The whole point of bolster is to make it even for everybody.. What? Did you want to go back and bash on undergeared people and feel good about yourself?

 

Interesting seeing alot of blind/incompetent people thinking they're good in pvp when the game itself caters towards people with BiS gear against those with no gear.

 

Not saying you're blind or incompetent personally but seriously.. if you thought the pvp was fair to begin with.......

 

 

............... lol.

^^^ This.

Thanks for the response Eric!

I cant speak for everyone but I understand that with releases there are going to be some unintended consequences that may not be fully vetted until it goes live.

Thanks again.

The other issue we found in our investigation is that Bolster’s diminishing returns are too generous and giving out too many stats over the course of a set. Our item system uses a diminishing returns formula on each individual stat on a mod, so that putting more and more of a stat on a single mod costs more “item budget.” The Bolster system follows the same formulas, but because it gives more frequent smaller values that are added together, each stat takes a less harsh diminishing returns hit. Taken over the course of an entire set, the result is that a fully Bolstered character tends to have gained some small values in each stat and rating over actual items. To fix this we need to massage some numbers to make diminishing returns affect Bolster stat gains more drastically.

 

It is important to note that “naked Bolster” is never intended to be better than wearing gear, this is a bug and is going to be fixed.

here's an idea: reapply the OLD, imperfect bolster system and take this crap back to PTS where you can...you know...FIX IT.

as for ppl whining about old bolster: what do you want? you're playing against toons with 20+ more levels of abils. there's no way any sort of "bolster" can reasonably compensate for that. however, it was possible to rectify your dirth of abils by maxing gear. NOW, you go up against someone who has painstakingly max'd his gear, and you stomp him...because you're naked? lol great.

I guess this means I'm out of pvp for a week cuz I can't level until the 15th. then it's about another week to hit 55 just so I don't have to get 2-shot by a 31 in greens. just reset the bolster until you figure out what you're doing. please.

That's a good post Eric, thx for the update. I guess that explains why removing earpiece/implants/relics gave me better stats than full (pve) gear. Although naked was worse overall for me when considering set bonus and such.

This was my data if it helps (50 merc, rakata aim stim, 9% aim talent, 5% health buff).

A) Full pve gear (mostly rakata, all augmented, none of the gear had expertise),

B) earpiece+implants+relics removed,

C) all gear but blasters removed

=

Aim: A) 2380, B) 2562, C) 2329

Health: A) 23086, B) 24136, C)24222

Total secondary stats: A) 1452, B) 1445, C) 1453

Armour: A) 5666, B) 5666, C) 5602

Expertise: A) 1961, B) 1985, C) 1990

here's an idea: reapply the OLD, imperfect bolster system and take this crap back to PTS where you can...you know...FIX IT.

 

as for ppl whining about old bolster: what do you want? you're playing against toons with 20+ more levels of abils. there's no way any sort of "bolster" can reasonably compensate for that. however, it was possible to rectify your dirth of abils by maxing gear. NOW, you go up against someone who has painstakingly max'd his gear, and you stomp him...because you're naked? lol great.

 

I guess this means I'm out of pvp for a week cuz I can't level until the 15th. then it's about another week to hit 55 just so I don't have to get 2-shot by a 31 in greens. just reset the bolster until you figure out what you're doing. please.

Its a new expansion and all 50 PvP gear is phased out. Minus the few bugs mentioned low level PvP is balanced stat wise, as long as you don't wear phased out gear. And this system is way better than having to fight twinks in low level PvP. At 55 PvP gear is still the best. Let your old gear go, it will be OK.

Hey everyone!

 

I was able to spend a bit of time today talking to Rob Hinkle and Alex Modny about the PvP changes and although they are busy right now working on getting solutions to some of these issues, I wanted to pass on some explanations on what is going on.

 

What is the purpose of “naked” bolster? So I want to clarify why Naked Bolster exists. For Bolster we need to have a system that impacts Warzone players from level 10 to level 55. To do this we want to make sure characters are on as even a playing field as possible. However, when you were leveling up your main, when did you get your first helmet, implant, or relic? In the level up game we have certain points where characters have not yet received certain items and we don’t want to punish these characters because they don’t have access to certain items while higher level characters have plentiful access, so they both get bolstered up to the same level to create a more equal playing field.

