Bolster Changes in Game Update 5.1

[Vember]

What does GW2 class balance has to do with this?! You are complaining about class balance of GW2 in SWTOR forums

 

 

You brought up class balance slugger, in a direct comparison of the two pvp systems. Which made me laugh. With much gusto.

 

I've been playing GW2 since launch. That game has great pve, absolutely terrible pvp. SWTOR pvp is far and away superior in every possible way.

 

But I do wish we'd get more pvp maps. 8v8, not that arena ********.

Edited January 27, 2017 by Vember

[Evolixe]

I don't really see why everyone is sucking up to Bioware so much for this "great sign of communication post" when literally all they have done is made an announcement. They aren't communicating ****.

 

Look at the silence now. I mean, there have been DOZENS of decent posts in this thread.. they might read them. But they won't put them under consideration.

 

Prove me wrong Bioware. Untill then, there is nothing to be thankful or excited about.

[Vember]

Just a matter of time until your next "Unsub and uninstall" post Evo, amirite?

[Evolixe]

Just a matter of time until your next "Unsub and uninstall" post Evo, amirite?

 

Not really.

 

That doesn't mean I won't criticize Bioware for doing dumb **** though. You can bet your backend that I will.

Edited January 27, 2017 by Evolixe

[TrixxieTriss]

I don't really see why everyone is sucking up to Bioware so much for this "great sign of communication post" when literally all they have done is made an announcement. They aren't communicating ****.

 

Look at the silence now. I mean, there have been DOZENS of decent posts in this thread.. they might read them. But they won't put them under consideration.

 

Prove me wrong Bioware. Untill then, there is nothing to be thankful or excited about.

 

Pretty much this ^^^

[Lhancelot]

Eric, why the sudden change in direction regarding PVP and gearing? Here is the patch notes to 3.3 you guys posted.

 

Nearly 2 years ago, it was expressed why it was important to NOT have a heavy gear grind for the entry level PVP gears.

 

Many of us are struggling to understand the "why" behind the 5.0 and 5.1 grinding gearing system change that relies heavily on RNG from the alt friendly, much more fun and flexible gearing system that was developed for the 3.3 patch.

 

Can you confirm that you guys are aware of how many people are unhappy with the new gearing system and that you are considering ways to make it better, and if so when?

 

http://www.swtor.com/blog/pvp-economy-and-ranked-rewards-restructure-game-update-3.3

 

Community News

06.01.2015

 

PvP Economy and Ranked Rewards Restructure for Game Update 3.3

 

Hello PvPers! As some of you may have heard on the Bad Feeling Podcast, we are making a few changes to Warzones and Ranked Warzone Arenas. Alex covered several of these changes in the interview but for clarity, and as an official jumping-off point for discussion, we wanted to go over the changes and the reasoning behind them here. Please feel free to join us in the discussion thread linked below. Let’s get started!

 

PvP Gear Cost

 

We think that getting a full set of PvP gear is too much of a grind. This is so much the case that only about 2% of PvP players have a full Dark Reaver set. Having at least Exhumed gear is a barrier to entry to being successful in PvP for the majority of players, so we looked to reduce the time and cost of getting there. We have reduced the entry PvP gear costs by roughly a third, and a full set (not min/maxed) will now cost about 4075 Warzone Commendations. For the Dark Reaver/Ranked set we didn’t reduce the price as much, but Ranked Warzone Comms will no longer be used to buy them; pieces will now be purchased with Warzone Comms and the previous tier gear piece. (Ranked Warzone Comms have been removed from the game, but we’ll touch on that more in the Ranked Reward changes found below.) A full Ranked Gear set will now cost about 16,525 Warzone Comms, much less than the current price of around 29,000 Ranked Comms. The exact prices are still being finalized, but this is the spirit and intent of the changes to PvP gear prices that you'll be seeing. In addition, the character cap for Warzone Comms will be raised to 200,000 and the Daily/Weekly Missions will have increased Credit rewards. These changes will make it easier and faster to gear up and get to a competitive level in PvP. Our hope is that the reduced grind makes for a more enjoyable Warzone experience.

