Companion Change Feedback

[Nomad_Zero]

Companion Balance Changes | 11.23.2015, 11:01 PM

Hey folks!

 

A few follow-ups based on what we have been seeing in the thread. We have been seeing some concerns about Companion tanking viability, and the difficulty of some Heroic Missions. If you have specifics thoughts or feedback on those, please shoot them into the feedback thread found here. We have been getting some great feedback on those topics there.

 

We have also seen some good suggestions around renaming Heroic Star Fortress. Keep all of your thoughts and feedback coming, and we will continue passing it onto Michael and the rest of the team.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

 

 

Really? How much more feedback do you require to understand that you royally screwed the pooch with your nerf/nuke bat attempt to 'balance the game'. Its getting rather monotonous now. How about actually playing the game and try some random queues or something. Id like to see a post from a dev saying something like 'wow, we played thru 'insert random fp/op here' and found out that it is a tedious, fun-deprived experience. Hell, the forum posts alone, from dev and player alike have kept me off the game today.

[Blurch]

The low level Heroics are not bad your level 12 and the mobs are 8 in Ore Mendel and go through them really fast with little chance of dying. However when you start getting to Voss and above you're the same level as the mobs after sync which takes a long time to complete depending on class. You're also can easily get killed since your dealing with mostly 2+ silvers and a gold. So if you could raise the level by 2 on the higher planet H2's it would help out a lot.

 

With the tanks I can't even begin to tell you since they currently broken and have no absorb or defense rating yet and are under powered.

 

With the Heroic Star Fortress I would go with who ever said Tactical 2+. Sorry can't remember who posted it or find it again.

[RealKraschman]

Just curious, but what happened to the color of my sith? she was the brightest, deepest crimson red, and I was very happy, now my sith is lighter then a peach??? whats up with that? where did my color go? and why? I would like it back please.

Do you have "Show Dark Side corruption enabled?"

 

I have two Togruta twins, one Jedi one Sith and despite identical skin colours, the Sith looks considerably paler.

[Akkub]

What I seen so far is that the change has pretty much broken the healing function of the companion. Here is a case I even shared it in general chat in game. I had a group of 4 mobs, 3 were dead, one still CC'ed. My dps Sorceress was at 53% health..... and guess what, no heals. The companion was set to heal, I never changed it to any other role.

There is another issue, I can have all the mobs on me, and yet I get no heals at all..... why it is busy healing herself for no bloody reason... so I die no heals. In both examples, the affection is 13.

The companions of 4.0 were just fine. I tried soloing World Bosses to see if the complainers were right, but get squashed like bug (as it should be), drag large numbers of mobs to me (never did they go to the healer) sometimes it did not go so well. Gaming life in general....

[MeNaCe-NZ]

What I seen so far is that the change has pretty much broken the healing function of the companion. Here is a case I even shared it in general chat in game. I had a group of 4 mobs, 3 were dead, one still CC'ed. My dps Sorceress was at 53% health..... and guess what, no heals. The companion was set to heal, I never changed it to any other role.

There is another issue, I can have all the mobs on me, and yet I get no heals at all..... why it is busy healing herself for no bloody reason... so I die no heals. In both examples, the affection is 13.

The companions of 4.0 were just fine. I tried soloing World Bosses to see if the complainers were right, but get squashed like bug (as it should be), drag large numbers of mobs to me (never did they go to the healer) sometimes it did not go so well. Gaming life in general....

 

Were they fine or were they so over powered you didn't notice the effect of the broken heal mechanic from the companion?

 

What you are saying is effectively a bug and if all they do is keep upping the output until the bug isn't as noticeable well that's nothing but a half assed band aid solution which will cause issues of it's own ( as it did with the OP companions ).

[Raphael_diSanto]

Let the player decide!

 

Add a toggle to preferences that offers an option to select companion effectiveness.

 

Also add an indicator on the players frame that shows what preference was selected. This will allow groups to determine what setting they want and ability to see if group members are compliant.

 

I'd love to see this. I'm an easy-mode player, I'll freely admit. Video game gameplay doesn't engage me, has never engaged me, and never will engage me, so increasing the difficulty to keep me engaged isn't gonna be what flicks my switch as a customer.

 

Running stories is what engages me. Getting to the next display of talking heads. Choosing dialogue options. RPing my character. Following the plot. I see combat as an artificial stumbling block that prevents me from doing the bit I really want to do - Dialogue.