 

Ex: We want to make sure your level 11 without a helmet is getting some stats for their head slot to be equal to the level 25 with a helmet.

 

With that being said, we do not intend for naked Bolster to be better than wearing gear of any type. This is a bug with the system that we are adamant on fixing and attempted to fix on PTS. The truth is that when we fixed one aspect of the system we opened up another edge case. Last night when it became apparent we had not done enough to fix the issue we started an investigation (yes at 3am CDT in the morning) and have been working all day on a plan of attack to shore up this system so that it is fun and balanced for all parties.

 

More specifically the issues we have discovered are how the Bolster system handles Relics and diminishing returns. Currently on live, Bolster is giving too many stats to the Relic slot, meaning if you don’t use a Relic (naked Bolster) you will get more stats than the Relic itself would give. Actually different stats entirely since most Relics have Endurance and a proc effect. This means that taking off Relics will give you more primary damage stat and secondary stats and you will probably lose Endurance. How Bolster looks at Relic slots needs to be redone so that stats it assumes are present or should be present are more in-line with Relics that are present and we are working on that currently.

 

The other issue we found in our investigation is that Bolster’s diminishing returns are too generous and giving out too many stats over the course of a set. Our item system uses a diminishing returns formula on each individual stat on a mod, so that putting more and more of a stat on a single mod costs more “item budget.” The Bolster system follows the same formulas, but because it gives more frequent smaller values that are added together, each stat takes a less harsh diminishing returns hit. Taken over the course of an entire set, the result is that a fully Bolstered character tends to have gained some small values in each stat and rating over actual items. To fix this we need to massage some numbers to make diminishing returns affect Bolster stat gains more drastically.

 

It is important to note that “naked Bolster” is never intended to be better than wearing gear, this is a bug and is going to be fixed.

 

How does this affect level 55? Bolster will bolster characters up to right below Partisan gear, the new level 55 PvP set gear. This is working correctly from what we can see and means that the Elder Game will not have this issue of “naked Bolster.” Partisan and Conquer gear are still highly valuable and give better stats than Bolster so that max level PvP should be intact as we designed, it is just unfortunate that the system has bugs in it that make getting to that point frustrating.

 

Because of the bolster changes and general changes to 2.0 combat math you will see larger numbers during combat. We have given out more health with levels which means more damage to counter it. Also, in 2.0 the gear gap has been closed significantly. In pre-2.0 the gap was roughly (very roughly!) 80% difference between Recruit and fully augmented Elite War Hero gear. Closing this gap means that PvP battles will be on a more equal footing but you might be experiencing damage and heal numbers you hadn’t seen before the patch.

 

Hopefully this post has addressed some of your concerns about the current state of PvP following Game Update 2.0. Again, naked Bolster being as strong as it is right now is a bug and is not intended design. We have outlined above what our current plan is for addressing it but this is always subject to change. I will do my best to keep you all updated on how and when these changes will happen. Thank you all for your questions and feedback.

 

-eric

awesome eric, thanks for the update. godspeed in getting everything sorted

oh, and i finally got that video of my level 40 commando owning face uploaded!

here's an idea: reapply the OLD, imperfect bolster system and take this crap back to PTS where you can...you know...FIX IT.

 

as for ppl whining about old bolster: what do you want? you're playing against toons with 20+ more levels of abils. there's no way any sort of "bolster" can reasonably compensate for that. however, it was possible to rectify your dirth of abils by maxing gear. NOW, you go up against someone who has painstakingly max'd his gear, and you stomp him...because you're naked? lol great.

 

I guess this means I'm out of pvp for a week cuz I can't level until the 15th. then it's about another week to hit 55 just so I don't have to get 2-shot by a 31 in greens. just reset the bolster until you figure out what you're doing. please.

Except the tiny problem of 30-54 brackets, meaning that everyone 50+ runs around with 1600+ Expertise. The old bolster didn't include Expertise. You'd have 50+s one-shotting 30-49s because they didn't have access to (E)WH gear.

I agree that Bolster is currently borked/bugged, but going back to the old one while they fix the current problems is an even worse choice than rolling it out bugged and fixing it ASAP. And I do think the Expertise thing needs to be re-examined some, 2-shots or 3-shots do not make for a healthy PvP metagame.

