Bolster: What it should have been, and why it still doesn't work

[fowlerpdx]

if you're serious, the reason is that you may have noticed that you have to earn your gear in PvE by defeating certain bosses. if you don't win the boss fight, you have no chance of getting that particular piece of gear. that gear then makes the fight easier each successive time as your ops grp "gears up." then they move on to the next raid or the hm version or whatever. you get the point, right? you earn gear in pve for doing well in pve so that you can then tackle the next challenge in pve.

 

the reason there's an extra stat in pvp (expertise in swtor, resilience in wow) is because without such a stat, it would be possible to skip the progression. for example, pre 1.2 swtor, champion gear was so good and so relatively easy to obtain that even if you were only interested in pve, you'd farm ilum for crates and load up on the champion gear until you could get your columi bonus or rakata drops. in sum: champion allowed players to skip the flashpoints and tionese tier entirely.

 

the same applies for pvp: dude could have run all through every pve encounter in the game and thrown on his full rakata gear (again, this worked pre 1.2) and have a gear advantage over 80% of the WZ, who were ppl in champion gear (there wasn't enough expertise to justify the loss of mainstats pre 1.2).

 

the existence of expertise makes sense. for that matter, so does bolster. the problem is that you don't need both of them. expertise is for a gear grind/gear gap system. bolster is for eliminating gear gaps. pick one, BW. make up your mind. the half-assed crap leads to complaints from both ends. do you feel like chinese finger cuffs yet?

 

If it took about the same amount of time invested to reach top-tier equips in either PvP or PvE, why would it matter if some people chose one route or the other and bypass some of the content? They still put in time to build their character. What is inherently bad about a player grinding PvP to get top-tier equipment and then bypassing some of the FPs or OPs? Does that somehow make the game less fun for everyone else?

[foxmob]

If it took about the same amount of time invested to reach top-tier equips in either PvP or PvE, why would it matter if some people chose one route or the other and bypass some of the content? They still put in time to build their character. What is inherently bad about a player grinding PvP to get top-tier equipment and then bypassing some of the FPs or OPs? Does that somehow make the game less fun for everyone else?

 

Justin Verlander may be the best pitcher in baseball, but I don't want him quarterbacking my NFL team.

[TheronFett]

By your logic then we should just get rid of gear. Upon entering a warzone everyone gets "bolstered" to the exact same stat level. Would that be fun?

 

This is an mmo. Gear discrepancies are kind of the point.

 

Here is my logic:

 

First and foremost, I want a challenge. I played in beta as a Pyro Powertech and that's what I rolled for early access and official launch. I remember being a rarity in warzones. Most players rolled Merc because dual pistols looked cool and it was easy to spam tracer missile. Pyro soon became FOTM and every team had at least two. I got tired of it and started rolling alts. In short, I don't enjoy steamrolling everyone around me. Sure it's fun at first. But it gives a false sense of personal ability, and frankly, after awhile it just gets boring. Last, I PvP to win and for fun, not gear. I don't give a **** about stats or medals, I just want to win. I PUG 95% of the time and still win far more often than not.

 

I think PvP should be about the challenge, not the gear. Personally, I'd be fine if they gave every class 1 set of gear and it was the only thing you could equip in a warzone. No mods, no augments, no min/max. Just a base set of gear so that everyone is the same. If you want gear progression, there's PvE. There are operations that get progressively more difficult for that reason.

[ChickenWangs]

I used to support bolster but the more and more I think about ALL the complexities the more I think it need to be taken out of lvl 55 WZs. It is an absolute mess of rules, variations, problems and exploits.

 

I totally understand what they tried to do and I commend them for it. The problem is that PvP gear is rather pointless now and that simply isn't fair for those people who mainly play the game for the PvP aspect. We need expertise. That can't go away else PvE players could waltz into WZs with the best gear.

 

I can only think of a couple simple fixes to this mess:

 

1. If your gear slot is not PvP appropriate piece of gear, it is replaced by a flat stat false piece. The problem is people in powerful PvE gear who want to USE their PvE gear in PvP would have their gear replaced with even worse gear.

 

2. Just bolster expertise with no rules. Make it simple but make it very low. The problem with adding a ton of free expertise is that the system is artificially inflating the value of the gear beyond its gear level. The system should check for 500 expertise. If you don't have at least 500 expertise you get it for free...BUT THAT'S IT. You don't get any more free stats.

 

3. Scrap it. All these rules are a mess and its not possible to balance it correctly.

 

Again people will be lazy and not wear said gear. Many a time I have come upon a WZ (pre 2.0) where the person was wearing Columi and expected to somehow contribute to the team in some manner. Bolster will force them to have decent stats as long as it is at a fixed rate.