Increased Warzone Rewards

 

We found that the Warzone Experience and Credit rewards were not keeping up with the rest of the game, so we'll be giving them both a boost. Players can expect to receive double the XP and double the Credits for a completed match.

 

Legacy Lockbox

 

When we fixed the unintended ability to transfer Warzone Comms to other characters within a Legacy, we got lots of feedback from players requesting a legitimate way to make those transfers. After some discussion, we have come up with a solution: Warzone Commendation Legacy Lockboxes. Each PvP Items vendor (on either Fleet), will begin selling a Warzone Commendation Legacy Lockbox that can be purchased for 99 Warzone Comms and will contain 99 Warzone Comms. The Lockbox can be transferred between Legacy characters.

 

Ranked Reward system

 

The current Ranked Warzone reward system indirectly promotes players to stop queueing after they have gotten to the tier that they feel they will end up at for the Season, which lowers the amount of people who participate for the duration of the season. To combat this we wanted to give reasons to queue for the entire season without implementing something draconian-esc as rewards for playing each day of the season. We have come up with a system that we feel gives players a reason to play all season long and keep the Ranked population competitive and having fun.

 

Ranked players will no longer receive specific item rewards at the end of the season for reaching a certain rating in a Ranked Season. Instead, players will be granted a number of Season-specific tokens based on the tier of rating the player achieved. These tokens will be used to purchase the ranked rewards the player wants after the season has ended. For example, if you don’t like the Silver tier title, the Bronze tier title can be purchased instead for less tokens. In addition to receiving a large amount of Season-specific Tokens at the end of the season based on the tier placed (enough to buy the entire tier of rewards), players will now receive these season-specific tokens for every match they play based on match outcome and performance medals. A player that wins the match with max medals gets a larger amount of Comms than a player that gets the minimum number of medals and loses, at roughly a 1:18 ratio. We believe that this system of awarding Comms based on performance of the team and the individual will create a distinction between just playing and playing well.

 

The intention here is to encourage players to be engaged over the length of the season and continually attempt to improve and compete at a higher skill level. The better you are and the more you play, the more rewards you will be able to purchase. Since highly skilled players can still play the minimum number of games and earn the Gold tier rewards at the end of the Season, we feel this is the best of both worlds of rewarding both skill and time investment.

 

End of Season Rewards will be available for purchase from a vendor in the Combat Training area of each fleet for the entirety of the following Season. For example, Season 6 rewards will be available during Season 7 and will be removed from the vendor when Season 8 starts. If you have unused Season tokens they will be converted automatically into Warzone Comms when they can no longer be redeemed for Season Rewards. This gives players a large window to purchase the Season-specific rewards and still get something back from leftover, unspent Tokens.

 

In addition, there is at least one Reward per tier that is exclusive to the tier (cannot be purchased) so you can still show off that you earned the Reward based on skill alone.

 

As a few examples of the participation level needed for the Gold tier mount, a player who does not place in Bronze or above would need to play more than 60 games per week for the entire season at a 50% win rate, earning max medals each match, while completing every daily and weekly to purchase the mount (but if they lost every game and got the minimum number of medals it would take about 5000 games in a season to accrue the Comms needed). This gets easier for players that place in rating tiers, but a Silver rated player would still need to play more than 18 games a week, winning half their games, achieving max medals each match, completing every daily and weekly for the entire season while not purchasing any other rewards to afford the mount. These numbers are ballpark but we feel that they have a good balance between being physically obtainable so players will feel like they have the ability to achieve them, while still being a significant challenge and investment.

 

One more note, Top 96 players will be rewarded enough Season-specific Comms to purchase every reward for the season, in addition to their exclusive reward. They are the cream of the crop and have earned it.

Miscellaneous PvP Changes

 

There will be two other small changes to PvP in Game Update 3.3, one for regular Warzones and the other for Ranked.

 

In Warzones, capturing an objective (on Alderaan or Voidstar, for example) will no longer be interrupted by AoE effects. This change should reduce the stagnation on objectives and allow for more diverse defensive strategies.

