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Winter/Spring 2018 Roadmap Update


KeithKanneg

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I asked a question about removing gear from pvp and making everyone have the same rating so the game is no longer determined by freaking gear, but by skill and knowledge. And the response I got was "Well then what will pvpers grind for?"

 

Imo, they shouldn't lock augs that make you more powerful in pvp behind pve content. I know people who play only one type of content, and I know people who play it all. Still not fair. And also adding a new level of augs SOOO soon after they just added some that take forever to get? *sigh*

 

Real pvpers don’t play to grind. They play to pvp. Look at games like overwatch which aren’t gear related and you can see that pvpers don’t care about gear.

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Pvp community is waiting for an answer about grinding the new augments: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9545313#post9545313

 

We need answers about forced pve content and competition in pvp

 

Give him a break. He only posted that yesterday and said he would be trying to include it when he posts about the Augments. They obviously haven’t finalised it yet, so it’s good that he has acknowledged the request for info and might mean they will think more on how this would affect pvp.

Let him get the info out to us before you pitch fork him.

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FINALY!!!! SOMEONE ELSE HAS NOTICED WHAT I HAVE BEEN SAYING SINCE 3 DAYS AFTER 4.0 WAS RELEASED!!!!!

 

Sadly this is a issue that has been around for years. I could give you the reason (I think anyways) behind it, but then I will get banned lol (If you want to know my theory, just ask for a PM) But what happened, is when 4.0 happened and you started KOTFE, they deleted all the old companion coding files. (Hence all the issues and bugs with the RL letters after chapter 3) And even though the original coding is still there for companions that are at the terminal, it is slowly being removed as more and more companions get re-added back. And yes, I have run many many MANY tests on this. The best example I can give atm is Elara Dorne with the trooper. Before she was added to the Iokath storyline, I run to Quesh and triggered her voice line there, then went through the Iokath storyline, and took the "new" coded Elara with me to all the voice line triggers on the different planets. NONE OF THEM PLAY AT ALL PERIOD EVER. The reason why is because the coding for triggering those lines is deleted. (Also as to why Raina had Kaylio's voice lines for the longest time.)

 

Also to add more hurt to you losing companions interaction......the companion color unify bug (that has broken 5 times since being added in 2.4) has been broken now for 14 months......and still isn't fixed..... :(

 

Thanks for explaining as much as you could. But holy cow, we wait for over a year for our companions to come back and they don't work right? Evidently, all the QA people left also to work on other projects. And what makes BW think this is ok?

 

Is that also the reason that the whole 'Risol Nare" thing with Torian disappeared also in the vanilla story?

 

Oh well, doubt it will be fixed, but one can hope and that seems to the common trope of late, "One can only hope."

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Thanks for explaining as much as you could. But holy cow, we wait for over a year for our companions to come back and they don't work right? Evidently, all the QA people left also to work on other projects. And what makes BW think this is ok?

 

Is that also the reason that the whole 'Risol Nare" thing with Torian disappeared also in the vanilla story?

 

Oh well, doubt it will be fixed, but one can hope and that seems to the common trope of late, "One can only hope."

 

Moving to open beta would help them QA if they have no staff. I’m sure there are plenty of people willing to help out with it. But Bioware are all about the secrecy and not telling anyone anything. So open beta won’t happen.

Sometimes I think Bioware should use this by-line under their logo. “We shoot ourselves in the foot, so you dont have too”

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Hmm.....true true. I guess I just had more fun when having a more level playing field in pvp since playing GW2 pvp where they actually removed the gear requirement and it became the fastest growing community in GW2 over 2 years. (Course now its more balanced and not as high) Also.....if the bolster is supposed to only be a few points difference (the bolster goes to 246 I believe and max gear is 248) then why when I'm on my characters that are fresh 70s with full 230s die in less then 3 seconds and my 246 geared characters do not? Same class, of commando/merc. Hence where my mindset of normalized gear rating comes from.

 

Bolster only goes to 242, not 246.

 

Also, the 242 works on total stats on everything equiped at once. So if you add Augments that put you over the theoretical bolster limit, your normal gear won’t bolster properly and you’ll actually lose stats to bring you back to under 242.

 

As a previous poster said, Hottie and few others did some testing of bolster and found the sweet spot before 242 to be 236. Wearing 234 and 240 gear gives weird results and so does mixing internal mods and enhancement lvls.

