Companion Change Feedback

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Yea, just to be clear, im only speculating. I could very well be wrong, and perhaps the vast majority of folks were for 4.0.2. I wouldn't bet on that, but it is possible. I would like to know the hard data as well.

 

And also, I wanted to point out that simply because I feel hardcore players are a minority in this game I do NOT feel their concerns should be ignored, quite the contrary. My only point was that, if they had to choose to screw one group or the other it would likely have to be the smallest group....and that may be what they have done here.

 

The part of that statement I hate ( not because you said it but because they probably believe it ) is "Had to choose" - they didn't HAVE to choose anything. They could have chosen to cater to everyone rather easily from the outset.

 

I would have been perfectly happy for them to leave the original comps alone if they just posted "We realise people are annoyed at how easy this is making the game and we also see a majority of players enjoy it this way so we are actively working on a system to keep everyone happy, we'll update you once we know more".

Or something to that extent.

No, first they stuff it up by releasing it in the state it was, then they swing the nerf bat because it didn't meet their internal expectations of how combat should be in the game ( and how everyone knew it to be before they released the OP comps to show how it could be if you never had to try ) and then they blatantly move the goal posts of their expectations to make it all super difficult.

 

I don't know I've encountered a company that goes so far out of it's way to actually piss off portions of it's player base ... luckily for BWA and it's management though EA only care about meeting X profit goals, it doesn't matter that they could be making superior profit with better management and design choices so they basically get away with this half assed approach that BWA are taking with this game.

 

Wonder how much of that profit though comes from the CM vs Subs ... I then wonder how much of that CM profit is from dubious sources.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I saw a lot of posts after 4.0.2 about companions being too weak.

 

Don't strawman what I asked, I asked where are all the posts about not being able to complete the story because companions are too weak?

 

 

There's too much emphasize on Alliance and Influence for it to have no consequences. I find the whole Alliance grind inconsistent with 'emphasizing story' and the effective removal of side-quests, which had a lot more story to them then the heroics grind that replaced them.

 

I guess we will see. I think the grind is there solely for that, to grind and keep people playing. A lot of players hadn't done the content so it's new and interesting ( I haven't still, did a few after 4.0 but it was honestly too stupidly easy that it was boring me that I went and played something else if I wasn't doing FPs/Ops etc. ) but being how easy it is it's quickly going to become redundant and boring for a majority.

 

You need to remember this fresh and new content was created since launch and is being effectively recycled - come the next chapters that's it. There is nothing else to rehash like this anymore ( unless they find a means for people to redo the actualy class stories next like time travel or something ) - we are going to get our 1 hours ( if that ) per month and that will be it. Somewhere along the line we might get an operations ( solo players won't care ) but no matter how you look at it there just isn't going to be enough content to keep the casual solo crowd happy and playing.

 

Not unless they manage to add another 5-10 heroics to top out the alliance grind each month or so but I honestly don't see this happening.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I'll have to disagree with "They have a HUGE amount of work to do if they are to provide a consistent and fun experience for all that comes close to the experience prior to 4.0 IMO.". IMO, if the old system was working, making enough profit with growth potential, I doubt they would have attempted the changes that they did. I know that the pre-4.0 experience offered nothing that would have brought me back.

 

Now I don't doubt that the players that were already here would, for the most part, agree about the pre-4.0 experience. Although there is a vocal group that believes that the 4.0 experience was superior to what came before and after.

 

I do agree that they have their work cut out for them to find a balance that will retain most of the old player base and still attract new players and grow the game.

 

Where id this growth potential though? Look at the content people are doing, it already existed for them ( heroics )

.It took them MONTHS just to adapt that content and add in the story we got plus 1 SF... what growth are we going to get that's going to have anyone wanting to sub every single month for only 1 hours new story?

 

We might be surprised but history of this game dictates otherwise.

 

If they don't find a means to keep people subbing and grinding they will lose subs. They've made it all so easy now they've removed the grind aspect ...

 

Previously that was a new planet, new heroics and a couple of operations to round them out.

I don't see this happening now unless they've doubled their development resources because the resources that could be creating planets etc. are going to busy getting that 1 months story out ( unless it's already done, we can hope ).

[nimmerstil]

Don't strawman what I asked, I asked where are all the posts about not being able to complete the story because companions are too weak?

Don't be ridiculous, that's no strawman, you weren't making an argument, I bypassed a pseudo question that was besides the discussion. Complaints about companion strength were never about completing story, but about heroics that were either taking too long for the grind, or were too hard.

 

Essentially your pseudo question was a kind of strawman by framing the reason of the complaint as something that it wasn't.

 

I guess we will see. I think the grind is there solely for that, to grind and keep people playing. A lot of players hadn't done the content so it's new and interesting ....

I really really hope they are just to nudge people into doing them. I don't think people want more grind, those days are long past.

[Ghisallo]

Don't be ridiculous, that's no strawman, you weren't making an argument, I bypassed a pseudo question that was besides the discussion. Complaints about companion strength were never about completing story, but about heroics that were either taking too long for the grind, or were too hard.

 

Essentially your pseudo question was a kind of strawman by framing the reason of the complaint as something that it wasn't.

 

I really really hope they are just to nudge people into doing them. I don't think people want more grind, those days are long past.

 

I think you miss the point that he is trying to make. He is trying to say, and he can correct me if I am wrong, that the Story is for the story fans. When you look at the playable content outside the story you need to address those who play MMORPGs for the playable content. I love story, I also love playable content. Playable content that is easy has little point to me.

 

As for the grind those days aren't past. Every MMORPG with a subscription or a subscription/f2p hybrid financial model has them. The trick is making it fun. Part of making it fun is making it new and you can see that THIS, not the grind or lack there of is the problem by reading the complaints. The main complaint about the Heroic Missions was not "OMG they are a grind!"... it was " OMG I have to grind stuff 40 levels lower than me I already did hundreds of times on my toons!!!!" You also see it in people not wanting to have to gear up to do the H2 SF. Why? Because it is basically the only piece of new repeatable content and they don't want "old" content from delaying it.

 

We can also look t the history of this game. Get to endgame with the grind they had SWTOR was fun. Get to that endgame though and you had nothing but one FP and one OP... nothing else. People leave. Then in 2013 they add new content lots of grinds... They stop the subscription drop, according to their own statements, and add how many f2p accounts? Then very small new content additions the following year...UNTIL SoR... According to their own statements again they add "many more new players".

 

tl;dr Saying the day of the grind is done is a useless statement because " grind" is subjective. If the content is legitimately new most people do not see it as a grind because it is new and fun...it doesn't become a grind until the content starts to feel old. The majority of releateable content this time around is old. It is this that is the problem.

[Mourkoth]

Don't be ridiculous, that's no strawman, you weren't making an argument, I bypassed a pseudo question that was besides the discussion. Complaints about companion strength were never about completing story, but about heroics that were either taking too long for the grind, or were too hard.

 

Essentially your pseudo question was a kind of strawman by framing the reason of the complaint as something that it wasn't.

 

I really really hope they are just to nudge people into doing them. I don't think people want more grind, those days are long past.

 

It also needs to be taken into consideration that not everyone was really willing to post such complaints in the amounts that are being requested as evidence. Rather, they simply left without saying a word, because conditions like a more tedious (and yes, sometimes stalled by impossibly strong NPCs) made playing the game too dificult to justify.

 

PoT5 was getting a steady trickle of new members once 4.0 dropped, enough for me to start putting together a PvP guild. Once 4.2 dropped, so did the pop counts, drastically. My guild emptied without warning, along with two other close allies....

 

...people just weren't really all that eager to work with Bioware/EA, which as suggested by their odd reaction to this, is certainly not the most ideal example of customer service.

[Ghisallo]

It also needs to be taken into consideration that not everyone was really willing to post such complaints in the amounts that are being requested as evidence. Rather, they simply left without saying a word, because conditions like a more tedious (and yes, sometimes stalled by impossibly strong NPCs) made playing the game too dificult to justify.

