TheSupaCoopa Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 This would be an amazing feature. As it is right now, we don't get a lot of customization for our companions to really make them feel unique, and I think the Disciplines system would be an interesting way to allow it. -Duran'del Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Essence_of_Light Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 An interesting idea, but I'm not sure how it would be implemented. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aussircaex Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 Disciplines may be too complex for that. Maybe we could just have a button to click instead that would adjust how they play. Like one button lowers the CDs on their attacks and lowers their threat, while the other pumps up their defense and increases their threat. Wait that exists. Sarcasm aside, there already is a function to change a companion's role if they are a healer or tank. What else are you suggesting they add? More abilities for companions? That wouldn't be bad per se, but is that what you meant? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuriDogshin Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 This would be an amazing feature. It sure would be amazing, constructing an AI to take advantage of all those skills and procs, considering that most players don't know how to do so. You're asking BioWare to build an AI smarter than many SWTOR players. Even if that were possible, it's probably not a good idea. That AI would eventually make its way into every mob, making the game very difficult for most players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warrgames Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 It sure would be amazing, constructing an AI to take advantage of all those skills and procs, considering that most players don't know how to do so. You're asking BioWare to build an AI smarter than many SWTOR players. Even if that were possible, it's probably not a good idea. That AI would eventually make its way into every mob, making the game very difficult for most players. After taking over all the mobs in the game, it would than take over the world and wipe out mankind!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muljo_Stpho Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 (edited) From the idea in this topic, I'm picturing it basically being a visualization for what's kind of happening behind the scenes anyway. There would be a linked pathway of abilities that would look similar to (but smaller than) the upcoming Disciplines interface. Your current level determines how many abilities on that pathway are active / available, and the companion quickbar fills out with the abilities. But what this would do is it would allow the developers to custom tailor the moves available to each companion for their selected discipline. Instead of just having two stances that reduce cooldowns on one half of their abilities or the other half of their abilities, they could have specialized moves built just for one stance or the other (with stances being switched as disciplines instead of keeping the stance buttons on the companion quickbar). On the other hand though, there is the approach taken with Treek where a few of her abilities are programmed to function completely differently depending on which stance she's in. Perhaps they could just revisit all of the companion abilities and change specific ones to feature stance based functionality to emphasize what that stance is supposed to be about. Edited November 20, 2014 by Muljo_Stpho Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshlaBoga Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 No need for Companion Disciplines. BRING BACK THE BETA ROLE KITS! Back in Beta Companions had an extra slot where you could swap out their Healing, DPS, or Tank role. Why did they remove that? Scourge heals for the win:p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarpeSangrea Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 No need for Companion Disciplines. BRING BACK THE BETA ROLE KITS! Back in Beta Companions had an extra slot where you could swap out their Healing, DPS, or Tank role. Why did they remove that? Scourge heals for the win:p A thousand times this. I end up never using the companion I actually want to because they are the wrong role. I use healer companions on all of my toons(except my healer lol). On my trooper for example, my favorite companion is M1-4X, but that's a tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tortcat Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 A thousand times this. I end up never using the companion I actually want to because they are the wrong role. I use healer companions on all of my toons(except my healer lol). On my trooper for example, my favorite companion is M1-4X, but that's a tank. yep yep remember this and agree Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vember Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 No need for Companion Disciplines. BRING BACK THE BETA ROLE KITS! Back in Beta Companions had an extra slot where you could swap out their Healing, DPS, or Tank role. Why did they remove that? Scourge heals for the win:p This needs to happen immediately. Why would they take this out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ridickilis Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 This needs to happen immediately. Why would they take this out? They took it out when they removed the option to kill companions. When they removed that it removed the *need* to use one companion to fulfill all the roles, otherwise players would have complained that they killed their "X" roled companion and now don't have one. Still, the feature would be a nice little fun thing to have but not overly necessary. Lately I've just been sending the 200k to every new alt I create and open up the field respec. That way I just change my role to fit whichever companion I want to use for the 1000 kills or rp purposes or whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KyaniteD Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 (edited) This needs to happen immediately. Why would they take this out? Maybe the question to ask is why they felt it was needed in the first place? Maybe the answer could be that the option to kill companions could deprive players of certain companion roles. So in turn, since companions can no longer be killed, all companion roles will always be available to the players and one companion doesn't have to be able to cover all bases. Just a theory, of course. The combination of killing companions and having role kits has quite some potential to be quite popular. Edited November 20, 2014 by KyaniteD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clarian Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 BRING BACK THE BETA ROLE KITS! Back in Beta Companions had an extra slot where you could swap out their Healing, DPS, or Tank role. That would be awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaximusRex Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 Maybe the question to ask is why they felt it was needed in the first place? Maybe the answer could be that the option to kill companions could deprive players of certain companion roles. So in turn, since companions can no longer be killed, all companion roles will always be available to the players and one companion doesn't have to be able to cover all bases. Just a theory, of course. The combination of killing companions and having role kits has quite some potential to be quite popular. Killing companions was removed because too many people in beta regretted it and made tickets to get the companion restored. They are concerned if they allow players to kill companions that it would overload CS, so they killed the option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deewe Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 No need for Companion Disciplines. BRING BACK THE BETA ROLE KITS! ^ This but would also like to be able to choose their classes, especially to change their default weapon. For example really don't like Bowdaar with a stick, want him