How does this affect level 55? Bolster will bolster characters up to right below Partisan gear, the new level 55 PvP set gear. This is working correctly from what we can see and means that the Elder Game will not have this issue of “naked Bolster.” Partisan and Conquer gear are still highly valuable and give better stats than Bolster so that max level PvP should be intact as we designed, it is just unfortunate that the system has bugs in it that make getting to that point frustrating.

We shall see won't we. The last iteration of Bolster in the 55 bracket on PTS had a toon performing better without Relics slotted. Based on the information in your post, it doesn't sound to me like that issue from the PTS has been resolved yet so I seriously doubt that the 55 bracket won't suffer from similar shenanigans to what we are experiencing now on live.

However, it is interesting to hear that all of the Comms we are collecting may end up being worth something at 55. However, if Bolster is active in Rated WZs, then it really doesn't matter much since any exploits/holes in the mechanic will certainly show up there.

If I could do anything, I would once again implore Rob and Alex to remove Bolster from RWZs. Keep the layer of PvP gear progression and min/maxing relevant by making Rated Bolster-free, at least until the mechanic is completely stable in Regz. It would also buy you guys some time to create and provide us with some real endgame PvP content.

Anyway, thanks for trying Eric.

How does this affect level 55? Bolster will bolster characters up to right below Partisan gear, the new level 55 PvP set gear. This is working correctly from what we can see and means that the Elder Game will not have this issue of “naked Bolster.” Partisan and Conquer gear are still highly valuable and give better stats than Bolster so that max level PvP should be intact as we designed, it is just unfortunate that the system has bugs in it that make getting to that point frustrating.

okay....as long as naked, bis pve, and wh/ewh gear isn't as good as the lower tier of the 2 new tiers of pvp gear, then cool. There will be a reason to grind the gear, Wear the gear. Lowbie pvp is a joke, but as long as endgame pvp is cool, don't care if naked is the new twink.

Because of the bolster changes and general changes to 2.0 combat math you will see larger numbers during combat. We have given out more health with levels which means more damage to counter it. Also, in 2.0 the gear gap has been closed significantly. In pre-2.0 the gap was roughly (very roughly!) 80% difference between Recruit and fully augmented Elite War Hero gear. Closing this gap means that PvP battles will be on a more equal footing but you might be experiencing damage and heal numbers you hadn’t seen before the patch.

To be honest, this is a little concerning, I've been doing 7k backstabs on my operative and 8k mauls on my assassin. I realize that healthpools are greater now, but not by much, so I'm not sure if this is a good change or not. I'm also now taking 7k smashes on my assassin while in tank spec, thanks to the armor nerf. Though, I do have considerably more hp on my assassin...I'm somehow getting 32k hp....another one of those buggy high hp specs maybe? <=/

In any case, I am really amazed that you somehow continued to test this bolster effect internally....yet didn't bother to check either of the 2 lowbie brackets which obviously still have the naked pvp bug. I'm a little more relieved to hear that PVP at lvl 55 is (hopefully) working properly without any weird pve/naked statting higher than actual pvp gear

Still though, you had 3 months to test this, tons of complaints pertaining to this very issue, and you even boasted that you "quashed" this bug no less. Yet, it still goes live in this state. I understand needing to meet deadlines and then hotfixing stuff as needed, but this is a Very Severe oversight. This has basically broken pvp for everyone from level 10 to 54. It may be great for those who already hit 55 through some kind of exploits (another Serious bug that somehow slipped past your "internal metrics"), but for the rest of us, we're stuck with a pretty miserable play experience.

For people who exclusively pvp, they now basically have the choice of playing a ton of joke pvp matches or just playing another game. As a business, that's something you should strongly consider, because you obviously haven't considered that at all.

In pre-2.0 the gap was roughly (very roughly!) 80% difference between Recruit and fully augmented Elite War Hero gear. Closing this gap means that PvP battles will be on a more equal footing but you might be experiencing damage and heal numbers you hadn’t seen before the patch. -eric

Thanks for the reply, Eric. But a couple of concerns:

1) The quote above - Bolster hasn't 'closed the gap'. It's superceded it. IE PvP gear is worse than lvl 11 greens.

