lol bolster

[Master-Nala]

That, and I guess Rob needs to make sure he fully appreciates how many holes bolster has at 55. It'll take them weeks to iron them all out, and well, they're going to lose a good bit of people along the way. My guild's login rate has dropped about 50% within 2-3 weeks since the release. It's just sad, my PvP centric guild has dropped activity like a rock. I'm logging in at 8-9pm at night, and seeing maybe 5 other people online these days...

 

This is what I don't get. Bolster is buggy, but it's not that bad. Nowhere near bad enough to justify all this complaining.

[islander]

This is what I don't get. Bolster is buggy, but it's not that bad. Nowhere near bad enough to justify all this complaining.

 

Today? Not chronically bad. However, this expansion is a month old...and in this time many people in my guild have seen every bug we reported be unfixed. The gutting of level 50 war hero gear really did a number on morale honestly(it was kept in tact just fine on PTS - inferior, but at least max expertise)...and then relying on the various degrees of unbalanced/broken bolster, combined with the still today unbalancing of gear bolstering, fringe exploiting, and pure augment exploiting...

 

I'm really not sure how anyone in their right mind could consider this past month "not that bad".

Edited May 6, 2013 by islander

[Pistols]

This is what I don't get. Bolster is buggy, but it's not that bad. Nowhere near bad enough to justify all this complaining.

 

It's not "buggy", it's exploitable, there is a difference. It's also been abused for over a month, the justification is evident to the non-droolers.

 

/end

[Astarica]

The exploits are Bioware's fault, though it takes time to fix exploits. I don't like the time they're taking to fix it but it's not like they built a system to be exploited on purpose (though it really shouldn't have been very hard to put a sanity check to cap any gear's power at Conqueror no matter what).

 

There's also the guys who don't understand Bolster and think they're getting better gear while wearing the wrong thing. I suppose you can blame Bioware for thinking the players might actually be smart and wear PvP gear, and they're at fault for not slapping the guys wearing the wrong gear (Arkanian and up) really hard so that they instantly die and wouldn't possibly ever attempt to do that again. Ironically it's because Bolster mostly works that you at least have a playable character even while wearing all the wrong PvE gear to the point people actually believe they're doing better.

[islander]

See, Bioware had it wrong. The smart people are the ones who figure out that level 12 green bolsters better then their 55 partisan item.

 

Me, I'm stupid. I just wear my PvP gear like a minion

[Astarica]

See, Bioware had it wrong. The smart people are the ones who figure out that level 12 green bolsters better then their 55 partisan item.

 

Me, I'm stupid. I just wear my PvP gear like a minion

 

That's only true if you're doing the augment exploit and that's clearly not intended by design. The time it took to fix this does leave a lot to be desired, though.

[Master-Nala]

It's not "buggy", it's exploitable, there is a difference. It's also been abused for over a month, the justification is evident to the non-droolers.

 

/end

 

Resorting to insults and hyperbole just shows how silly this all is. Bolster definitely has a lot of problems, but to hear people tell it every loss since 2.0 has been the result of exploits and unfairness. MMOs are works in progress. It's just a game, enjoy it for what it is until it gets fixed or go to some other game that you think does it better.

[ebado]

Tomorrow will be a month of broken bolster and rampant exploiting.

 

Broken bolster = not urgent enough to fix

Exploiting = OK

 

Will we reach five weeks? Maybe six?

[Chickensevil]

Hey everyone, I have seen a lot of questions about why Bolster exists at 55 given the issues we have been having. I talked to Rob Hinkle and here is his explanation on why Bolster exists as a system at level 55.

 

 

 

I appreciate the response here on why we need bolster. I was never one to suggest throwing it out for normal play, but why do we even have this in ranked? From what I have seen the biggest location where these bugs are getting exploited are in ranked. On top of that, people should be reasonably expected to at least get a full set of partisan gear on their own before ever touching ranked. Would be the equivalent of having a gear bolster in nightmare PVE. You just hit 55? You don't need to gear up for NiM just join a group and go!