 

In Ranked Warzones, in order for a character to enter the queue they will need to be wearing gear that gives them max expertise. This will prevent inexperienced players, who may not be ready for Ranked play, from entering the queue until they have the appropriate gear.

 

We hope you enjoy these PvP changes and look forward to your feedback!

 

The SWTOR Combat Team

[TrixxieTriss]

Eric, why the sudden change in direction regarding PVP and gearing? Here is the patch notes to 3.3 you guys posted.

 

Nearly 2 years ago, it was expressed why it was important to NOT have a heavy gear grind for the entry level PVP gears.

 

Many of us are struggling to understand the "why" behind the 5.0 and 5.1 grinding gearing system change that relies heavily on RNG from the alt friendly, much more fun and flexible gearing system that was developed for the 3.3 patch.

 

Can you confirm that you guys are aware of how many people are unhappy with the new gearing system and that you are considering ways to make it better, and if so when?

 

http://www.swtor.com/blog/pvp-economy-and-ranked-rewards-restructure-game-update-3.3

 

I got the impression that they were looking at ways to improve gearing because they care about pvp being fun but that all seems disingenuous, especially when you read their comments from the 3.3 patch notes.

But they also seem to indicate that changes won't be made till 5.2 in April??.. so over 2 months away.. who in their right mind is going to stick around for another 2 months for a change that will probably be so small as to mean nothing.

[AllisonLightning]

I got the impression that they were looking at ways to improve gearing because they care about pvp being fun but that all seems disingenuous, especially when you read their comments from the 3.3 patch notes.

But they also seem to indicate that changes won't be made till 5.2 in April??.. so over 2 months away.. who in their right mind is going to stick around for another 2 months for a change that will probably be so small as to mean nothing.

 

They keep posting which means the sub numbers dropped and fast. I don't see them sitting on their hands till April on the Bolster thing as long as the pressure is maintained. Mostly because of the financial quarter thing- they need some way to maintain or boost numbers for their revenue.

 

But I don't believe they care if PvP is enjoyable, just that we are subbed.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

But they also seem to indicate that changes won't be made till 5.2 in April??.. so over 2 months away.. who in their right mind is going to stick around for another 2 months for a change that will probably be so small as to mean nothing.

 

People enjoying the game still I imagine.

[AlrikFassbauer]

They keep posting which means the sub numbers dropped and fast.

 

Did I understand this right ? You mean that a high frequency of dev postiung means that subs are failing ? LMAO.

You weren't here a few years ago when the communication was so much better, were you ?

[AllisonLightning]

Did I understand this right ? You mean that a high frequency of dev postiung means that subs are failing ? LMAO.

You weren't here a few years ago when the communication was so much better, were you ?

 

Them posting here. I wasn't here but them posting in a section they usually avoid? They wouldn't do that without a substantial reason and it seems to be the way they operate now. Posting, usually when something's wrong.

[MidnightsMadness]

I think this is the disconnect. Gear is NOT important from a PvP mindset. It's important in scripted fights with computers that are designed to be defeated by players of a certain power level.

 

Being able to min/max stats is one thing, but being unviable because of gear removes the player aspect of PvP. You create handicaps that favor people with more time to play. It seems every recent decision has been made to increase the time we need to play without adding much of anything to do. All there is now is the grind, but PvPers just want to PvP, starting and ending with an even playing field. It's just time gating to suck the money out of my wallet.

 

Fix Bolster so that PvP is less about gear and more about skill. You might start to foster a community of players dedicated to PvP for the sake of PvP and not for some NPC rewards.

 

 

This.

[TrixxieTriss]

Them posting here. I wasn't here but them posting in a section they usually avoid? They wouldn't do that without a substantial reason and it seems to be the way they operate now. Posting, usually when something's wrong.

 

It is pretty rare them posting in the pvp section

[TrixxieTriss]

We hear you on that and we are committed to continue working on improving the gearing experience in the game. Still, we want to make sure that Bolster is set up properly going forward. We don't want to not fix Bolster because of gearing issues, let's just work on improving gearing as well.

