Let me start this by saying: I love the challenge associated with a crappier companion; I do not, however, wish to sacrifice a vivacious SWTOR community just so I can have a more obvious SOLO challenge.
I wonder if the Dev's would like it if we, the players, forced them to push spiky needles up their pee holes? The majority of them probably wouldn't like that very much--just the kinky ones would.
People don't like when things/opinions they don't like/agree with are forced upon them; I.E. if they don't want to group, they're not going to group. It's not a new concept. When the majority of a community wants OP companions and instead devs nerf them--it's bound to have some repercussions. The fact is (and polls show this), a LOT of people came back to SWTOR for KOTFE but STAYED because of the revitalized solo content through these OP companions.
What happens now? All the people that disagree with the changes will go elsewhere (and they are MANY), as usual, and SWTOR will hemorrhage subscriptions again, and your "just ask someone to come with you" concept will become all the more moot, because there wont be anyone playing.
Were the OP companions hurting us elitist I-want-a-challenge players? Not really, we created new challenges for ourselves through pulling more mobs, etc.; My personal favorite was attempting to pull entire H2 instances and surviving, not always successfully--my character actually felt powerful like the storyline suggests. Why cater to the solo players? They help keep economy and community going, just like the non-solo players. And the real group-player content isn't effected by these OP companions.
Though I don't like it, I think it'd be wise of BW to make companions just as strong or nearly as strong as they were pre patch.
If they don't... at least BW won't have any more server capacity issues.