80% Is Eighty Percent

No matter how you slice it 80% is eighty percent.  Eight out of ten is 80%.  I don't care how you look at it the answer will always be 80% no matter what kind of spin you put on it.

What if I had twenty one dollar bills.  I gave person A ten one dollar bills, and I gave person B eight one dollar bills.  I tell person B they have the same amount of money as Person A.  Do you think I can convince him he has ten dollars?

What if I sliced a pizza into ten slices, and I ate eight slices.  How much of the pizza did I eat.  I ate 80%.  If I ate 7 slices it would be 70%, and 9 slices would be 90%.  Could I convince you that if I ate 8 slices that really I ate all ten slices?

What if you had a car that regularly got 40 miles to the gallon.  I give you a car that gets 32 miles to the gallon, and tell you it is the same.  Would you believe me?

What am I trying to prove here?  I am trying to prove that 80% of something is not the same as 100%, but for some reason some people try to convince others it is.  Who are these other people?

I am talking about the bolstering in SWTOR.  I have raised the 80% of the stats question many times now, and I get told I am assuming things.  80% is eighty percent right?  How am I assuming anything?

I don't care what kind of spin you put on it, but it is still 80%.  No one being bolstered will have any chance against a player who isn't bolstered.  Of course a bolstered player can beat a total noob, but does that really count?  Not in my book.

Please if someone can show me mathematically where 80%=100% I would love to see it.  Until I see it there is no way that bolstering is going to work in SWTOR.

Bolstering In SWTOR PvP

I have to admit that I haven't followed SWTOR real closely, but the bolstering mechanic has me a little nervous.  I see many uneven matches in the Warzone.  Who is going to want a bolstered player on their team?  It leaves many questions in my mind on how it is all going to work.  I found this gem explaining bolstering.

Q: How will the Bolster system work? – Kelremar

A: If after a time the Warzone matchmaking system has not found a match of players of the same level range, then it will start up a ‘bolstered match’ where players of varying levels will have their stats bolstered to within 20% of each other. Therefore, player skill disparity withstanding, the lowest level player will be 80% as effective as the highest level player in the match.

If it is 80% of the top players than that is going to be a huge difference.  If someone gets bolstered ten levels does that just mean their health, and mana will increase?  What about your spells, and damage?  Is his weapons, and armor going to be ten levels lower?  What if everyone is max level, and one guy is 10 levels from max, and gets bolstered?  Will he really be competitive?  Will he gain any spells that maybe he hasn't trained yet being ten levels lower?

How is a bolstered player going to play?  Are they going to be inexperienced, and cost your team a victory?  I just don't see how any competitive pvper is going to be happy with this.

I remember in the early days of World of Warcraft you could queue up for Warsong Gulch with a ten level disparity.  It caused so much anger.  All the 60's would belittle the person, and tell them to leave and go do some PvE.  I know many times even one lower level player meant the difference from winning, and losing. Eventually Blizzard changed it to 60's only queueing after all the griping on the official forums for months.

This could also be interpreted that if everyone is level 40, and you are 50 that you could be lowered to level 48 to try to make it more competitive.  Once again if it was me playing I would be pissed off if all of a sudden my health, and mana was cut down to make the match more fair.