 

Many people already are sad that the best LOOKING gear is on the CM and then to make the best stat gear not come from doing the hardest content? Really, really depressing. I see the purpose at 55 bolster, always have... but not for ranked.

[stephenalandavie]

Hey everyone, I have seen a lot of questions about why Bolster exists at 55 given the issues we have been having. I talked to Rob Hinkle and here is his explanation on why Bolster exists as a system at level 55.

 

 

 

This some form of joke? People have been asking for weeks what is going to be done about it not why does it exist. I think we all get this we are not imbeciles. Its getting old now this just some answer as to what is going to be done concerning bolster would be nice. Not fed with this rubbish.

[theeliteninja]

Put bolster in PVE content too. I have not been doing PVP recently, but when I did I know that it takes a lot of dedication to get that gear, much more than it does to get good gear in PVE. It is a shame that the hard earned gear people get from pvp is next to useless.

[tman_ac]

I actually think progressing in PvP is fun. When I started to play more PvP my gear wasn't good as well. Sure, it was frustrating sometimes to get killed like a headless chicken from a guy who had superior gear, but in the end my motivation was to farm enough commendations to get better gear.

 

Seriously, why don't you just remove every gear and give us fixed stats for PvP and PvE. Would make the world so much easier (boring)...

 

Progression is something you have to calculate in while playing a MMO. I am not against the bolster system as it was prior to 2.0, but bolstering the end-game level is just not the correct way in my opinion.

[Majram]

This some form of joke? People have been asking for weeks what is going to be done about it not why does it exist. I think we all get this we are not imbeciles. Its getting old now this just some answer as to what is going to be done concerning bolster would be nice. Not fed with this rubbish.

 

I think we are being trolled...

[thesadplanet]

If this is the response we're getting, then it truly seems like Eric Musco and Rob Hinkle have completely missed the point of the entire issue of the bolster system.

 

Even the general forum community, which often resembles a small, yet vocal minority compared to the actual playerbase, for the most part, had no issues with the concept of the bolster system. The problem is, you released a product that was completely and utterly broken, and have still not fixed it.

 

Everything about the implementation of the bolster system was extremely unprofessional. On the PTS, there were hoardes of bugs reported on the bolster system, one of the most notable being "naked bolstering". This is a bug was specifically pointed out by devs in forum posts prior to ROTHC's release, saying that it would be fixed. Well, it wasn't.

 

After you fixed that, it was soon discovered that ripping out the enhancements in your war hero gear somehow inexplicably made it better.

 

And now, to this day, if you rip out and re insert your augments, you get an absolutely ridiculous stat boost.

 

To say that this update "did not go as smoothly" as you might have hoped is a massive understatement, and your overall lack of communication with the community throughout these issues is simply pathetic.

[Trevormortis]

Unfortunately, giving away physical gear ran into a number of problems: we couldn’t actually make it as powerful as we wanted without invalidating the gear being dropped in flashpoints, some players simply sold the gear for an immediate cash gain, and a large number of people either didn’t ever acquire the Recruit gear or simply didn’t wear it while inside PvP. The result was a rather harsh introduction to PvP for fresh level 50 players into the established PvP end-game that resulted in a significant drop off in participation of PvP.

 

So you identify 3 problems with recruit gear (and therefore why you chose to switch to bolster)...

1. Recruit gear was better than flashpoint gear.

2. People sold the gear because they preferred 300+k credits to having a lower tier pvp set.

3. People didn't receive the gear or they chose not to wear it in pvp.

 

# 2 and #3 are bs. So...... because people decided that they would rather have some credits than pvp in decent gear, you decide to cater to those people instead of your actual pvp community?. (If you sell that gear and ***** about people beating you, you are not part of the pvp community and have no right to be upset.)

 

I'm also unaware of anyone not receiving their recruit gear. If that actually happened, that's news to me. To me this sounds like you had no real excuses for why you made the changes you made, but instead you are having to make some up because you have now been put on the spot.

