What if--they keep companions at the same power level they are now but allow you the option of using two of them t a time while playing solo? It's kind of annoying that I have this giant multitude of companions and I can only use one at a time. Also why can't I change most of their armor?

I never have to do these things. The current heroics system with the current companions simply doesn't demand it. I can clear these using less than half the abilities at my disposal, and unlike you I don't even use good damage rotations. Truth be told, I never even looked up what my optimal rotation is supposed to be because it is not necessary for solo play. The game is accessible as hell. Probably the easiest game I've played all year. And people still complain.

First, I don't understand why everyone is biased except for you. Human beings are inherently biased. From my point of view, speaking as a solo player who has never raided, the game is still not very difficult. I can walk into planetary heroics with a level 1 influence companion and mash my keyboard with no thought, without using defensive cooldowns, and still prevail. I don't see how anyone could want the game to be more accessible than that. We're talking about content with a big 2+ label on it, meaning it's balanced for people to play in pairs, and an inexperienced player like myself can tackle it solo without really trying. I just cannot fathom how people are having trouble with this. Heroic Star Fortresses, that's a different story. Those are harder but Bioware said they only wanted the most experienced players to complete them solo. In 4.0, the game went beyond merely accessible to the point where combat was but a mere formality. You could not lose with one of those OP companions at your side no matter what. Someone explain to me how it's fun to walk into a fight that you can't lose even if you do nothing. There are no video games that I know of where you can just stop fighting and let your AI teammates kill everything, and yet that is apparently what the playerbase of this game wants. And I really don't see how you could even reach the end of half of those games with the attitude you have toward difficulty.

A few things: SWTOR does not have a community of super hardcore poopsocking nolife raiders like in the old days of WoW. The end game has never been substantial enough to foster that kind of community The people who wanted the companion nerfs are mostly average or maybe slightly above average players. Not the elitist hardcore raiders you keep mentioning. 4.0 took away most of the need for player input in single player content and planetary heroics. There's nothing inherently elitist about wanting a game that requires the player to contribute in fights rather than companions that are powerful enough to steamroll everything. The game in its current state is still very, very accessible. I'm struggling to think of what other games you might have played in the past that set such a low bar that caused you to think 4.0.2 made the game super hard.

But do you want the companion to be more powerful than you? Because that's what we had during 4.0. I want the companion to be like the sidekick and my character to be the main hero.

What a strange community this is where offering to help makes you an elitist douchebag and people are proud of being near the bottom in terms of skill.

I agree that it should be a single player game instead of an MMO, but single player games still have some challenge to them, or at least the possibility of death. And I don't know what single player RPGs people are playing where they don't have to worry about gear and stats. That's a staple of all RPGs, not just MMOs.

The hardest raiding content in this game is still easier than your average MMO. Many of the actual raiders and nolifers already quit because even at the top level, the game is not offering enough challenge for them. you are not arguing with those people. You are arguing with average players.

Heroic Star Fortress is supposed to be soloable by people who understand their class, have decent gear, and have a high influence companion. Not by everybody who tries.

Heroic Star Fortress isn't a solo quest :^)

I didn't say anything about challenge. The heroics are still not very challenging. The only thing now is, it's possible to die if you go afk. There's a point where the game becomes easy, which we are already at, and then there's a point where it's completely impossible to die, which was 4.0

I don't see what this has to do with companion nerfs though. The game as it is now, is still easier than most single player RPGs. If that's what you're here for, you're not being faced with an unexpectedly insurmountable challenge or anything. As for the grinding, I can agree that it's pretty boring, but is there any reason that someone who is only trying to blow through all the story chapters NEEDS no endlessly grind out heroics day in and day out? I doubt you're going to be locked out of chapter 10 if your alliance isn't built up enough or something. Which brings us back to the real issue with the expansion: this "story-focused" expansion still has a lot less story than the base game did. Instead of 8 separate stories, each lasting for dozens of hours if you don't spacebar, we now have a single story that's maybe 8 hours max if you don't skip anything. The larger issue is that the people who want story were given very little of it, and all that's left to do is grind. I don't see how making the grind easier is going to satisfy them.

You think it's fun when your companion can kill everything while you just watch?

I just want to preface this by saying that I am not an experienced MMO player. I started playing this game briefly a couple times over the years and dropped it quickly, and didn't really become a regular player until 12x EXP earlier this year. Prior to that I played WoW a bit years ago, but for the most part I am not particularly versed in MMO mechanics. That being said, the solo content is still trivially easy, and the planetary heroics aren't much harder. I can solo planetary heroics as a DPS character, with Yuun, who is influence level 1, set to DPS mode, without much trouble. This isn't a case where 4.0 made the game easy and 4.0.2 made it hard. In 4.0, unless you were doing group content with no companions, the game played itself. I could set my companion to heal and be confident that I would never die, even if I went AFK during fights. I could set my companion to tank and send him in against heroic groups by himself and he would take absolutely no damage. Now after the recent patch, I have to at least contribute by mashing my character's generic basic attack if I want to win, but the enemies still generally don't put up much of a fight. Maybe in a fight with 2 golds I will actually have to try to put out decent DPS or possibly pop a defensive cooldown, but overall, I'm not being challenged much. Look, I realize people play this game for the story, and some of them might want the combat to be easy. But the combat is already very easy. During 4.0, the combat was nonexistent. I don't understand how a person could prefer a game where your companion can clear heroic groups for you while you go afk the entire time. Even if the combat is meant to be easy, there still needs to be a failure condition. At a bare minimum, there has to be a possibility that I can die, or the combat is completely meaningless. Right now, if I don't pay attention and get swarmed or something, MAYBE then I'll be in danger of dying. In 4.0, there was no danger whatsoever. EDIT: While typing up this post, I went AFK in a heroic area. Upon returning to the game, my companion was dead and I was at half health being wailed on by a gold enemy. It still took very little effort for me to pop one defensive cooldown and kill the enemy without really coming close to dying. That's how easy this game still is. I can still get attacked in heroics while AFK and not die.

Why is resisting Valk a light side choice though? I can be pure evil but that doesn't mean I want to give someone control of my body. If my Sith character resists Valk because I'm too stubborn and proud of my own power and I don't want to share any with him, that's not light side. That's the Sith code to the letter.