 

PoT5 was getting a steady trickle of new members once 4.0 dropped, enough for me to start putting together a PvP guild. Once 4.2 dropped, so did the pop counts, drastically. My guild emptied without warning, along with two other close allies....

 

...people just weren't really all that eager to work with Bioware/EA, which as suggested by their odd reaction to this, is certainly not the most ideal example of customer service.

 

That however is a PvP server. Most people I know who roll on such servers are the most passionate against anything that can even vaguely be called a grind in PvE because they want to PvP far more than any type of PvE. I can't tell ya how many times I have seen the "why do you have to put PvE into my PvP."

 

On JC I really haven't noticed that big a drop. Even outside of primetime (I work 8pm to 8am so usually get my play in when I get home from work) I found/find myself waiting for respawned and the like on the daily missions. BUT JC is a PvE server so the dynamics are different.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Don't be ridiculous, that's no strawman, you weren't making an argument, I bypassed a pseudo question that was besides the discussion. Complaints about companion strength were never about completing story, but about heroics that were either taking too long for the grind, or were too hard.

 

O'RLY?

 

The point is that you, and I and just about everyone here, have lost contact with the difficulty of the game for new players and are in no position to evaluate the difficulty for them. There are 8 stories, each with it's critical path and none of may get blocked because companions have become too weak.

 

Pretty sure you are clearly talking about story difficulty there? Pretty sure this entire topic has been about companion strength and how it makes heroics etc. achievable to a solo, casual player ( unless you've been off having some other debate on your own but o.k. ). Can't recall a massive influx of "i'm failing the story now please help".

 

How did I reply to the above in any case?

 

Sorry but I must have missed all the posts that said "my companions are too weak I can't do the story now" ... was there even one post nerf?

 

You endeavored to take the argument away from the content being argued ( heroics, SF ) to somehow relate it to story difficulty which I then asked you if there was even one post complaining about it ... your response and to which you LITERALLY quoted me was ...

 

I saw a lot of posts after 4.0.2 about companions being too weak.

 

Yeah ok pretty much the entire argument being had over multiple topics was around people complaining about companions then being too weak but thanks for stating the obvious.

However you failed to even come close to showing me where people were posting on failing the non existant story content difficulty "issue" you decided to elude to and have still failed to do so ...

[nimmerstil]

O'RLY?

 

I forgot my own context, sorry about that.

Yes I did say somewhere in this thread that keeping an eye on difficulty for new players was important.

 

You endeavored to take the argument away from the content being argued ( heroics, SF ) to somehow relate it to story difficulty which I then asked you if there was even one post complaining about it ...

I do, and it's obvious Bioware has to take the difficulty for beginning players into account when balancing. It's also obvious that none of us have a very good idea for how difficult the game is for new players, if just for the fact that we know the mechanics too well.

 

New players not posting here is not a good metric, F2P players can't even post ...

[nimmerstil]

I think you miss the point that he is trying to make. He is trying to say, and he can correct me if I am wrong, that the Story is for the story fans. When you look at the playable content outside the story you need to address those who play MMORPGs for the playable content. I love story, I also love playable content. Playable content that is easy has little point to me.

That is a possibility, some of the story players would probably pick up on the additional content.

 

As for the grind those days aren't past. Every MMORPG with a subscription or a subscription/f2p hybrid financial model has them. The trick is making it fun. Part of making it fun is making it new and you can see that THIS, not the grind or lack there of is the problem by reading the complaints.

MMO's are 'in decline', it seems, might well be that more people are just finding other games that fit their preferences better.

 

Fun gameplay is important, as well as fresh content, everything will get stale after a while, and variation, because even old content will become fun again after doing lots of other things, in time we all go back and replay our old favorites.

