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.

The vanilla model got changed pretty quick, and it seems more common in MMORPGs for PvP to be a gankfest until geared. Other MMORPGs have eliminated gear from pvp entirely, like GW2 and Blade and Soul. I think we should keep working towards making PvP truly skill vs skill, not rolling back to a system that was criticized for being too grindy. Just because I did it back then doesn't mean I want to do it again. People have a right to voice complaints, and they'll stop playing when they decide they want to stop. In the meantime, they're going to use the forums to express their dissatisfaction with the current direction. It's to give BW a chance to at least communicate their decisions, and for them to not be able to say "well if you didn't like it, why didn't you say anything?" btw, I'm in the camp where RNG is not exciting, it's a relief, especially after opening crate after useless crate. I don't clock out at the end of a day and pull a big lever hoping to get compensated for the day's work. I like working, earning a wage, and spending it how I please.

Going back to a time when things sucked because of some nostalgic sentiment is stupid. These regressive decisions make people who have been playing since launch finally quit and just leave newer players confused. The people complaining aren't trying to get free gear or instant gratification. They want PvP to be enjoyable and skilled-based, which means eliminating non-player factors, like stat disparities. Praising this game for allowing you to stomp other players simply because they don't have the gear to compete is not in the spirit of player versus player, it's your gear versus that player. If you're an advocate for PvP, I would think you'd be an advocate for skill>gear.

The only thing that makes sense is they don't know what they're doing anymore, like all the real Devs left and we're stuck with a bunch of college entry interns that have to answer to a bunch of angry shareholders. How else do you repeat the worst mistakes of the past?

I thought everyone was bolstering to 250. I thought it was a great way to eliminate gear as a variable for determining the outcome of PvP matches.

Hooray! They deleted PvP by making gear not just relevant, but central to performance. You hardly have to worry about skill anymore so long as you pick the targets with the lowest gear score. You're so good at PvP after grinding for hundreds of hours on old PvE content. Great job.

When has anyone ever gotten free gear? No one is talking about going back to a time that didn't exist. People liked the old system of earning currency and having a choice of what to spend your hard-earned comms on. This "people just want their **** now" argument is asinine and shows a clear lack of understanding of the actual issues people are raising. W T F is so challenging about a slot machine?

Oh, thanks guys

and still under maintenance. Maybe they're biting the bullet and removing PvP since they can never seem to get it right. Maybe they should realize that PvE and PvP are two completely different games and mindsets. Upward progression in PvE is through collecting gear and fighting increasingly more difficult enemies designed to be defeated at certain gear thresholds. Progression in PvP is less tangible. You don't get better gear to finally put that rascal down, you get better at playing your class. You get better at the enemy's class, learning to anticipate. You get better at situational awareness. "BiS" in PvP is someone with a deep understanding of classes and warzone mechanics. Replacing this kind of progression with gear gates/grinds shows a lack of understanding of the difference between these two gametypes.

It seems every time they make a step in the right direction, when it seems like they might know what they're doing, they take 10 steps back and break it with the solution being

PvP balance is always up and down, it changes every patch. 5.0, working better. 5.1, completely broken. PvP has never been about stomping the late-comers. It's about PLAYER VS PLAYER. Stomping people you outgear is not skill, it's gear disparity. No one wants to compete in a race with a Chevy Geo.

PvP is only better if gear is equal, or maybe in your case when the gear disparity is tipped in your favor. Restore Bolster in PvP, Remove Gear in PvP.

What's going on there? Are they afraid of the flood of complaints that would sweep through it? Are they trying to fix Bolster before it reopens?

If you agree that PvP is skill vs skill, then you'd have no problem with a mechanic that evens out the massively uneven playing field that is a gear-based MMORPG. There's no skill involved in demanding handicaps. If you want gear vs gear, there's some NPCs you can fight and compare DPS with other group members. People who only care about gear in PvP are the same ones who think padding their damage meters at the end of a WZ matters.

Honestly, why bother with gear in PvP? You do the same thing, but with more handicaps, like having more health and hitting harder while taking the exact same physical and mental actions. PvP doesn't have the same positive feelings towards progression that PvE does, Especially when there's a gear/stat/handicap discrepancy in the favor those who have the time to dedicate solid hours of PvP and PvE compared to someone with like <5 hours of gametime a week. Eventually, everyone has the same handicaps, and then the playing field is even, which is how PvP should start. PvP has always been about player versus player, and letting as little get in the way as possible between the two. Bolster bridges the divide between PvERPG and PvPRPG. Not to mention the cheap 204 gear to get started quickly in a gear-based game. The Valor minimum is a good tool to control what players can enter Ranked, especially if you could lose Valor.