 

-and if people chose not to wear the gear that you already sent to them via carebear mail, then once again, they decided to do that, and that directly lies on them, not you BW.

 

This only leaves point #1, which I don't really have a good response for yet(I just saw BW's post in the last 10 minutes and haven't had enough time to think it over, plus I'm at work atm, but I'm sure myself or someone else could think of something that could solve that "problem" in due time, without destroying pvp as we know it.

 

If you take out the 2 bs reasons why you switched to a HORRID bolster system (which is broken as can be, is ruining the game for many serious and casual pvp'ers alike, and is causing the loss of sooooo many subscriptions) then that only leaves 1 reason to switch from recruit gear to bolster, and that's because of FP gear.....

 

If that is it.....

 

GG

[Kaizersan]

If you take out the 2 bs reasons why you switched to a HORRID bolster system (which is broken as can be, is ruining the game for many serious and casual pvp'ers alike, and is causing the loss of sooooo many subscriptions) then that only leaves 1 reason to switch from recruit gear to bolster, and that's because of FP gear.....

 

If that is it.....

 

GG

 

I love how you can know they are loosing subs when most nights I see the servers at the same levels as before 2.0 so just go take a time out then come back when you realize maybe you are just not as good at pvp as you thought you were and that you were using the gear pre 2.0 as a crutch for your lack of skill.

[scraycroft]

This some form of joke? People have been asking for weeks what is going to be done about it not why does it exist. I think we all get this we are not imbeciles. Its getting old now this just some answer as to what is going to be done concerning bolster would be nice. Not fed with this rubbish.

 

truth

[TUXs]

Hey everyone, I have seen a lot of questions about why Bolster exists at 55 given the issues we have been having. I talked to Rob Hinkle and here is his explanation on why Bolster exists as a system at level 55.

 

 

Eric,

 

Can you explain why the decision was to bolster EVERY item individually? Aside from being a monumental task, it's also the reason there are so many issues being exploited right now.

 

Why didn't you just bolster people to a minimum level of expertise - that was Rob's stated goal after all. Why not just give every player an innate 1500 (or so) "expertise" and let the greater value (gear or innate) prevail? Wouldn't that have alleviated all of the current bugs and been a fraction of the time to implement? If 1500 was too low, bump it to 1600. If that's too low, boost it to 1700.

 

I don't care about "equalizing" PvP and PvE gear, I'm glad the gear gap is diminished - but I do care about the problems I think you've created unnecessarily by trying to over complicate this.

[jgoldsack]

Eric,

 

Can you explain why the decision was to bolster EVERY item individually? Aside from being a monumental task, it's also the reason there are so many issues being exploited right now.

 

Why didn't you just bolster people to a minimum level of expertise - that was Rob's stated goal after all. Why not just give every player an innate 1500 (or so) "expertise" and let the greater value (gear or innate) prevail? Wouldn't that have alleviated all of the current bugs and been a fraction of the time to implement? If 1500 was too low, bump it to 1600. If that's too low, boost it to 1700.

 

I don't care about "equalizing" PvP and PvE gear, I'm glad the gear gap is diminished - but I do care about the problems I think you've created unnecessarily by trying to over complicate this.

 

Indeed. I was under the assumption that is how it was done when they explained bolster initially... if your gear was lower than partisan, you got bumped up to partisan level, on a per slot basis. Not that every item inside every item was also taken into consideration, more of an "ilevel" kind of bolster.

 

They failed to follow the KISS rule.

[chriscruiz]

PvP would be a lot better if they...

Remove bolster from the 55 bracket

Implement Cross server ranked warzones which was promised a loooong time ago.

[MitchPB]

So since i can walk into a WZ in lvl 10 greens and have the same stats as someone in full conq can we have a bolster for PVE as well?

 

Or you could be sensible and remove this garbage system because it is a complete slap in the face to players who put time and effort into PVP.

 

Stop listening to the crying carebares BW.