to have a Bowcaster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSupaCoopa Posted November 20, 2014 Author Share Posted November 20, 2014 Disciplines may be too complex for that. Maybe we could just have a button to click instead that would adjust how they play. Like one button lowers the CDs on their attacks and lowers their threat, while the other pumps up their defense and increases their threat. Wait that exists. Sarcasm aside, there already is a function to change a companion's role if they are a healer or tank. What else are you suggesting they add? More abilities for companions? That wouldn't be bad per se, but is that what you meant? Mako isn't very good at dealing damage, even with the DPS stance. She just heals me instead of dealing damage and only uses her basic attack. Its pathetic. Gault's terrible at dealing AoE damage, even with the AoE stance. I could say every companion and how bad they are at doing their secondary role. A discipline system would be able to be remedy this problem, even if it was just a bare bones one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silverspar Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 (edited) It sure would be amazing, constructing an AI to take advantage of all those skills and procs, considering that most players don't know how to do so. You're asking BioWare to build an AI smarter than many SWTOR players. Even if that were possible, it's probably not a good idea. That AI would eventually make its way into every mob, making the game very difficult for most players. Making an AI smarter than the players of SWTOR isn't as hard as people make it out to be. That part is actually quite a bit simpler. Making an AI that is challenging but fun is another matter all together. The system requires things to happen at precise moments, that way the elitest raiders can feel like they are the bestest for beating a bunch of 1s and 0s. Change that algorithm up, and well you end up making all those strategies and plans obsolete. Edited November 20, 2014 by Silverspar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Costello Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 I agree that would be amazing. Companions are something BW should be embracing, any story linked to a companion has so much more meaning and any customisation is good whether its more choice of look or ability. Companions are something that separates ToR from the competition and should be a focus point not one that is ignored and forgotten. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlrikFassbauer Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 I like this idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuriDogshin Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 If you're going to lecture and belittle other posters then you probably ought to get the facts straight yourself. Nothing I posted was incorrect. My facts are straight. Mako in dps stance will NOT out dps a pure dps companion, even if you turn off all her healing abllities and put her in gear that has stats optimized for dps. You are just making my case for me: even the current system of controlling companion abilities is complicated, and many players seem to not even know it exists. Yet they are asking for a more complicated system to replace it. Frankly, if a player needs that much control over their companions to clear the content that you can effectively use a companion doing DPS to clear, they are doing it wrong. That said, melee DPS companions in my experience out-parse all others except HK-51. Ashara in particular puts up some nice numbers. Nothing wrong with that: just like with PC classes, there are tradeoffs between lethality and survivability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HammerOneOne Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 This would be a great idea but if it were a more simplified version of the discipline system. For instance, you pick one of the three disciplines available to that companion's class. If it stopped there that would be great. i have no desire to go through disciplines and setting them up for each time I would change their discipline. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heezdedjim Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 Allegedly in beta the companion customization determined their ability set. So any companion could perform any role by swapping customizations. Like many, many other features that have been long lamented and asked for many times since launch, this is another that was removed and never has reappeared, for reasons they never explained. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LyraineAlei Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 Nothing I posted was incorrect. My facts are straight. You are just making my case for me: even the current system of controlling companion abilities is complicated, and many players seem to not even know it exists. Yet they are asking for a more complicated system to replace it. Frankly, if a player needs that much control over their companions to clear the content that you can effectively use a companion doing DPS to clear, they are doing it wrong. That said, melee DPS companions in my experience out-parse all others except HK-51. Ashara in particular puts up some nice numbers. Nothing wrong with that: just like with PC classes, there are tradeoffs between lethality and survivability. They aren't asking to control like that. They are asking to play with the companions they like to play with, without having to deal with underperforming by removing abilities. Again, Mako, in DPS still spends more time healing that shooting. How do I know this in anecdotal form? Because I have turned off her heals, set her in DPS stance, and she spent more time standing and doing nothing because of the CDs of her abilities. My PT loves Blizz to bits, can't play along side him though because they are both tanks, and really, 42-52 levels (about) with Mako saying "Thought I was a pushover?" And "I'm not just w pretty sidekick, you know." In every. Single. Battle is enough for me to try punching my screen out. Because Tank/heals is "the" (supposedly) most efficient combo to kill mobs, with DPS/Heals right after. And my SW Jugg doesn't want to finish Corellia with Quinn right now. She's in Tank spec. My Guardian really likes hanging out with Scourge. Also in Tank. And Kira keeps stealing mobs off me, even when I use High threat generating stuff. And I really want to push Doc out the window from time to time. My Commando enjoys traveling with Elara. Too bad she's heals as well. Vanguard has fun trying to keep aggro when Forex keeps harpooning more and Kore away from her. Sawbones Scoundrel will punch the screen if either one needs to listen to Corso any more. Or Bowdaar. Love my wookie, but after a while the growling gets to me. I have yet to roll a Sin or Shadow because I love Khem and Qyzen too much to not use all the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sorwen Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 I just really hate as a Guardian I never really got to use Kira. So many characters have wasted companions because the combination just isn't going to work for how they are playing. Why as a Tank/DPS did I have to wait for most of the game to get a healing class companion when my second companion was just as capable of it if they followed the right AC? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LyraineAlei Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 I just really hate as a Guardian I never really got to use Kira. So many characters have wasted companions because the combination just isn't going to work for how they are playing. Why as a Tank/DPS did I have to wait for most of the game to get a healing class companion when my second companion was just as capable of it if they followed the right AC? ^ I like Kira and all, but she's always stealing my mobs off me. She doesn't even tank, and I'm trying to generate enough threat that they try to chip at my guardian until they die at her blade. Isn't that how it's supposed to work? Me tank, meat shield of awesome? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts