Companion Change Feedback

[Noyjitat]

Level: 65

Discipline: Serenity Shadow

Gear 208 MH, 216-ish gear (one 208, one 220)

Companion: Koth Vortena

Companion role: Healer / DPS on easy trash pulls

Influence level: 25

Mission: Star Fortress Heroic solo.

 

Overall trash is harder but not too hard.

Knights of Zakuul gold mobs ambushes and patrols are IMHO overtuned.

Praetorian is still quite easy.

Champions - Thundering blast ones are quite doable

Melee ones are bad. Around 8-10k per assault attack.

 

Two Knights of Zakuul "boss" is brutal. Parsec shows incoming damage 1k dps more

than healing and self-healing with cooldowns combined. If both knights are up, they wipe the floor

with me. If one is CCd then it is still negative hp balance since I exhaust CDs on one of them.

 

Did not go further.

 

Did The One the Only achievement pre-nerf and it was not in any way, shape or form a faceroll.

I used CC, interrupts, DCDs, Heroic moments on two knights boss, two last solar arrays (or whatever they are called) and the last boss.

 

So I am genuinely baffled.

Between gold trash mobs harder than champs and bosses easier than gold star trash (Praetorian),

difficulty levels seems a big mess to me.

Healing of companions could use a buff for sure.

 

All of the above is absolutely MHO and not claiming to be anything more than that.

 

P.S. Quite fun to watch Koth trying to heal me up out of combat. Poor thing, he tries so hard.

 

It's actually nothing new here. This game has always had trash mobs more dangerous than bosses, especially in operations. They could really solve alot of problems by making bosses harder, trash weaker and gone the middle ground with healing and damage. Sadly the idea of harder for them is giving the boss a ton of hit points or a bunch of abilities that 1 or 2 shot kill you.

[Halinalle]

Seeing a lot of people posting stats as 65's on planetary Heroics, that should not even be what we are measuring from. If you can't do planetary Heroics we have a HUGE problem with playstyle. The meter should be H2 SF at this point.

 

Just trash the "One and Only" Period across the board. People will cry a lot less (in the long run).

 

Please try The Viper's Nest on Makeb. I just tried it and it's... definitely a challenge.

 

If you can do it can we see a full run on video?

Edited November 20, 2015 by Halinalle

[Cedia]

If you think this game is more tedious than the following... WoW, EQ, EQ2 or RIFT.... I don't know what to say. It is more "tedious" than 3 days ago but in comparison to these other games? Yeah no.

 

Sorry, I beg to differ. I play LOTRO, EQ2, and GW2. Smooth sailing with no hiccups and no stress.

 

4.0.2 is all about worrying about your companion and making sure your tactics for every fight are absolutely perfect and all your cooldowns are up. I'm talking about H2's here. I tried a few, then decided to just play alts through the storyline.

[TFBWYAG]

I've run my tests on old content, not just heroic2s and the heroic star fortress. The healing by companions is worse than it was before this expansion and some things simply won't be soloable anymore. Just simply proving that the healing is worse than previous expansion is more than enough to warrant a fix and adjustment. It also means that problem transfers over to the newer stuff as evident in heroic star fortress testing.

 

Finally the damage value was damage role was scaled back too much. With it being okay (but not great) in level sync pre 60 content and horrible in the new content. I posted this in the most constructive manner as possible but it is disheartening to see people still trying to say this changes were fine when they clearly are not.

 

I wrote in a post earlier, late last night I took my level 38 Merc to Hoth, as I was working through the storyline to get to the Starship Graveyard, now 39 at this point, from arriving on Hoth to Starship Graveyard, I had to constantly throw some off-heals on myself cause Mako (Influence 22) wasn't keeping up.

 

While fighting the one-eyed guy, forget his name, he's Elite or Gold, I had to pop Heroic Moment, use my 15 second shield or dmg reduction screen, and Legacy Unity, and off-heal myself, cause Mako (poor thing) just couldn't keep up with a simple Elite fight, not even final Boss of Hoth storyline.

