The second issue we want to address is concerns over the balance between level 55 PvE and PvP gear. We have seen some reports from players around the forums and in this thread that they are seeing players wearing Underworld or Arkanian gear having higher stats under Bolster than people wearing Partisan or Conqueror.

 

After some investigation, it appears that this is true, but it is not intended. Although we always want to keep the PvP environment competitive even for players not wearing full PvP sets, Partisan and Conqueror should be performing better in Warzones than their PvE counterparts. We will be deploying a fix for this in 2.0.1 which will be coming out on Tuesday.

 

I know there is still a bit of confusion around the Bolster system, how it affects stats and Expertise and I am working on getting some more information on it. Sometime after 2.0.1 I am going to work with the combat team on getting a “mathy” post explaining a bit about Bolster and how it works which will hopefully work to clear up some confusion. As you can imagine, it is a pretty complex system.

 

I hope that alleviates some of your concerns with the issue of PvE v PvP gearing and thank you all for your feedback.

 

-eric

 

What Eric is saying is that this game is not ready yet to be played byt ppl that only pvp....

This is a PvEr game so pvpers should unsub untill its fixed for me ...to go back to GW and AION in the meantime.

If you are St*pid enough thou to play it, i will be waiting you in WZ with my Arkanian set, my 30%+ stats and atleast 8K hp plus to ROLFSTOMP you

I don't think anyone disagrees with this.

I do, Bolster is still a generally good idea that has some issues that need to be resolved.

Speaking of, to all those saying "These issues have been reported on PTS and nothing has been done about it!!!1111one!!!111eleven!!!"

You deserve a slap in the face and a reality check.

There have been multiple iterations of Bolster on the PTS. Tweaks and improvements have been made to the entire system with the data that was available (which was a lot less information than they have now). In the last build before Live there were more tweaks and changes to Bolster to touch on issues.

So, then 2.0 went Live in pre-release, with the information available and the bugs fixed and issues resolved that were possible to fix and resolve before Live. Then, within the first week they got a ton of information. Because it is Live, I think you can safely say they got 100 times more information than any week in the PTS. Not to mention that most people on PTS were max levelled immediately anyway, meaning the main issue shown and solved in week 1 (Naked Bolster in sub-55 brackets and WH/EWH gear being worse than greens in those same brackets) actually had very little data on the PTS. But they went Live anyway, why?

Well, to start; to get 100 times more information in a week of pre-release than they would get in a week on the PTS. To actually have real data to work with, and quickly resolve issues. Right now, they solved two major issues within a week time. One with a real fix (Naked Bolster) one with a 'quick fix' because another fix would mean reworking the system entirely. That is a very impressive feat so far, and if they keep fixing PVP issues in that same rate, then by the mid May all these complaints we have now will have come and gone like the winter's snow.

So, do I think people don't have a right to complain about these issues? Not at all. You feel the issue, let it be known. But do I think people have the right to demand Bolster to be removed? No. The idea of Bolster is good "to reduce the difference between new PVP players and fully geared PVP players in their gear efficiency." This difference was about 60-80% efficiency difference between Recruit and fully augmented EWH pre 2.0. I agree people that invest in PVP should have slightly better gear than those who do not. but 60-80% makes endgame PVP about gear only, and not about skill at all. The new system, will balance it more in the 55 bracket.

Furthermore, people that think all problems will be solved if Bolster is removed tomorrow are delusional and, frankly, stupid. In one line you blame Bioware for releasing content they "have not tested well enough" (FYI: you mean, they have not bug fixed well enough, don't blame QA testers for things they have no control over please), while in the next you are calling for them to immediately implement another untested system of level 55 Bolster-less PVP. Something about pot and kettle comes to mind..

So, TL;DR.. Bolster is a good system in it's concept, which still has a lot of issues that need to be resolved. Issues that come to light 100 times better on Live than they would on PTS. If we just keep reporting the issues we have in a serious manner to the developers, through things like bug reports and threads with clear examples, we will all be able to more quickly have a more balanced system than we had pre 2.0.

PS: Posts that basicly say "You are an idiot for making a development decision" as a reply to a yellow post are the most destructive thing you can do. We all begged for months for Developers to come out and be open about decisions and why they were made. Now they are here, they are reminded again why they didn't come out before.

