Level 54 gear

[Zunayson]

This is absurd:

 

...Before 2.0 players obtained sets of PvE gear, the Dread Guard (and Campaign) sets, to players as they reached the max content of the game. This gear was intended to set the minimum power level of players inside Flaspoints and operations, making sure that regardless of what gear you’ve managed to obtain as you were leveling, you were at “X” power level at the worst.

 

[...]Unfortunately, giving away physical gear ran into a number of problems: ...some players simply sold the gear for an immediate cash gain, and a large number of people either didn’t ever acquire the Dreadguard gear from operations or simply didn’t wear it while inside PvE operations. The result was a rather harsh introduction to PvE for veteran level 50 players....

 

[...]So, we decided to give bolster to all content in the entire game to make sure that everyone is always able to play and be competitive.

 

 

 

 

I mean it's like they didn't even mention the most valid reason for why recruit set was bad - inventory space! Lol...

Edited June 13, 2013 by Zunayson

[BoushhDC]

so untill BW says so...like saying, i didnt know it was not ok to rob a bank just because i didnt know the law....not as extreme but noone has to tell me right from wrong...or an obvious error on BWs side(using it aka exploiting the unintentional adantage is exploiting the flaw in the game. but since you need BW to tell you sooo and you cant read Dev tracker for yourself......here you go

 

 

 

EricMusco Hey Look At Me- I'm A Sensational PvP Bug, Fix Me | 06.04.2013, 04:55 PM

Hey everyone,

 

I just wanted to let you know that I have passed this on the PvP/Combat folks. They are aware of the issue and are actively working on a solution. I will pass on more information as I have it!

 

-eric

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/devtracker.php?page=5

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6393615#edit6393615

 

KK!

 

It's an "issue." Surely you read that before referring to the same post 3 times. lol.

 

Does that mean a "hack" which is something, for example, people perpetrate by using a 3rd party program to spoof the code? Is it a "bug" which is something like "oopsie, how the heck did that get messed up?" like how our WZ buttons on the UI have been going blacked out frequently and periodically? Is it an "exploit" like when players with Scamper figured out that they could leap over the final barrier in Voidstar (which everyone else has to use the terminals under pressure) even though NOBODY else is able, or supposed to be able, to do it? OR is it something else, not one of those three?

 

The lvl 54 gear pieces have been reported by those that have tested as a trade off for secondary stats of one's choosing at the expense of higher main stat and endurance with nominal differences in Expertise (crafted gear being the lower of the two). BW's expressed idea behind bolster is to make the differences between ALL types of gear, nominal without abandoning gear progression completely. They also said in their official statements, that this new system will enable them to "tweak" aspects to their liking more readily from their end on an item by item basis. They're paying attention to the ISSUE to see how things are shaking out with respect to their entire, overly-complicated system. They'll look at it and see if adjustments need to be made to get the lolbolster closer to where they envision it. However I look at it, it looks like a choice to me.

 

But -- and I hate to burst your self-righteous bubble -- they might do their internal evaluation and determine that the hysteria isn't justified. Or they might "tweak" their numbers again because it's not quite what they wanted. Or, they might think it's fine, but since players have their panties all in a bunch over a perceived "exploit" or whatever misnomer you wish to arbitrarily assign it, they may change it anyway. I really don't care because I'll run my WZs anyway.

 

I'll continue to think this bolster system was a mistake because I never minded the grind in any of it's phases... well, maybe when gear was based upon RNG, that kinda sucked since my personal RNG has always been lousy. lol.

 

But yeah, your "robbing a bank" analogy is more akin to using a 3rd party hack program and therefore doesn't apply to using items designed to be in the game by the developers and used as intended and that would be *gasp* wearing them. lol. Sorry, fail analogy.

 

Oh, and since you brought up matters of law -- and since you think you don't need to be told right from wrong -- you might want to ponder "libel" a little.

Edited June 13, 2013 by BoushhDC

[Megachronic]

It's an "issue." Surely you read that before referring to the same post 3 times. lol.