 

-eric

 

Eric,

 

I can understand the logic of building on a system that is the correct setting. But you have other issues besides the lvl cap you had set for Bolster.

 

There are multiple bugs or strange results happening in Bolster and none of these were addressed. Jump over to the pvp forum section where there are multiple threads to do with Bolster and testing some people have done since the Bolster nerf. You will get a better understanding of what we are seeing in RL experience instead of just looking at data numbers.

By reducing the cap those issues have become even more noticeable. At least before the Bolster nerf, those issues were less noticeable and we could live with them. Now they really stand out and are giving even stranger results.

DVL gear is bolstering better than any gear, even gear with the same gear stats. There are apparently YouTube vids of this.

208 gear does more damage than 228 even though the stats are slightly better.

Augments are giving weird results.

230 gear doesn't seem to Bolster properly and neither does 228

The only people who seem fine are those in 242 gear and they have a massive advantage over everyone else. Not just because of the Bolster reduction, but also because of the bugs.

 

It would be better over all if you were to reverse the current Bolster nerf and wait until all of those things are addressed. You should be able to address them in house based on 232 lvl. There is no reason to try and fix them separately in a live environment.

You also said you know gearing up speed for pvpers is too slow and you have said you will be looking at how you can fix that.

 

Please Eric, instead of slowly addressing all these things over a few months. Address them all at once in one patch. In the mean time reverse the Bolster nerf until you are ready to patch them all. The current system is driving people like me away from pvp. There is a lot of rage over this and I've unsubbed 3 accounts in my household after 5years of playing non stop

 

At least with the 250 cap, the bugs and gearing speed did stand out as much.

242 gear was still BiS

230-232 gear was good, but still gave people an incentive to BiS at 242, while still not being to disadvantaged

228 gearing is and was broken.

208 gear bolstered to just under 230-232 gear, but still gave people an incentive to BiS at 242, while still not being to disadvantaged.

Edited January 28, 2017 by TrixxieTriss

[AlrikFassbauer]

I think this is the disconnect. Gear is NOT important from a PvP mindset. It's important in scripted fights with computers that are designed to be defeated by players of a certain power level.

 

That's new to me.

Okay, one needs a certain kind of gear level because gear enhances the character's stats ... But skill is needeed to some extend there as well. Go, please, play Eternal Vault, do the jumping part, and then please tell me it doesn't require any kind of skill ... Or, try solving the riddles, liuke the pillar riddle from Eternal Vault, just as an example.

 

There are no riddles to solve in PvP, which means that the riddle-solving part of brain activity isn't neded there.

 

Because riddles in OPs are like Chess to the brain - but PvP is no Chess. It is all about tactics, fast reflexes, fast thinking, and adrenaline. But no riddles.

 

PvP is - so to say - the game for extrovert people.

OPs are for introvert people.

[Talon_strikes]

That's new to me.

Okay, one needs a certain kind of gear level because gear enhances the character's stats ... But skill is needeed to some extend there as well. Go, please, play Eternal Vault, do the jumping part, and then please tell me it doesn't require any kind of skill ... Or, try solving the riddles, liuke the pillar riddle from Eternal Vault, just as an example.

 

There are no riddles to solve in PvP, which means that the riddle-solving part of brain activity isn't neded there.

 

Because riddles in OPs are like Chess to the brain - but PvP is no Chess. It is all about tactics, fast reflexes, fast thinking, and adrenaline. But no riddles.

 

PvP is - so to say - the game for extrovert people.

OPs are for introvert people.

What if you're an introvert but exclusively PvP?

 

[Lhancelot]

What if you're an introvert but exclusively PvP?

 

 

I'd gather the majority of players on swtor are introverts tbh. Nothing against introverts, I am an introvert myself. No idea how he connected introvert/extroverts to PVP/ops though.

 

What is an Introvert? Essentially introverts tend to wear down from heavy social interaction and when they need to recharge their energies they tend to do this alone.

