Companion Change Feedback

[Arlon_Nabarlly]

Not pay to win... pay to go through levels quicker! And yes I am as honest as I can be (and poor)

 

Going through levels quicker is exactly what P2W is in almost every P2W game....

[Talonus]

Hey folks,

 

Following the Companion changes we made Tuesday in 4.0.2, we want to gather your feedback on your gameplay experiences. We hope by this point you have had some time to jump in and get your hands on the changes yourselves. First, before we get into the feedback we are looking for, let’s talk a bit about our specific design goals related to Companions:

 

[Heroic 2] Missions – Challenge Level: Medium. To complete this content, a player should have a good understanding of their class and game mechanics, as well as level appropriate gear. Their companion’s role should begin to matter at this point, supplementing the player’s own Discipline. We expect some players to find these challenging initially—maybe even needing a friend’s help--but once the player earns better gear, a few levels of Influence with their companion, and has a greater understanding of the game, they should be able to solo the hardest of these missions.

 

Based on these statements above, do you think that these are true after Tuesday’s changes? What content is more or less difficult than you expected? Is there something that is just flat out impossible?

 

Please give us your feedback, and we simply ask you to be as constructive as possible.

 

-eric

 

• Your level: 65
  
• Roughly Average Item Rating: 216-220 with set pieces
  
• Discipline: Mercenary / DPS
  
• Companion: HK
  
• Companion role: Healing
  
• Companion Influence level: Level 50
  
• Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?): H2 on all planets
  
• Your personal experience while playing this content: Many H2 missions are no longer solo-able at all. Particularly the Makeb H2 mission "Observer" is flat out impossible, I don't have even a remote chance of beating the Guardian Droid. The best I can do is get him to down to about 60% health before he kills my companion and me. Before the nerf I could take him. This isn't the only H2 that is too difficult or impossible to complete but it is my best example. After the nerf, it really doesn't matter which companion I have out or the level, the result is the same, death. I've tried companions at different levels and the difference is so minor as to not really matter. There are regular gold mobs on Makeb that can heal themselves almost as fast I can dps them down, really prolonging the fight and even then it's close. My companion seems to now need to spend most of the time self-healing rather than assisting me...and the companion is really only taking AOE damage since I'm getting most of the main hits/tanking.
  

Edited November 19, 2015 by Talonus

[Arlon_Nabarlly]

#SWTORCompanionLivesMatter

 

Dont hate

 

Reported, that's disgusting to play off real tragic events for drama in a video game.

[HuaRya]

Please give us your feedback, and we simply ask you to be as constructive as possible. Include information such as:

 

Your level 65 (multiple)

Roughly Average Item Rating 216

Discipline Merc DPS

Companion Lana

Companion role Healer

Companion Influence level

Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?) Heroic

Your personal experience while playing this content

 

I would like to clarify that I'm a 'Denizen' of this game meaning that while SWTOR ebbs and flows in popularity I'm that demographic of Star Wars nerd that explores all aspects of the game. As others have stated the pre-nerf settings allowed us to not rely on charity of others to complete Heroic 2 Star Fortress. I know we all want to think that this game is played by putting your headphones on firing up VOIP and forming a group the second you log into the game but that isn't really how the long term players play. Prior to this we've burnt out on PVP, the Lord of the Flies group hunting the pug scenario got old. The HM Flashpoints were dismissed as a L2P but if that were the case there wouldn't be a 30+ minute wait time for a back fill to a un-passable boss. The operations were mostly avoided unless it was a guild run and they only happen in an evening prime time window of 8-10'sh EST.

 

For the people who make up the backbone of this game the companion nerf has severed their ability to play independently. Now we need to halt what we were doing and sit around spam for help. Depending on the time of day we may not find someone to help or even worse be told by a guildie to wait for them to get to that same point in their story or by some weird obligation to the guild do it for no benefit to them.

 

My question to musco is: Was it the intention to make solo players rely on the charity of others to complete their personal content?