 

From my own testing, I’ve found the best thing to do is use 230 gear and upgrade to 236 as you get it. But don’t mix items in shells, don’t equip Augments and don’t use any other armor, implants, ear or relics until you have a full set of 242 gear to equip at the same time. If you do, there will be mixed and unpredictable results with Bolster.

 

But once you have 242 gear or higher, you should definitely equip Augments and also upgrade to higher items as you get them.

 

In the mean time, you will have people in 248 gear with 236 Augments in matches and they will have a significant advantage over you if you are the same lvl of skill. They will win 9/10 encounters with you and there is not a thing you can do.

 

I’m also in favour of making gear not matter in pvp so that it is skill vs skill. Actually if you play any mids or lowbie pvp, that is exactly what happens with gear. It bolsters to 242, which is unobtainable by anyone prior to lvl 70. So that means everyone has basically the same stats based on their class and mix. Lowbies and Mids are the last bastion of skill vs skill and not gear vs gear in the game.

Ideally they would just jack up the Bolster lvl to way above the current max gear with Augments attached. This would put everyone on a lvl playing field.

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But holy cow, we wait for over a year for our companions to come back and they don't work right?

Actually they all vanished in chapter 1 of KOTFE so that's:

2 years, 3 months, 26 days or

849 days or

121 weeks and 2 days or

20,376 hours or

1,222,560 minutes or

73,353,600 seconds.

 

And they haven't worked proper in all that time. But why hurry a fix? :p

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Bolster only goes to 242, not 246.

 

Also, the 242 works on total stats on everything equiped at once. So if you add Augments that put you over the theoretical bolster limit, your normal gear won’t bolster properly and you’ll actually lose stats to bring you back to under 242.

 

As a previous poster said, Hottie and few others did some testing of bolster and found the sweet spot before 242 to be 236. Wearing 234 and 240 gear gives weird results and so does mixing internal mods and enhancement lvls.

 

From my own testing, I’ve found the best thing to do is use 230 gear and upgrade to 236 as you get it. But don’t mix items in shells, don’t equip Augments and don’t use any other armor, implants, ear or relics until you have a full set of 242 gear to equip at the same time. If you do, there will be mixed and unpredictable results with Bolster.

 

But once you have 242 gear or higher, you should definitely equip Augments and also upgrade to higher items as you get them.

 

In the mean time, you will have people in 248 gear with 236 Augments in matches and they will have a significant advantage over you if you are the same lvl of skill. They will win 9/10 encounters with you and there is not a thing you can do.

 

I’m also in favour of making gear not matter in pvp so that it is skill vs skill. Actually if you play any mids or lowbie pvp, that is exactly what happens with gear. It bolsters to 242, which is unobtainable by anyone prior to lvl 70. So that means everyone has basically the same stats based on their class and mix. Lowbies and Mids are the last bastion of skill vs skill and not gear vs gear in the game.

Ideally they would just jack up the Bolster lvl to way above the current max gear with Augments attached. This would put everyone on a lvl playing field.

 

This sort of mixing and or using different types of gear to get the maximum and sometimes un-break bolster has been there since the day bolster was introduced to the game. People have repeatedly told them how to fix it, but they are unwilling or unable to do it, and that is if you are not at the max at the time(248 atm) you have a fixed and unchangeable stat, one tier below the max, regardless if you go in as a naked level 15 or a lvl 70 with full set of 240, and nothing you wear or are not wearing will alter that.

Edited by Mowermanx
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Actually they all vanished in chapter 1 of KOTFE so that's:

2 years, 3 months, 26 days or

849 days or

121 weeks and 2 days or

20,376 hours or

1,222,560 minutes or

73,353,600 seconds.

 

And they haven't worked proper in all that time. But why hurry a fix? :p

 

Yeah, I was stretching a bit with that 1 year remark. But we all know where the development, money and most everything is going, and it sure isn't bug fixes. Gets a bit disheartening that they made such a deal out of companion returns and break the hell out of them by doing it.

 

I wonder if Arcann will be a pod person with lips not moving and no dialogue when fighting after his alliance alert. Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants?

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Moving to open beta would help them QA if they have no staff. I’m sure there are plenty of people willing to help out with it. But Bioware are all about the secrecy and not telling anyone anything. So open beta won’t happen.