[Xtro]

Your level: 65

Roughly Average Item Rating: 208/216

Class: Gunslinger

Discipline: Sharpshooter

Buffs: Have all class buffs, full legacy bonus for classes and a lot of datacrone

Companion:Lana

Companion role:Tank/healer

Companion Influence level:33

Which Mission or Star Fortress are you playing (Solo Mode? Heroic Mode?): SF heroic Tattoine

 

Your personal experience while playing this content:

Against my own instinct I decided to try out SF heroic since I wanted to get the companions that are locked behind them. So I started out with Lana as Tank and it went reasonable well, considering that she could not hold area aggro. But when I came to first boss that ended. She did not try to aggro reinforcements as they came in and she could not take the heat from being attacked by the boss. In short boss whittled her down while I had to deal with reinforcements and attack boss in between them..... so we died.

 

So I tried it with her as healer and things went actually better. She now tanked the reinforcements with her healing and we defeated that boss. Things then went rather well untill we reached the third control station. She could not heal enough for the reinforcement and the two elite that guarded the boss and we died.....

I thought about it and decided to give it another try. Managed to stay outside room and kill the body guard......... and then the great grind started. Must have used 10 of those zappers on the boss and spent time killing 20 reinforcements before that last console became interactive.

 

Last fight was not as hard as third control room (which I assume was bugged) since I made sure always to have my back against a wall so I could not be pushed out. But I did have to use my heroic moment in that fight.

 

Total experience: I freaking never want to do this again, even if it probably mostly have to do with that last bugged control room. Utterly horrible. No fun what so ever, just grinding down ridiculously high health mobs. Can not see the fun in that.

 

Just for the record, having those red circles boss control in third room following you around is not fun at all for a class like gunslinger that need to use cover to do area to take down large groups. Pretty darn poor design of a mission from a gunslinger perspective.

[Xtro]

As for the grind those days aren't past. Every MMORPG with a subscription or a subscription/f2p hybrid financial model has them. The trick is making it fun..

They did make it fun in the 4.0 since they grind was easy and therefore less grindy. Making things more grindy in 4.02 fails miserably to make it fun.

 

They should have spent the time spent to nerf companions to fix all the bugs instead and other problems that was in game (happily they seem to have fixed most of mission objective not being fulfilled when picking up mission item now after last patch to buff companions a bit).

[CosmicCleric]

They did make it fun in the 4.0 since they grind was easy and therefore less grindy. Making things more grindy in 4.02 fails miserably to make it fun.

 

Its interesting actually, BioWare really broke a cardinal rule in MMO development; don't let the customer know they're on a hamster wheel.

 

In other words, MMO devs/companies add 'grind' to the game to make up for a lack of content being produced. Now, and as someone mentioned just a few posts earlier in this thread, if the devs do 'grind' right, the customer won't even notice it, being wrapped in the world/situation, and enjoying (hopefully!?) the variation of grind.

 

But what 4.0 to 4.0.2a has done is removed the grind, then slap it back in with a vengeance, bringing focused ATTENTION to the grind, and losing the customers who left pre-4.0 because of grind, who came back 4.0 because when they (and I) read "Single Player Experience" and then played 4.0 w/o the grind, they think 'grind' is not supposed to be part of the single-player experience.

 

Its really a dev/co. f-up of an epic level, something for the MMO development textbooks.

Edited November 29, 2015 by CosmicCleric
Fixed typo

[Ghisallo]

They did make it fun in the 4.0 since they grind was easy and therefore less grindy. Making things more grindy in 4.02 fails miserably to make it fun.

 

They should have spent the time spent to nerf companions to fix all the bugs instead and other problems that was in game (happily they seem to have fixed most of mission objective not being fulfilled when picking up mission item now after last patch to buff companions a bit).

 

Yes but you are missing something. For many, I would argue most, who liked the pre-nerf companions the main issue making it "not fun" and a grind was that the VAST bulk of the content in this content is old content forced into relevancy via Lvl sync. Part of the fun equation is doing something "new".

[Vego_Mohenjo]

Just a couple of quick comments, as I've not had a lot of time to test out the new system.

 

First, I'm a bit ticked off that my companion can't use the weapon I spent a small fortune on getting for her (Kaliyo). What reason could there possibly be for changing her from blaster pistol to rifle?

Second (and I apologize that this isn't actually a companion thing directly, but rather a crafting thing, which companions do for us... so it's still kind of on topic), I'm rather ticked off that I had to go and spend half my cash buying crafting recipes I didn't need before to make things I'd been making all along.