 

What is an extrovert? Essentially extroverts charge themselves off the energy of social activity with other people, and wear down quickly without social activity or when alone.

 

This doesn't mean introverts hate people, or that extroverts never like to be alone.

 

The two types of personalities simply have different internal mechanisms that dictate how they find peace within themselves and the energy to thrive.

[IamPolaris]

EricMcuso,

what is it with you guys and the nerfing of ops. never fails, operative classes like sniper have literally been the most nerfed class in the game.. as SOON as we ever get something that makes us competitive what do you >>JGFIYUYFIUY at bioware do? You nerf us.. operatives finally had a heal that helped us be somewhat on par with sorc heals. somewhat.. we dont have their super force speed , the bubble , the sexploding barrier of light that stuns enemies.. the aoe knockback that can also heal allies, the spamable aoe lightening that can help the field , the ability to bubble allies,,, the puddle that is instant and doesnt require us to channel (proc) a Massive self heal, an ally pull for the ones about to go out of range.. nope...

we have a time consuming hots that are channeled.. unless we use a utilityand even that that requires 2 actions to occur befor we can use..

Gone is Orbital..that could help punish enemies for attacking us and instead a grenade thats only good for a small area..

after the 5.0 a team of mercs/commandos could go against a team of ops and it was gonna be interesting.. now its an absolute JOKE..

you'll take away our heal and yet leave the mercs/commandos with their massive self heal and reflect that heals and all that..? are you kidding me?

so lets see now who all has a massive reflect

Sorcs, Mercs, juggs , powertech and with the merc/commandos being so Fotm they are literallyEVERYWHERE , ohh look hes reflecting swap target , oh so is he .. aaand him.. aaaaan her,,, aaaannnd him oh look a sork here to heal them . while i have literally almost died just from swapping targets between all the reflects and by the time you get back to the original target everyone is back to full or they can run forever ... you know what I'm just going to stop there. its obvious you guys dont give a crap you just like to hand out "I win" buttons to your favored classes and skip any real balance ! and if there is somehow balance in the game and one of those special snowflake Uber classes actually find themselves having to work for their win.. NERF the competition.. guess its only balanced if your end of the scale is loaded with gold.

[TrixxieTriss]

EricMcuso,

what is it with you guys and the nerfing of ops. never fails, operative classes like sniper have literally been the most nerfed class in the game.. as SOON as we ever get something that makes us competitive what do you >>JGFIYUYFIUY at bioware do? You nerf us.. operatives finally had a heal that helped us be somewhat on par with sorc heals. somewhat.. we dont have their super force speed , the bubble , the sexploding barrier of light that stuns enemies.. the aoe knockback that can also heal allies, the spamable aoe lightening that can help the field , the ability to bubble allies,,, the puddle that is instant and doesnt require us to channel (proc) a Massive self heal, an ally pull for the ones about to go out of range.. nope...

we have a time consuming hots that are channeled.. unless we use a utilityand even that that requires 2 actions to occur befor we can use..

Gone is Orbital..that could help punish enemies for attacking us and instead a grenade thats only good for a small area..

after the 5.0 a team of mercs/commandos could go against a team of ops and it was gonna be interesting.. now its an absolute JOKE..

you'll take away our heal and yet leave the mercs/commandos with their massive self heal and reflect that heals and all that..? are you kidding me?

so lets see now who all has a massive reflect

Sorcs, Mercs, juggs , powertech and with the merc/commandos being so Fotm they are literallyEVERYWHERE , ohh look hes reflecting swap target , oh so is he .. aaand him.. aaaaan her,,, aaaannnd him oh look a sork here to heal them . while i have literally almost died just from swapping targets between all the reflects and by the time you get back to the original target everyone is back to full or they can run forever ... you know what I'm just going to stop there. its obvious you guys dont give a crap you just like to hand out "I win" buttons to your favored classes and skip any real balance ! and if there is somehow balance in the game and one of those special snowflake Uber classes actually find themselves having to work for their win.. NERF the competition.. guess its only balanced if your end of the scale is loaded with gold.

 

You are joking about ops I hope