Theik Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 About me I used to play the game like a proper addict back when it first launched. Although I originally only got the game because I enjoyed the idea of a new Knights of the Old Republic game (I had pretty much burned out on raiding as endgame content in MMOs after years of hardcore WoW), I ended up sticking around for raiding because I found a cool guild to play with. While we were never really hardcore raiders, we raided enough that I eventually got several companions on my main decked out in raid gear, simply because we had nobody else to give it to. I ended up playing a healing Sage (my main), a tank vanguard and a DPS scoundrel to max level because I wanted to see the raids as different roles, and a DPS assassin because I wanted to see the Imperial side of the story, but eventually I grew bored. I quit the game a few months after the launch because we had all the raids on farm and I didn't feel like doing all that repeat content just to see the storyquests. Companions were however one of my favorite parts of the classes and I looked back fondly to them. Companions back then Leveling my consular, I used Qyzen almost exclusively. He was an amazing tank and did a decent amount of damage, meaning I could solo 2 man content easily, and with careful use of cooldowns and CC, I managed to complete most 4 man heroics. I was leveling rather quickly so it was always hard to find people to play with for the heroic content. Back then, I agree, you were stuck with one companion. For me, as a healing sage, this was Qyzen. He kept aggro and killed stuff, all I had to do was heal him and I could take down basically anything. For my vanguard this ended up being my healer because it was the easiest way to kill things, just grab the aggro of everything and whittle it down. For my scoundrel, it became the wookie tank because I needed something to grab aggro so I could shoot it in the back. I found myself using escape to quit and restart conversations almost constantly because I wanted to max out my affection with my companions to hear their storylines, without grinding diplomacy missions for gifts to bribe them with. (I'm sorry I killed that guy you liked, here's a ring to make up for it, we good now?) However, those companions I did have were extremely effective. Unlike many people I knew, I kept them well equipped. My consular's characters in particular ended up in almost complete sets of raiding gear, and I often found that if we were having a hard time doing a heroic flashpoint, simply kicking the weakest link and bringing out one of my companions made things 10 times easier. In essence, they were easily as effective as a sub-par player. I return I returned two weeks ago when a friend told me that it is now way easier to do the class story content because you no longer have to slug through all the side content just to stay on an equal level, which was the main reason I gave up on completing all the storylines in the first place. After getting over the shock that I had 20 mails about companion gear, events I missed and subscriptions I had purchased by resubscribing, I set about reequipping my companions so they weren't running around pantless (what the hell did they do while I was gone?) and vendored all the gear they could no longer wear because it was stuff that gave them no appearance changes. I noticed right away that my companion stats were ridiculous. They had far more HP than they wore raid gear, and their damage and healing was downright silly. It was obvious that companions were far too strong, but I didn't particularly care as it allowed me to blaze through content to finish new class storylines. The Good After force-of-habitually escaping several conversations to avoid affection loss, I finally realized that 'x disagrees' also gives influence with the character. This is an -incredible- change if you like roleplaying your character's responses, as you no longer get penalized for it. I also noticed that on my trooper, the only companion I had never bothered to max affection with, I was able to go through all the conversations for storyline in a row, finishing with me getting the legacy unlock despite him only being influence rank 5. This, I think, does devalue the companion unlocks of the legacy a bit considering they now might as well be the same unlock as the act 3 unlock, but not having to play 'do you like this necklace?' with your companion just to hear their storyline is a great idea. Next I noticed that all companions now had all three stances. While this lead to somewhat hilarious lines of HK healing me and claiming I was marked by the maker or that my threat was neutralized (I guess he killed bacteria making me sick?), it is nice to be able to take the companion who you like best for their personality or looks, rather than being forced into one or two choices because of your spec. The Eh A minor nitpick, but after playing through the Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior storylines and ending up with my companion of choice ending up at around influence 20-25, I really don't think the person who decided that maxed out affection previously = influence 10 now knew what they were doing. I spent several tens of thousands on gifts to get all my companions to max affection while trying to pick answers that would please my companions whenever feasible, now you get 2x that from simply playing the storyline and picking the answers you like to use. If you milk the right (or wrong) answers, you could most likely get to influence 30 by the end of the class storyline. The Bad I have an HK, which I did a pretty boring questline for after I returned. His personality and appearance are awesome. But other than that, HK is basically Vette, Doc, or any other tech-based ranged character. Where characters felt distinctly different before, with Vette having different skills from Zenith, they are now all completely identical in every way. Characters fall into the categories light side force user, dark side force user, tech ranged or tech melee, and that's basically all there is. Everybody in the same category is identical, they might use different weapons but that is only a graphical difference, and even the four categories are basically identical in terms of effects, they just use different graphics. This makes companions feel extremely samey. Asides from picking "do I want a companion who goes into melee range or not", you're really not picking based on what makes them unique, as there is nothing that makes them unique, which I think is a shame. They could have easily let companions keep their unique abilities and make their other stances generic, there was no need to make them all identical. The Dread Nerf After playing for two weaks on OP companions mode, the nerf was a pretty hard hit. Not only are the companions way weaker now than they were last week (obviously), but they are also far weaker than they were back when I had them in full raid equip. In fact, I think even level appropriate greens back at launch would have made your companions stronger back at launch than they are now, for the simple reason that their specialized skillsets were better suited for specific roles than the current generalized ones. Did the 4.0 companions need a nerf? Yes, they certainly did, they were trivializing content and were outperforming characters in level appropriate gear. But did they need this big a nerf? I don't think so. The last few levels of my warrior were a mess, I had to be extremely careful not to pull more than three mobs at a time, because anything more than that would result in my healer getting hit by one and deciding that a droid shooting him was such a distraction that he no longer had to worry about healing me. I am confident that there is some sort of happy medium somewhere between what it was at launch in **** gear, and what it was in 4.0, but this sledgehammer approach was not the solution.
Meraxos Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 I HATE the way the companions now have a reduced skill set and nothing but dull generic skills. There is nothing unique about any companion any longer. I also HATE that every companion can fulfill every roll. I thought this game was at least clinging to the remnants of the RPG concept. And companions most of all should have a specific role and a specific personality. Things like Skadge as a healer or Mako as a tank are silly beyond belief. But I was willing to accept these poor design choices because the companions were made powerful as compensation. But now that the companions are weak again I find that the fun is gone. Boring, generic companions performing ludicrous roles outside there nature and doing it poorly is not a recipe for me (at least not for me).
Theik Posted November 19, 2015 Author Posted November 19, 2015 I HATE the way the companions now have a reduced skill set and nothing but dull generic skills. There is nothing unique about any companion any longer. I also HATE that every companion can fulfill every roll. I thought this game was at least clinging to the remnants of the RPG concept. And companions most of all should have a specific role and a specific personality. Things like Skadge as a healer or Mako as a tank are silly beyond belief. But I was willing to accept these poor design choices because the companions were made powerful as compensation. But now that the companions are weak again I find that the fun is gone. Boring, generic companions performing ludicrous roles outside there nature and doing it poorly is not a recipe for me (at least not for me). I personally disagree that allowing every companion to fill every role is a bad idea. As I mentioned in my post, you were basically stuck with one companion, possibly two if your preferred companion role was tank or dps. However, there was no real reason to remove their uniqueness. They could have left Vette's dps stance exactly the same as to what it was before, they didn't need to turn it into the same tech-ranged template as every other tech-ranged companion.
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