 

Personally I find going around asking for people to do things I was perfectly capable of doing before the patch to be unappealing. To PVP, FP, & Op's I need to to group to succeed so now the last remaining solo content I have to do the same?

 

Here's whats going to happen. Despite what the white knights say who cheer any changes on the forums the population is now going to drop off. Why? Because people want to be able to run independent and achieve things in their own way in their own time when it comes to their personal story. You need to allow people to complete the Heroic 2 mission objectives on their own. Not force them to beg the trollish culture of General Chat to get it done.

[tmwfte]

I highly recommend Fallout 4.

 

Seconded.

 

I'm also enjoying playing through Divinity: Original Sin again as the Enhanced Edition. The changes, fixes, and additions actually feel really good, and this is to a game that was great to begin with (the original version of which I can still play, should I choose to, at that).

[Bakuryu]

Um, no. How about you guys (Bioware) actually test your game to get those metrics and figure out where it should be? It's an astounding concept to handle your own QA, I know. Or I guess you could look at the 100+ pages of feedback from the first thread about these changes for information. Or the number of unsubs that have hit since this patch fell?

 

No? Oh well.

[Xtro]

Please give us your feedback, and we simply ask you to be as constructive as possible. Include information such as:

• Your level
  
• Roughly Average Item Rating
  
• Discipline
  
• Companion
  
• Companion role
  
• Companion Influence level
  
• Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?)
  
• Your personal experience while playing this content
  

Level: 65

Average Item level: 205

Discipline: Gunslinger-sharpshooter

Companion: Lana

Companion Influence level: 29

Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing: Heroics 2+

 

Level: 42-56

Average Item level: 96 (blue level 34 gear)

Discipline: Mercenary-Arsenal

Companion: Mako

Companion Influence level: 23

Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing: Heroics 2+ up to and including Alderan.

 

Your personal experience while playing this content:

In short, while companion is in tank mode it fail to properly tank and gets grinded down now. That is to be expected since they no longer heal themselves as much and never actually had enough tanking ability to pull in area aggro.

While in healing role I get killed as gunslinger since I then pull in to much aggro if I area or the bloody companion stops heal me and heal itself if I don't. My BH have better survivability with slightly higher damage reduction, but still not overly fun now in heroics 2+.

DPS-role....... why would I use that as a DPS myself that do plenty of damage?

 

Personal thoughts after playing this content:

Congratulation, you added camping with new expansion and now we have the old fashion feeling of grinding again.

If you wanted to make the game better remove the bloody camping by placing EVERYTHING needed for those heroic 2+ in instances. That would make things less tedious and more bearable. You should also make the companion more useful when one have spent energy into improving them. Gimping them like now is hardly fun.

Having said that I did not die in any heroics but tank went down against some bosses and lost aggro other time when they did not. Do not think the survivability of tank companion should depend on losing aggro (though it is useful to have boss run to me be shoot away and lose aggro). Tank self heal and healing role heals need to increase (75% reduction... what was you people smoking? ).

 

Have not done Star Fortress yet (did not have time before) and as things are now I doubt I will any time soon. As gunslinger the healing between fights now is not what I would consider quality time with my companions.

[TUXs]

WOW really? Anyway I thought you said months ago once Battlefront came out you'd leave this game in the dust. It came out Tuesday

Ya know, that's been bugging me too...that was my plan, but tbh, I'd been having a lot of fun with 4.0...far more than I had expected, so I figured I'd wait a bit...because, unlike you, I don't really jump from game to game.

[MaximusRex]

Bullet 3 is absolutely NOT the case.

 

Level 65 Commando • gear all 216-224 (6-piece bonus), minus relics (PvP 208's) • Assault spec • Senya • Heals • level 27 • Higher level Heroic missions (Voss & Makeb specifically)..

 

It sounds that instead of companions being a problem it's that some Heroics haven't been re-balanced correctly. Maybe that is another area that needs to be looked at.