 

So yes, healing took way too much of a hit, when I geared my own Companions, I never had issues like that.

[caronome]

Eric, thank you for your efforts. What you said is quite rational. My feedback is I think you fail to realize that many (most?) consumer decisions are far more emotional than quantitative. For example, if SWTOR or Netflix were to raise the sub price $0.50, then there would be an irrationally large amount of complaints over 3%. Surely all the devs knew that radically changing the game from the KotFE marketing messages (story and solo), and the 4.0.0 game, was going to be extremely unpopular. When some forum wag says that oh people just hate change, I tend to respond, yes, that is why companies try not to change. Any marketer will tell you, if the customers tell you the product is too X, then the product is too X, regardless of what your numbers and tests show. Because it is their money.

 

So, for me, it's just not worth the effort to try to engage this new BioWare. You can change the premise of KotFE and ramp up the combat as high as you like; that was never the appeal of this game for me. A friend got me back into raiding in WoW and the grinds that involved. I was looking for an unstressful, solo, story-driven MMO for fun and I regret that is not the direction you are going in.

 

Every company gets to make the product they want and the customer decides whether to purchase. I am more emotional about this for two reasons:

 

1) Many months of KotFE marketing followed by 4.0.0 had my hopes up. Then there is this unexpected course change; it is a shock.

 

2) It just strikes me as foolish. With the possible exception of LotRO, this MMO has the most people who are not here for a cheap imitation of the WoW level, grind, raid cycle. Who does it hurt if a solo, never-going-to-op player has "too" easy of a time??? Between SW1-6, KotOR, and SW7, doesn't SWTOR have the highest % of first-time MMO players? I don't understand the business logic in not erring on the side of too easy. Of course, the devs can make what they think the game should be, but I don't see how that benefits EA shareholders.

 

As a founder who was so pleased we got through the dark times of 2012, it is surreal for this to draw to a close over SWTOR trying to be too hardcore.

 

GLHF and thanks for all the fish.

[Halinalle]

So yes, healing took way too much of a hit, when I geared my own Companions, I never had issues like that.

 

Yeah, it's almost like companions in gear they have on when they join your crew pre-4.0. So if players remember companions like this then they never upgraded the gear.

 

When even a dps Commando/Merc has more powerful healing abilities then you know something isn't quite right.

Edited November 20, 2015 by Halinalle

[Ghisallo]

I agree with a lot of what you have said. However he had two chances yesterday, or that's the only two post I saw concerning the companion patch, He was asked point blank would the customer still be able to complete the content with a Compn and himself.

 

His answer to me read, "sure you can that as H2+s where designed for PC and Comp" and i paraphrase that.

 

As far as this past weeks patch, as i said earlier I can still do the content but really am not that interested in that much grind for fluff rewards. Also from my understanding of the PR done before Xpac release they were touting this as casual, maybe I misunderstood them? When i want to do something challenging in game we grab 8-16 people and go do NiM HM or ops.

 

So basically imho, Tuesday BW shot themselves in the foot with the casual gamers. These people wouldn't have unsubbed when they finished the first pass through KOTFE. They would have taken all 20, 30, 40 however many characters they have across all servers through this and ground out rank 50 on every companion forever. Thats what most of them play for, not PvP not raid gear, just to have some fun for a couple of hours a day. Most would have spent money on the CM, as i believe thats there biggest market for the CM

 

 

Sure there are alot of us that have been around since beta either full time or off and on whatever but the game has never been Nightmare mode and with the Tuesday patch thats exactly what they made it for people who cant spend 2-4 hours once or twice a week doing Hard content.

 

Much like Tux's has said in multiple post, this is probably the biggest mistake they've (BW) has made. It will drive off a lot of people whether you want to believe that or not. I do.

 

First I do not doubt this will drive off people, don't get me wrong. I am pissed because IF they had not rushed the launch and fix what I am pretty sure they knew was broken first (the fix was a complicated one from what I can tell, I can't imagine they had it ready to deploy if they just found out 2 odd weeks ago) we would see people complaining about a grind like they always do and some leave but not a decent # of people outright pissed which will clearly cause a bigger loss.