 

Otherwise, so far it looks pretty good. I'm liking that I can change their roles to suit my playstyle. I'll say more when I've had a chance to play more.

[Xtro]

Just a couple of quick comments, as I've not had a lot of time to test out the new system.

 

First, I'm a bit ticked off that my companion can't use the weapon I spent a small fortune on getting for her (Kaliyo). What reason could there possibly be for changing her from blaster pistol to rifle?

Second (and I apologize that this isn't actually a companion thing directly, but rather a crafting thing, which companions do for us... so it's still kind of on topic), I'm rather ticked off that I had to go and spend half my cash buying crafting recipes I didn't need before to make things I'd been making all along.

 

Otherwise, so far it looks pretty good. I'm liking that I can change their roles to suit my playstyle. I'll say more when I've had a chance to play more.

 

They should really change companions so that there is 4 types:

Ranged Tech: All ranged tech weapons (go into melee when in tank)

Melee Tech: All melee tech weapons

Force Ranged : light sabre and ranged force attacks (go into melee when in tank)

Force melee: dual light sabre or double bladed light sabre

 

This should only be visual and all companions should have same stats in base that are only improved by presence and influence.

 

Most importantly they should fix script for which order power are used as well as make all companions have 90% damage reduction vs. all area attacks since they never moves out of them.

 

The tanks really needs to have better aggro control then now as well.

 

PS: Give a slap on the back of head to whoever thought it was a good idea to have HK-51 jump back to you in tank mode. A tank should never jump away from the creature he tanks toward the person he is supposed to protect since that means that tank and protected person is in one space for an area attack.

[Ramalina]

I thought I should expand on the following:

 

Tanking stance - strong enough for mildly challenging encounter but lacking against spikes in damage whether from big hits or many small ones (and very stupid about cool down usage and standing in avoidable effects, requires a lot of micromanaging for best effect).

 

a little bit.

 

The tank companions have a shield bubble with about 50% uptime that makes them practically invincible while the shield is up. However, when the shield is down their baseline damage reduction is more along the lines of a ranged DPS player, which is not really adequate for tanking. If damage rates were steady state, that would be fine, but PvE encounters are designed to be deliberately variable in order to make things more interesting for human tanks and healers. This causes a problem when the AI uses the shield on cooldown or after taking a big spike of damage, instead of doing what a human player does and using a defensive cooldown to anticipate a big spike of damage.

 

You could make a more sophisticated tanking AI, run through all your PvE encounters, and teach the companions when they should bubble up for best effect. If this were done, companions would be very good tanks, but that is a gigantic amount of work for a fairly small reward in functionality.

 

My suggestion would be to reduce the amount of protection the bubble offers the tank, but increase their passive damage reduction to compensate.

 

You could also fold some of that into a [ If companion_health < 40%, then trigger oh_crap_Im_dying defensive ability ] sort of a thing.

 

If internally you have flags for "killer abilities that can be interrupted" giving the tank a few lines of code ordering them to save their interrupt for that class of incoming attack might also help, but I don't think that would be all that practical unless the interruptable spike damage attacks are already identified in the code. Trawling through all the encounters to find and flag them would be a definite, "sucks to be you," type of work assignment for a developer.

 

Player healers generally hate tanks with very spikey/variable health levels, and right now the companion tanks are a bit too Jekyll and Hyde when it comes to the invincible/squishy divide.

[Isnogut]

Please keep in mind, the tank role for our companions isn't fixed yet. As for the healing stance, it gets better from affection 35+. However it is still a pain in the bottex compared to 4.0. It is quite hard to survive the Starfortress and mostly still unefficient at Makeb H2+ Missions. As for DD stance for companions, it is still quite effective.

 

I realised something, playing since 4.02 and after the serverfix: There is acutally no balance wihle beeing downgraded in level. While we do lower H2+ Missions, we can rush almost like before, but from Words at lvl 50+ it gets more and more demanding. Especially Makeb is almost impossible, even worse than Star Fortress.