2) All of this must have been apparent during testing - so why go live with it? It's a broken system. You know it, we know it. Why foist it on us?

So you *applaud* people who pvp naked?

 

Wow, some people never cease to amaze.

 

I mean, you obviously did manage to get out of the bed this morning as well which is at least as difficult as removing your gear and still, you get no applause from me.

No, I applaud the pvpers who figured out what gear/mod combinations they needed to still be able to wear armor and not get 2 shot instead of coming onto the forums and complaining. Never once, in any of my posts, did I say pvping naked is the way to go. I'm not against it but I'm not for it either. If you want to pvp naked that's fine just know that you are at a DISADVANTAGE to those of us who know how the new bolster works.

What's interesting is the Dev post saying naked bolster is providing better stats than wearing ANY gear. According to my testing and the last few hours of pvping, this IS NOT the case.

 

How does this affect level 55? Bolster will bolster characters up to right below Partisan gear, the new level 55 PvP set gear. This is working correctly from what we can see and means that the Elder Game will not have this issue of “naked Bolster.” Partisan and Conquer gear are still highly valuable and give better stats than Bolster so that max level PvP should be intact as we designed, it is just unfortunate that the system has bugs in it that make getting to that point frustrating.

 

Because of the bolster changes and general changes to 2.0 combat math you will see larger numbers during combat. We have given out more health with levels which means more damage to counter it. Also, in 2.0 the gear gap has been closed significantly. In pre-2.0 the gap was roughly (very roughly!) 80% difference between Recruit and fully augmented Elite War Hero gear. Closing this gap means that PvP battles will be on a more equal footing but you might be experiencing damage and heal numbers you hadn’t seen before the patch.

So we will have to grind a whole new (ranked) gear, augment it and min/max it in order to be 'slightly' better than the ones that come to pvp in pve gear? Because as you said, if you dont have pvp gear, bolster will place you just below the partisan level. Define 'just below' please. Is the difference even noticable?

In my point of view PvP'ers should be rewarded for having the top-tier gear, and that needs to be VERY noticable. From what i understand the difference between conqueror and pve gear will be something like 5%, is that true?

That's a good post Eric, thx for the update. I guess that explains why removing earpiece/implants/relics gave me better stats than full (pve) gear. Although naked was worse overall for me when considering set bonus and such.

 

This was my data if it helps (50 merc, rakata aim stim, 9% aim talent, 5% health buff).

 

 

A) Full pve gear (mostly rakata, all augmented, none of the gear had expertise),

B) earpiece+implants+relics removed,

C) all gear but blasters removed

 

=

 

Aim: A) 2380, B) 2562, C) 2329

Health: A) 23086, B) 24136, C)24222

Total secondary stats: A) 1452, B) 1445, C) 1453

Armour: A) 5666, B) 5666, C) 5602

Expertise: A) 1961, B) 1985, C) 1990

Most useful post I've seen all day.

My concern is that our current pvp gear is seemingly worthless in comparison to those without it. While I can understand the need to close the gear gap between a lvl 45 and myself with minmaxed wh/ewh I feel the compensation is too generous; it totally negates the gear I currently have.

The only issue (and notably the most important issue currently) that I see being addressed is the "naked bolster" But I didn't notice anything in the works to lower the curve the bolster provides to undergeared players. Maybe I missed something, I did only scan the material.

Will re-read.

What are people seeing as their HP figure? Most of my (fully clothed!) characters (30 - 54 bracket) seem to end up in the 22K - 24K HP range. However, my Powertech tank ends up with ~28K HP. Now, he is kitted out with the level 40 (currently 46) PvP tank gear, so figured this was the reason. Next PvP match I stripped down while waiting for it to start properly, but still ended up with ~28K HP.

Do you need to be naked before entering to see a difference? I've also tried swapping to Pyro stance in case that does anything, but nope. I'm not sure what that one character (although I've since seen a 28K HP naked assassin - tank stance + sabre/focus from memory) has that justifies +6K HP over my other characters (and usually the rest of the team).

Am I being stupid and missing some innate Powertech HP buff, or is this another Bolster quirk?

Thoughts?

The fix is very simple.