 

The only thing I will say about casual is this. First I need to say I HATE the term because its meaning is so subjective. I know "casual" players in RIFT that would look at the grind here and say "OMG that isn't a grind" (as an example). Because of that I am going to replace "for casuals" with "little to no grind" if that's okay.

 

That said, based on posts I have read, I think the "little to know grind" idea was an assumption by some players. They saw "all about the story for now" and "we will be adding content for our MMO fans later" and assumed that meant no grind and the OP state of the companions appeared to confirm this assumption. The types of posts I base this off of is "I came here for the story not to play an MMORPG that has a grind" and even "BW should just make this a SP story game and stop trying to make it MMORPG." This game has always had a diehard core of players that were NEVER looking for an MMO, they were looking for TOR 3. When you have passion like this you tend to read into some things and ignore others.

 

I think what they ignored is Ohlen in 2013 saying that what made the game fail at launch was the lack of end game. People said, in essence, I won SWTOR, and stopped playing, just like you would a SP game. So even if this expac was going to not introduce new group content it still needed something that, their experience told them, would control player advancement until they released the next chapter of the story. They also ignored that as much as they were saying they were focusing on the story they also said it was just "for now" and that this was still an MMORPG. They ignored a financial model that only makes money if there is a grind of some sort. I get why, they very much wanted something else and I get why they may be mad, for 4 weeks they felt like they had it and now feel betrayed. The thing is if they would have looked at this objectively since April, none of this would come as a surprise and as such there would be no sense of betrayal.

 

This BTW does NOT absolve BW of BAD testing and sloppy rushed launch of the expac...

[tatteredangel]

i'll give you some feedback..what the hell were you thinking?? I am a casual player and I don't have the time nor energy to put into grinding and looking for groups. I have grouped before and found people to be rude and sometimes just downright mean. I do not want to be told how bad of a player I am or had bad my gear is. if I wanted to group I would, I DONT hence the reason I was loving the companions as they were. some of us have lives and are not hardcore gamers and life is tedious enough without me getting on a game and banging my head on a wall for hours trying to finish content. a game is supposed to be fun and you guys sucked the fun right out of it with this stupid nerf. if people didn't like the companions then dismiss them if you want a challenge why did you have to ruin it for the rest of us? as of now I have one month left on my sub, husband has two months, if you guys do not fix this back to some reasonable extent then we are both gone. we have been playing since launch and let me tell ya, these companions now are WORSE than they were before 4.0. have you ever hear the phrase if it ain't broke don't fix it??? well guess what, it wasn't broke and you didn't need to fix it. it is not just the companion nerf either, you refuse to fix the bugs in the bounty hunter quest for Torian and I have put in three tickets on that, not to mention all the other bugs I won't go into. I was actually having so much fun the last month and then you guys go and do this. I don't care about pvp or any of that mess. I don't like pvp and am not good at it, don't care to do it. I got on the other day after this patch to play and see if heroics were still doable, ummm guess what nope. they take forever and my companion wouldn't even heal me half the time, so quit lying to your customers and saying that you can still do it just fine blah blah bllah. am I mad yep more than a little bit, shame on you guys for treating your customers this way and not caring about what they have to say. fix this mess you made or you will lose a lot more customers I guarantee you. it's sad because I enjoy the story too and was enjoying the new content too, should have known it would be too good to last. well back to guild wars 2 and rift, and IF this is fixed which I doubt then I might come back otherwise see ya around.

[Neoforcer]

 

[*][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.

 

-eric

 

Here is my other problem with this here is eric live on the stream oh we created and new heroic 2 that every one can jump into and have fun and with level sink wont be a problem solo you comps are better then ever yada yada

 

Should i pull up you swtor stream and prove you lied to us BW Eric and i quote you are very strong with level sync which means what on how hard the heroic 2s level should be with level sink medium content huh.