 

Does that mean a "hack" which is something, for example, people perpetrate by using a 3rd party program to spoof the code? Is it a "bug" which is something like "oopsie, how the heck did that get messed up?" like how our WZ buttons on the UI have been going blacked out frequently and periodically? Is it an "exploit" like when players with Scamper figured out that they could leap over the final barrier in Voidstar (which everyone else has to use the terminals under pressure) even though NOBODY else is able, or supposed to be able, to do it? OR is it something else, not one of those three?

 

 

I'll continue to think this bolster system was a mistake because I never minded the grind in any of it's phases... well, maybe when gear was based upon RNG, that kinda sucked since my personal RNG has always been lousy. lol.

 

 

Oh, and since you brought up matters of law -- and since you think you don't need to be told right from wrong -- you might want to ponder "libel" a little.

 

Definition of exploit (vt)

Bing Dictionary

ex·ploit1.take advantage of somebody: to take selfish or unfair advantage of a person or situation, usually for personal gain

 

Seems like your trying to justify the use of 54s in wzs, just man up and say "hey, if you can't beat em join em"

 

That i could respect.

 

Its obviously not the intent of BW to make crafted items better than partisan/conq. They nerfed the UW gear via bolster with less expertise. I will search the dev tracker but im pretty sure there was a post saying that pvp gear was intended to be the best gear for pvp, boslster is there to narrow the gap not to make other items better.

[BoushhDC]

Definition of exploit (vt)

Bing Dictionary

ex·ploit1.take advantage of somebody: to take selfish or unfair advantage of a person or situation, usually for personal gain

 

Crafted gear is "unfair" in what sense, since it's available to everyone? (BTW, Unfair is defined as "Not based on or behaving according to the principles of equality." -- Since you like that kind of thing.) Anyway, It kinda sounds to me just like what those that have been arguing that PvP should be about skill over gear have been clamoring for. Are you sure BW didn't cave in to those folks?

 

Do I personally think it should be unarguably better than the best PvP gear? No, but again I'm not convinced that it is. Even with that having been said, since no one is prohibited from getting it, I don't get the "unfairness" of it, especially in the strictest definition you provided. Some on this forum would assault such a perception of "unfairness" as no more than some kind of "elitist petulance." You know the rap: "skill>gear"... yada yada.

 

Seems like your trying to justify the use of 54s in wzs [...]

 

No, I'm not justifying it, BW did. BW decided to make the new bolster system where people can wear whatever they want into the WZs. If they are going to allow people to wear PvE (Expertise-less) gear, and coddle players who don't want to do the grind to get PvP gear, that was never up to me.

 

Here's how BioWare justified the use, i.e. allowed, PvE gear in PvP:

 

(Once again, apologies to others that have seen this many times, but some people need to have things cut and pasted just for them, in order to grasp who's really responsible and why).

 

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.

 

...Before 2.0 we gave free sets of PvP gear, the Recruit (and Recruit Mk-2) sets, to players as they reached the max level of the game. This gear was intended to set the minimum power level of players inside Warzones, making sure that regardless of what gear you’ve managed to obtain as you were leveling, you were at “X” power level at the worst.

 

[...]Unfortunately, giving away physical gear ran into a number of problems: ...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....

 

 

So yeah, again, blame those people. Or blame BioWare for caving into them (and potentially, again). I wasn't happy about BW's design decision, the basis for their decision, nor their implementation. Probably the latter has inspired more vitriol than anything else. But here it is. Until they decide to do something different, keep on them to fix things, but realize that there is no indication they are entertaining ideas of abandoning it... not at this point.

 

Its obviously not the intent of BW to make crafted items better than partisan/conq. They nerfed the UW gear via bolster with less expertise. I will search the dev tracker but im pretty sure there was a post saying that pvp gear was intended to be the best gear for pvp, boslster is there to narrow the gap not to make other items better.

 

I honestly don't know what they intend based upon their implementation of the new bolster since it hasn't experienced a single moment of its mutilated existence where it's lived up to what was promised. In terms of what BW's intention is/was in terms of how gear is supposed to stack up against each other, I don't have any idea, but based upon the past, It wouldn't surprise me if they knowingly made it better than Partisan. But then again, the gear progression is nowhere near as obvious as it was under the previous system. Are you actually claiming that through all this heinous nonsense, that YOU know exactly what BioWare intends? Please. I don't think they even specifically know. Just the general idea. I bet they might even describe it as "evolving." heh. Personally, I think their PvP team is a hot, scrambling mess, with regards to the new bolstering system. If they get their ducks in a row, however, they'll change what they think needs to be changed. Until they do, it is what it is from moment to moment, like it or not.

