're doing to run this game.

 

That'd be great. But I doubt it.

[Shapechanger]

Pretty interesting thread, read the start and then the post 2.0 comments.

 

The fact of the matter is you may not like newbies coming in and being competitive because you worked hard on this toy and built yourself a lincoln log voltron, but this game is a TOY. And its good medicine for you.

Are you awesome because of your gear? Or DO YOU HAVE SKILL?

Cause if I can come in as a noob and wax the floor with your face, you can come here and rage about your gear all you like, but the fact of the matter is you are still pounding your keyboard in frustration because you suck. So man up and go develop some skills, and prove you are the bees knees. Or come here on the forums and whine like a diaper baby that a noob came along and farted in your eye, because you dont have any skill after all.

 

And if you want to sell toys, you dont sell them to 5 kids if you can sell them to 50, even if those 5 quit cause its not special enough anymore. 45 is better than the 5. You get my drift. I think BW is making the smart decision here, even if the vocal forum whiners dont like getting beat by skilled noobs.

 

 

My perspective - bolster is good for business.

 

Im new, started a week ago. Havent played it prior. Limited playtime cause of kids and work; I prefer store solutions. Ive spent $170 or so, so far - major time saver for me. I played LotRO a bit, probably spent 800-1000 there, TSW about 4-500. So Im a valuable customer that is short on time but financially have discretionary spending for boats or whatever I want to do. One of the things I like to do is PvP in persistent worlds where I can develop a character.

 

I also prefer PvP over PvE 10 to 1.

But I don't have the time to gear grind heavily to remain competitive with each new content patch. If I cant be competitive on my schedule, I dont compete. This is why I walked away from TSW.

Even if I did have 3 hours a day, I wouldn't spend that kind of time on toys - too much good stuff in life outside of a game. BUT, I still like to play the game some, non-obsessively, and do well in PvP.

 

Without this bolster change, swtor is non viable for me. Hey, my money is as good as your money, and there are alot of people like me out there. Isnt it good business for BW to encourage people like me to come subscribe, spend some cartel bucks, and have a good time?

 

Whats fun about being a masochist and going and getting a-raped endlessly because I dont have 200 hours or whatever to get the gear - probably more time considering casual status leaves me without easy access to the people who can enable quick gear grinds... so its even worse. No thanks, spend my money elsewhere.

 

Without welcoming new players, and giving them a decent shot at doing well, your pvp experience will slowly die off due to natural attrition and a hostile environment for new people.

And without new people coming in to PvP, and the player population dying off due to natural attrition, people will begin to unsub due to lack of population, feeding the cycle.

 

Like it or not you WANT new people, and you want the new people to do well enough to keep playing. AKA BOLSTER.

So put on your wizard hat and MAN UP, and prove you arent just a stuffed shirt that grinded your way to the top. Or come here on the forums and diaper baby about it because some noobs proved you had no skills afterall, just a bunch of toiletpaper stuffed in your pants. Cause thats what Im reading here, the proof of the skill-less is right here in pages and pages of diaperbaby whines.

 

Well, at least now you have proof you suck. So what? Its a game. A toy. You want to play by yourself in an ever smaller circle jerk? Is your ego so stuffed up you cant handle some fresh competition?

 

If not, then why the hell does bolster bother you even one iota? It shouldnt. Its just enabling noobs to compete, and keep PvP at a healthy population level. Just some peoples overbuilt egos based on gear cant handle the facts. And you know what those facts are now dont you? So man up and PROVE you are Barney Badarse and it is YOU at your computer, not your pixelated belt, and stop whining like some child that new blood is giving you a run for your money.

Edited April 30, 2013 by Shapechanger

[mr_ruiz]

Are you awesome because of your gear? Or DO YOU HAVE SKILL?

 

Well my personal opinion is the same on this, but from the PvP side... so why can't PvE geared peeps come in without expertise and succeed? Aren't they awesome because of their gear also?

 

PvP isn't getting any buffs if we decide to go do some raiding, but I guess that's okay in the eyes of the PvE community - There is a double standard being applied here, which some of us can tolerate, to a certain extent only.

 

Bolster is good for business, I agree with that. The way I see it is - Sure give the PvE geared guy expertise, but make it somewhere around 'recruit' level. Don't make it confusing to everyone with scaling and all these numbers. Make it simple, flat across the board. If they don't like the way they're performing, they will see the benefits and grind out some PvP pieces.

 

This has already been said so many times by so many people in this thread. I feel like people are just trolling (not you in particular) to annoy us now.

