At least you finished it. I did it on Story Mode first. Found out I had to do it on solo mode. Was in the middle of killing the second boss and the server crashed. I'm going to read a book.

It works if you choose either the arrogant or silly responses. Once I started doing this, the story became very funny. But you have to be willing to play it that way. Having played all classes male and female, I found the female smuggler annoying and the female consular bland. I made the consular an alien race and tried to pass it off as a cultural issue which helped a bit. For the best. Female IA, Warrior and BH are all quite good. Male Inquisitor and also the Male Consular I like for what I posted above. The rest I feel are all decent to good. Character VO and its quality is strong point of this game imo.

Ardun Kothe Although I think many of the IA companions are well done, they don't fit my character. Of the available ones from other classes, Elara probably makes the most sense since I consider my Agent to be a Republic sympathizer. I'm hoping she will be available to other classes at some point.

Yeah, if all I am getting is a chapter a month with no other new content, I'll just let my sub run out and resub for a month once Chapter 16 is done. I have no interest playing as HK and while I liked him fine in the story, it disappoints me they are bringing him back.

Yeah, unless I know 20 gets me something interesting, I'm done at 10. Wish there was more to this than a number.

How about giving companions a bonus say 25% to one of the three roles (Heal/Tank/DPS). That way you can use whatever companion you want but if you want a little extra for a particular situation you can grab another companion. It also might give people a reason to get more companions to influence 50.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. For me, with high Influence and Presence, we should feel like we are competing with our companions strength wise. Otherwise, what is the point of increasing those. Of course that will make trash content trivial at higher levels and I think that is fine. You should feel OP then against trash and strong mobs. This is why I want strong companions. But, for something like Star Fortresses, it should be challenging for a player with a high influence/presence companion, not a 30-40 minute grind through trash. Halve the time. Get rid of most of the trash and design more difficult encounters.

I would like this. My Agent essentially made that choice at the end of the main story. It would also be nice if we could group cross-faction. We have been working together to some extent the past 10 levels anyhow.

Ugh. I tried doing the HK quest last Christmas timeframe and spent 45 minutes in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and came up empty. That was enough for me. As for the OP. I give it a 7/10.

It sounds like they will still be weaker then they were pre-4.0 with decent gear. Someone with the numbers can confirm. If that is the case, I'm not sure why this would be acceptable. You go from 10 levels of affection to grind to 50 levels of influence only to have a companion weaker than they were before? Imagine if you heard about this pre-KOTFE and they told you there was going to be this new companion system where they started out a lot weaker than they currently are, but now you can grind from 10 to 50 influence so that they will be only a bit weaker than before. If they want content to be less trivial than create some content that is more difficult instead of nerfing the companions. I was doing the final boss fight in KOTFE over the weekend and I was sitting at full health the entire time. The problem wasn't an OP companion, it's that the fight itself was not made interesting or challenging. I don't understand the crowd that wants a companion but wants them to be weak. At rank 50, I want a companion that is nearly as tough as my character so I feel like I have to play may best to out compete them. For people that want a challenge (me included though not all the time), we should want them to create more challenging content. To me the whole process has seemed backwards.

Yeah, when you add a grind to 50 levels of influence, you need to make it worthwhile otherwise people won't do it. At 50, they should be very close to a player's effectiveness imo. Otherwise, just revert it to pre-4.0 and let us gear our companions again.

Interesting post. I will check this out. I have 3 characters at 10 and several others at different ranks. Having said that, I don't see myself grinding past 10 until I know there is a real purpose. And even then I can't imagine doing it on any alts. I prefer the wait and see approach cause currently it appears to be a pointless grind.

Exactly!!!!! I actually felt like a Jedi for once. Sigh. Oh well.

It does seem that they are just trying to calm all the furor by asking for this feedback.

I have seen numbers posted a couple times. One person did a comparison of healer companions at several different influence levels now vs what they were getting with their decked out companions pre-4.0. Even at influence 50 it was barely half of what they were getting pre-4.0 with those companions. I can't verify the legitimacy, but it looked like an honest post.

Sounds like into January when new story comes out. As is, there is nothing to do but grind alliance faction which afaik is nothing but a number. So if you care about seeing that number go up next to the alliance specialists, there is some old recycled content you can do.