 

To be honest, if my PvP'ing was so easily disrupted by such minor variances as exist at this point with regards to gear, I'd unsub... something others may have to face up to and consider.

Edited June 13, 2013 by BoushhDC

[sanchito]

so untill BW says so...like saying, i didnt know it was not ok to rob a bank just because i didnt know the law....not as extreme but noone has to tell me right from wrong...or an obvious error on BWs side(using it aka exploiting the unintentional adantage is exploiting the flaw in the game. but since you need BW to tell you sooo and you cant read Dev tracker for yourself......here you go!

 

Law is more complicated than that, and so is "punishing exploiters" in this case. Talking about bank robbery, a better analogy would be an ATM who gives out money without actually taking it from your account. Some people will realize what's happening and exploit it, but others will never know what is going on and still end up with money that isn't theirs.

 

Level 54 purple is the top of the leveling gear progression, a lot of people will get it and never play a warzone in it, others will get it and end up warzoning in it without knowing about the bug. Just look at the amount of people still pvping in champion / BM / recruit gear, it's imo a safe assumption to say a big part of the player base has no idea what is going on with bolster.

 

If BW wants to punish exploiters, they have to find a way to know who used it knowingly to gain an advantage and who had no idea what he was doing and accidentally exploited. This will take time and effort they will be reluctant to spend, and frankly, rightfully so, it's a lot more important to fix bolster than to punish people who are gaming the flawed system BW introduced.

 

edit: you can also make an argument that since it's crafted gear and available to anyone it is no exploit in the first place. The gear is not bugged, it has exactly the stats it's supposed to have, only bolster translates those stats wrong.

Edited June 13, 2013 by sanchito

[BoushhDC]

[...]

 

edit: you can also make an argument that since it's crafted gear and available to anyone it is no exploit in the first place. The gear is not bugged, it has exactly the stats it's supposed to have, only bolster translates those stats wrong.

 

You make good points, especially this last. This seems to me the closest to the truth than any of my noted speculations. My central view has been that BW created such a complicated system (the new bolstering) that they have had trouble accurately predicting how items and/or combinations of items would interact under it. I've written as much before, but you elegantly and succinctly cut to the heart of the matter. kudos.

Edited June 13, 2013 by BoushhDC

[Doson]

Lvl 53/54 craftables being BiS is an acknowledged bug. Abusing this bug is exploiting. Not sure why people still think this is working as intended with all the proof in their face. Shadows/Sins running around with electrostaffs is BWs intention? Yeah, sure.... The players who abuse these bugs have a significant advantage over players who don't, so where is it skill > gear now?

 

Anyway.... "Never argue with a fool, on lookers may not be able to tell the difference."

 

....and yes I mean you BoushhDC and all your ignorant friends.

[BoushhDC]

Lvl 53/54 craftables being BiS is an acknowledged bug. Abusing this bug is exploiting. Not sure why people still think this is working as intended with all the proof in their face. Shadows/Sins running around with electrostaffs is BWs intention? Yeah, sure.... The players who abuse these bugs have a significant advantage over players who don't, so where is it skill > gear now?

 

Anyway.... "Never argue with a fool, on lookers may not be able to tell the difference."

 

....and yes I mean you BoushhDC and all your ignorant friends.

 

I've stated, ad nauseum, that I think that BWs new bolstering system has been a mess. Plain and simple. l2read and get over yourself. lol.

Edited June 13, 2013 by BoushhDC

[Megachronic]

Law is more complicated than that, and so is "punishing exploiters" in this case. Talking about bank robbery, a better analogy would be an ATM who gives out money without actually taking it from your account. Some people will realize what's happening and exploit it, but others will never know what is going on and still end up with money that isn't theirs.