Sometimes I think Bioware should use this by-line under their logo. “We shoot ourselves in the foot, so you don't have too”

 

You made me chuckle with that last line, but how right you are.

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Hottie and some friends did a great job of checking the math behind bolster:

 

https://www.rambol.net/home/2018/1/2/examining-bolster

 

While I obviously don't know exactly what is going on as I've not seen you pvp, there are 2 possibilities I can see:

1. Are you wearing augments on 230? I assume so, but I thought I'd ask, but that's an easy thing to miss that does add some stats that you won't get if you aren't wearing any.

2. (This is likely the issue): Your endurance in 230 gear is lower. Not truly by a significant amount (5k or 6k), but enough to be noticeable, and so you are probably getting targeted due to that, as people assume that gear=skill (it doesn't, but that is the assumption people make), so if they see someone who is less geared, they assume they will be easier to kill and focus them. You probably would not actually survive significantly longer if you were focused in your geared toon, but people see a fully geared merc and decide it's not worth bothering to try and kill him, but see an undergeared anything and decide it is.

 

P.S. I assume you are being facetious, but if you are dying in 3 seconds in 230 gear as a merc, then you are doing something wrong. Even just with reflect you should survive 6 seconds, and that plus your other DCD's and adrenals and you should be able to face tank a couple people for a decent amount of time no matter what.

 

P.P.S. probably the best stat to see that gear does not really affect survivability is that the armor reduction of 230 bolstered vs 248 is 19.65% vs 20.04%. So you are taking .5% more damage as a 230 vs a 248 (with, lets be say 5% less hp), so in this case, if you are focused you would last about 5.5% longer than the 3 seconds you lasted in 230 gear, giving you a wopping 3.15 seconds of survivability in 248 gear. Obviously the longer a fight goes on, the bigger the difference is, but even if you die after 2 minutes in 230 gear, you'd only last 2 minutes and 6 seconds in 248 gear all else equal.

 

Hmm.....maybe. Oh and me dying in 3 seconds is after I had died due to using all my DCDs and surviving lol, my bad for not explaining that.

 

I guess it just might be the armor reduction stat that is bothering me. Dps wise I still do roughly the same numbers from 230 to 246, just slightly a bit more. So it most likely is just the armor rating plus the endurance stat. Which I just want it removed and normalized across everyone, but with your explanation and the math, its not as bad as I thought, so thank you.

 

Still wish it though :p

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This sort of mixing and or using different types of gear to get the maximum and sometimes un-break bolster has been there since the day bolster was introduced to the game. People have repeatedly told them how to fix it, but they are unwilling or unable to do it, and that is if you are not at the max at the time(248 atm) you have a fixed and unchangeable stat, one tier below the max, regardless if you go in as a naked level 15 or a lvl 70 with full set of 240, and nothing you wear or are not wearing will alter that.

 

That isn’t correct about wearing no gear.

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That isn’t correct about wearing no gear.

I didn't say that is the way it is, this is the way it needs to be for a rock solid balanced outcome.

As soon as you make it so a piece of gear alters the bolster, it will be gamed as its always been from day one, or it will be broken as it has always been from day one.

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Actually they all vanished in chapter 1 of KOTFE so that's:

2 years, 3 months, 26 days or

849 days or

121 weeks and 2 days or

20,376 hours or

1,222,560 minutes or

73,353,600 seconds.

 

And they haven't worked proper in all that time. But why hurry a fix? :p

 

I'm growing convinced that they interpreted the 5 years you were gone before the whole Eternal Grind literally.

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Bolster only goes to 242, not 246.

 

Also, the 242 works on total stats on everything equiped at once. So if you add Augments that put you over the theoretical bolster limit, your normal gear won’t bolster properly and you’ll actually lose stats to bring you back to under 242.

 

As a previous poster said, Hottie and few others did some testing of bolster and found the sweet spot before 242 to be 236. Wearing 234 and 240 gear gives weird results and so does mixing internal mods and enhancement lvls.

 

From my own testing, I’ve found the best thing to do is use 230 gear and upgrade to 236 as you get it. But don’t mix items in shells, don’t equip Augments and don’t use any other armor, implants, ear or relics until you have a full set of 242 gear to equip at the same time. If you do, there will be mixed and unpredictable results with Bolster.