 

I know that isn't for everyone, and I know that "real" gamers look down on people like me, but I play BioWare games because they have the best talking heads in the business

 

So I'd love a toggle that put the game into 'let your companion solo everything for you' mode. I mean, if we have an optional button that skips dialogue, why can't we have an equally optional setting that essentially skips combat. This is, after all, supposed to be a story-driven experience, not necessarily a combat driven experience.

Edited November 24, 2015 by Raphael_diSanto

[LordArtemis]

I think it would be nice if players could toggle influence. That would likely allow players that wish a challenge to provide themselves one.

[JediMord]

I'm not reading through 199 pages to see if someone said it.

 

I'd like to be able to re-order your comps in the crew skills area by influence.

[Hiply]

I'm not reading through 199 pages to see if someone said it.

 

I'd like to be able to re-order your comps in the crew skills area by influence.

 

Well, I suppose that's a QoL improvement but I'm not sure how many cycles something like that would justify since it's a pretty simple matter to just look at the number.

[Bakgrind]

I think it would be nice if players could toggle influence. That would likely allow players that wish a challenge to provide themselves one.

 

Nah that wouldn't work either, but what it does show is that is a rather poor game mechanic that they implemented. The content for KOTFE is a bit harder than what it was in vanilla SWTOR so the new change was over powering for the older part of the game . And honestly I would of rather have the old companion system instead of this money sync, cc cuz you know they will be selling packs for influence system.

[Joefjr]

Presence needs a way to directly effect a companions ability to tank and mitigate damage, right now it doesn't. Yes it does give them more HP's but it does that to both Heal and DPS role while also increasing the amount of HPS and DPS they put out.

[Joefjr]

Both Veeroa Denzand and Choza Rabaat, are Force skill set users getting Tech power instead of Force power, this makes them inferior to companions who have lower influence ranks than they do.

[Seliana]

The development team needs to seriously put some thought into not just the games challenge, but also towards respecting the players time. By no means am I complaining or upset about the endgame content, far from it thats the whole reason I play. But the checklist of stuff to do each week is entirely impossible for adults with 40 hour a week jobs. That was before the companions were all lowered to near uselessness. Now that they are worse then before changes were made to 4.0, on top of the fact that the companion AI is buggy and forgets to deal damage, cc, or heal in combat, then after that there is also the forced level sync. The checklist of daily and weekly quests is basically a joke now given how much time investment it would take to get through all of it each week.

 

Its clear to us that you want to add more difficulty to the game. But be aware there are two types of difficulty, good difficulty and bad difficulty. Good difficulty challenges players to play better by increasing mechanics usage by enemy npcs, giving your AI better tactics and new tricks to try on the players, giving the monsters wider skill sets and new abilities the players haven't encountered before or wouldn't expect, if you want certain things to stand out as a challenge it has to be tough but fair without making your player feel like they are wasting their time.

 

Now bad difficulty is what you've been doing now: Inflating health pools, lowering player damage to increase the length of fights, removing player options by increasing monster immunities to interupts/stuns/cc/knockback ect, which in turn removes player creativity and the desire for your players to experiment with the toolkits you've provided them to complete the challenges in the first place.

 

Extra Credits did 2 remarkable presentations about this very topic months ago that I would highly recommend the dev team check out:

How to Approach Game Difficulty:

and

When Difficult Is Fun - Challenging vs. Punishing:

 

There's something to be said for respecting your players time by not making each individual fight take more and more minutes to complete. By dropping player damage and forcing players to have level sync while on a planet, then dropping companion damage to make the content "challenging" for some reason, and then inflating everything's HP to increase the "difficulty", you simply add more grind. Grind is bad for your game because it eventually makes a game dull and uninteresting, it is the top reasons MMO's get deserted in fact is dropping player interest. By no means do players want or need the content to be a cakewalk, but allowing players with limited time due to family and work a faster way to enjoy what the game has to offer is going to help you sustain your long term business. An ideal approach would be making a lot of these new features like inflated health/level sync/and lower companion damage optional, so that those who want hours to burn can turn them on and those without the time can enjoy feeling all powerful, even if it's only for an hour a day in their lives.