 

Level 54 purple is the top of the leveling gear progression, a lot of people will get it and never play a warzone in it, others will get it and end up warzoning in it without knowing about the bug. If BW wants to punish exploiters, they have to find a way to know who used it knowingly to gain an advantage and who had no idea what he was doing and accidentally exploited. This will take time and effort they will be reluctant to spend, and frankly, rightfully so, it's a lot more important to fix bolster than to punish people who are gaming the flawed system BW introduced.

 

I never said to punish the people using this exploit, and the ones that are ignorant of the bolster flaws obviously are not exploiting...the OP is refering to RWZ

 

What are the servers doing about 54 gear in rateds. Are all the top guilds running the 54 gear now or are you guys not using it because you consider it an exploit? As of right now it's tough to say for me because everyone can get the gear, but just using 54 gear over my pvp gear kinda bothers me. But I am not going to gimp myself if all the top rateds teams are using it.

 

we are talking about people that already have pvp gear or have access to it and have chosen to use the lv54 purples that are scaling as greens via bolster to gain an advantage...its the definition of exploiting

[Megachronic]

BW please fix this...If I could be the best dps in TFB Nightmare mode with 54 craftables...would the pve community be ok with this????

[sirullrich]

I hope your PVP skills are better then your reading comprehension.

 

But yeah, I get it, MMO's are a time sink and some of the PVP community wish to be rewarded because of that. At the end of the day everyone who PVP's long enough in this game will have the same gear regardless. My only gripe was about the constant whining about the temporary unfairness of the level 54 gear.

 

Do crafted level 54 epics that act as green quality bolstered items contradict the essence of MMO PVP? Sure it does.

 

In theory the longer you play IE: how many hours you play during a given period of time/patch update, the better your gear/reputation etc will be and players want to be "rewarded" for said time sink.

 

All of that is fine and good, however I've been around ALOT of high level PVP players and honestly, gear doesn't mean a whole hell of alot to them. For example Warcraft would release a tournament server where they give everyone access to the same gear etc and the top PVPers would still be at the top.

 

Essentially, if the main reason you're PVPing is because you want to walk around the fleet in full top tier PVP gear with your character tab open admiring what you've accomplished with your time, then maybe you're better suited for PVE.

 

That doesn't mean to people in WOW don't like there gear. They entered a special tournament where gear is provided what does that prove????????? Better pvpers will always be better with or w/o gear and it is the same for PVE better raiders will always be better with or w/o gear. If pvpers don't need gear neither do pvers.

[Draekos]

Better pvpers will always be better with or w/o gear

 

So what are you doing QQing here Mr. PvP superstar?

[Delta_V]

First of all, this issue needs to be fixed sooner rather than later.

 

However, I'm not sure Bolster (despite all it's other problems) is the source of the issue here. The other day, I inspected the gear of a guildmate on the Fleet (so no bolster involved) who was using a pair of purple 54 implants, and the implants only showed up as green items in the inspection screen.

 

That seems to imply that Bolster is not the source of the problem. Level 54 green items are most likely getting bolstered exactly as intended. However, something else in the game's code is incorrectly identifying purple items as green items, and this incorrect data then gets passed to the Bolster system.

 

tl;dr: for all of Bolster's issues, it is most likely working as intended in this case, and this issue is probably caused by a bug in a different piece of code.

Edited June 16, 2013 by Delta_V

[Avicii]

First of all, this issue needs to be fixed sooner rather than later.

 

However, I'm not sure Bolster (despite all it's other problems) is the source of the issue here. The other day, I inspected the gear of a guildmate on the Fleet (so no bolster involved) who was using a pair of purple 54 implants, and the implants only showed up as green items in the inspection screen.

 

That seems to imply that Bolster is not the source of the problem. Level 54 green items are most likely getting bolstered exactly as intended. However, something else in the game's code is incorrectly identifying purple items as green items, and this incorrect data then gets passed to the Bolster system.

 

tl;dr: for all of Bolster's issues, it is most likely working as intended in this case, and this issue is probably caused by a bug in a different piece of code.

 

 

To add to this I craft and sell the 54 implants and when I go to get the returned ones out of the mail when you view them, they are still purple, but they don't display all the stats there is typically 1 secondary stat gone from them. However when they are in my bag you can see all the stats again. Maybe this is a known issue just something to add to the issue with them.