 

Going in a tactial FP with one healing companion (35+) and 2 other players it is quatie balaced. Without the healing companion some are also at some point futile. Especially when you group with low level alts.

 

The problem was never really the overhealing from our comps, but the overall inbalance. The few open PVPlayers were not really an issue. BioWare should really try to fix this, instead of fixing the sympthoms.

[Cavadus]

Play a L65 gunnery trooper, all 216 gear with a few 220 pieces (headset, implants). Only a 208 barrel.

 

I use Fourex as a tanking companion and have him at influence rank 41.

 

Aside from heroic on Makeb where you have to blow up the munitions, and defend them after planting the explosives, I have zero problems with any of the heroics. There's one on Voss where you need to kill the akk dog type things and their handlers and there's a particular champion mob on the upper level of the large main chain chamber that's a total *****. I can barely get it done with Fourex as as tank. In fact, he usually dies and I have to finish the last 20% of the mob's health solo.

 

And I even have my two little healing abilities ready to go (med probe and bacta infusion) and use them.

[Tesseryn]

Level 65

Avg 208 with a couple of 216 pieces

Marksmanship Sniper

Lana Beniko

Tanking

Influence level 19

any Heroic that has pulls of 3 or more strong to elite mobs from Alderaan and up

 

I have noticed that the tanking capability of the companions are severely lacking self heals when you are playing a class that has NO HEALING SPEC available. She is continually down around 25% - 30% health every pull and that is with me trying to do a DPS race to get them down by single target acquisition or the occasional AoE and popping all buffs and Offensive CD's to boost my DPS to get them down in time. It was enjoyable before the 4.0.1 patch and the resulting patch 4.0.2.

 

Can you please fix the companion tanking nerf and at least give them a bit more self-healing capabilities back so I am not spending more time out of combat recouping their health and I am in combat. I guess the 2+ heroics are meant to be done by 2 players not a player and their companion, this is definitely taking the fun out of doing the heroics, since we have to run them over and over to get the artifact items for the alliance. I am also aware you may not read this and if so then so be it but I am adding my info here to let you know you still need to do either some more "balancing" or just take the comps back to the state they were before Patch 4.0.1. Since the only way to level their influence is by getting the gifts from the artifact crates from heroics which is more difficult now tor the non-healing classes/non-tanking classes than it was before patch 4.0.1.

[chenroku]

I just quit the game. I can't stand it anymore. I had a level 59 Vanguard and level 56 Powertech. I spent so much time tweaking up my characters gear, plus outfitting all my companions with the correct gear so they looked good and also performed well in their roles. Such as Healer ( Mako for example ), DPS or Tank. Then you guys just abandon the whole concept of stats for companions? I was already a bit ticked off since the skill and specialization trees have gotten all nerfed and dumbed down previously. I preferred the old tree where you could pick and choose among the 3 specializations. But this takes the cake. Oh, and the level adjustment thing too. Wow. Could the game get any easier or more generic?

 

Anyway, I'm done wasting my time. All that gear I tweaked is useless. Plus much of my companion gear went missing and then was emailed back to me within the game after the patch. What a mess. I'm done. I tried playing last night, but it just wasn't fun anymore. I had Aric Jorgan with me and instead of dolling out damage with his assault cannon like he used to, he was giving me some wimpy healing. Didn't feel right and wasn't fun anymore since he couldn't use all the spec'd out gear I had him wearing.

Edited December 22, 2015 by chenroku

[Dashtardly]

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

Your level: 65

Roughly Average Item Rating 208 (with a couple of 216)

Discipline: Jedi Knight (guardian)

Companion: Kira (I was not going to wait for my favorite companion)

Companion role: Heals

Companion Influence level: 19

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

Your personal experience while playing this content: Not too bad on the mobs up to the first robotic boss. Died on that when he was almost dead as I got blown off the platform. I liked the recovery and breakout from being in Jail (although if I died a lot that could be annoying). Saved the game and restarted the next day (unfortunately I lost my progress). Was able to complete and did not die at any point however, it was extremely challenging. I used every defensive cool down, heroic moment, health pot etc. This was the first heroic SF for me and the mechanic of draining the Exarch's energy took me a while to figure out. Health seemed to be hovering around 40-60% the entire fight. The final fight with the boss had a bunch of apparitions which I killed but couldn't tell if it was important or not to address them or leave them alone. That fight wasn't too bad so long as you moved out of the danger zones.