[Aelaias]

Here is my logic:

 

First and foremost, I want a challenge. I played in beta as a Pyro Powertech and that's what I rolled for early access and official launch. I remember being a rarity in warzones. Most players rolled Merc because dual pistols looked cool and it was easy to spam tracer missile. Pyro soon became FOTM and every team had at least two. I got tired of it and started rolling alts. In short, I don't enjoy steamrolling everyone around me. Sure it's fun at first. But it gives a false sense of personal ability, and frankly, after awhile it just gets boring. Last, I PvP to win and for fun, not gear. I don't give a **** about stats or medals, I just want to win. I PUG 95% of the time and still win far more often than not.

 

I think PvP should be about the challenge, not the gear. Personally, I'd be fine if they gave every class 1 set of gear and it was the only thing you could equip in a warzone. No mods, no augments, no min/max. Just a base set of gear so that everyone is the same. If you want gear progression, there's PvE. There are operations that get progressively more difficult for that reason.

 

I support this message.

[Astarica]

The reason why PvP gear have progression is that no company is very certain that just the PvP itself is enough to keep people playing. Even stuff like FPS seems to be going toward a trend where you have to grind a few things so your guns do more damage. It may simply be easier to have some kind of grind as opposed to hoping your game is good enough that people will play for the sake of playing it.

 

I've been running some tests on Bolster and I think rating 152 gear (RE crafted purples) are BiS PvE gear for PvP, as they barely lose out to Conqueror gear and have 2 less Expertise after Bolster (148 versus 150 on implants, for examle). I assume the case of rating 156 (purple 66, basic gear) is covered by the fact that there's got to be people running around PvPing in purple 66 and nobody has said anything about how basic gear is awesome in PvP. By the time you get to Arkanian and up, the loss of Expertise is too great that even with bolster, the gear is still inferior (though by a fairly small margin). There's some weirdness going on in the MH/OH slots. One of my test shows a loss of tooltip damage by equipping a BM OH compared to a Partisan OH despite the latter having significantly better offensive stats. I have heard people claiming that Partisan/Conqueror MH/OH are secretly improved in WZs to beat their Arkanian/UW part and that certainly looks possible.

[Happy_Puppy]

I posted something like what the op posted in a another thread. Though with mine it was over all stats not item by item.

 

I think 25% over bolsters is way way to high. In a game that most upgrades are just a few percent I think that doing a %5 to max of 15% is better. Also I think expertise needs to scale less.

 

Such as:

 

Bolstered Base: 2000 expertise

Tier 1 pvp gear: 2100 difference of 5%

Tier 2 pvp gear: 2200 difference of 10%

 

Main stats having a 10 to 15% difference in total from top end pvp gear to brand new 55 is plenty. Anything more and you start to get the gear becomes the factor in a fights not the skill of the players.

[Astarica]

For gear wtih rating of 152 or below you effectively get the maximum Expertise (152 rating gear gets 148 expertise instead of 150 for Partisan on implants).

 

The decline in expertise is considerable once you go above rating 152.

[Aelaias]

The reason why PvP gear have progression is that no company is very certain that just the PvP itself is enough to keep people playing. Even stuff like FPS seems to be going toward a trend where you have to grind a few things so your guns do more damage. It may simply be easier to have some kind of grind as opposed to hoping your game is good enough that people will play for the sake of playing it.

 

That's what Marc Jacobs thought when he created Warhammer Online. Turned out he was wrong but far be it from Bioware to learn from his mistakes. Heck, learning from theirs takes a while.

 

People do NOT enjoy getting stomped by ultimately geared twinks for having the nerve to graduate to endgame PVP. There are enough pathetic wretches who get a kick out of doing unto others or because they have no choice but anyone with a desire for a reasonable challenge from opponents, or... gasp, a sense of class would not have the capacity to enjoy this. The gear progression should be very slight, improving performance by a few percentage points at most, certainly no more than 5% per level. Then you wouldn't need this idiotic bolster that appears to be more than bioware could chew. A recruit set no more than 10% behind conqueror would probably have been better.

Edited April 29, 2013 by Aelaias

[Arkerus]

Again people will be lazy and not wear said gear. Many a time I have come upon a WZ (pre 2.0) where the person was wearing Columi and expected to somehow contribute to the team in some manner. Bolster will force them to have decent stats as long as it is at a fixed rate.

 

I was laying out options. A least with some type of bolster it gives them some expertise. That said, with the mess that all the rules are now I'm in favor of dumping it.

Edited April 29, 2013 by Arkerus

[DarkPharohEclip]

Lemme see if I get this straight. You want a cap on bolstered stats. Let's just call that X.

- Partisan gear X + 10%

- Conqueror gear X + 25%

And you see this as a fix? Gear gaps of 10, 15, and 25% is considered "fair"?

 

PvP should be about competition, not gear. The gear grind that exists now offers a very low gear gap (less than 5%) advantage for those who are truly concerned about gear progression and having the absolute best min/max.

 

Maybe I'm reading your post wrong, but reintroducing (and increasing) a gear gap is not the answer to the problem with PvP.