 

just my two cents... old, dirty, used up, the kind nobody picks up when seen on the ground.

[Savej]

Without this bolster change, swtor is non viable for me.

 

It doesn't take long to get partisan gear for one character in SWTOR. It didn't take long to get WH gear on one character. If you have a few hours a week to put in, for a couple months (not 3 hours a day for 6 mos), you'd be more than competitive if that's all you wanted to do. If you don't have a few hours a week to play then you should pick another hobby. But I'm not sure what hobby - all of the worthwhile ones that I know of take a little commitment to enjoy them - miniature golf?

Edited May 5, 2013 by Savej

[Scroman]

Honestly Bioware bolster is just a gigantic mess, my significant other and I will certainly be jumping ship for ESO if it isn't at the very least tweaked to actually reward people who bother to put time into their gear / removed all together. It's also obvious your pvp community ( which is pretty much all subs ) overall hates the changes.

 

Listen to the people who really want to enjoy your game or lose business and enjoy a second TORtanic .. your move.

[lxynl]

Pretty interesting thread, read the start and then the post 2.0 comments.

 

The fact of the matter is you may not like newbies coming in and being competitive because you worked hard on this toy and built yourself a lincoln log voltron, but this game is a TOY. And its good medicine for you.

Are you awesome because of your gear? Or DO YOU HAVE SKILL?

Cause if I can come in as a noob and wax the floor with your face, you can come here and rage about your gear all you like, but the fact of the matter is you are still pounding your keyboard in frustration because you suck. So man up and go develop some skills, and prove you are the bees knees. Or come here on the forums and whine like a diaper baby that a noob came along and farted in your eye, because you dont have any skill after all.

 

And if you want to sell toys, you dont sell them to 5 kids if you can sell them to 50, even if those 5 quit cause its not special enough anymore. 45 is better than the 5. You get my drift. I think BW is making the smart decision here, even if the vocal forum whiners dont like getting beat by skilled noobs.

 

 

My perspective - bolster is good for business.]

 

Bolster isnt good because its broken.

 

I always see this "skill" arguement and its as lame here as it has been all the other times its been tried to justify a bad or broken system.

Bolster absolutely should NOT be in rated wz's period and it should never have made it into 55 regular wz's either. Having said that instead of taking all expertise off of the old 55 gear why didnt you just put max expertise on every thing, then adjust the stats so they increased, but only slightly with the newer gear. There isnt a huge stat gap between elite and partisan gear and there should never have been a huge gap between any of the pvp gear, just a slight stat increase as you go up in tier.

 

As it stands right now you dont need pvp gear at all and you can exploit the expertise bug with green augs, so yeah you have a broken system.

 

The first thing you need to do is fix the expertise exploit, hell just stop everyone from changing specs or gear in wz's and that ends it. Second take bolster completely out of rated wz's. Last, all pvp gear at level 55 should have max expertise on it, with higher tiers having slightly better stats than the piece just below it, this isnt that hard but you are making it that way.

 

I understand you dont take alot of suggestions from the forums, hey its your money throw it down the rabbit hole if you want, but since all your "great ideas" took us from millions of subs to a few 100k, if that, might it be time to be more open to customer suggestion, just sayin.

[blooddodo]

Question.

 

I saw a guy whose only source of expertise was his mh weapon. He had 2k exp bolstered.

Later, I saw another guy with no expertise from gear. Again, 2k bolstered.

Both at level 55, both wearing some form of PvE purple gear, with a couple of blues.

 

The question - HOW?!

[Astarica]

Question.

 

I saw a guy whose only source of expertise was his mh weapon. He had 2k exp bolstered.

Later, I saw another guy with no expertise from gear. Again, 2k bolstered.

Both at level 55, both wearing some form of PvE purple gear, with a couple of blues.

 

The question - HOW?!

 

Any PvE gear below rating 152 has effectively the max Expertise. This is most likely because Conqueror is rating 154 and it's intended that the differenec between Conqueror and lesser gear to be small. Ironically, the difference between Conqueror and UW is bigger than the differnce between Conqueror and rating 152 gear, because UW takes a serious hit on expertise for being above rating 154 that more than offsets the stat difference.

[Givemedanger]

There must be some sort of gear progression. Without gear many of us would have no incentive to play. It's not cool atm that gear doesn't matter much.

 

With my current gear (sorcerer) i get no bolster to expertise/mainstat/endurance/crit/surge/alacrity. I only get a boost to power and small to armor rating.