 

But once you have 242 gear or higher, you should definitely equip Augments and also upgrade to higher items as you get them.

 

In the mean time, you will have people in 248 gear with 236 Augments in matches and they will have a significant advantage over you if you are the same lvl of skill. They will win 9/10 encounters with you and there is not a thing you can do.

 

I’m also in favour of making gear not matter in pvp so that it is skill vs skill. Actually if you play any mids or lowbie pvp, that is exactly what happens with gear. It bolsters to 242, which is unobtainable by anyone prior to lvl 70. So that means everyone has basically the same stats based on their class and mix. Lowbies and Mids are the last bastion of skill vs skill and not gear vs gear in the game.

Ideally they would just jack up the Bolster lvl to way above the current max gear with Augments attached. This would put everyone on a lvl playing field.

 

Weird.....I seem to remember with 5.0 the bolster was to 250, and then they lowered it to 236 and caused a uproar, so they changed it to 246, not quite the highest gear rating but close enough. Could be wrong and I'm to lazy to go find the yellow post lol.

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Hmm.....maybe. Oh and me dying in 3 seconds is after I had died due to using all my DCDs and surviving lol, my bad for not explaining that.

 

I guess it just might be the armor reduction stat that is bothering me. Dps wise I still do roughly the same numbers from 230 to 246, just slightly a bit more. So it most likely is just the armor rating plus the endurance stat. Which I just want it removed and normalized across everyone, but with your explanation and the math, its not as bad as I thought, so thank you.

 

Still wish it though :p

 

Ah, well any class being attacked by a bunch of enemies with no healers after they've popped all their DCD's should die after 3 seconds :p

 

Again, the problem is probably that people tend to focus you more when you HP is below 129k, because they assume you are not geared and therefore less skilled. The actual stat's are not really different, but you are much more likely to be the first to be targeted in those situations (especially arenas) so it feels like a big difference. But as a merc, think of it as practice for being a jug or pt in full 248 gear, you'd get targeted first if you played that class too :D

 

Weird.....I seem to remember with 5.0 the bolster was to 250, and then they lowered it to 236 and caused a uproar, so they changed it to 246, not quite the highest gear rating but close enough. Could be wrong and I'm to lazy to go find the yellow post lol.

 

You have the first 2 parts right, but they changed it to 242 not 246. A bunch of folks (Trixie included) wanted it at 248 gear (not an option they gave when they polled us), but BW felt they needed a carrot to get a large enough population to PVP. And while I only have anecdotal evidence (but clearly BW agrees), at least for myself and many of my guildies in all 3 of my guilds, the gear is a big carrot to make us PVP more than we would, and the population isn't high enough to sustain those who would do it without a carrot (i.e. it is better to have pops every 5 minutes because a bunch of people are going for gear than it is to have a pop every 20 minutes of only those doing it for "skill vs skill")

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Well for damage it correct, but for surviving it is not correct. I have gone into pvp with empty shells, I die VERY fast, but I still am in the top 3 dps overall the entire game.

 

Actually it’s not correct. If you don’t believe me, go to the Bolster terminal on the fleet and test it on the WZ dummy

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Weird.....I seem to remember with 5.0 the bolster was to 250, and then they lowered it to 236 and caused a uproar, so they changed it to 246, not quite the highest gear rating but close enough. Could be wrong and I'm to lazy to go find the yellow post lol.

 

Here you go 😉

 

Hey folks,

 

For this week’s discussion topic, let’s talk about Bolster! This has been a hot-button item since the launch of 5.0 due to various changes which have been made. Here is a bit of a history on what we have done so far:

When we launched Eternal Throne Bolster increased everyone’s item rating up to 250 (which was 8 higher than the highest possible gear rating of 242 at the time). This meant that gear was irrelevant in PvP as Bolster made an equal playing field. However, it is our design intent that players in all gameplay have some form of gear progression and so in Game Update 5.1 we lowered the effect of Bolster in PvP to 232. To compensate for the launch of Tier 4 gear we increased Bolsters effect in PvP to item rating 238.