[KAOSFANG]

Your level: 65

Roughly Average Item Rating: 216 full gear and main hand, 186 relics, 220 offhand

Discipline Juggernaut Inmortal tank

Companion Changeable, either Lana as a healer for though bosses (what a surprise) HK-51 as a dps (im a nostalgic person, can't help it).

Companion Influence level: 29 Lana, 13 HK-51

Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?) I do solo runs on SF only at weekends, tried a bunch of weekly h2 heroics since last patch.

Your personal experience while playing this content.

 

As impopular my opinion could be, I do agree with companions nerf. Prior patch, a Lana Beniko could take you throught the whole game (except ops and fps for obvious reasons) regardless of her influence level while you were watching tv, arguing with wife, do homework or even bother to pay attention to your game play. Content turned boring and predictable, there was no risk to die or the thrill to try a mission where you had slim chances to survive by yourself and still get it done. Besides history and the fact im a big sw whole universe fan, the excitement adquired from playing for me, went gone after the arrive of nearly invencible companions.

 

The bunch of random weekly h2 i tried, took me a bit longer, near to die often and even fell to the ground a couple of times. H2 was never that fun before, back when there was no level sync and I went back to other planets to abuse of my level cap and do heroics i couldn't do it before by myself. The point is, it doesn't matter wich level you are or planet you chose to play. YOU HAVE TO DIE, LEARN, DIE AGAIN AND REPEAT OVER AND OVER before u get the correct rotation, gear and experience to sucefully solo content that is not supposed to or very hard to do it alone.

 

So far for what I said here, some could say I might be 1 year or more experienced player feeling all great cause it's a way easier for me to write and do all this but I would say different if I was a newcomer o newbie player who wants to have fun and get everything with a bit to no effort. The fun fact is, I have barely 9 months playing (mostly at weekends only) I only have 1 toon at 65 level and a Jedi guardian at 63. Im not even legacy maxed (45 level atm). When I arrived, I had no idea of ANYTHING and took me countless deaths and time to eventually learn and manage to do it well by myself and now with the help of my guildies.

 

(HK-51 voice) Conclusion: meat bags sometimes are lazy and want everything handed out or in the easiest way. True gamers, never quit, and conquer.

[Skywalkher]

Please give us your feedback, and we simply ask you to be as constructive as possible. Include information such as:

 

Your level 65 (multiple)

Roughly Average Item Rating 216

Discipline Merc DPS

Companion Lana

Companion role Healer

Companion Influence level

Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?) Heroic

Your personal experience while playing this content

 

I would like to clarify that I'm a 'Denizen' of this game meaning that while SWTOR ebbs and flows in popularity I'm that demographic of Star Wars nerd that explores all aspects of the game. As others have stated the pre-nerf settings allowed us to not rely on charity of others to complete Heroic 2 Star Fortress. I know we all want to think that this game is played by putting your headphones on firing up VOIP and forming a group the second you log into the game but that isn't really how the long term players play. Prior to this we've burnt out on PVP, the Lord of the Flies group hunting the pug scenario got old. The HM Flashpoints were dismissed as a L2P but if that were the case there wouldn't be a 30+ minute wait time for a back fill to a un-passable boss. The operations were mostly avoided unless it was a guild run and they only happen in an evening prime time window of 8-10'sh EST.

 

For the people who make up the backbone of this game the companion nerf has severed their ability to play independently. Now we need to halt what we were doing and sit around spam for help. Depending on the time of day we may not find someone to help or even worse be told by a guildie to wait for them to get to that same point in their story or by some weird obligation to the guild do it for no benefit to them.

 

My question to musco is: Was it the intention to make solo players rely on the charity of others to complete their personal content?

 

Personally I find going around asking for people to do things I was perfectly capable of doing before the patch to be unappealing. To PVP, FP, & Op's I need to to group to succeed so now the last remaining solo content I have to do the same?

 

Here's whats going to happen. Despite what the white knights say who cheer any changes on the forums the population is now going to drop off. Why? Because people want to be able to run independent and achieve things in their own way in their own time when it comes to their personal story. You need to allow people to complete the Heroic 2 mission objectives on their own. Not force them to beg the trollish culture of General Chat to get it done.