It's okay to disagree, but at least add more than "You are wrong".

This is all so funny

If we dident have this patetic fail expertise stat then we would have no issues from the start.

So simpel to have it take the same amount of time to earn pvp/pve gear with same stats and problem solved.

Of course there will always be that 0.1% of idiots whining about raiders doing better in PvP even thou as i said above

have it take about the same amount of time to earn both gears.Players will still have a clue what they are doing in

both pve and pvp anyways or they will suck at it.Works awesome in GW2 a PvP game.But of course we know the devs here dont have a clue what they are doing with pvp soeeeeeee........

I have a solution to the bolster issue!

From what I gathered, their problem comes from trying to cater to PvE'ers in PvP. We didn't have this much stink on the forums about gear/bolster before.

Just create NAKED BOLSTER the most powerful, so that everyone just removes their gear, except weapon to PvP! THUS you have created a truly gearless balance system, and no more GEAR gap for the whiny PvE'ers to complain about so you can ruin the PvP in the game for us.

If you care this much about them to bolster 55 PvP, then you should just take it the step further so NAKED BOLSTER would be the solution. Then that way there won't BE anymore bolster issues/gear issues!

Heck, just make all gear in the game cosmetic, and just have achivements for PvE accomplishments and PvP accomplishments. Even steven allaround!

The second issue we want to address is concerns over the balance between level 55 PvE and PvP gear. We have seen some reports from players around the forums and in this thread that they are seeing players wearing Underworld or Arkanian gear having higher stats under Bolster than people wearing Partisan or Conqueror.

 

After some investigation, it appears that this is true, but it is not intended. Although we always want to keep the PvP environment competitive even for players not wearing full PvP sets, Partisan and Conqueror should be performing better in Warzones than their PvE counterparts. We will be deploying a fix for this in 2.0.1 which will be coming out on Tuesday.

Thanks.

Just for the sake of clarity, please have the developers look also into the issue where players are only using certain Modifications of PVE gear (in particular hilts/barrels) and put it in PVP gear.

Also, a "mathy" answer how bolster works exactly would be really much appreciated.

Speaking of, to all those saying "These issues have been reported on PTS and nothing has been done about it!!!1111one!!!111eleven!!!"

You deserve a slap in the face and a reality check.

 

There have been multiple iterations of Bolster on the PTS. Tweaks and improvements have been made to the entire system with the data that was available (which was a lot less information than they have now). In the last build before Live there were more tweaks and changes to Bolster to touch on issues.

 

Are you serious?

Both the issues of naked bolster and of PVE gear able to outperform PVP gear were known on the PTS in their latest playable build. The issue of naked bolster was explicitly promised to be fixed before live.

What is even worse, even without any PTS this would have been embarrassing. All it took me (and the rest) to just try out a single WZ afer 2.0 to notice thinks were completely ****ed up. We are not talking about some arcane bug which happens every full moon. You just had to remove one piece of gear to see the mess for yourself.

The second issue we want to address is concerns over the balance between level 55 PvE and PvP gear. We have seen some reports from players around the forums and in this thread that they are seeing players wearing Underworld or Arkanian gear having higher stats under Bolster than people wearing Partisan or Conqueror.

 

After some investigation, it appears that this is true, but it is not intended. Although we always want to keep the PvP environment competitive even for players not wearing full PvP sets, Partisan and Conqueror should be performing better in Warzones than their PvE counterparts. We will be deploying a fix for this in 2.0.1 which will be coming out on Tuesday.

 

I know there is still a bit of confusion around the Bolster system, how it affects stats and Expertise and I am working on getting some more information on it. Sometime after 2.0.1 I am going to work with the combat team on getting a “mathy” post explaining a bit about Bolster and how it works which will hopefully work to clear up some confusion. As you can imagine, it is a pretty complex system.

 

I hope that alleviates some of your concerns with the issue of PvE v PvP gearing and thank you all for your feedback.

 

-eric

 

Make sure you also try to address the issue of pve gear becoming better under bolster by taking out one item modification from the piece.

Are you serious?

 

Both the issues of naked bolster and of PVE gear able to outperform PVP gear were known on the PTS in their latest playable build. The issue of naked bolster was explicitly promised to be fixed before live.