Flat Stats for both new brackets.

10-29 gets x amount of primary stat, x amount of endurance, x amount of expertise, x amount of bonus damage/healing regardless of level and gear, everyone enters identical for their class.

30-54 Exact same as above, maybe slight stat increase to make it feel like your progressing

55 Bracket, purely based on gear, since there is nothing at all to spend your comms on from 10 through 54 so you should be saving and converting your comms as you get them to cap out.

Its a new expansion and all 50 PvP gear is phased out. Minus the few bugs mentioned low level PvP is balanced stat wise, as long as you don't wear phased out gear. And this system is way better than having to fight twinks in low level PvP. At 55 PvP gear is still the best. Let your old gear go, it will be OK.

lol playing against lower levels in the same old pve gear that I can go back and craft on an armormech. so no. sorry. system fail.

Except the tiny problem of 30-54 brackets, meaning that everyone 50+ runs around with 1600+ Expertise. The old bolster didn't include Expertise. You'd have 50+s one-shotting 30-49s because they didn't have access to (E)WH gear.

 

I agree that Bolster is currently borked/bugged, but going back to the old one while they fix the current problems is an even worse choice than rolling it out bugged and fixing it ASAP. And I do think the Expertise thing needs to be re-examined some, 2-shots or 3-shots do not make for a healthy PvP metagame.

so 50-54 is its own bracket for a few weeks while they fix their sheeit. not exactly rocket science.

Except the tiny problem of 30-54 brackets, meaning that everyone 50+ runs around with 1600+ Expertise. The old bolster didn't include Expertise. You'd have 50+s one-shotting 30-49s because they didn't have access to (E)WH gear.

At this point they should just remove expertise completely. If they are going to give it in large volumes to everyone, regardless of gear, even naked people, then it's a worthless stat that should just be removed.

lol playing against lower levels in the same old pve gear that I can go back and craft on an armormech. so no. sorry. system fail.

If you want a gear advantage this game is no longer for you. BTW you are mad over low level PvP, we are not talking endgame here.

If you want a gear advantage this game is no longer for you. BTW you are mad over low level PvP, we are not talking endgame here.

uh...there IS a gear advantage. wearing crappy gear > good gear. and I'm looking at 33s with 2.4k hp while I'm at 2.2k (w/o relic). his exp is bolstered to be equal to mine. what do you mean no gear advantage. it's there. it's just back asswards.

At this point they should just remove expertise completely. If they are going to give it in large volumes to everyone, regardless of gear, even naked people, then it's a worthless stat that should just be removed.

this is fine with me for pre-55. could've easily just changed stats on pre-55 pvp gear. it's not like they haven't done that before.

uh...there IS a gear advantage. wearing crappy gear > good gear. and I'm looking at 33s with 2.4k hp while I'm at 2.2k (w/o relic). his exp is bolstered to be equal to mine. what do you mean no gear advantage. it's there. it's just back asswards.

THIS. They went in the complete opposite direction, and the gear gap is actually worse. The difference between full recruit and EWH was 4-5k HP. I've seen people in 2.0 warzones with 8-10k more HP than me. Their secret? Crappy gear, or no gear at all.

 

With that being said, we do not intend for naked Bolster to be better than wearing gear of any type. This is a bug with the system that we are adamant on fixing and attempted to fix on PTS. The truth is that when we fixed one aspect of the system we opened up another edge case. Last night when it became apparent we had not done enough to fix the issue we started an investigation (yes at 3am CDT in the morning) and have been working all day on a plan of attack to shore up this system so that it is fun and balanced for all parties.

 

The other issue we found in our investigation is that Bolster’s diminishing returns are too generous and giving out too many stats over the course of a set. Our item system uses a diminishing returns formula on each individual stat on a mod, so that putting more and more of a stat on a single mod costs more “item budget.” The Bolster system follows the same formulas, but because it gives more frequent smaller values that are added together, each stat takes a less harsh diminishing returns hit. Taken over the course of an entire set, the result is that a fully Bolstered character tends to have gained some small values in each stat and rating over actual items. To fix this we need to massage some numbers to make diminishing returns affect Bolster stat gains more drastically.

 

[-eric

Thanks for the response, which is highly appreciated.