 

Just as a reference here is the crazy long list of Daily and Weekly quests the players are given to complete every 7 days:

 

7 Daily Planets (about 6-8 missions per planet so around 50 per day which is about 350 a week)

2 Daily PVP Missions (6 matches, which is 42 a week)

1 Daily PVP Starfighter (2 matches, 14 a week)

1 Daily Groupfinder Storymode Operation (7 per week)

1 Daily Groupfinder Hardmode Flashpoint (7 per week)

1 Daily Groupfinder Tactical Flashpoint (7 per week)

71 Weekly Heroics (2+)

12 Weekly Operations

5 Weekly Tactical Flashpoints

3 Weekly Hard Flashpoints

1 Weekly Groupfinder Flashpoint

1 Weekly PVP Starfighter (7 matches)

1 Weekly Unranked PVP (15 matches)

1 Weekly Ranked PVP (9 matches)

1 Weekly Star Fortress Run (6 completions)

7 Weekly Complete the Daily Planet Quests

 

If we add all of that stuff up it is roughly 530 things to do every 7 days. Making that list take substantially longer is why your players have been turning against your changes to increase "challenge" by adding bad types of difficulty.

[Deyjarl]

Add a toggle to preferences that offers an option to select companion effectiveness.

 

No one would toggle it off without an incentive to do so, and you will all complain if people with it set to more difficult are rewarded more.

[Obnxs]

I'm not reading through 199 pages to see if someone said it.

 

I'd like to be able to re-order your comps in the crew skills area by influence.

 

Yes please.

[Fordbird]

The development team needs to seriously put some thought into not just the games challenge, but also towards respecting the players time. By no means am I complaining or upset about the endgame content, far from it thats the whole reason I play. But the checklist of stuff to do each week is entirely impossible for adults with 40 hour a week jobs. That was before the companions were all lowered to near uselessness. Now that they are worse then before changes were made to 4.0, on top of the fact that the companion AI is buggy and forgets to deal damage, cc, or heal in combat, then after that there is also the forced level sync. The checklist of daily and weekly quests is basically a joke now given how much time investment it would take to get through all of it each week.

 

Its clear to us that you want to add more difficulty to the game. But be aware there are two types of difficulty, good difficulty and bad difficulty. Good difficulty challenges players to play better by increasing mechanics usage by enemy npcs, giving your AI better tactics and new tricks to try on the players, giving the monsters wider skill sets and new abilities the players haven't encountered before or wouldn't expect, if you want certain things to stand out as a challenge it has to be tough but fair without making your player feel like they are wasting their time.

 

Now bad difficulty is what you've been doing now: Inflating health pools, lowering player damage to increase the length of fights, removing player options by increasing monster immunities to interupts/stuns/cc/knockback ect, which in turn removes player creativity and the desire for your players to experiment with the toolkits you've provided them to complete the challenges in the first place.

 

Extra Credits did 2 remarkable presentations about this very topic months ago that I would highly recommend the dev team check out:

How to Approach Game Difficulty:

and

When Difficult Is Fun - Challenging vs. Punishing:

 

There's something to be said for respecting your players time by not making each individual fight take more and more minutes to complete. By dropping player damage and forcing players to have level sync while on a planet, then dropping companion damage to make the content "challenging" for some reason, and then inflating everything's HP to increase the "difficulty", you simply add more grind. Grind is bad for your game because it eventually makes a game dull and uninteresting, it is the top reasons MMO's get deserted in fact is dropping player interest. By no means do players want or need the content to be a cakewalk, but allowing players with limited time due to family and work a faster way to enjoy what the game has to offer is going to help you sustain your long term business. An ideal approach would be making a lot of these new features like inflated health/level sync/and lower companion damage optional, so that those who want hours to burn can turn them on and those without the time can enjoy feeling all powerful, even if it's only for an hour a day in their lives.

 

Just as a reference here is the crazy long list of Daily and Weekly quests the players are given to complete every 7 days:

 

7 Daily Planets (about 6-8 missions per planet so around 50 per day which is about 350 a week)

2 Daily PVP Missions (6 matches, which is 42 a week)

1 Daily PVP Starfighter (2 matches, 14 a week)

1 Daily Groupfinder Storymode Operation (7 per week)

1 Daily Groupfinder Hardmode Flashpoint (7 per week)

1 Daily Groupfinder Tactical Flashpoint (7 per week)

71 Weekly Heroics (2+)

12 Weekly Operations

5 Weekly Tactical Flashpoints

3 Weekly Hard Flashpoints

1 Weekly Groupfinder Flashpoint

1 Weekly PVP Starfighter (7 matches)

1 Weekly Unranked PVP (15 matches)

1 Weekly Ranked PVP (9 matches)

1 Weekly Star Fortress Run (6 completions)

7 Weekly Complete the Daily Planet Quests

 

If we add all of that stuff up it is roughly 530 things to do every 7 days. Making that list take substantially longer is why your players have been turning against your changes to increase "challenge" by adding bad types of difficulty.