 

i just have to /sigh at these posts..... Dude, bolster is not working like that. It is still about gear, not about skill. Now it's about who knows how to cheat the system the best. Also, raiding gear is far better than the pvp gear.. Any pve gear seems to be better than the pvp gear.. THis just isn't right. Now if the bolster system actually worked like you are describing it.. Skill > Gear well, maybe I could go for that, but it is not working out like that. It is just making PVE gear the best option to go into a warzone with.

Also, I have no doubt in my mind that this bugged out bolster system is behind all this lag we are starting to experience. They have had to tweak the coding in this game so much that it has created an unstable gaming situation.

[Astarica]

That's what Marc Jacobs thought when he created Warhammer Online. Turned out he was wrong but far be it from Bioware to learn from his mistakes. Heck, learning from theirs takes a while.

 

People do NOT enjoy getting stomped by ultimately geared twinks for having the nerve to graduate to endgame PVP. There are enough pathetic wretches who get a kick out of doing unto others or because they have no choice but anyone with a desire for a reasonable challenge from opponents, or... gasp, a sense of class would not have the capacity to enjoy this. The gear progression should be very slight, improving performance by a few percentage points at most, certainly no more than 5% per level. Then you wouldn't need this idiotic bolster that appears to be more than bioware could chew. A recruit set no more than 10% behind conqueror would probably have been better.

 

I'm not saying this philsophy is right. I'm just saying you can tell there's clearly a design of treadmill even in PvP due to fear of totally equal PvP being 'not good enough' for $15/month.

 

At any rate if Recruit set is at most 10% behind conqueror and easily affordable people would be crying about how all their hard work didn't pay off as they can no longer faceroll people, which is the same thing we're getting right now as bolster (not counting bugs) prevents you from using Conqueror gear and just faceroll people.

[Draqsko]

The reason why PvP gear have progression is that no company is very certain that just the PvP itself is enough to keep people playing. Even stuff like FPS seems to be going toward a trend where you have to grind a few things so your guns do more damage. It may simply be easier to have some kind of grind as opposed to hoping your game is good enough that people will play for the sake of playing it.

 

I've been running some tests on Bolster and I think rating 152 gear (RE crafted purples) are BiS PvE gear for PvP, as they barely lose out to Conqueror gear and have 2 less Expertise after Bolster (148 versus 150 on implants, for examle). I assume the case of rating 156 (purple 66, basic gear) is covered by the fact that there's got to be people running around PvPing in purple 66 and nobody has said anything about how basic gear is awesome in PvP. By the time you get to Arkanian and up, the loss of Expertise is too great that even with bolster, the gear is still inferior (though by a fairly small margin). There's some weirdness going on in the MH/OH slots. One of my test shows a loss of tooltip damage by equipping a BM OH compared to a Partisan OH despite the latter having significantly better offensive stats. I have heard people claiming that Partisan/Conqueror MH/OH are secretly improved in WZs to beat their Arkanian/UW part and that certainly looks possible.

 

^ This.. I confirm this has been my experience with upgrading from purple 61/63 tanking gear, to purple 66/69. Basic gear is ok, you'll get a slight loss of expertise on it, but the stats you gain from the gear make up for this. Arkanian/Black Market gear though, it's just brutal the effect of the loss of expertise, and I'd hate to PvP in Verpine/Underworld gear. The loss of expertise from bolster on that set will just make you useless in PvP. Everyone saying that people are rolling into PvP in top tier raiding gear and owning everyone in PvP CLEARLY has no idea what they are talking about. The only way someone would be owning you in top tier raiding gear is if they are using the exploit for augment slots. Now that is an entirely separate issue than trying to argue that bolster is giving PvE gear too much.

 

I'll repeat again, at half level 66 purple and half level 69 purple with Campaign Relics, and earpiece, I get 1700 expertise. The healer I go with who has one more piece of 69 instead of 66 in that mix, gets 1630 expertise.

 

In response to the post I quoted, Arkanian/Black Market MH/OHs probably take the biggest expertise hit versus their Partisan counterparts than any other piece of equipment that I've seen. I don't think that the PvP Mh/OH is necessarily buffed persay but the expertise hit is considerably bigger compared to armor pieces for example. Of course that would ultimately have the same effect.

[DarthBama]

Here is my system.

 

Minimum expertise 1900

The non-expertise stats on each mod gets boosted to the relative 54 mod in pre-54 and the relative top PvE mod in 55 PvE. You have something empty, tough luck (exception being relics since they are gated by alignment).

 

Here are some examples.

Conquer armoring gets boosted to Underworld stats

A level 35 player with a level 35 purple armoring gets boosted to the same type of purple 54 armoring.

A level 35 player with a blue 35 armoring gets boosted to same type blue 35 armoring.

A lazy level 35 player with level 10 armoring, gets boosted to green 54 armoring minus a stat penalty for having such a wide difference between armoring level and character level.