 

I'd also like the bolster to be removed but i see one problem. ATM it also gves you more power - for me about 80 more force power (damage) inside a warzone. If the bolster got removed my dps would get lower and killing someone would be a problem - not to mention killing a healer. Immortal tanks anyone?

Edited May 1, 2013 by Givemedanger

[Atramar]

There must be some sort of gear progression. Without gear many of us would have no incentive to play. It's not cool atm that gear doesn't matter much.

 

With my current gear (sorcerer) i get no bolster to expertise/mainstat/endurance/crit/surge/alacrity. I only get a boost to power and small to armor rating.

 

I'd also like the bolster to be removed but i see one problem. ATM it also gves you more power - for me about 80 more force power (damage) inside a warzone. If the bolster got removed my dps would get lower and killing someone would be a problem - not to mention killing a healer. Immortal tanks anyone?

 

progression is still there, it's just smaller (about 8%?) and allows my tank, which I don't pvp in a long long time, come back and have some fun in my pve tanking gear. am I better then full pvp tank? nope (part of it is that pvp itemization will go further with HP then tanking stats and endu/power augments instead of def/power). is difference big enouth to make my team rage at me? nope. could I contribute to the team guarding objectves,healers and carrying a ball? Yes.

[Lortemand]

i play a sniper and have almost full partisan, only 2 items missing. I get 2-3 gcded by everyone, the pvp stat doesnt seem to do anything. the guys with elite pve gear win. they crush you in 3 gcds.

[Atramar]

i play a sniper and have almost full partisan, only 2 items missing. I get 2-3 gcded by everyone, the pvp stat doesnt seem to do anything. the guys with elite pve gear win. they crush you in 3 gcds.

 

you are getting 2-3 shotted? by which class?

not to mention, snipers are squishy. roll, cover, kb... that are your defenses, not facetaking an marauder.

[Isislol]

People running in full pve gear with only pvp MH have the same expertise as my full part/conqueror but 200 more endurance/main stat? How is that even fair? Why bother grinding the same 5 warzones every day?

I don't mid bolster in lowbie bracket or even at level cap but if weekends warriors in greens or pve heroes have the same or better stats than someone who pvps for hours every day something is not right.

This game already lost most of its player base after 1.2. that's why they merged ghost servers and now it looks like a lot pvp'er will quit again if the bolster stays in its current state.

[Isislol]

The dev team for this game is full of complete idiots. They will go down in gaming history as the biggest group of clowns to ever grace some small **** hole office.

 

^ This.

[Atramar]

People running in full pve gear with only pvp MH have the same expertise as my full part/conqueror but 200 more endurance/main stat? How is that even fair? Why bother grinding the same 5 warzones every day?

I don't mid bolster in lowbie bracket or even at level cap but if weekends warriors in greens or pve heroes have the same or better stats than someone who pvps for hours every day something is not right.

This game already lost most of its player base after 1.2. that's why they merged ghost servers and now it looks like a lot pvp'er will quit again if the bolster stays in its current state.

 

not quite. my pve geared tank has 1750 expertiese. fully geared pvp tank will still be better. (not to mention different customization)

 

and pve hearoes don't know tactics or pvp rotations. unless you can only kill some one by outgearing them, pve heroes and sunday marauders in greens should not be a problem for such a pro like your self.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Atramar

[Isislol]

and pve hearoes don't know tactics or pvp rotations. unless you can only kill some one by outgearing them, pve heroes and sunday marauders in greens should not be a problem for such a pro like your self.

 

I never said I had a problem killing them or winning games against them but they should not have better stats with broken bolster than someone in full pvp gear. Stop defending bolster and if you want to pvp go get pvp gear or give me bolster in pve.

The old system before 2.0 was fine and only people who cried about gear gap were players with 10 alts or pve'rs doing WZs between raids.

[Atramar]

I never said I had a problem killing them or winning games against them but they should not have better stats with broken bolster than someone in full pvp gear. Stop defending bolster and if you want to pvp go get pvp gear or give me bolster in pve.

The old system before 2.0 was fine and only people who cried about gear gap were players with 10 alts or pve'rs doing WZs between raids.

 

They don't have better stats. unless they use augment exploit. or if you forgot to augment your gear (or if you are gimping your self wearing wrong itemized stuff/old relics)

I do have pvp chars and they are pvp geared, just wanted to have some fun on my pve tank. sue me

 

on pve to gear up you can go L50 hms when you are L55, on pvp you only face L55 people.

