Since Companion Affection influences your chance of greater success in crafting, there is a strong motivation to maximize the returns on it.

 

The problem is, that generally means having to go to a fan site and look up every quest conversation to determine which companion most benefits and which choices yield the most - or ESC out and running the conversation multiple times. This really slows the game down, but if you don't do that you lose a lot of opportunity to increase affection while doing the quests & story.

 

I'd suggest incoroporating the affection gains in a manner that let a player see this on the fly like alignment gains are. The more complex part is that you need to somehow indicate which companion stands to gain the most from the quest, so perhaps adding tootip notes on quest givers that give the quest name they have for you, and the potential maximum numerical gains for your companions. That means quest pick-up or turn in isn't slowed down, which wouild pick up the pace of the game and lead to less quitting from boredom. Frankly I get bored doing it, but its necessary to promote long term crafting competence. While overall this may sound minor, having boring game--play aspects in a game is costly for your business as it leads to clients wandering off to more esciting venues.

You could just wait to do this until you do your daily endgame quests or simply give your companions gifts. If you buy the legacy gift affection buffs and not buy the dialogue buffs, you will lose the least amount of affection possible through dialogue while gaining the most possible through gifts.

 

Dialogue choices are free though, I'll concede that. But creating the system you suggested would in a way encourage people to play the game a certain way. It's easier to play the game your way and people will play that way because of that. But I think it's a better experience playing the game however a person wants.

 

For the record, I'm neither for or against something like this. If this was implemented, I would turn it on like I have alignment turned on. It doesn't mean I HAVE to pick a certain option, but it would help during situations where I can't decide wwhat to pick. But it just is not that important. The only companion I can see where this would make a difference is the last companion you get.

Edited October 17, 2012 by MonkeyCannon

You will notice that each of your companions react always the same to your behaviour. Their codex entry will also list what they like and dislike.

 

Getting to know your companion is part of the game too. Your choice is then to either act the way your character would have reacted (roleplaying, you know), or change your character behaviour to accomodate your companion. Which is also fine as it can reflect that your character is evolving ingame by being "nice" to your companion.

 

The crafting boost is only relevant at level 50 and by then running the dailies on Belsavis will quickly boost their affection to the max.

 

So play the game as you would like your character to behave in your own story. Enjoy the leveling.

Only worry about min-maxing at level 50.

Well for many people they look at such things always. After going thru a quest on one toon, you know the drill and usually just accept and go kill. Here its a whole new thing with a different comp & class on choice rewards. Can't afford to buy affection beyond Rank 2, so conversation gains look mighty good.

It's slightly difficult on the first toon, but once you get to 44 or 45, the level when you can send 5 companions out on missions, you can farm for companion gifts very quickly and spend them on yourself or send them to alts. Every time I roll a new alt, I take two hours on my main to farm companion gifts while I'm doing other things like space dailies or using the GTN. I rolled a trooper monday and just by doing this raised Aric's affection to 4k. My trooper is still lvl 11.

 

And you can sometimes find gifts on the GTN cheaper than what the vendor sells them for.