 

here the stream to prove you bw lied to us through Eric http://www.twitch.tv/swtor/v/18528261 at the 2 hour mark he talks how heroic 2s should be no problem making them sound easy only to back track BTW Eric not blaming you just your dev team for saying it should be challenging when you state on a stream it should be easy to do...

 

No were in that info which was advertised all over the net which can fall on ground of false advertising and lead to legal trouble for you bw...

 

Word like jump right in no problem play how you want this stuff is easy your stronk

 

Even though i do not run this content would piss me the hell off if i did know this. I stick to player not NPC as NPC have dumb AI that can give a remote challenge over a player.

Just thought i would point this out to you for others.

[Ghisallo]

Sorry, I beg to differ. I play LOTRO, EQ2, and GW2. Smooth sailing with no hiccups and no stress.

 

4.0.2 is all about worrying about your companion and making sure your tactics for every fight are absolutely perfect and all your cooldowns are up. I'm talking about H2's here. I tried a few, then decided to just play alts through the storyline.

 

I play EQ2 as well. There is certainly stress here...now... Because of how they launched the Expac. If they launched the Expac with the way companions are today and not on Monday I don't think the stress would be there because people as they progressed would have been incrementally adjusting as the content changed. What they did Tuesday was the equivalent of hitting the emergency brake when you are doing 45 mph.

 

GW2 I don't find applicable BTW. The pace of a game is directly applicable to the games financial model. That is a b2p game (last I checked) not a subscription/hybrid, so its kinda an apples to oranges comparison.

[khonaan]

Well I know only one cave with datacron and killiks on Alderaan, there's an HC2 in there and every day solo players do it alone...

 

without going in details, when your companion engages more than one group of mobs before i can finish off the first group, just so he can commit suicide in response to what BW did to him... its a headache...

 

if BW wanted to add a challenge to the game why not :

 

create and appropriate AI?

one with a bag of tricks that he can use at random, not a predictable rotation?

how about an AI that can read your rotation and counter it,

forcing you to use your head instead of a hotkey rotation mapping to your game mouse?

since most attacks come from either right/ left or above, how about he moves his shield to nullify it?

 

8 years as a sub, if you want challenge, try this:

i came here to play a casual game with my sweetheart,

[Neoforcer]

Oh and i sure you know BW that http://www.torstatus.net/ those numbers were higher on Tuesday and are now failing off.. I wonder why that is what could it be casuals going to battlefield no it more pvp focus and casuals don't like pvp. I wonder what the issue is.

[Razdek]

Multiple lvl 65s basic gear.

I have spent most of my time levelling alts through the storyline. Most of my companions are not above lvl 8.

 

My feedback is, if I have to do ANYTHING! To make my companions even remotely useful (ie level them up to extremely high levels before they are useful) my sub will disappear. The point of companion changes for 4.0 was to make them useful and customisable without having to worry about spending years gearing them etc etc. 4.0.2 is a complete reversal of that philosophy and a stab in the back. They were perfect the way they were and you killed them in one foul patch. You even admitted that a lot of people liked them the way they were. If people think companions were to opped and wanted a challenge, then they should have just gone without a companion or grouped with others. Solo play has been ruined.

[Imadian]

Just last week, I was able to do my Heroic +2 quests with a companion.

TODAY, after dying 4 times on ONE of the same heroic +2 quests, I logged out.

GG, you caved in to all of the whiners about how this game was too easy and our companions were too "OP."

This did not call for such a HUGE nerf all around like this.

Revert this horrid patch or fix the companions to a reasonable state.

Edited November 20, 2015 by Imadian

[Khiriath]

Hey folks,

• 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
  

If you have a video or other related content to go with your feedback, feel free to link that as well as it will allow us the best insight into your experiences.

 

The team will be reviewing all feedback, along with supporting data, to see what / if any future adjustments need to be made. Thank you all in advance for your feedback!

 

-eric

 

Level 65

 

Gear:

Head 216, Chest 216, Gloves 216, Belt 224, Gr eaves 220, Boots 224, Bracers 216, 220MH, 220OH(all the above is token gear from ops) 224 Earpiece, 216 implant(token from ops) 220 implant(crafted), 216 token relic, 208 PvP relic. All gear is augmented with 208 Overkill augments.