 

old system wasnt fine, only people defending it, were people who liked steamrolling recruit geared players and marked them for easy kills.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Atramar

[Isislol]

 

old system wasnt fine, only people defending it, were people who liked steamrolling recruit geared players and marked them for easy kills.

 

Seriously, how long it took to get full WH before 2.0? Maybe a week or two if you actually pvp. Plus you could get comms capped before even hitting 50.

Bolster should never give you stats close or better to some one in full pvp gear. I understand some lazy or casual players enjoy free ride now and don't want bolster fix but most pvp'rs are just frustrated their gear means nothing in WZs anymore. It has nothing to do with skill or rolling undergeared pugs, even good players like to have some kind of advantage if they put countless hour grinding the same WZs. It's the same with pve, you want to get rewarded with gear for clearing harder raids.

[Atramar]

Seriously, how long it took to get full WH before 2.0? Maybe a week or two if you actually pvp. Plus you could get comms capped before even hitting 50.

Bolster should never give you stats close or better to some one in full pvp gear. I understand some lazy or casual players enjoy free ride now and don't want bolster fix but most pvp'rs are just frustrated their gear means nothing in WZs anymore. It has nothing to do with skill or rolling undergeared pugs, even good players like to have some kind of advantage if they put countless hour grinding the same WZs. It's the same with pve, you want to get rewarded with gear for clearing harder raids.

 

don't remember, I didn't care as in recruit I managed to get people killed, and I still do. But how many people simply left for seing 14,5k hp sniper on their team? how many times I heard 'hey, recruit sniper, delete your char and go cap comms in pre 50, you making us lose'.

 

I only once capped comms on pre 50, simply for the reason I hated lowbie pvp for being filled with bads. only char I capped before hitting 50 was my marauder, and I geared her up on L 45 with purples and augments, it was a wrecking ball (anni or carnage, depends on the mood). was that my skill? was that fun for 3 defenders to get killed by a single person before help arrived?

PVE gear in pvp is not free ride. it is weaker. some people have more hp, some have more main stat. some have 1800 expertiese. but unless they are exploiting, they do not have gear advantage.

pvp have their carrot (better gear is there)

pve don't have stick (they are not gimping their team by showing up not in min/maxed pvp gear)

 

it is NOT same for pve.

1st. pve lets you craft gear (66) purples, you can't craft any pvp stuff (excluding crystals).

2nd. for pve you can gear up on easy runs and there is set up progression. on pvp you are all in same hell hole. from recruit, fresh 55 to veterans who would be valor 666 if not the valor cap.

 

only bolster removal I'd think would be good idea, is ranked WZ pvp. that is different story.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Atramar

[DarthKalldin]

"Partisan and Conquer gear are still highly valuable and give better stats than Bolster so that max level PvP should be intact as we designed, it is just unfortunate that the system has bugs in it that make getting to that point frustrating. "

 

FALSE BW! ^^

 

This system sucks at the moment!

Why? I replaced 5 peaces of EWH armor (gear for players lvl 50 - if you don't remember) with Partisan armor (gear for lvl 55 ), and got around 40 expertise more! Almost same stats, after completing expansion with 5 levels, and after obtaining 2nd best armor (thats Partisan) for PvP! WoW!

 

You should boost partisan armor item level, including all stats...

OR/AND lover bolster in 55 lvl war zones, OR simply remove bolster system, and add recruit set once again...

Edited May 4, 2013 by DarthKalldin

[Lord_Oz]

Frankly I'm amazed at how they're treating pve players in pvp with this bolster mechanic. While I get the idea, the implementation has been quite idiotic. PVPers don't get bolstered in FP's and OP's do they? I get the streamlining of entry level pvp, but why after months of testing were the concerns raised on the beta and pts just ignored? The disparity in pvp and pve gear concerns me as well. What if a pvper wants to get into some FP's and not suck, shouldn't our gear atleast be somewhat viable in those rare occurences? I mean PVE 66's are right now.

 

Let's start with the gear tiers.

PVP

Partisan - iLevel 63 mods w/ Expertise

Conqueror - iLevel 65 mods w/ Expertise

 

PVE

Arkanian - iLevel 69 mods / no expertise

Underworld -iLevel 72 mods / no expertise

 

Random LEVEL 53/54 Armorings/Mods/Enhancements/implants/etc - iLevel 66

 

Now, I understand bolster is supposed to be the "New Recruit", and I understand the IDEA of wanting to separate PVE and PVP tiers so that one is not as beneficial in the others environment, but the degree to which the sets are itemized is a little much IMO.