 

+1

 

Well Said! /clap

[Arlon_Nabarlly]

Ya know, that's been bugging me too...that was my plan, but tbh, I'd been having a lot of fun with 4.0...far more than I had expected, so I figured I'd wait a bit...because, unlike you, I don't really jump from game to game.

 

ROFL like you know me. I very rarely jump from game to game, but please tell me more about my play habbits...

[StrangeDais]

It's about the not-fun slow *** grind. Nothing about SWTOR was ever difficult. Not ever. Even the hardest stuff like a few ops wasn't all that hard. Stand on only certain parts of the floor, wowzers. If you want to play a challenging game, go play Dark Souls.

 

This change was a reward to the obsessive grinders and a slap in the face to the casuals, who the whiny grinder class complained were now able to do the same content as them.

 

BW will find out the hard way that the casuals outnumber the vocal minority of whiny grinders 50 to 1.

 

Here, have some cheese. Don't worry, it's casual cheese. You'll like it.

[RoninUTA]

• 43
  
• 104
  
• Powertech
  
• Mako
  
• Heal or Tank
  
• 19
  
• Heroic 2+ Reinforcements Alderaan
  
• Unable to complete the heroic missions now with my companion only. Dropping all heroics as it is now too much time in for the benefits received. With pre 4.0.2 I was enjoying finally getting to see these missions on my own time. Now it's just frustrating and not fun.
  

[Hebruixe]

Thanks for creating this thread, Eric. It goes a long way to soothe anxieties when you open communications like this.

[Alssaran]

Um, no. How about you guys (Bioware) actually test your game to get those metrics and figure out where it should be? It's an astounding concept to handle your own QA, I know. Or I guess you could look at the 100+ pages of feedback from the first thread about these changes for information. Or the number of unsubs that have hit since this patch fell?

 

No? Oh well.

 

Yeah. Just that this state is exactly where Bioware has intended the game to be. Wherever you agree with it or not is up to you. Now it's also up to you to tell them why this state of the game is not acceptable. It is for them, and probably for a lot of the pre-4.0 playerbase as a whole. Funnily enough, most people from that time I have contact with report that the game still doesn't feel impossible at all. We tried everything to make us go on a more average level: Clicking abilities. Wearing green gear. Using companions below 50. Playing DPS instead of heal/tanks. We still can't seem to find an impossible quest...

 

That's what you get for advertising for casual players. Once they come they will demand everything and take over a game. It's kind of like sex without a condom. Good for the first few times, but then you realize what a horrible mistake that was nine months down the line. Just that it didn't take nine months here...

[BlownSi]

Sub cancelled. The fact that they are now asking for feedback after the fact means that they know they screwed up, probably knew before the patch went live, and yet they pushed it anyway. Nope, I will take my money elsewhere.

[TUXs]

ROFL like you know me. I very rarely jump from game to game, but please tell me more about my play habbits...

You're right...I assumed you did based on this:

I've only been subbed like 4 out of the last 18 months.

[tmwfte]

...when you open communications like this.

 

Now that there. ^ That is pure comedy gold.

[Neoforcer]

 

I honestly don't get the nerf and I have been around since pre launch. I can't even imagine what the grind is like for people that don't have the legacy perks. I thought the goal was to make the game more approachable for the casual gamer? It looks like this patch went totally against that goal.

 

because 10 hard and nightmare mode player wanted nightmare mode challenges to be heroic 2s and leveling to be hard mode raiding for lowbies.