 

First, there already is a toggle for difficulty. One companion has 40 influence; this is easy mode. Another companion has 1 influence...the difficulty is increased. Almost none of the players that were seeking more "challenging" content used the companion with 1 influence...instead they maxed affection with <comp name here>, blew through the content and said it wasn't challenging enough.

Second, I'd like to point out that trying to do EVERY mission EVERY day is craziness. Even folks (like me) that have a lot of time to play don't shoot for EVERY daily/weekly/flashpoint/OP/pvp. If we did, it would take (for me at least) about 2 weeks to become burned out and quit playing. Try to alternate between content a little. One week get the pvp stuff done. The next do operations, etc. I'm all for giving companions back some effectiveness, but if they get to the point where all 530 missions can be done easily EVERY week, I see some longevity issues for the game.

Finally, I'd like to say; you can ignore GSF dailies/weeklies...GSF SUCKS!!...lol

[MrLuigiEW]

Probably already been asked but I'm wondering why PTS wasn't used to test these changes? If its because the population on pts isn't high enough to get good data maybe in the future you could bring back the 1.x pts titles or some of the beta titles as incentives for testing new changes.

[Divotox]

Why not just allow us to add gear again?

 

Buff them to where they'll be as of the next patch, but re-enable gearing. That way we have to work on making them even stronger if we choose to.

 

people that want a bit more of a challenge leave them ungeared. Those that want an easier time have to work for it/gear up the companions.

 

Seems like a good idea to me any how.

[Ghisallo]

Probably already been asked but I'm wondering why PTS wasn't used to test these changes? If its because the population on pts isn't high enough to get good data maybe in the future you could bring back the 1.x pts titles or some of the beta titles as incentives for testing new changes.

 

Well this situation was one that required rapid action. First the ner f because it was completely invalidating the design intent and Second a correction on the nerf to avoid further exacerbating the debacle. Also it's not just a matter of the number of people on PTS, its a matter of who. The player who describes themselves as a "casual who doesn't want their MMO to be work" is rarely on PTS. They want to play the game. I mean just look at all the comments by people when Eric asked for feedback... "Why should we test the game we pay you for? That's you're job."

 

So would PTS have actually addressed the concerns of the players who liked the original OP companions?

[Ghisallo]

Why not just allow us to add gear again?

 

Buff them to where they'll be as of the next patch, but re-enable gearing. That way we have to work on making them even stronger if we choose to.

 

people that want a bit more of a challenge leave them ungeared. Those that want an easier time have to work for it/gear up the companions.

 

Seems like a good idea to me any how.

 

Because half the reason for the new companions is to reset them. This expac is not about the current player. Look at it. Reset companions, Lvl sync based missions in a 3 year old world, FPS and OPs with a bolster mechanic so levels what, 50-65 can group? Making the leveling process story only etc.

 

This expac is about getting the new player to 60 as fast as possible and minimizing how far "behind" he or she feels when they get there, while minimizing the loss of existing players.

 

Half the problem some people have with this expac is that they think it's about "us" so they are looking for solutions that would work for "us". It isn't about us its about the people who aren't here yet.

[Erasimus]

.... But the checklist of stuff to do each week is entirely impossible for adults with 40 hour a week jobs. ...

 

About 12 years ago I started playing MMOs. WoW was my first real MMO and for about a year I wore myself out trying to do everything in the game. Until WoW I had mostly played single player games. I'd take some time and binge play until I had finished the game.

 

After about a year I had an epiphany, there was no "winning" or "finishing" an MMORPG. I was much happier after that revelation. I started playing MMOs at my own pace and found others that I could group with that had similar interests and play styles.

 

So I don't believe there is any checklist that you "have to complete" each week. Play at whatever pace you feel comfortable with. After all, there is no prize for getting there first and unless the game is shut down there is no finishing the game. No matter your pace you get to do it all and the only important thing is that you enjoy the journey and your time in game whether it is new challenging hard modes or just watching the story in solo mode.