 

It was the hardest fight I've experienced (solo mode - not counting tacticals or OPS). It was enjoyable but I couldn't do anything else for the rest of the night - was so intense.

[LordArtemis]

Well, in general I think the system is acceptable in its current form. Not particularly positive, but at least not glaringly negative IMO.

 

There are a few tweaks that could make the system much better IMO. These suggestions pertain directly to companions, not to level sync, as often the subjects end up melting together. I will attempt to avoid that trap.

 

1) Companion gifts

 

First, feeding companion gifts one at a time is rather tedious. It would be better if we could apply companion gifts in bulk, using the same mechanic perhaps that we use to split stacks. Or just a way for us to combine gifts into one gift set we could then present to our companion would work.

 

Second, there are far too many types of companion gifts in each category IMO. When you combine all of the different types of gifts inside each type, then level, you end up with a HUGE variety of gifts that is not really necessary IMO. I think that it would be beneficial if half of the current variety existed.

 

Third, a way to actually craft companion gifts would be beneficial IMO. You could assign certain gift types to certain crew skills, like weapons for Armstechs, and limit craftable gifts to the same ones offered by the vendor on fleet. Reverse engineering gifts could perhaps allow us to make higher grades of those gifts.

 

Fourth, I believe that top end companion gifts are not providing enough influence to companions, even with buffs from legacy and the like. I think a 10 percent increase for level 5 gifts and a 20 percent increase for level 6 would make the entire system overall more balanced.

 

2) Companion skill bars

 

I believe it is still beneficial to allow us to set the bar vertical if we wish, even if companion abilities no longer fill a bar. I also think it would be beneficial if we could drop those skills on our main bars like other abilities, giving us keybind access.

 

3) Flashpoint influence gain

 

Right now it seems that the only companions that benefit from running flashpoints influence wise remain our primary initial companions. I would like to see ALL companions get a response set for all flashpoints, even if you have to use current response sets that are close to the current companion dispositions. This would give folks an alternate influence building source.

 

4) Influence/presence toggle

 

This would be something that would appeal to hardcore players IMO that feel the game has become too easy, without the need for them to resort to disabling companion abilities to adjust difficulty. Allowing a player to toggle off presence and/or influence would weaken our companions considerably.

[MCaliban]

I generally found the difficulties listed in the OP to be accurate.

 

• 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

Item Rating:: 220 mainhand. Armor is a combination of 208 and 216. Relics are 198.

Discipline: Telekinetic Sorcerer

Companion: Lana. Damage for solo, Healer for heroic. 10-15 Influence.

Missions: Yesterday, I soloed heroic mode SF for the first time and died once. 90% of the content I could sleep through.

 

Regular and strong opponents are just giant bags of HP to grind. Champion Paladins are a nice challenge, but I'd like to see at least one unique mechanic in a fight with them. The 'ambush' with elite mobs in the Ephemeris core was fun, and everything after that seemed to have the right amount of challenge and mechanic engagement.

 

Solomode is easy enough, but in the time it takes to finish, I could do some weekly heroics for a better reward.

 

Other Characters:

Under the 'new' system I've leveled a Sentinel (watchman) and am currently leveling Gunslinger (marksman). My companions are influence level 4-8. I ran one solo FP (Essles) with my Gunslinger and by the end of Corscant, I was level 25. When I arrive at a planet, I immediately do the heroics, which are trivial due to being overleveled.

 

Notes on Companions:

Companion healing is OP. If Lana is this powerful at influence 10-15, I can't imagine what she's like at level 50.

 

Last Note:

False History/For the Record should be changed so a single player can complete it.

Edited December 22, 2015 by MCaliban

[LordFell]

 

I'm continuing to find that Tank Companions just don't hold Aggro, and when they are taking damage, they're squishy.