[sanchito]

If this is the response we're getting, then it truly seems like Eric Musco and Rob Hinkle have completely missed the point of the entire issue of the bolster system.

 

Even the general forum community, which often resembles a small, yet vocal minority compared to the actual playerbase, for the most part, had no issues with the concept of the bolster system. The problem is, you released a product that was completely and utterly broken, and have still not fixed it.

 

Everything about the implementation of the bolster system was extremely unprofessional. On the PTS, there were hoardes of bugs reported on the bolster system, one of the most notable being "naked bolstering". This is a bug was specifically pointed out by devs in forum posts prior to ROTHC's release, saying that it would be fixed. Well, it wasn't.

 

After you fixed that, it was soon discovered that ripping out the enhancements in your war hero gear somehow inexplicably made it better.

 

And now, to this day, if you rip out and re insert your augments, you get an absolutely ridiculous stat boost.

 

To say that this update "did not go as smoothly" as you might have hoped is a massive understatement, and your overall lack of communication with the community throughout these issues is simply pathetic.

 

my thoughts exactly

[TUXs]

Indeed. I was under the assumption that is how it was done when they explained bolster initially... if your gear was lower than partisan, you got bumped up to partisan level, on a per slot basis. Not that every item inside every item was also taken into consideration, more of an "ilevel" kind of bolster.

 

They failed to follow the KISS rule.

 

EXACTLY!!!! They didn't look at "every slot", they looked at every item inside every slot - completely over complicating what they needed to do! They could have simply assigned every gear slot (singular, not mods+enhancements+armorings+augments) a "default" expertise level. If Conq gear gives 150 Expertise, "bolster" could give 130 or whatever - If the slot ever exceeded 130, that value would be taken.

 

What sucks is that I asked about this VERY possibility (swapping gear inside a WZ) the day Rob (or whoever it was) posted about the "new 2.0 Bolster" - I asked him if they had taken into account the possibility that players would swap gear to f-with the system, and he replied to that concern with something like "gear is always being looked at in WZ's so this won't happen", which turns out to be 100% false, since this is exactly HOW people are able to exploit it.

[Darkshadz]

So since i can walk into a WZ in lvl 10 greens and have the same stats as someone in full conq can we have a bolster for PVE as well?

 

Or you could be sensible and remove this garbage system because it is a complete slap in the face to players who put time and effort into PVP.

 

Stop listening to the crying carebares BW.

 

The system is not garbage, the players are (well lots of them in PUGs) Going back to the old system would be far worse. They have better ways than you to know what the community (and not a small bunch of players with a big ego trolling the pvp forums) really want. Although I don't do rated, I do watch rated pvp WZs on Twitch.tv and from what I see the bolster is fine for the most part. Let's just hope they fix the issues ASAP. The sky is not falling....

[khsolo]

One of the first things we want to address are concerns about how our change has affected players in WH and EWH in the open world. The simple explanation is that due to the way our itemization works, we had to make the choice that WH gear would either be good in open world (and not viable in Warzones) or viable in Warzones (but lacked Expertise in open world situations). We decided that since a large majority of the PvP that occurs in our game and the place where players worked to receive the gear is Warzones, that we would side with Warzones overall.

 

We completely understand that the desire from everyone would be that WH/EWH was viable in both open world PvP and Warzones, but unfortunately that just was not a possibility in this case.

 

And thats exactly the problem there when you have diff gears with diff stats, people who do wz and have expertise in the gear have a unfair advantage against those doing basically pve in a pvp open world area and can just gank them at will and laugh their way to the bank = no fun for those questing in open world with pve gear when found by someone with expertise gear

 

The whole expertise idea is imo terrible and its a problem that will have no solution as long as expertise exists bacause you have 3 games, pvp in open world, pvp vs pvp and pve and on top of that you have 2 sets of gear, you will have imbalances all around when you try to balance the 2 different gears out against the 3 possible situations, its just impossible and as long as expertise exists one or two or all 3 types of game experiences will fail