Nah, people would be complaining about how they are worse than pre-4.0, but yeah it wouldn't be nearly the uproar that they have right now. And as for their testing. They had to know it was OP unless they never play their game. I could tell you in the first 5 minutes of gameplay that the heals were out of control. Not that I minded it though.

Some thoughts I have... The ability to choose my alliance specialists from my list of companions with each of them having abilities that affect their performance in that position. Influence rank having an impact on how your companion reacts to you. Don't invest in to their influence over time, they may leave or betray you. Invest into them, it may open up new quests that you do specifically with that companion. They also could do things like send you alliance crates once per week with high enough influence. Your choices in which companions you have in your alliance have an impact on which ones you recruit. Companions choosing to join or leave based on the makeup of your alliance. Too many dark side companions, a light side companion may not join you or may leave you. Choices that matter...

Pretty much my sentiments as well. The non-stop fighting made my character feel like a Jedi. Having to regen between fights is not interesting gameplay and a major contributing factor to why I lost interest in this game quickly when it first came out. It's also why I chose Biochem on the majority of my characters later on. I would use the reusable medpacs between fights to shorten down time. I've had some problems post nerf where my companion isn't healing me at all post fight. I haven't studied this in detail yet so I am not sure exactly what is happening here.

They need some sort of vision for them. They could not of thought grinding to level 50 influence to get half the power a well geared companion had at level 60 was an acceptable outcome. (I'm using numbers from memory of another person's post). What would be reasonable expectations? Certainly at influence 50, they should be more powerful than a well geared companion pre 4.0. I would argue between 80-100% of an average player. And at half that influence they should be at least as good as well geared companion pre 4.0. Otherwise this was a complete waste and they may have well just kept them as they were before. And in that case I would end up grinding better gear for 2-3 companions on each character which helps solve their lack of solo content problem. It really isn't that hard.

That would be $225 million but still a ton of money. Have the actually lost 5 million subs since their last expansion came out? If so, that is stunning. I did read that they aren't going to be announcing sub numbers anymore.

I've done numerous grinds in mmo's when they actually have a purpose and while I don't like them, if they aren't too painful I'll do them if there is something interesting gated behind it. Unfortunately, I see nothing compelling about the alliance system. Great the factions go to 20. I'm at 10 now and have done all the Star Fortresses on heroic. What does my progression to rank 20 get me now? A title? An achievement? I understand some people like these things, but these have never mattered to me. I'm not seeing any interesting progression here for a solo player. I won't need 208 gear to the next bit of story although I have it now anyways. I have all the currently available companions and their purpose in the alliance system right now is nothing. I'm stuck with 4 leaders that are completely uninspiring. Really, Sana Rae is going to lead my force enclave? How about Lord Scourge or anyone of my choosing? Choices are supposed to matter here? If I have too many dark side companions, will new light side ones not join me? Doubt it, but that's at least a somewhat interesting decision. I mention all this because at least with the OP companions, doing this grind was bearable. Pointless, but bearable even fun because I essentially had no down time. Now, it's pointless and painful. Doable, yes. But not fun and not worth my time. Something, Diablo 2 taught me long ago when I was doing pointless grinds is that the journey needs to be fun, not just the end result of randomly getting one better item every few hours or so. The journey is no longer fun.

I like the first sentence in your last line. Unfortunately, Bioware didn't go with minor adjustments. They clearly don't understand human beings. If they nerfed it a couple times bit by bit, the player base would have been more willing to accept it. But giving them something that made the game really fun for a lot of people and then completely taking it away is just a terrible miscalculation on their part. I'm with the people who believe they nerfed them not because of the people complaining that they were OP (and I agree they were), but because people were progressing too quickly in the alliance system and they wanted to slow them down. To that point though I still don't see the point of grinding through the alliance system as is. Unless they make major improvements to it, it is nothing but a way to get extra companions and I am better off waiting to see where the companions I want are gated then doing some grind that as is seems entirely pointless.

Here's the thing. I am not sure that any of this grinding matters. So far I don't think anything has been gated behind influence with the specialists other than some decorations and achievements. I was willing to do what could have been a pointless grind to 20 on each pre-nerf, but now I'll just play something else until the next story update happens and I know what I need to do to play new content or get other companions.

Not even holding my breath for this. I was convinced that they were going to at least slightly buff the slot machine after the giant nerf and it never happened. I'll be monitoring the forums for the next few days to see if I am wrong, but otherwise I am moving on.