[Beachdudeca]

Not sure what it will look like come the patch being done on Tuesday , BUT

 

as of now , Companions lack a SHIELD component to Defense that they used to have ,

 

Can this plesae b added back ?

[Obnxs]

Companion tanking is atrocious. No mitigation, can't hold aggro on a group, can barely hold single target aggro without a head start. Pre 4.0 I could send a tank companion at a group and AOE/blast to my heart's content. Now...not a chance. This is single player, PVE content...I shouldn't need to micro manage my companion, my aggro, and my target among other things. I want to have fun; if I wanted the above, I'd go back to progression raiding.

 

And give us back the Treek for which we paid. This homogenized version with no heals means she's pointless.

[Nomad_Zero]

The development team needs to seriously put some thought into not just the games challenge, but also towards respecting the players time. By no means am I complaining or upset about the endgame content, far from it thats the whole reason I play. But the checklist of stuff to do each week is entirely impossible for adults with 40 hour a week jobs. That was before the companions were all lowered to near uselessness. Now that they are worse then before changes were made to 4.0, on top of the fact that the companion AI is buggy and forgets to deal damage, cc, or heal in combat, then after that there is also the forced level sync. The checklist of daily and weekly quests is basically a joke now given how much time investment it would take to get through all of it each week.

 

Its clear to us that you want to add more difficulty to the game. But be aware there are two types of difficulty, good difficulty and bad difficulty. Good difficulty challenges players to play better by increasing mechanics usage by enemy npcs, giving your AI better tactics and new tricks to try on the players, giving the monsters wider skill sets and new abilities the players haven't encountered before or wouldn't expect, if you want certain things to stand out as a challenge it has to be tough but fair without making your player feel like they are wasting their time.

 

Now bad difficulty is what you've been doing now: Inflating health pools, lowering player damage to increase the length of fights, removing player options by increasing monster immunities to interupts/stuns/cc/knockback ect, which in turn removes player creativity and the desire for your players to experiment with the toolkits you've provided them to complete the challenges in the first place.

 

Extra Credits did 2 remarkable presentations about this very topic months ago that I would highly recommend the dev team check out:

How to Approach Game Difficulty:

and

When Difficult Is Fun - Challenging vs. Punishing:

 

There's something to be said for respecting your players time by not making each individual fight take more and more minutes to complete. By dropping player damage and forcing players to have level sync while on a planet, then dropping companion damage to make the content "challenging" for some reason, and then inflating everything's HP to increase the "difficulty", you simply add more grind. Grind is bad for your game because it eventually makes a game dull and uninteresting, it is the top reasons MMO's get deserted in fact is dropping player interest. By no means do players want or need the content to be a cakewalk, but allowing players with limited time due to family and work a faster way to enjoy what the game has to offer is going to help you sustain your long term business. An ideal approach would be making a lot of these new features like inflated health/level sync/and lower companion damage optional, so that those who want hours to burn can turn them on and those without the time can enjoy feeling all powerful, even if it's only for an hour a day in their lives.

 

Just as a reference here is the crazy long list of Daily and Weekly quests the players are given to complete every 7 days:

 

7 Daily Planets (about 6-8 missions per planet so around 50 per day which is about 350 a week)

2 Daily PVP Missions (6 matches, which is 42 a week)

1 Daily PVP Starfighter (2 matches, 14 a week)

1 Daily Groupfinder Storymode Operation (7 per week)

1 Daily Groupfinder Hardmode Flashpoint (7 per week)

1 Daily Groupfinder Tactical Flashpoint (7 per week)

71 Weekly Heroics (2+)

12 Weekly Operations

5 Weekly Tactical Flashpoints

3 Weekly Hard Flashpoints

1 Weekly Groupfinder Flashpoint

1 Weekly PVP Starfighter (7 matches)

1 Weekly Unranked PVP (15 matches)

1 Weekly Ranked PVP (9 matches)

1 Weekly Star Fortress Run (6 completions)

7 Weekly Complete the Daily Planet Quests

 

If we add all of that stuff up it is roughly 530 things to do every 7 days. Making that list take substantially longer is why your players have been turning against your changes to increase "challenge" by adding bad types of difficulty.

 

 

Great post! The videos were spot on. Should be mandatory viewing for the devs as this game certainly has fallen iinto the 'punishing' style.

[Deyjarl]

Why not just allow us to add gear again?

 

Because companions are no longer balanced by gear.

 

Adding gear stats to the mix would only make things worse.