 

Spec:

Advanced prototype powertech.

 

Companion:

Lana Beniko

 

Companion role:

Healer/Tank

 

Companion Influence Level

Rank 22 with 2278 presence

 

Mission:

Star Fortress Heroic 2 under <One for All> criteria

 

Personal Experience:

In short, bad. Using a medpack, Guard Canon Heroic Utility point and my Kolto Overload, I healed myself more than Lana healed me. According to my combat logs and parses I achieved 1276 HPS, while Lana's highest was 986HPS.

Overall I found the difficulty of the mission to be very inconsistent. First Paladin was a challenge, managed to kill him, but ended at 10% health, and didn't use a medpack.

 

Then got to the Praetorian expecting a major fight, bought some medpacks in preparation. Burned through this fight and health never dipped below 85%.

 

Encountered Second Paladine, and suddenly Lana just freezes mid fight, not attacking, not healing, not moving, just frozen. The result was a quick death for us both. Repeated this fives times. Then tried Lana in Tank stance. She was dead after taking four attacks, I followed soon after. Decided that this would have to wait until I was full 224 and a Lvl 50 Lana, that is how lopsided the fight was.

 

Ambush before the Exarch stage, went as expected, with need to take down the adds, and hope that Lana will CC one of the Knights, but made it through that with a dead Lana and me at 25% health.

 

Reactor Phase of the Exarch fight. This took seveal attempts to get past. Once again Lana would freeze and do nothing at various times which was a major part of the problem. In one attempt she did an amazing(ly low) 546 HPS despite dying after me. When she wasn't frozen she was standing in circles of impending doom. Even when successfully clearing one of these rooms I had to resummon her after each because she had died from standing in dmg.

 

The actual fight with the Exarch. Again I healed myself more than Lana healed me. It was a long and tedious fight. To keep Lana alive I had to keep putting her on passive mode so that she would come to me and move out of circles of impending doom. Again she was doing her freeze routine where she would just stop doing anything at all, and usually was holding the pose of the last thing she did.

 

Well kitted out like this, the fight can be done. Technically I can also drink my own urine, the latter would probably slightly more enjoyable. I love a good challenge that requires sound tactics and certain outputs of DPS/HPS ect to overcome. I find them fun and entertaining. I regularly participate in HM and NiM ops, and was probably one of the few that liked TOS as it was released, before the nerf. This is not fun. Hard yes, but fun no. I find it jarring that this former head of Sith Intelligence who managed to make her way into a hostile empire and free me from a carbonite prison suddenly lacks the good sense to step out of the exarch's death ray.

 

As a final note. After the companion gear boxes were added to Yavin in 3.0.2, my Treek or any other healing comp was doing slightly more than 3k HPS. By stark contrast my rank 22 Lana hasn't broken 1000 HPS. I find it odd that 5 levels and a lot of influence later, my companion is underperforming 3.x by 66%.

 

Supporting documents: Combat logs of my initial foray into 4.0.2.

[Neoforcer]

Just last week, I was able to do my Heroic +2 quests with a companion.

TODAY, after dying 4 times on ONE of the same heroic +2 quests, I logged out.

GG,

 

and that should make the other people that play very nervous

[DarthThuzad]

Eh, just soloed H2 Fortress with 31 inf Lana healing. Wasn't that hard. Not sure how it would compare to inf 1 ranged healer though. Could go and test that.

I was going to post a video of me soloing it with a 1 inf Treek healing but then I remembered a) Treek's actually better off than the other companions (in the healing department) apparently b) did it on a hard mode geared tank, so there's that.

 

Meh, thought that counts, I guess?

Edited November 20, 2015 by DarthThuzad

[JourrnoRush]

Just last week, I was able to do my Heroic +2 quests with a companion.

TODAY, after dying 4 times on ONE of the same heroic +2 quests, I logged out.