 

What is even worse, even without any PTS this would have been embarrassing. All it took me (and the rest) to just try out a single WZ afer 2.0 to notice thinks were completely ****ed up. We are not talking about some arcane bug which happens every full moon. You just had to remove one piece of gear to see the mess for yourself.

You do realise the major complaints were: "Naked outperforms my WH/EWH gear" right? This had as much to do with Naked boosting too much still (because of empty slots needing to give stats for low level characters), as well as WH/EWH underperforming stats wise.

The issue on PTS where naked was better than Partisan was solved before 2.0 hit Live.

You do realise the major complaints were: "Naked outperforms my WH/EWH gear" right? This had as much to do with Naked boosting too much still (because of empty slots needing to give stats for low level characters), as well as WH/EWH underperforming stats wise.

Yes, your point being?

That using your amassed lvl 50 PVP gear when doing PVP lvl 50-54 was complete unforseeable? That the developers had NO way of knowing that players would try to do that instead of taking some lvl 33 green PVE gear instead over their lvl 50 epics (which makes so much more sense, right)?

Bugs do happen and should be expected. But these are not bugs. Its knowingly releasing a obviously completely untestested version of the Bolster which messes with an entire part of the games content, which is simply reckless.

If you are entirely ok with this, well this is your choice.

Yes, your point being?

 

That using your amassed lvl 50 PVP gear when doing PVP lvl 50-54 was complete unforseeable? That the developers had NO way of knowing that players would try to do that instead of taking some lvl 33 green PVE gear instead over their lvl 50 epics (which makes so much more sense, right)?

 

Bugs do happen and should be expected. But these are not bugs. Its knowingly releasing a obviously completely untestested version of the Bolster which messes with an entire part of the games content, which is simply reckless.

 

If you are entirely ok with this, well this is your choice.

My point is, that this specific issue was fixed just before 2.0 went Live. This had the unforseen side effect that the underperformance of WH/EWH became the most clear issue at hand.

When it comes to QA, what often happens is that one issue arises when another is solved, or the presence of one issue overshadows the presence of another and therefore makes that less visible.

What also happened a lot on PTS was people in their mains, just going for the 55 insta boost and Partisan gear gaining route to 'test' endgame PVP. The route towards that will be less tested in a PTS environment while it will be more tested in an actual Live environment. Therefore, the issue of the route to Partisan (which is where WH/EWH exists) was undertested because people were able to insta 55 for testing purposes.

And these are bugs, no matter what you claim it to be. Also, 2.0 had to have Bolster because no other way of having PVP with the current talents was tested. So yes, gearing is a bit skewed now, but having removed Bolster just before Live would have created an even more untested and therefore a lot more unbalanced situation than we have now.

Yes, there are silly situations like endgame PVE being better than endgame PVP. But the inbalance of these weird situations is not nearly as big as the inbalance in PVP in general was pre-2.0. There is no 60-80% power difference that can be gained through abusing the Bolster bugs. And because of that, it is already superior to pre-2.0 PVP.

And, as I pointed out a few times already, it are the same people that are now gaming the system for maximum efficiency as those that did the pre-2.0 system by using PVE gear in certain slots, or mixing WH and EWH mods to get that Expertise sweet spot but maximizing other stats. It's not like raiders suddenly all started playing PVP. And their advantages are now still smaller than they were 3 weeks ago.

As others have said, please address the empty slots issue as well. Don't put in a fix for a problem you're finally acknowledging (pve being better than pvp gear) and then fail to address another big issue where people have to rip stuff out of their gear and have empty slots to get best stats.

I'm going to check these forums tuesday/wednesday, and if the system isn't fixed, and if it still punishes those who ground their gear out, I might finally pull the plug on this game.

hope you(Bioware) have fun with your new clients, i hope they are as good as me at least... Thanks for ruining the game for me that am here from the beginning and making my "hard earned" pvp gear into pve gear xD...

time to sub out... Good luck in your future endeavors

But the inbalance of these weird situations is not nearly as big as the inbalance in PVP in general was pre-2.0. There is no 60-80% power difference that can be gained through abusing the Bolster bugs. And because of that, it is already superior to pre-2.0 PVP.

Not in my experience.

Under lvl 55 WZ are at the moment much more imbalanced than they were before.

With the exception of the dreaded lvl 49 pimped twinks, pre lvl 50 WZ before the patch were almost perfectly balanced anyway with everyones hp between around 11-13k HP. When 2.0 went live, you could see people between 18k and 33k HP in the lvl 30-54 WZ. Two hotfixes later, there still is a potential gap of 6-7k HP (23k to around 29K).

LVL 55 WZ zones now see around 25kHP to 33K HP (we are not even discussing the mess when 2.0 went live). Expertise varies largely depending on the question if people got the memo of removing the expertise crystals from their old PVP gear.

PVP NOW is a mess.

And do not get me wrong: My juggernaut has read all the memos and now sits happily at the top of the food chain with 32K HP at lvl 55 and about 1,8K expertise (mostly remodded EWH + Conquerer+Partisan). I just would never dare to claim that it is more balanced now.

The second issue we want to address is concerns over the balance between level 55 PvE and PvP gear. We have seen some reports from players around the forums and in this thread that they are seeing players wearing Underworld or Arkanian gear having higher stats under Bolster than people wearing Partisan or Conqueror.

 

After some investigation, it appears that this is true, but it is not intended. Although we always want to keep the PvP environment competitive even for players not wearing full PvP sets, Partisan and Conqueror should be performing better in Warzones than their PvE counterparts. We will be deploying a fix for this in 2.0.1 which will be coming out on Tuesday.

 

I know there is still a bit of confusion around the Bolster system, how it affects stats and Expertise and I am working on getting some more information on it. Sometime after 2.0.1 I am going to work with the combat team on getting a “mathy” post explaining a bit about Bolster and how it works which will hopefully work to clear up some confusion. As you can imagine, it is a pretty complex system.

 

I hope that alleviates some of your concerns with the issue of PvE v PvP gearing and thank you all for your feedback.

 

-eric

 

I think they should delete bolster for lvl55 wz and make a recruit gear free with abaout 1800 expertise or something like that with low stats and dont let ppl q up for wz under 1800 expertise so they must wear the standard pvp gear and players who are in pvp gear dont lose wzs anymore cuz they have bad teamates with 0 expertise who feeds the enemy's score on hypergate wz, its unfair i work so much on my pvp gear and a pve geared guy has almost the same stats or better than me, but i cant do hard operations in pvp gear. BW SHOULDNT LET PLAYERS Q UP FOR WZ IN PVE GEAR!!!

As others have said, please address the empty slots issue as well. Don't put in a fix for a problem you're finally acknowledging (pve being better than pvp gear) and then fail to address another big issue where people have to rip stuff out of their gear and have empty slots to get best stats.

 

I'm going to check these forums tuesday/wednesday, and if the system isn't fixed, and if it still punishes those who ground their gear out, I might finally pull the plug on this game.

Check out the dev tracker -- they've already addressed this issue. And if it hasn't been completely solved already, it will be on Tuesday.

They've stated, as an example, that empty relic slots were being given stats that were better than any in-game relics. And they've also stated they tuned down the amount of stats you gain from an empty slot.

Now, you're always better off having a piece of gear in a slot -- but not punshed too much for being too low a level to equip a piece in that slot.

I think they should delete bolster for lvl55 wz and make a recruit gear free with abaout 1800 expertise or something like that with low stats and dont let ppl q up for wz under 1900 expertise so they must wear the standard pvp gear and players who are in pvp gear dont lose wzs anymore cuz they have bad teamates with 0 expertise who feeds the enemy's score on hypergate wz, its unfair i work so much on my pvp gear and a pve geared guy has almost the same stats or better than me, but i cant do hard operations in pvp gear. BW SHOULDNT LET PLAYERS Q UP FOR WZ IN PVE GEAR!!!

Uh, excuse me?

"I can't do hard operations in PvP gear" -- guess what? You can do SM operations through the groupfinder. You can ALSO do HM FPs.

If they remove bolster and stop PvE-geared people from queueing for WZs, they need to ban all players wearing a single piece of PvP gear from running ANY PvE content.