 

There have been numerous feedback threads on both sides of the fence on this topic, but it seems the larger consensus is that players would like to see a higher bolster rating in PvP to lower the overall gear gap. With that in mind we want to present 3 possible options and see what you think:

  1. Bolster is equal to item rating 238. - This is how it works today, this effectively puts you slightly above Tier 2 gear.
  2. Bolster is equal to item rating 240. – This would place Bolster equal to the start of Tier 3 gear. There would now be an 8 rating difference between Bolster and the highest tier of gear (248). For reference this is identical to the gap that existed for Bolster prior to 5.0.
  3. Bolster is equal to item rating 242. – This would place Bolster at the top end of Tier 3 gear, meaning only Tier 4 gear is above it.

 

Let us know what you think? Do you like Bolster where it is? Do you want to see it go up?

 

-eric

 

Let me state by saying, that last sentence about what we think and where did we want it was throughly ignored by Bioware. So I’m not sure why they bothered to add it considering they totally ignored the feed back.

There was a whole thread of where 95% of participants wanted Bolster to be at or above 246. The majority or posters even wanted it set back at 250 or at least 248.

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"We’ve added powerful new Augments for those who need additional stats to help take down Izax in Master Mode. Or, you simply want to be OP! In this new Flashpoint, we’ll provide legacy-based Crafting Patterns (Bind-on-Pickup – BOP) which will drop randomly off mobs and Bosses. If you’re one of the lucky ones, you may also find a Bind-on-Equip (BOE) version of the same patterns. We’ll follow up with the materials needed to craft the Augments."

 

What about pvp players? We dont like to play flash points, operations etc so why you are forcing us to do it? We must be competitive in pvp, having best stats so why we cant get these new augments via pvp too?

Good point. Another good question would be: "What about dedicated crafters? We don't play combat!". Schematics should always be tradable (and not just rare ones, they should be easily acquirable!), or at the very least, bind on Legacy.

 

Let me state by saying, that last sentence about what we think and where did we want it was throughly ignored by Bioware. So I’m not sure why they bothered to add it considering they totally ignored the feed back.

There was a whole thread of where 95% of participants wanted Bolster to be at or above 246. The majority or posters even wanted it set back at 250 or at least 248.

Indeed. PVP shouldn't be about gear, it should be an even playing field about player skill. Edited by Glzmo
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  • Dev Post
Eric/Keith,

 

Thank you for providing us the eagerly anticipated roadmap. Having spent much of my IT career in software development, I know just how much work goes into deciding what to add, remove, and change in any production environment. That being said, there's quite a few QoL issues being brought up that I didn't see mentioned. Have you guys discussed with the team some of the items below, and where that might fit into the 2018 roadmap, or beyond?

 

 

  1. Account-wide ignore feature going in both directions to help manage/mitigate the toxicity of public chat channels in the absence of in-game moderation. (And along with that, the removal of the cap on the Ignore list.)
  2. Right-click report feature for exploiting/hacking in WZs that captures the necessary server logs to verify cheating occurred so that the player isn't required to basically stop playing in order to submit a ticket or take supporting screenshots that they then submit directly to Eric or Keith.
  3. Stronghold decoration maintenance/updates, to include a hook capacity increase for flagships from 800 to 1000. (This area of the game is sorely in need of attention: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=921318)
  4. Guild interface improvements. (There was a really good suggestion thread on this but I can't find it now.)

 

Thanks again for the exciting news and your continued commitment to this game we all love.

Hey there. All excellent suggestions, so thanks for the ideas. Here's my thoughts on each:

 

  1. Account-wide ignore feature and ignore list cap - I like the account wide idea and we'll look into the Cap. What we may find is we need to automatically clean up your list and remove those accounts which are no longer part of TOR such as banned Advertisers.
  2. Right-click report feature for exploiting/hacking in WZs - not sure why we don't already have that in place. Will ask the team to investigate.
  3. Stronghold decoration maintenance/updates - we'll look into it.
  4. Guild interface improvements - Already on our list. I met with some players at our New York Cantina and they followed up with a ton of ideas. We've had many discussions about Guild Management, along with additional ideas on Guild engagement activities. It's not yet on the Production schedule, but it's an excellent Quality of Life improvement where all Guilds benefit.

 

---Keith

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While we're at it (QoL ideas), why not make the "Report->spam" Account wide ? right now when I mark an in-game mail as spam, and relog to other toon, I have to do it again, and again, and again to clear mailbox... It would be really nice to just mark it once and *puff* ALL mail from the marked player are gone from all my toons on the server.
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