GG, you caved in to all of the whiners about how this game was too easy and our companions were too "OP."

This did not call for such a HUGE nerf all around like this.

Revert this horrid patch or fix the companions to a reasonable state.

 

Hmm your signature...

 

Learn to play your class and use the skills available to you. If you can't complete the content due to lack of skill or gear, grab a buddy.

 

It's not that hard, but I understand new players might have to group with others until they learn to solo it.

[Xtro]

Thousands LOL

 

Its the same 50-100 people now going back and forth. The "polls" can be tampered and only BW's data will reveal if a fix is needed.

LOL, you do not see the irony in that statement as the SAME people state their support for the change over and over in this thread while saying everything is sunshine and fun now.

 

There is always a small hard core player base that have no connection to the rest of the player base experience in a MMO. They always want things more hard (mostly since they already have the best gear) instead of just running with less powerful gear if they want a challenge. People like that is pathetic really.

[JourrnoRush]

and that should make the other people that play very nervous

 

The players of this game are nervous over everything.

[Imadian]

Hmm your signature...

 

Learn to play your class and use the skills available to you. If you can't complete the content due to lack of skill or gear, grab a buddy.

 

It's not that hard, but I understand new players might have to group with others until they learn to solo it.

okay, I DO know how to play, thanks. Why be an arrogant ***? I guess you don't know what's going on with the latest patch?

no, I guess a hardcore player who thinks that NO ONE knows how to play their class would care.

Edited November 20, 2015 by Imadian
spelling

[Imadian]

LOL, you do not see the irony in that statement as the SAME people state their support for the change over and over in this thread while saying everything is sunshine and fun now.

 

There is always a small hard core player base that have no connection to the rest of the player base experience in a MMO. They always want things more hard (mostly since they already have the best gear) instead of just running with less powerful gear if they want a challenge. People like that is pathetic really.

exactly.

[Knockerz]

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

 

65

204

Operative Healer

Temple

DPS

12

Solo Dailies

 

65

204

Jug Tank

Jaesa

DPS

10

Solo Dailies

 

65

204

Shadow DPS

Nidia

Healer

10

Solo Dailies

 

Overall, I don't like these changes. I want to run dailies or story quest without having to worry about dying. The current form of the companions are worst then pre-4.0 companions. I could gear my companions in yavin gear and they would outperform the current companions. For example, Nidia dps spec pre 4.0 is superior to the current Nidia in dps spec. The same trend can exist with all the current specs vs old companions. A healer with yavin gear could easily out heal any healer companion with the same influence. This is unacceptable. In short, if the changes are not reverse I will not continue playing swtor. If I wanted challenge I would go run hm heroic, operations, or pvp.Personally, I think the influence needs to be carefully attuned and a max 50 influence should be as powerful as a pre 4.0.2 healer at least. I won't be playing swtor if the changes are not reverse or drastically improved to be on equal footing with a yavin geared companion pre 4.0 or companions reverted back to pre 4.0 that allow us to gear them.

Edited November 20, 2015 by Knockerz

[TFBWYAG]

okay, I DO know how to play, thanks. Why be an arrogant ***? I guess you don't know what's going on with the latest patch?

 

Oh he does, he comes over from his Troll Post to cause some trouble here and then returns to his Troll Post for a while again,

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=854931

[JourrnoRush]

LOL, you do not see the irony in that statement as the SAME people state their support for the change over and over in this thread while saying everything is sunshine and fun now.

 

There is always a small hard core player base that have no connection to the rest of the player base experience in a MMO. They always want things more hard (mostly since they already have the best gear) instead of just running with less powerful gear if they want a challenge. People like that is pathetic really.

 

Why does everyone assume that leaving companions as is means we are hardcore players? We might be just as casual as you, we just play the game better. We don't see the point of making hte companions OP we enjoy using the skills available to us to get gear, adventure, RP, etc.

 

Its people like you that are trying to lower the skill cap even lower. BW responded, the game got harder (not really, you guys are lacking gear and how to play the game). It appears they agree with us and not you, sorry.