Ontop of that -- PvE gear is meant to be below PvP gear at all points. Once they fix this on Tuesday, it will be no different than giving out a free set of recruit gear -- without actually having the gear.

Not in my experience.

 

Under lvl 55 WZ are at the moment much more imbalanced than they were before.

 

With the exception of the dreaded lvl 49 pimped twinks, pre lvl 50 WZ before the patch were almost perfectly balanced anyway with everyones hp between around 11-13k HP. When 2.0 went live, you could see people between 18k and 33k HP in the lvl 30-54 WZ. Two hotfixes later, there still is a potential gap of 6-7k HP (23k to around 29K).

 

LVL 55 WZ zones now see around 25kHP to 33K HP (we are not even discussing the mess when 2.0 went live). Expertise varies largely depending on the question if people got the memo of removing the expertise crystals from their old PVP gear.

 

PVP NOW is a mess.

 

And do not get me wrong: My juggernaut has read all the memos and now sits happily at the top of the food chain with 32K HP at lvl 55 and about 1,8K expertise (mostly remodded EWH + Conquerer+Partisan). I just would never dare to claim that it is more balanced now.

Not to mention there are certain things that can be done to create 45k smash monkeys in the 55 bracket if you're willing to spend some money, creating quite the huge gap between people. Anybody who says that bolster doesn't create an unbalanced system are only trying to fool themselves. It's hard to understand why people are in such support of a broken system. If BW can't figure out such advanced programming and algorithms, do the easy thing and either create free GEAR for their intended stats they want for introductory play, or make everybody start with the same stats/expertise for their specific role and if that number isn't met, that's what you are automatically bolstered to. Whatever they're doing now is obviously just not working and each 'fix' they try seems to just screw the pooch even more.

hope you(Bioware) have fun with your new clients, i hope they are as good as me at least... Thanks for ruining the game for me that am here from the beginning and making my "hard earned" pvp gear into pve gear xD...

time to sub out... Good luck in your future endeavors

Patience is a virtue man...2.0 have 1 week.

Make other things ur priorities instead of swtor. Games are for fun

I hope that alleviates some of your concerns with the issue of PvE v PvP gearing and thank you all for your feedback.

There's not a lot of hope left in the bolster system. I think it was good in theory, but impossible to implement correctly. There comes a time we count our losses, admit our failure, and correct the mistake. Give PvPers back their pedal stools. Let us feel accomplishment for the time we put in.

You need to work on ridding bolster from 55. When another player has higher stats in his pve gear with the enhancement exploit than I do in my conq/partisan mix it's just ridiculous! Bolster for pre-55 is fine,you need something to get you there. But it has no place in 55. Also an EASY fix is to make partisan gear available at 52 or 53;With this people will be ready for 55 pvp when they reach that level.

Stop making sense!

Ontop of that -- PvE gear is meant to be below PvP gear at all points. Once they fix this on Tuesday, it will be no different than giving out a free set of recruit gear -- without actually having the gear.

and you know what? If 172 PvE gear sets result in people only bolstering to 1300-1400 in warzones, and that's their ceiling - I'm perfectly good with this. Scale back 169-166-163 down to an eventual minimum of 1000 (think recruit set) and then no 'full time' pvper should have a problem with this.

and you know what? If 172 PvE gear sets result in people only bolstering to 1300-1400 in warzones, and that's their ceiling - I'm perfectly good with this. Scale back 169-166-163 down to an eventual minimum of 1000 (think recruit set) and then no 'full time' pvper should have a problem with this.

I have absolutely no idea what the planned numbers are -- but the intention is that even in the "best" PvE gear, we will be at the same level as someone with the worst PvE gear.

And, anyone in PvE gear should be at a "disadvantage" to anyone in PvP gear. I agree with reducing the gear gap between top-end PvP and PvP, but there should still be a gap. Before this -- at lvl 50, if you went in with no PvP gear, you stood absolutely no chance no matter what skill level you were. Hence giving out free PvP recruit gear.

I've seen a lot of PvPers who only take issue with the bolster problems that BW has admitted to as bugs, and are working on fixing. However, there are a lot of people who don't care to listen when told things are bugged -- either that, or they are upset that PvP gear no longer means you're able to lolsmash everything else.