 

As I see it, Partisan should have been 66 - (identical to what can be CRAFTED which takes zero time sink), and Conqueror should have been 69. This would have the effect of still being inferior to it's competing PVE tier, yet would actually have made obtaining the gear in PVP desireable, because right now, it's really disgusting how people can walk in to WZ's in crafted 63's or greens with aug slots and (exploiting or not) be on level with those that have half conq/half partisan ( fully geared in the new pvp armor). There has to be some kind of gap, I'm not saying it should be what Recruit to EWH was or BM to WH even, but there needs to be some gap or there becomes an issue with desire to progress to the new gear.

 

So like others have said, Partisan and Conqueror need to be buffed, at least to 66 and 69 respectively. Just think of the next tier's gap between PVE and PVP, PVE will be 75's, and PVP will just be getting 68? If this bolster system persists, will they have to make even MORE adjustments to it then (and risk screwing up something yet again/introducing more bugs) in order for the PVE gear to truly be subpar to the matching PVP gear?

Edited May 5, 2013 by Lord_Oz

[cashogy_reborn]

"Partisan and Conquer gear are still highly valuable and give better stats than Bolster so that max level PvP should be intact as we designed, it is just unfortunate that the system has bugs in it that make getting to that point frustrating. "

 

FALSE BW! ^^

 

This system sucks at the moment!

Why? I replaced 5 peaces of EWH armor (gear for players lvl 50 - if you don't remember) with Partisan armor (gear for lvl 55 ), and got around 40 expertise more! Almost same stats, after completing expansion with 5 levels, and after obtaining 2nd best armor (thats Partisan) for PvP! WoW!

 

You should boost partisan armor item level, including all stats...

OR/AND lover bolster in 55 lvl war zones, OR simply remove bolster system, and add recruit set once again...

 

you do realize the backwards logic here right?

 

pre 2.0 bolster, people complained that the gear gap was too great between PvP and non-PvP gear. bioware fixed that w/ 2.0 bolster

 

right when 2.0 came out, people complained that level 50 PvP gear was too far below level 55 PvE gear. bioware fixed that by adjusting WH/EWH gear to function better w/ bolster

 

now, people are complaining that level 55 PvP gear is not enough of a boost over what level 50 gear gets from bolster.

 

do you see the issue here? the community whined, and got what it wanted, and then whined some more about it.

[Skolops]

not quite. my pve geared tank has 1750 expertiese. fully geared pvp tank will still be better. (not to mention different customization)

 

and pve hearoes don't know tactics or pvp rotations. unless you can only kill some one by outgearing them, pve heroes and sunday marauders in greens should not be a problem for such a pro like your self.

 

There are people in full 66 PvE gear who are getting 2000 expertise. Along with the level 66 stats, this makes it better than conqueror. This is obviously not intended, but its an enormous problem.

[_Kayko_]

The second issue we want to address is concerns over the balance between level 55 PvE and PvP gear. -snip-

 

After some investigation, it appears that this is true, but it is not intended. Although we always want to keep the PvP environment competitive even for players not wearing full PvP sets, Partisan and Conqueror should be performing better in Warzones than their PvE counterparts. We will be deploying a fix for this in 2.0.1 which will be coming out on Tuesday.

 

-snip -

 

-eric

 

 

I'm confused, what exactly are the PvE counterparts of Partisan/Conqueror gear?

While the lvl 72 gear might not have the expertise as a base, it would appear that the loss of this expertise does not match the output gained by the increase in stats making the 72 mods superior to the best available PvP designed items with War Hero / Classic gear still being a viable option in the PvE adjusted world of 2.0 bolster.

 

Perhaps if all the PvP items were to reflect this same 68/72 mod level that the difference would then be correct in making the top end PvE actually worse as it was claimed to be in patch 2.01.

 

We are all aware at this point that an entire set of mods for all classes can be changed in a patch (and not even a significant patch.. this was done to all War Hero in a ".0b" patch.) So with that, I personally can not see this being a difficult thing to create a code for.

 

While I like the idea of players being on a more equal footing when stepping into PvP when they have only done PvE, however, on top of the issues of how expertise scales vs stat weights, this should be working both ways if the intentions of Bolster is to remain in it's current form (and I for one prefer the post 2.0 intent of bolster). For those that prefer the PvP side of the game, they are put at a distinct disadvantage when joining in PvE due to the significant lower mod level on the PvP gear and the stat weight allocation loss from having the expertise.

Edited May 5, 2013 by _Kayko_