[xordevoreaux]

Class: Jedi Sage Healer

Level: 31

Gear: All gear 80 rated (24) Force Expert

hilt: 62 hilt, 80 mod, 88 enhancement, 136 crystal (power) -- trying to get artificer higher for hilt

focus: 58 armoring, 80 mod, 88 enhancement, 136 crystal (power) -- trying to get synthweaver higher for armoring

ear: xonolite quick savant relay (80 rating)

implants: decorated force lord package mk-2 (80 rating)

relics: decorated relic of focused retribution (80 rating) (both relics)

companion: Qyzen, tank, influence 10

 

mission: The Morgukai (level 26, Nar Shadaa)

 

I cannot complete this mission. Tried repeatedly. Against one gold star and one trash mob combination, I am okay. Tough, but okay. I clear the first room, including the walker. There is a combo mob of 2 gold star mobs. I put force armor on qyzen, put force stun on one of the mobs, send qyzen after the other.

I cannot keep Qyzen healed. His health drops to 60% after a few hits, and then a walker shows up, originating from a point beyond the two gold-star mobs, so I had no chance to get rid of these walkers prior to attacking the two gold-star mobs. The walker starts attacking me. Qyzen ignores the walker, I'm down very quickly in health and start healing myself and re-establsihing force barrier on both of us. Qyzen is now 20-30% health.

A second walker appears. I now have 2 gold star mobs and 2 walkers, and qyzen is not even done with the first gold-star mob. Qyzen dies, I die soon after.

 

Not fun. Level appropriate gear, my crafters are making 8, 16, 24 level gear, so I figure level 24, without going over level 26 (the quest), is level-appropriate. Yes, I have 2 mods on 2 pieces of gear less than 26, but on those same two pieces, I have 2 mods that are at 26 (88), plus they both have the 136-rated crystals, both being power.

 

I cannot complete the mission at that corner.

Edited November 19, 2015 by xordevoreaux

[Alssaran]

Sub cancelled. The fact that they are now asking for feedback after the fact means that they know they screwed up, probably knew before the patch went live, and yet they pushed it anyway. Nope, I will take my money elsewhere.

 

Oh, for crying out loud. Don't communicate at all? You're the devil incarnate. Communicate a bit? Bad. Ask for feedback? You're bad. Don't ask for feedback? You're the worst.

 

Yes, just go. Don't let the door hit you on your way out. I'd rather play this game for another year without this stuff to read than ten years with it.

[Trobon]

Yeah. Just that this state is exactly where Bioware has intended the game to be. .

 

Except according to what they say they are looking for it's not. How many people have to say that they are having trouble completing planetary heroics on or above level for people to see this? There's a post a few above me saying that as a level 32 healer with a tank companion they can't complete a level 28 heroic. How is that a Medium difficulty as Eric described it? They are playing complementary roles and are almost certainly geared for the heroic, but can't complete it.

 

The problem is that the companions as they are now are geared towards the end game player. The one with +300-400 presence from legacies and more from datacrons. The ones with level 25+ influence. This is not how they should be tuned. It makes everything way to hard for anyone newer.

[JediJadd]

Please give us your feedback, and we simply ask you to be as constructive as possible. Include information such as:•Your level: 29 (scaled to 26)

•Roughly Average Item Rating: 58-62

•Discipline: Trooper - Gunnery Commando

•Companion: Aric Jorgan

•Companion role: Tank

•Companion Influence level: 13

•Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?): Solo 2+ (Prison Prep Centre on Nar Shadda

•Your personal experience while playing this content: My companion could not handle agroing 4 Silver enemies. And when he did manage to get the agro for all 4, he died very quickly, followed just as quickly by me... I died a total of 9 times before finally completing it. And that is after using things such as cryo grenades and the like for cc. If all future heroic 2's are like this, I doubt I'll be doing any of them.

 

I mourn the loss of the fun I once had.

[tmwfte]

Oh, for crying out loud. Don't communicate at all? You're the devil incarnate. Communicate a bit? Bad. Ask for feedback? You're bad. Don't ask for feedback? You're the worst.

 

How you communicate is just as important as what you communicate. And the method, consistency, and content of communication from BioWare is horrible.

 

But then, you're trotting out a strawman that people are calling the missions "impossible" and then mocking it, instead of listening to the fact that people are saying "possible, but tedious and not fun", so I don't expect you to understand the differences in quality of communication.